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Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
21–30 of 51 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#22My advice would be to target a situation where clients search for you, rather the other way around (everything else I find unsustainable). For that you need to put your work out, like breadcrumbs - so the interested party gets curious and reaches out. Has worked for me for the past seven years. The cost of putting your work out is basically zero these days - all you have to do it put the time in, which you have to do…
I'm a DS/ML consultant, but I've never done Kaggle or even serious public github projects. For context, I've only changed clients once, as my contracts have been very long-term. My initial client reached out to me and induced me into part-time consulting in the first place, and my second/current reached out to me based on previously working at the same company.
So I'm not saying that I know everything, but n=1 says that interpersonal connections in a domain+skill can be fully sufficient. Obviously, which one to focus on depends on where you're starting from - I have 10 years of experience in a domain and have interacted as a skilled expert with many people who are now managing budgets at various mid-sized companies. If I needed a new client, I'd primarily reach out through that network instead of using Kaggle.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#23I’m a consultant and bootatrapped it into a profitable firm. First, understand the difference between a contractor and a consultant. Though not all differentiate the two, many do and that’s reflected in the market rates associated with them (consulting == contracting + hard-to-find expert advisory). Convert a single existing FTE role into a consulting engagement to get you started if you can. If not, your ability to sell yourself is highly variable and something you’ll need to try and fail at a few times — this is highly dependent on your personal social strengths and weaknesses in my experience making quality general advice hard to give. Have 3-6 months living expenses in the bank, at least. This will help smooth out cash flow inconsistencies. And perhaps the most important thing is to not waiver on your rates. There are many leads that won’t pay for value; avoid them for the many who will. It will seem at times that lowering your rates is necessary, but its far more likely to be a symptom of looking in the wrong place for the right clients; recognize this as a fail in the try/fail cycle, and try again.
Happy to answer more questions if you can narrow down your ask to specifics.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#24From my experience social skills are most important. Way more important than technical skills. If you can connect to upper management you can make very good money.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#25You can go on Hired and Triplebyte to find contracting gigs.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#26I’ve been doing this for the last 7 years. It’s quite common and not much different than an employee as a contractor. They pay your company that you set up and you pay yourself however much you want to offset on taxes and such.
Interestingly there are contracts for full-time employees too nowadays for non-tech related roles so companies can save on not having to spend on benefits.
Main thing I learned is pay yourself a fixed amount and don’t treat your business bank account as your own. I ended up having owing my business money in the first few years lol.
Also the good thing is some of the stuff I buy I use it as a business expense.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#27I searched project aggregators for interesting projects that take longer than 3 months Wrote a few applications. Got one of these projects. Repeated it when the project came to an end.
Can you give an example of such project aggregator?
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#28I’m a consultant and bootatrapped it into a profitable firm. First, understand the difference between a contractor and a consultant. Though not all differentiate the two, many do and that’s reflected in the market rates associated with them (consulting == contracting + hard-to-find expert advisory). Convert a single existing FTE role into a consulting engagement to get you started if you can. If not, your ability to…
> Convert a single existing FTE role into a consulting engagement to get you started if you can
Can you give an example of what this would look like?
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#29My advice would be to target a situation where clients search for you, rather the other way around (everything else I find unsustainable). For that you need to put your work out, like breadcrumbs - so the interested party gets curious and reaches out. Has worked for me for the past seven years. The cost of putting your work out is basically zero these days - all you have to do it put the time in, which you have to do…
I'm a DS/ML consultant, but I've never done Kaggle or even serious public github projects. For context, I've only changed clients once, as my contracts have been very long-term. My initial client reached out to me and induced me into part-time consulting in the first place, and my second/current reached out to me based on previously working at the same company. So I'm not saying that I know everything, but n=1 says t…
>I've only changed clients once, as my contracts have been very long-term
It should be pointed out that this is much closer to insecure employment than traditional contracting/consulting. No judgement from me, because I'm in a very similar position- freelance contractor on paper, but in reality, one client and a very employee-like working dynamic.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get started as independent consultant or contractor
#30I started doing a lot of contracting through recruiters which could be anywhere from a few days work to 6-12 month longer contracts. This allowed me to meet a lot of different people in my industry/city and build a reputation as someone reliable. After that's done then it's a matter of growing those relationships and once the recruiter lock-in period ends you can start to approach them directly and offer your service…
Can you elaborate on "contracting through recruiters"? Did you respond to recruiters who were reaching out to you with full-time positions and say "no thanks, but what about a contract instead?" If so, do you have any particular strategies for getting to a "yes" with that approach? Or did you mean that you reached out to recruiters and worked out a finder's fee arrangement if they brought you contracts? If so, how di…
I’ve found some recruiters just default to W2 because it’s less headaches (and potentially more money) for them. Sometimes it’s a requirement for the contract. You don’t know unless you ask