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Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#161

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

Joeboy wrote: post #80
aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two viable possibilities: 1. It's about the money, because you never know when you may have a 5-10 year underproductive period due to health/other unforeseen emergency. 2. It's not about the money, it's about the experience/knowledge gained/distraction/self-worth of accomplishing more.

> it's about the experience/knowledge gained/distraction/self-worth of accomplishing more To me, a side gig means accomplishing more of what someone else wants, with the trade-off of being less able to accomplish (or learn about, or distract yourself with) what you want. Which seems like an odd thing to want unless you need the money. I suppose for some people having a £200k income and not needing the money seem less…

Sometimes people see others' goals as helpful to their own.

See: John Carmack at FB.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#162

Post by Enginerrrd »

ghaff wrote: post #64
Enginerrrd wrote: post #29

Pound pavement. Take people out to lunch. Go to conferences. Lots and lots of networking. Leverage any existing connections you have. If you're a senior, you should have some that are no longer relevant to your company, like old coworkers and whatnot. In my experience, there will be about a 3-6 month delay between looking for work and securing a contract. A couple things: I undersold myself at first to get a couple o…

Per another comment of mine, you're now essentially talking about a full time-ish job though. Unless you're lucky and connect with just the right people in your network, it's really tough to land well-paying part-time to very part-time gigs with a minimum of business development and a fair bit of flexibility. And this is true broadly. It's very hard to find/make a 10-20 hour job that lets you take off a month or two…

I totally agree.

I ended up trying to approximate this for a time by sharing work with a shop of 3 people. We were each 3 separate companies, but we would bring in clients under one contract and then just exchange labor via internal market-like exchanges. It worked pretty well for quite a while.

But even then... while it did sort of allow one to frequently (but not always) work part time and to take a couple weeks off and just distribute work with the other guys in the shop, it didn't attenuate the feast or famine issue as much as I'd hoped. In practice, 2 out of the 3 of us did the business development, and 1 guys served as the guy we could offload work onto.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#163

Post by angarg12 »

itake wrote: post #151
3pt14159 wrote: post #79

Side gigs don't really earn much. If you've got a friend that you've worked with before and they have a startup or something, ask for some peanuts amount of equity as an hands on advisor. It'll do more for your CV than 20 hour side gigs glueing some libraries together. Or pick a well known library / framework and contribute. Or rescue a "looking for [co-]maintainer" library out there.

I earn $10k/mo contracting 20 hours per week. Personally, this extra income helped me maximize my day job benefits (401k and ESPP) and provided liquidity during the home buying process.

Maybe you can answer a question that is nagging me.

I recently moved to the US, and ever since I keep getting messages on LinkedIn offering contract/freelance jobs.

However the hourly rate is so poor that it would pay less that my current job base pay (not counting stocks and bonuses).

In Europe the rule of thumb is that contract job should pay 2x your full time job rate. This is based on the associated overhead plus lack of benefits (e.g. you need to pay your own pension contribution).

This made me think, is anyone taking these contract jobs? I see several possibilities:

a) Contract work in the US is not attractive.

b) People reaching out in LinkedIn are the bottom of the barrel. There are better rates out there.

c) People run several contracts in parallel, or with a full time job.

Is any of these true or am I missing something?

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#166

Post by molsongolden »

angarg12 wrote: post #163
itake wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I earn $10k/mo contracting 20 hours per week. Personally, this extra income helped me maximize my day job benefits (401k and ESPP) and provided liquidity during the home buying process.

Maybe you can answer a question that is nagging me. I recently moved to the US, and ever since I keep getting messages on LinkedIn offering contract/freelance jobs. However the hourly rate is so poor that it would pay less that my current job base pay (not counting stocks and bonuses). In Europe the rule of thumb is that contract job should pay 2x your full time job rate. This is based on the associated overhead plus…

b) is the most likely situation here

The 2x calculation is similar in the US. I've also seen "3x your hourly rate as an employee" if you're relying on the contracting income. It's important to account for the time you'll spend doing sales and misc. non-billable business building.

There are lowball contracting offers all over the internet and people sometimes accept these for various reasons. A higher tier of sustainable contracting does exist though, with most of the higher paying work sourced via networking, not via job boards.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#167

Post by ghaff »

bmitc wrote: post #158
ghaff wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that highlights though that a steady stream of decent paying gigs isn't a few hours "after the kids are in bed" sort of thing for the most part. Every now and then I'll do a little (non-coding) consulting for someone I know but my observation--not having looked very hard, mind you--is that anything between having a serious go at it and picking up low-paying scraps is hard to do on a regular basis.

That's a very good point. But at the same time, I do wonder why there aren't more temporary things that are carved out. I think it speaks somewhat to the design of software, because surely people have little pieces, components, libraries, etc. developed that just need some time and eyes on them and don't require onboarding to the full system or long-term commitments or even full-time commitments. But I suppose there'…

I'd think there would be so much coordination and onboarding overhead that it wouldn't be worthwhile unless it was so specialized/unique that your own staff doesn't understand it--and then why are you using software you don't understand and can't maintain.

Where I've had the most experience with using consultants and agencies for short-term/part-time are things like the following: -- You have a specific problem related to, say, ball bearing design and you really need to consult with an expert specialist. -- You need a speaker for an event and want a name of some sort -- You need a discrete project that you could probably do in-house but an agency specializes in that sort of thing -- You need a fractional share of some specialty (e.g. public relations)

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#168

Post by varispeed »

I was doing a couple of side gigs when I was younger. It was a total nightmare. Ended up feeling like doing two full time jobs, being absolutely exhausted and then not having much extra money to show for it (the taxes are brutal).

As where did I find those - at the time it was gumtree or word of mouth.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#169

Post by gtfoutttt »

mywittyname wrote: post #95
jinglejangley wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm already earning near that compensation, was just looking for something on the side as well :)

You're chasing pennies with a side-gig. If you're already at the top of market in terms of pay, it's unlikely a side-gig is going bring in enough to satisfy your ambitions. Why not start your own business? The upside is much better. Yeah, it might fail, but you can decide to start another one what you learned.

Or buy real estate.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?

#170

Post by sokoloff »

giantg2 wrote: post #134
sokoloff wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From 168 hours that we all start with in a week, if someone wants to spend 20 of them making their and their family's lives better, why wouldn't we generally encourage that? I certainly wouldn't discourage it and I could be neutral on it, but if I think about, I'd rather they work on a side gig than watch Netflix, doom-scroll, or watch TikToks.

I think the part we're disconnected on is "better". Will a couple extra grand a year make their family's life better beyond the amount they already have? Perhaps physical exercise or relaxing provides more benefit. Of course we probably can't answer this as it's specific to each individual. I suppose I'm in the camp that finds it skeptical that it would be much benefit at that level. I might also view it as a negativ…

Most every tech job in the world could go to someone who needs it more. That doesn't make me discourage people from taking tech jobs, nor do I plan to retire when I have the minimum amount needed for a modest retirement.
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