101–110 of 179 posts
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it's not about forcing yourself to be a good salesman, but rather about showcasing your skills, expertise, and personality in a genuine and authentic way
Everyone in the world, including a million experienced programmers, are already showcasing their skills in a "genuine and authentic" way. Why are you better than anyone else for the job?
Having the right technical skills is only 50% of the requirement (and realistically even less than that). The harder battle is being a good salesman. Push yourself and your services at every opportunity. Send mass emails to friends and old collegues. Write daily puke-inducing posts on LinkedIn. Write blog posts and make toy Github projects with "looking for work" blurbs at the top of each one. Set a goal to post N ti…
Ugh. This is probably one of those "Thanks, I hate it!" moments. You're probably 100% right, and this is why I could never be an independent contractor. This kind of self-promotion and lead generation seems so demeaning, slimy, and shameful, and I'd probably die of embarrassment if I ever had to do it. Yet it comes so naturally to some people. It sucks that this kind of skill is required to make it on your own.
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I don't think they are, and I don't think it's necessary (or possible) to be better than anyone else.
Seriously? Have you seen the absolute crap that some people produce? You really don't think "it's necessary (or possible) to be better than anyone else"? Race to the bottom, here we come!
Sign up for small company at bottom, find things to fix. Set timeline and expectations to leave in 9mo. By then you'll be running parts of the company. You may not actually want to do this long term, or it may be a nice side income. Plan for not continuing to do it, document well, and everyone will be happier
My suggestion is talk to small, indie recruiters. Big recruiting firms will not likely have these types of roles. I'm currently doing a 2 month contract, 40 hours a week, for a small tech consulting agency.
Having the right technical skills is only 50% of the requirement (and realistically even less than that). The harder battle is being a good salesman. Push yourself and your services at every opportunity. Send mass emails to friends and old collegues. Write daily puke-inducing posts on LinkedIn. Write blog posts and make toy Github projects with "looking for work" blurbs at the top of each one. Set a goal to post N ti…
Ugh. This is probably one of those "Thanks, I hate it!" moments. You're probably 100% right, and this is why I could never be an independent contractor. This kind of self-promotion and lead generation seems so demeaning, slimy, and shameful, and I'd probably die of embarrassment if I ever had to do it. Yet it comes so naturally to some people. It sucks that this kind of skill is required to make it on your own.
No one's fault but my own, but I should have realized a lot sooner that real success would require a lot more proactive "sales" effort; and that if I wasn't willing to do that, I needed to go work for someone else a lot sooner than I finally did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously? Have you seen the absolute crap that some people produce? You really don't think "it's necessary (or possible) to be better than anyone else"? Race to the bottom, here we come!
It's nice to interpret someone's post in good faith, then he doesn't have to defend something he never said.
CEO of Toptal here. If you like, I can ensure we review your profile and client matching history to see if there's anything we overlooked. I'm available on Slack or taso@toptal.com. We’ll see if we can optimize your visibility to clients needing backend/data optimization experts. While we look into this, Opire (an open-source bounties site) has lots of short-term opportunities.
I quit using Toptal because I was living in Western Europe and got extremely lowballed at a given point. As if I simply had to match the rates of people from Eastern Europe or Northern Africa. I got a better hourly rate through the platform when still living in Latin America. Before Covid, it was amazing.
Short term work is more plentiful when money is easy and there’s a lot of entrepreneurial activity going on due to some recent catalyst such as mobile app platforms or the dotcom boom etc. Right now we’re in the AI boom and some people may be making money peddling agentic solutions but money is tight and businesses are hurting. It’s also hard to trust a short term dev who doesn’t really need the money. You have no le…
> It’s also hard to trust a short term dev who doesn’t really need the money. You have no leverage over them. They sort of just do as they please. On one hand I agree. On the other hand I cannot help but contrast this with how free market capitalism is advertised: free agents entering free mutually beneficial contracts at their own free will, everyone benefits. Then suddenly when the worker is actually free to leave…