161–170 of 179 posts
Don't focus on finding work, you'll just be selling your time to the lowest bidder. If you can afford it, build something for free, blog what you learn, and ship it. Build a portfolio of real working software and technical writing. If your software has users, talk to them and you should find plenty of work.
I offer two services to my clients, consulting/expertise and firefighting. The former pays for food, gas and grass; the the latter pays for everything else including skiing in the Alps and sunbathing in Cancun. The purpose of business is not to sell but to create a customer...
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disagree. feeding your own family IS more important to you. it has to be, because that is your responsibility. you are not responsible for other families. not at the expense of your own. the question is rather: why is unethical behavior the only way to feed your family? in case of the suggestion to just quit after 9 months i would say that if there is no other way to get work, then what choice do they have? this is s…
> you are not responsible for other families. Why not? Do you not consider yourself at all responsible for the wellbeing of society?
but at the end of the day i can't let my children starve to achieve that goal, nor am i responsible to feed all my neighbors who sometimes struggle to actually afford all their daily necessities. there has to be a balance somewhere. and as i said the balance is to not resort to unethical behavior. but that's not the same thing as giving other families a higher priority than my own which is what you are suggesting (you are not explicitly saying it, but the opposite reading of "why is your family more important than others?" is "why should other families be more important than yours?".)
i brought these children into the world, and my responsibility is towards them first. this does not mean that i ignore the needs of others, if i can help them. it also does not mean that i focus on giving my children an advantage over others, or that i protect them from their own mistakes. all i am doing is to make sure that they are healthy and learn, in school and in life. that is my priority because it is my responsibility alone. noone else is going to do that for me. i am the only one who can make sure that it happens. caring for society on the other hand is a group responsibility, not an individual one. i can and do contribute to that, but only as much as my primary responsibility of caring for my children allows.
A lot of the advice here about networking and marketing yourself is solid, but I want to address this part of your question directly - “Do you know of any project boards or feature bounty platforms to find short-term projects?” I’ve faced a similar issue with traditional freelancing platforms, so I ended up building a platform where experienced engineers can work with agencies to manage and deliver projects. It’s a d…
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IMHO selling yourself (selling anything, really) is a bit demeaning. But this is probably a class affectation on my part, not real moral intuition.
Well it's a couple things - Expectation to be "successful" i.e. social media presents extreme conceptions of success, similar to a supermodel body expectation vs. real life. To say, "I'm looking for work" is to publicly admit failure against such a standard. The fear is that for every potential employer, 10 people you know will see the post and say, "tut tut, what a failure" and then call their 10 friends to share th…
Of course, I shouldn't let their misconceptions bother me, but there it is.
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.
In fact, there are a few of such bounty platforms in my notes, but Algora seems to be the one with the most traction: in terms to new tasks to work on and the bounty amounts being competitively priced.
Here’s an example of a 2-3 month bounty offering up to $20,000 on Algora, for someone with React Native skills: https://github.com/BasedHardware/omi/issues/1944
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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.
Independent contractor here. Admittedly, it's not for everybody. But once you've built up a base of clients who need your services regularly, you don't need to keep seeking more, at least not at nearly the same rate. Also, word of mouth will keep people coming to you. The reality is that I almost never have to sell myself. But I've been doing this for decades, and YMMV. Of course, your ability to do this will be some…
A lot of the advice here about networking and marketing yourself is solid, but I want to address this part of your question directly - “Do you know of any project boards or feature bounty platforms to find short-term projects?” I’ve faced a similar issue with traditional freelancing platforms, so I ended up building a platform where experienced engineers can work with agencies to manage and deliver projects. It’s a d…
this looks interesting. but i am missing steps for engineers to join the talent pool. the frontpage only addresses projects and agencies looking for people, but not people looking for work. there i no way for engineers to sign up.
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Independent contractor here. Admittedly, it's not for everybody. But once you've built up a base of clients who need your services regularly, you don't need to keep seeking more, at least not at nearly the same rate. Also, word of mouth will keep people coming to you. The reality is that I almost never have to sell myself. But I've been doing this for decades, and YMMV. Of course, your ability to do this will be some…
Do market downturns affect you greatly? I'm curious how the past 12 months have gone so far. As someone who's considered what you're doing.
To be honest, the distinction between full time employee vs. contractor is less important (i.e. affects your work less) than other factors like your capacity and willingness to engage with people, industry, tech stack, and willingness to learn new stacks.
I offer two services to my clients, consulting/expertise and firefighting. The former pays for food, gas and grass; the the latter pays for everything else including skiing in the Alps and sunbathing in Cancun. The purpose of business is not to sell but to create a customer...
how do you find your clients?