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Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#171

Post by sublinear »

deadbabe wrote: post #4

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…

> hard to trust a short term dev who doesn’t really need the money

Hard to trust employers who don't really need the labor but are completely stacked with useless morons and yes-men running the place.

This absolutely goes both ways.

The economy is only as strong as its ability to trust others and weed out everyone else. That so many believe this is difficult says more about their abilities than the market.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#172

Post by ornornor »

kmoser wrote: post #169
mancerayder wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really, because the bulk of my work is building websites, and even in a down market, a website is an integral part of my clients' business. My work is not really seasonal, either. 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 t…

Wry curious to know what is your strategy for sales and marketing. How did you find your first customers and how do you keep getting more (besides existing ones comes back for more)

Would chat privately if you prefer but no contact details in your bio.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#173

Post by ornornor »

patrick451 wrote: post #128
quectophoton wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I would describe it is: "How do you like applying to new jobs and doing interviews? Now imagine that being half your job."

Contractors have to do the leetcode monkey dance for prospects?

Depends what kind of “jobs” you apply to.

If you’re selling a specific service then no, kinda like how you pick a doctor.

But if it’s to apply for a regular coding job except you’re not on the payroll but « independent » then yes it’s exactly like a regular job interview. It just pays 2x but the process is just as shitty.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#174

Post by kmoser »

ornornor wrote: post #172
kmoser wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, because the bulk of my work is building websites, and even in a down market, a website is an integral part of my clients' business. My work is not really seasonal, either. 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 t…

Wry curious to know what is your strategy for sales and marketing. How did you find your first customers and how do you keep getting more (besides existing ones comes back for more) Would chat privately if you prefer but no contact details in your bio.

A few times in my career I've responded to job listings and contacted recruiters but these days I do no sales/marketing. The vast majority of jobs I've gotten, even the first few, have been through contacts I made online in the BBS days. I was also lucky that my first few real jobs were long-term freelance contracts (1-2 years each) so I didn't have to look for work very often. The landscape has changed tremendously since then, though, and these days a resume is less important than a good portfolio.

My advice: join a small, local tech oriented community, contribute regularly, and don't discount the value of F2F. Happy to go into more detail here, or contact me at kmoser.com.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#175

Post by AbstractH24 »

paxys wrote: post #36

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…

I'd add a 3rd requirement - scoping & project management, particularly when being "surgical" and coming into an existing project.

That's a skill I'm trying to learn, and not sure where to turn. If anyone has any advice.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#176

Post by anon743448 »

prepend wrote: post #147
rsanek wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to add it to your resume, right? If you want to mention the work in future interviews, you can easily talk about it as short-term contracting work. I'm not sure what's wrong ethically about it though? Is it that you wouldn't have provided enough value to the firm in 9 months?

A gap on resumes is still a gap. I invest a lot of attention, time, and resources in new employees and want to attract and retain people for long periods of time. I cover this during the interview process. If someone only wants to work for 9 months, they aren’t a good fit for my org. (Although we do have contract work for shorter term) If someone lies and says they want to work long term to get the job, while plannin…

People join wrong companies all the time and quit in less than a year. Same goes for companies, plenty of people get laid off during their first year. It sucks but it also gives us more liquid labor market where employees and employers know that they can get out of bad relationships easily. (And it usually favors employers)

One or two stints like that are not a problem. Nor is gap in resume should be an issue. (Yes some old school managers want perfect resume but many more understand that people now take time off to explore other interests, travel, start their own ventures etc)

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#177

Post by brokegrammer »

I've been wondering the same thing. Been blogging and posting on Reddit + Freelancer Seeking Freelancer threads on HN but nothing came up so far. Don't know if it's because I'm using an old tech-stack (Python + Django) or if my communication needs improving.

It's definitely tough to get even one client these days.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#178

Post by dep_b »

rglover wrote: post #112
toptal wrote: post #49

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.

Curious, are there any exceptions to your coding test (I applied back in 2021 or so, not sure if this is still a requirement)? The test didn't like my solutions/speed (which meant I couldn't move forward), however, I'd say I'm more than qualified to be a Toptal dev (see projects in my HN profile [1]). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/rglover

I only passed the coding test because they asked me exactly the same question the second time. I was definitely one of their top developers there, got great reviews and got approached directly for some great projects so it was pretty obvious I was an above average performer there.

Coding tests suck for people from countries that have a more practical mindset at universities. I remember needed algorithms exactly once where I had to apply algorithms to cluster 100,000's of map pointers and every built-in solution was completely slow.

Got it to an agreeable performance, which was cool. However using the Geo capabilities of the database directly was much faster, and could be cached for all users, so I just used that instead in the end.

Re: Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

#179

Post by rnewme »

hnisoss wrote: post #108
dep_b wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm doing my last engagement on toptal rn as well. Will quit after. The company I m working for is awesome but toptal part not so much anymore. From staff to FUD. They cut down my rate to 1/3 of what I used to charge few years back. (They still bill client 2x what I get, of course).

Well, that ended well!
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