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Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#71

Post by tomrod »

phrotoma wrote: post #19
aviperl wrote: post #10

I was hanging out on a slack community of developers where I would commonly respond to questions and chat on the channel for Python. Someone there had a friend with AWS costs flying through the roof and he needed some help from somebody who could understand python. My action on that channel caused him to reach out to me. Once I solved their issue, they asked me if I could add features to the site. I turned them down…

Your story is a nice succinct version of the "Business of Authority" strategy. Establish yourself as an expert, work finds you. https://thebusinessofauthority.com/

I never thought about these as different acquisition models. What others are there to learn about?

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#72

Post by TheAmazingRace »

So unlike some folks, I’m still very much reliant on $DAYJOB for the majority of my income. But I managed to carve out a niche in an unexpected place.

OS/2 consulting

It all started when I made a connection through a OS/2 community post asking for help on some CNC equipment running OS/2, and it turned out that they were fairly local to me, so I now have an occasional source of income in the form of troubleshooting and debugging OS/2 boxes.

I’m slowly building up contacts to do more. This isn’t ever going to entirely replace my normal 9 to 5, but it’s really good side work and gives me something to do.

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#74

Post by pdimitar »

eatonphil wrote: post #61

If you'd like visibility, I pay experienced developers a small fee to write educational articles on software infrastructure. While you cannot write about your own projects, your byline in the article is a good place to say that you're looking for work (employment or contract). https://theconsensus.dev/contribute.html

I'm close to finishing a fairly complex and laborious Elixir bridge to SQLite (through Rust) and I loved the journey. Maybe I should contact you and write an article. Hmm.

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#75

Post by squirrel »

Had been consulting for equity with one startup out of an accelerator, so it was natural to go paid once I went out on my own. For the next few clients, approached investors I knew from that and other startups, who referred me to portfolio companies who needed me. I wish I'd read Alan Weiss's Million Dollar Consulting at the beginning though, I would have avoided many mistakes (like day-rate billing).

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#76

Post by skeeter2020 »

santiagobasulto wrote: post #3

General consultancy is an extremely crowded space. As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. My advice would be to differentiate yourself: - Become an expert in 1 thing, and one thing only: either start an open source project, or b…

+3 for focus / personal and networking.

I don't consult anymore, but for an extended period I did so at a premium rate and as an independent. I remember a hiring manager's boss saying something to me like "I could get 2 or more consultants for the same money" and I replied, " I don't really see myself as competing with those organizations, but if you can get the job done it makes sense to take that path." It was both cocky and true (not sure today-me would say that). The thing I understood well was that differentiating as a skilled individual makes you much harder to displace; there are countless "$TECH programmer with N years of experience in $FOOBAR" while there are very few "$YOU".

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#77

Post by skeeter2020 »

aerhardt wrote: post #44
santiagobasulto wrote: post #3

General consultancy is an extremely crowded space. As a startup CEO, I get at least 3 emails per week from software agencies and consultants. On top of that, they're usually located in India/Ukraine and the rates they offer are very low, so I assume it's very difficult to compete. My advice would be to differentiate yourself: - Become an expert in 1 thing, and one thing only: either start an open source project, or b…

> Become an expert in 1 thing I endorse this. I've been doing generalist consulting for about six years, and I love flying solo. I've been successful in landing some big customers and interesting projects, but I'm tired of the inefficiency that comes with being a generalist, so I've decided to specialize vertically. I had a super-interesting project in executive search in the last couple years, and I've decided to se…

I used to fear specialization because of a form of commercial or career FOMO. The reality is you instead get spread to thin and are (ironically?) now at risk of being displaced by "good enough" AI solutions. If you are a generalist you still need to be "T-shaped" with a few areas of deeper expertise. Funny enough your expertise could be getting things done-done using all your generalist abilities (ex: able to take initial ideas all the way to a active, viable business).

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#78

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

You have to ask yourself - why? I’ve worked full time for consulting departments/companies (not staff aug) where I have been over projects for 6 years.

I get paid whether I’m on vacation, on the bench, full benefits, etc.

They take care of finding projects, chasing down payments, sales, marketing and I get paid…decently.

Every time I think about going independent - and I have a decent network and great credentials for my specialty - the juice just ain’t worth the squeeze. I get to focus on leading projects and not have to worry about the surrounding work.

Re: Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?

#79

Post by mancerayder »

Is anyone in this space nervous that companies will spend their infrastructure or software engineering budget on AI 'agents' like Claude en lieu of consulting dollars?

If you aren't afraid of this, are you doing anything different from a marketing or even daily work perspective?

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