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How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

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Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#261

Post by gwilkes »

nandemo wrote: post #260
new299 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is currently living in Japan, but only working remotely for companies in the US/UK I'm kind of interested to know how you find work here? Is it hard to get contract work? Where do you look? What is the pay like?

Personal contacts, recruiting agencies, job boards (but not craigslist). You're probably better off working for companies in the US/UK. Freelancing is not as common as it is in the US, large and mid-sized companies much prefer to deal with other companies rather than individual freelancers. But you seem to specialize in relatively rare skills, so you might have better luck freelancing than the average web developer.…

I get the impression that most of patio11's high paying clients are not in Japan (please correct me if I'm wrong Patrick).

Yes, there is freelance work in Japan, but a look at any job board will show that tech salaries are not as high as US/UK jobs. In my experience that seems to affect freelance rates.

I do a mix of US and Japanese freelance work. Personal contacts are the big one for me. Without high level Japanese you may be limited to the foreign tech community.

That community is small but it still can take some time to build up a network. Took me about two years here until I started to get a good amount of Japanese freelance work.

You may both be aware of it already, but if not, the Hacker News Tokyo Meetup is as good a place as any to start: http://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp

For me the biggest advantages of local work are working with people in person (I got tired of remote only work), and the untapped opportunities in web and software from the US/UK being ahead in those areas.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#262

Post by dalore »

philwelch wrote: post #204
F_J_H wrote: post #106

There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…

> If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather than reduce expenses – people pay much more for that. But decreasing costs by $1 is mathematically the same as increasing revenue by $1--it increases profitability by $1. Which means any process or mentality that prefers one…

It's not the same because you will pay slightly more tax on that $1 going up, and slightly less tax on reducing your costs.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#263

Post by larve »

flyinglizard wrote: post #152
alinajaf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi flyinglizard, I'd love to pick your brain about consulting on ARM/embedded stuff as it's a field I'm interested in. Do you have an email address that I can send a few specific questions to (that I promise won't take more than a few minutes to answer)? Thanks in advance.

YHM

hey flyinglizard, I'd love to pick your brains too :)

regards, manuel

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#264

Post by liquidcool »

goblin89 wrote: post #189
ahoyhere wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we're disagreeing here about pricing at all! Lots of very good freelancers are undercharging and everybody should price on value delivered. (Especially those freelancers who disappear and only get work done when yelled at. If only!) That's why a lot of the educational content I've used to promote Freckle is about delivering, understanding & capturing value… for freelancers. (Which includes understanding…

> If you ask your client questions and debate features, that's already a good start. I've always been doing that, and felt uncomfortable to call this activity ‘programming’. Local clients (small businesses) hire a web developer to build a site, but it usually requires at least some education and research, as they rarely have good understanding of their needs. Still I'm shy to call it consulting except to myself. Your…

One book I found very valuable (and discovered on another HN thread) was Gerald Weinberg's "Secrets of Consulting." That book generated lots of good ideas. If you pause at the publication date, don't. You'd be shocked how little this stuff changes, until you realize (as Weinberg explains) it's always a people problem, and people haven't changed.

I also recommend Patrick's recent podcasts/interviews on the subject.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#265

Post by goblin89 »

liquidcool wrote: post #264
goblin89 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you ask your client questions and debate features, that's already a good start. I've always been doing that, and felt uncomfortable to call this activity ‘programming’. Local clients (small businesses) hire a web developer to build a site, but it usually requires at least some education and research, as they rarely have good understanding of their needs. Still I'm shy to call it consulting except to myself. Your…

One book I found very valuable (and discovered on another HN thread) was Gerald Weinberg's "Secrets of Consulting." That book generated lots of good ideas. If you pause at the publication date, don't. You'd be shocked how little this stuff changes, until you realize (as Weinberg explains) it's always a people problem, and people haven't changed. I also recommend Patrick's recent podcasts/interviews on the subject.

Thanks a lot for recommendations, the book looks very interesting. I have Patrick's podcasts in queue, and just realized that ahoyhere is Amy Hoy who was a guest on one of the episodes. =)

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#266

Post by flyinRyan »

F_J_H wrote: post #106

There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…

Also, if you're pitching money savings then you're moving the client into a money saver mindset which might make them think your rates are too high.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#267

Post by flyinRyan »

pknerd wrote: post #55
patio11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a blog and start making new business acquaintances. (Being in the Valley should not exactly have you hurting for options on that score.)

And what about those who not even in US and belong to a "3rd world country" where one wish to give work only because it's Cheap?

Price is about perceived value, not what the product costs to produce. Your living costs are irrelevant to your rate (except setting the minimum you need to get to make it worthwhile, but even that doesn't affect market rate just viability).

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#268

Post by flyinRyan »

komlon wrote: post #225

You just go and be a contractor. There are tons of contracting positions open in London that will pay £500 - £600 per day. It's easy to make over £100k (pounds) if you're a good contractor. http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/JobSearch/Results.aspx?Keywords=core...

A contractor (contract based, usually 3-6 month intervals, low paid) is a totally different thing to a freelancer (higher bill rate, hourly ad hoc projects usually) and a consultant (much higher bill rate, but project based instead fixed interval based).

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#269

Post by prince_hakeem »

Cass wrote: post #87
trhtrsh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patrick's other projects are the self-education, credibility-development, and marketing for his consulting business. He is not going to retire a millionaire on bingo cards and appointment reminders.

Have you looked at the appointment reminder pricing? A single mid-tier customer brings in $1000 to $2400 per year. Scale that to a few hundred accounts, and you won't have to wait for retirement age to be a millionaire.

So that begs the question "Why isn't he working on promoting that instead of consulting?".

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#270

Post by bartz_daniel »

mtrimpe wrote: post #31
SageRaven wrote: post #24

Damn, that sounds nice. I wonder if system admin/architecture can be modeled that way. I'd love to bill even a modest $2k/week, rather than trawl craigslist, responding to posts for "unix/linux ninjas" then having shops balk at anything over $20 an hour. I don't know how many messes I've cleaned up (likely left by people charging a hell of a lot more than me) for really low rates. I know, I know. Craiglist and other…

I don't know about sysadmin work, but I'm pretty sure DevOps could be. I worked at a company that ended up spending probably several man-years worth of effort over a period of three years on puppetizing their environment and still doesn't have a one-click-deploy of their infrastructure and feels the pain of that acutely every few months when a new environment needs to be brought up by hand. If someone'd been around o…

Would love to know more about the remaining challenges to get closer of a one-clid-deployement after such a puppetizing effort.

Could you share some of the most important issues (technical or not) ? In advance many thanks.

I am really curious about your experience as we try to achieve the same objectives here with http://comodit.com

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