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Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

#61

Post by jordsmi »

keithwarren wrote: post #17

I have been on my own for 15 years. I bill around 150/hr give or take 20% depending on the situation. Most of the work is Microsoft stack web related but mobile apps and api building has been steadily increasing for a several years now to the point that probably 20% of my 2014 revenue was in that space. 50-60% of my revenue is sub-contracting. I have a few firms that often take on projects that they are not suited fo…

How exactly do you 'network' at these events. Do you just introduce yourself and sort of talk, have a business card that you give, or how's it go?

Just wondering from someone who's never been to any type of event, so I've never had to really do any networking

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

#62

Post by asgeo1 »

I get most of my leads from either:

* My website. I rank reasonably well in Google for search phrases such as "Freelance Developer in $mycity". Probably if I blogged I would get more traffic. But it doesn't hurt to get a website going, and see if you can get ranked in Google for a particular geographic area. I suppose it's only really useful if you live in a city large enough that businesses are trying to find developers in via Google.

Also I've found that the people who do search Google for developers in a geographic area, are generally doing this because they want someone local, and have often previously tried offshore developers and not liked the results.

* LinkedIn / Github / Stackoverflow - occasionally I get leads from these sites. LinkedIn is easily the best of the three. I don't think you even need many connections on LinkedIn (I've only got 60). I think I just show up in the search results. Usually LinkedIn you will get recruiters looking to fill a contract job. Github/Stackoverflow are usually other developers from a company looking for someone to help out on a project.

I'm a bit disappointed in Stackoveflow Careers - I've never had a lead from there, which is odd.

* Referrals. This is probably the best way to get work - it would be hard if you were young and just starting out I guess. I've found that now and then clients will mention you to other potential clients, and it does kind of snowball a bit once you've worked for enough people.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

#63

Post by patio11 »

icpmacdo wrote: post #25

What level of skill did you have in Web Dev before you started freelancing(to freelancers in general)?

Depends on what type of company you're working for and what type of work you do. In general, the bar for journeyman programmer is "Given a rough description of a system that the client wants to have, you're capable of reducing two pages of text and a few sketches into a system which actually exists in computer code, is successfully deployed into the target organization, and more-or-less meets their needs as expressed to you." You do not get tripped up by junior engineer foibles like "I don't know how to deploy this", "Those requirements are ambiguous", "I need cooperation from X and I'm not getting it so I have accomplished nothing since being blocked on that", etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

#64

Post by up_and_up »

I have been moonlighting/contracting on the side for a couple years now: http://www.featlabs.com

I drum up work by:

* Posting myself on the Monthly HN Whois hiring Freelancers thread (1st of month)

* http://www.authenticjobs.com/

* Attending and doing talks at meetups - got a recent retainer from doing this.

* Old contacts pinging me about projects (rare)

Odesk and Elance, IMHO, are not worth my time. It is a race to the bottom honestly.

I get at least 3 hits a month from my HN posting of which one is solid enough to move forward with in some fashion. Since its part time I dont need more than two clients at a time.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

#65

Post by scarecrowbob »

gargarplex wrote: post #26
weaksauce wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the details of your project? What language/frameworks are used? how legacy is legacy? Does the code base have any tests already? Remote work acceptable? Length of contract? Scope of work?

Adult content site. PHP5.2 and JavaScript. Un-shelving code from 2012. There are a few test classes. Remote work is acceptable. Work is ongoing. Work involves building features, bug fixing and interaction with vendor APIs. Work requires familiarity with Apache.

Among other things, I have experience maintaining and improving "older" PHP; contact me at john.reeve.medai@gmail.com if you're looking for a developer.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

#67

Post by mafellows »

Avoid eLance and oDesk. You're positioning yourself on the low-end of the market just by being on the site. Network locally and get to know entrepreneurs in your area. Reaching out to other dev shops can also be a great way to get consistent contract work. Don't underestimate the value of remote clients either. Services like letsworkshop.com send out quality remote web development opportunities. They're not perfect, but they can be well worth the cost. iOSLeads.com and AndroidLeads.net are a couple of services I started for mobile devs. Happy to answer any questions.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

#68

Post by lwhalen »

arafalov wrote: post #31
lwhalen wrote: post #13

Not to hijack someone else's thread or anything, but if folks have a line on a site that pairs 'people who need *nix-based system administration/automation/devops-anything' with 'system administrators/automaters/devops engineers' and could post it, I would be deeply grateful.

If you mean for a short advice/discussion, then something like https://www.airpair.com/ might be worth looking at.

I mean everything from "our pre-existing Puppet manifest had its owner leave the company 6 months ago and no one here knows how to refactor it to work with Widget X" (a day or three's worth of work) to "we've given devs the keys to our AWS account six months ago, and our burn rate ballooned to $600k/mo. Please optimize our AWS environments to what we really need, lock down the Wild West our development team created, and maybe spiff up our automation a bit so it's more hands-off and/or make it so we don't have to memorize IP addresses for everything" (N months to a year of work, depending). I will definitely check out AirPair though, thanks for the link!

Re: Ask HN: How do you find freelance/contract gigs?

#69

Post by spoiledtechie »

keithwarren wrote: post #17

I have been on my own for 15 years. I bill around 150/hr give or take 20% depending on the situation. Most of the work is Microsoft stack web related but mobile apps and api building has been steadily increasing for a several years now to the point that probably 20% of my 2014 revenue was in that space. 50-60% of my revenue is sub-contracting. I have a few firms that often take on projects that they are not suited fo…

If your in any need of an extra Microsoft Stack developer, please reach out. cheetahtec attt gmail.com 10+ years of experience here with .NET and Mobile.
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