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Re: HN statistics

#11

Post by DavidChouinard »

andreasklinger wrote: post #9

@nhoss2 Slightly offtopic: Love the honesty on your http://labs.im/ page. But you might be underselling yourself. You are saying you are willing to work cheaply because you are young and a risk. You are capable of using node.js, you use phantomJS, you seem to have good product and ux thinking and you are able to use github. Just the last one alone puts you on the upper 50% of the worldwide freelance market. Not to sp…

I agree, this is top-notch work. I would drop the beatup negative attitude, it's a big turnoff. You could easily get a remote part-time job in the Valley for 100+$/hour — think of it, that's only 40 hours of work to pay off your tuition.

Re: HN statistics

#12

Post by yread »

What is this for? Or is it just a cool way to try new technologies without any real purpose?

EDIT: I didn't mean it in a bad way. Trying new stuff is a perfectly fine reason for doing things and this looks quite beautiful. I was just looking for an answer like "this helps you see whether more karma is given on weekdays or weekends". Statistics and visualization should answer meaningful questions, I think.

Re: HN statistics

#14

Post by suhastech »

A bit off topic:

I think I'm pretty much in the same situation as Nafis. I'm majoring in Electronics and have a passion for computers.

Only difference is, tuition is quite cheap here in India (around $5000 for 4 years). So, small freelancing projects help me sustain.

Though the quality of education here is questionable. One year into college, all I have learnt is * Stuff as much portions you can during the term * Write the exact things from the textbook on your exam * Forget or vaguely remember it in the holidays

That's not really what I hoped for. Hopefully, it gets better over the years...

Re: HN statistics

#15

Post by mvzink »

andreasklinger wrote: post #9

@nhoss2 Slightly offtopic: Love the honesty on your http://labs.im/ page. But you might be underselling yourself. You are saying you are willing to work cheaply because you are young and a risk. You are capable of using node.js, you use phantomJS, you seem to have good product and ux thinking and you are able to use github. Just the last one alone puts you on the upper 50% of the worldwide freelance market. Not to sp…

You're absolutely right, but I think you're understating the issue. DavidChouinard and csomar also have good points.

There are clients who want to hire good developers for a lot of money and those who want to hire good developers at university who don't know how much they're worth yet for peanuts. That's not always bad, I've had at least one great client in that category, but it's not lucrative—granted you may have to take what you can get.

Nonetheless, OP: I urge you to aim higher than "work for cheap" and please please please reword your acquisition letter to sound more like "I'm a good developer but I didn't have a portfolio so I made these things," rather than, "it will be a big risk taking me on"—maybe to them it will seem like a risk, but you know better!

As somebody living in Argentina and born in the US, I should have no appreciation whatever for your modesty :P but I do, since I think my first cold emails to potential clients went something like yours: honest, but embarrassingly modest. But I soon learned that toning down the modesty is a great way to get more clients and charge them more (seriously, you'd be surprised how high your rate can get, even as a relatively untried uni kid).

Also, don't forget the monthly HN freelancing threads if you aren't already aware of them. Here's Aug 2012's: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4323612

Re: HN statistics

#16

Post by danso »

yread wrote: post #12

What is this for? Or is it just a cool way to try new technologies without any real purpose? EDIT: I didn't mean it in a bad way. Trying new stuff is a perfectly fine reason for doing things and this looks quite beautiful. I was just looking for an answer like "this helps you see whether more karma is given on weekdays or weekends". Statistics and visualization should answer meaningful questions, I think.

Even if it is just a way to try new technologies...it's a huge mistake to think that aggregation/visualization/analysis, even at this relatively simple level, is "without any real purpose." Such big picture views can be as valuable as the datapoints used to compose them.

Re: HN statistics

#17

Post by yitchelle »

Hey there, Great showcase of your skills. It shows great UX, presentation, some fu with git and getting stuff out in the wild. Shows some great initiatives!

I would create a CV on http://labs.im rather than a text story about your situation. You should use your knowledge to create a kickass CV page.

I agree the other comments that you are going to be peppered with low paying freelance offers, you might as well register on odesk.com or similar. But I believe that your software skills are much better than that.

By the way, Some of the cities (Brisbane, Sydney & Melbourne) in Australia have a thriving startup scene, you should hit them up.

Re: HN statistics

#18

Post by [deleted] »

andreasklinger wrote: post #9

@nhoss2 Slightly offtopic: Love the honesty on your http://labs.im/ page. But you might be underselling yourself. You are saying you are willing to work cheaply because you are young and a risk. You are capable of using node.js, you use phantomJS, you seem to have good product and ux thinking and you are able to use github. Just the last one alone puts you on the upper 50% of the worldwide freelance market. Not to sp…

[deleted]

Re: HN statistics

#19

Post by e12e »

DavidChouinard wrote: post #11
andreasklinger wrote: post #9

@nhoss2 Slightly offtopic: Love the honesty on your http://labs.im/ page. But you might be underselling yourself. You are saying you are willing to work cheaply because you are young and a risk. You are capable of using node.js, you use phantomJS, you seem to have good product and ux thinking and you are able to use github. Just the last one alone puts you on the upper 50% of the worldwide freelance market. Not to sp…

I agree, this is top-notch work. I would drop the beatup negative attitude, it's a big turnoff. You could easily get a remote part-time job in the Valley for 100+$/hour — think of it, that's only 40 hours of work to pay off your tuition.

Really? Easily? I've yet to see anyone willing to hire someone to do off site work with a US company, in the Valley or elsewhere. At least not development work, or anything in the range of 100 USD/hour.

I've always found that a bit strange, but maybe you know something I don't?

For the record I'm based in Norway, and English is my second, not first language -- but even if it was just to recommend friends and acquaintances that are in a similar position as op -- I would really like to hear how you would suggest going about looking for such work?

Re: HN statistics

#20

Post by mootothemax »

A quick story regarding your frelance work. When I first moved to Poland, I had the mindset that since I was living in a cheap country, I should price my freelance work low as well. I'll hasten to add that this was my first attempt at freelancing, and for a PHP developer with over 10 years of experience, I was charging between $20 and $30/hour. Absurdly low prices.

Anyway, this was meant to be temporary, and I got a job for a year, before deciding to return to freelancing. This time, however, I figured that I had little to lose by attempting to charge what I wanted to get paid. I also switched to charging on a per-day basis.

What happened? In terms of work available, very little - there's lots of work out there. I found that I was able to spend longer on the initial discussion phase, as the cost of doing so was minimal compared to my overall day rate, and it led to happier clients - everyone wins.

My rates have continued to rise ever since, and I'm on the verge of hiring other programmers to take some of the load off me alone. I could go on and on about the charge-by-the-day option, and how everyone wins with it: clients don't worry about whether having a conversation with me will be charged - of course it won't! - and it gives me the freedom to create huge amounts of client satisfaction if I do a ten-minute fix for free.

So, charge good rates, in daily increments, and do so happy in the knowledge that you're charging a fair rate for valuable skills.

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