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Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

codeinpython.blogspot.com

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Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#41

Post by jnbiche »

iopq wrote: post #25
zuck9 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? What is ideal for Bay Area? Most startups I see have salaries around ~$80k (~$32/hr for 48hr week or ~$40/hr for 40hr week)

You realize that the $80,000 includes completely free health care (otherwise $300 a month minimum, if not more if they offer a good plan) with no employee contribution, free dental ($20 a month?), $300 towards vision a year, minimal life insurance maybe, free meals at the office, etc. Not to mention that you get sick pay, holiday pay, retirement account contributions, etc. Including the benefits it easily adds up to…

Not to mention the extra ~12% payroll tax that all freelancers are hit with (twice what employees pay).

Or the fact that a very large portion of your time as a freelancer has to spend with non-income earning activities (accounting, marketing, etc) if you want to have any chance of surviving as a freelancer.

60$/hr for a freelancer is equivalent to about 60,000-80,000/year. It's a decent income for some parts of the country, but not SF.

Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#43

Post by developer1 »

x5n1 wrote: post #39
csomar wrote: post #31

The next part is to set the price for the job. Usually I would say: Ok, data scrape will cost you $75. That's still ridiculously low by any measure. I wouldn't take you seriously at that price point. Because, here is why: I was charging that much 5 or 6 years ago. How about $7,500 for manual data scraping? On a related note. A friend of mine asked the other day if I can develop for him a GPS/Google maps solution that…

People want stuff for free. The web is free. They expect next to free for skills that take at least 10 years to actually master. Skill level similar to a doctor.

Damn you, giving me an additional boost to my already large ego. I'm one of those programmers who considers my skills to be more developed than most of my co-workers - I've met 4 people throughout my career whom I consider to be as good as or better than me. I never thought to compare my experience against that which a doctor goes through.

Ironic considering my language of choice is laughed at by "true developers". It's true that I consider my skill set to be above the people I've worked with, but I know there are millions of developers out there who outshine me in what one might call real development. I am both proud and jealous, but I like the comparison of a seasoned developer being similar to a doctor. It's true that it takes 10-20 years to have a solid understanding of what one is doing. Interesting analogy.

Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#44

Post by gaius »

x5n1 wrote: post #39
csomar wrote: post #31

The next part is to set the price for the job. Usually I would say: Ok, data scrape will cost you $75. That's still ridiculously low by any measure. I wouldn't take you seriously at that price point. Because, here is why: I was charging that much 5 or 6 years ago. How about $7,500 for manual data scraping? On a related note. A friend of mine asked the other day if I can develop for him a GPS/Google maps solution that…

People want stuff for free. The web is free. They expect next to free for skills that take at least 10 years to actually master. Skill level similar to a doctor.

Because developers keep telling everyone who will listen "anyone can learn to code!" and "software should be free!".

Even if it were true, no doctor or lawyer would be stupid enough to openly say it.

Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#45

Post by zrail »

tsotha wrote: post #38
wlievens wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any payroll taxes on top of that salary number? Where I live (Belgium) there's a 33% (probably being lowered to 25% soon) social security tax paid by the employer.

In the US your employer pays around 15% of your salary as tax. If you're not working for someone else that's an extra 15.3% you have to pay - it's called "self employment tax".

It's not an extra 15%. The total amount of Social Security and Medicare taxes is 15.4%, with the employer paying half and the employee paying the other half. When you're self-employed, you pay both halves. And the employer half is always deductible on your federal income tax, which reduces the sting a little.

Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#46

Post by tagfolder »

developer1 wrote: post #34
csomar wrote: post #31

The next part is to set the price for the job. Usually I would say: Ok, data scrape will cost you $75. That's still ridiculously low by any measure. I wouldn't take you seriously at that price point. Because, here is why: I was charging that much 5 or 6 years ago. How about $7,500 for manual data scraping? On a related note. A friend of mine asked the other day if I can develop for him a GPS/Google maps solution that…

I clicked through the the article, verified that the title was the same as HN, read the early line "Couple days ago some R.D. from United States contacted me. She wanted to do website scrape.". I stopped reading. Clickbait, ignorant of real freelance work, thinks being contacted about a pathetic scraping job means freelance is worthless? Give me a break. Become a real developer who can find real clients worth the eff…

Hi real developer. Please give me advice how to become real python developer. I just started to learn python from scratch, I've developed my first django website ( http://review.food-singapore.com/ ). I have developed many scripts/scrapers (but seems that's just pathetic) And now when I'm trying to apply any full time python job, almost all require link to github/some project which I don't have. How to get any real python position?

Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#47

Post by gizi »

I used to do jobs at elance.com and peopleperhour.com but I have not accepted a single invitation in almost 3 years. I keep receiving them, sometimes 10 times in a single week. Prospective clients from these sites nowadays get 10 seconds to convince me that they are not wallowing in bullshit, and up till now they have all failed the test. So, there's nothing wrong with these sites, but you will indeed be better off if you save your time for more interesting people.

Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#48

Post by brzd »

Uptrenda wrote: post #40

Upwork is basically where businesses and entrepreneurs go to outsource work to people living in countries with a lower cost of living. It's a place that's excellent for startups who know how to extract maximum value from foreign workers (I've seen people making upwards of 10,000+% profit from doing this which is honestly crazy) but terrible for the workers themselves. Well ... at least in some instances. As far as I…

Can you tell us more about these startups?

Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#49

Post by nkozyra »

csomar wrote: post #31

The next part is to set the price for the job. Usually I would say: Ok, data scrape will cost you $75. That's still ridiculously low by any measure. I wouldn't take you seriously at that price point. Because, here is why: I was charging that much 5 or 6 years ago. How about $7,500 for manual data scraping? On a related note. A friend of mine asked the other day if I can develop for him a GPS/Google maps solution that…

He lives in the Phillipines, which obviously changes the scale of cost.

I had done this a few times in the past and would routinely charge just $100 for scrapes because I had written a robust enough application that the actual work involved (creating a manifest file) took about 5 minutes. I was attempting to work at scale.

Eventually I just got sick of oDesk. I had a regular job and was just looking for beer money anyway and the vast majority of jobs were essentially content stealing for some half-assed SEO purpose. I'd ask people if they'd read the TOS of the site in question and that's when communication would stop. Or they'd come and say "how about $15" and then I would quit communicating.

The lesson is good here - this site (and others like it) are filled with cheap, low-skilled programmers and clients with iffy intentions.

I'll also say that "5 star" doesn't mean much on this site. Reputation is established not by merely having a good aggregate score.

Re: Wanna quit your job and become upwork freelancer? Do not do that

#50

Post by thrownear »

x5n1 wrote: post #39
csomar wrote: post #31

The next part is to set the price for the job. Usually I would say: Ok, data scrape will cost you $75. That's still ridiculously low by any measure. I wouldn't take you seriously at that price point. Because, here is why: I was charging that much 5 or 6 years ago. How about $7,500 for manual data scraping? On a related note. A friend of mine asked the other day if I can develop for him a GPS/Google maps solution that…

People want stuff for free. The web is free. They expect next to free for skills that take at least 10 years to actually master. Skill level similar to a doctor.

>They expect next to free for skills that take at least 10 years to actually master.

You compare it to a doctor, but really it is more like that of a driver. Most of the people are only concerned about getting from point A to point B. They don't really care about proper cornering techniques or following the best line..

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