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

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

#51

Post by tagfolder »

nkozyra wrote: post #49
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 an…

yes, I have similar experience, I just developed own python scraping solution to automate the process. But many of clients want script plus data and willing to pay only $15.

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

#52

Post by gaius »

thrownear wrote: post #50
x5n1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

99% of what a doctor does is repetitive. Every year the next batch of new parents come in with the same problems with their kids and get the same prescriptions, people break arms and legs, get flu, have headaches, etc etc. Most people just want to be told what pill to take, they don't care about neuropharmacology or myocardial infractions.

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

#53

Post by armabiz »

This is just one of those examples where experienced freelancer will see flag "avoid!" for such kind of clients.

The truth is that places like odesk/up work/anything is just big market. There are clients willing to hire low-rate developers and micro-manage them, but at the same time there are clients who want to hire top talents from the marketplace to deal with complex tasks and get really top solutions.

Somehow I could find really interesting work in high-load startups with 4M visits/m, OpenSource or even Y-combinator startups with good culture.

To be clear, during ~10 years of experience I was at both sides of barricades: hiring developers/designers/marketeers and being software developer/freelancer myself.

So it's just experience grew into skill when you had all that shit like non-paying/rude/time wasting clients and feel how to avoid that.

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

#54

Post by sandGorgon »

erbdex wrote: post #8

What was that "Indian/Fillipino guy/girl" part about. Do you thing we don't code? Or is incompetence a function of race in your mind? :(

SandGorgon's Law of Outsourcing Analogies [1] - "As an online discussion about PROGRAMMING grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving outsourcing or Indians approaches 1, if Godwin’s law has not already been satisfied"

http://www.lambdacurry.com/2010/07/sandgorgons-law-of-outsou...

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

#55

Post by eru »

tagfolder wrote: post #46
developer1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

I'm not developer1, but I'm happy to give you some pointers. My email address is in my profile.

Why not put your scripts and scrapers on github?

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

#56

Post by eru »

developer1 wrote: post #43
x5n1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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". I…

> I've met 4 people throughout my career whom I consider to be as good as or better than me.

You need to start hanging out with smarter people.

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

#57

Post by stefantalpalaru »

> Even my profile states $15 per hour

Don't do that. I started with $40/h, raised it to $50/h and still consider it low. I also avoid fixed price projects and I'd rather wait for good jobs rather than work for peanuts. There's enough open source work to keep me active when the freelancing market is in a lull.

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

#58

Post by WhitneyLand »

Udo wrote: post #35

I've been working as a freelancer for a bit more than a year now and let me offer a counter perspective. This article is a report from the absolute bottom. Part of the problem is the clientele: data scraping jobs are the shadiest, worst-paid jobs you can take on as a programmer. Also, offering the client to pay what they think is fair is a monumentally bad idea. The bigger problem is the perception of value. I regula…

It looks like most of the jobs on HN are full time gigs. Are you pinging them to ask about freelance work?

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

#59

Post by anonmeow »

drinchev wrote: post #7

This is all wrong. Click-bait title. Some thoughts by a discouraged person in a globalised world and a general conclusion that doesn't make any sense if you read the article. Maybe the OP shouldn't look for projects in oDesk-type websites. I don't do that and I'm really happy working as a freelancer. For anyone wondering how to find freelance projects. You should go and look for local clients, networking, contact com…

>It's a really, really, really big sea of possibilities nowadays for developers.

If you are in the silicon valley or at least in some 1st world country - sure, you have a lot of possibilities and ridiculously high pay. The sad truth is that exactly same skillset can be valued 10x less or 10x more depending on your location.

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

#60

Post by tagfolder »

eru wrote: post #55
tagfolder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

I'm not developer1, but I'm happy to give you some pointers. My email address is in my profile. Why not put your scripts and scrapers on github?

thanks! About scripts I think they won't be useful for anyone, because most of them are like: "scrape all apps from app store", "scape 30 million business profiles from website A.", etc. But anyway will try to put some :)
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