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Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#71

Post by thesephist »

icelancer wrote: post #23

>but software companies are not willing to hire people my age for good reason I doubt it. I've hired two 18 year olds to work remotely for me, one of whom does excellent quantitative analysis I've yet to see out of anyone I've employed with an advanced degree. Companies are by and large very stupid. Don't devalue yourself or your skills. Craigslist is decent. One of the best things you can do is invest in a Github or…

Seconded, and can confirm. I came to my current software company at 17 and I've been treated fairly to my skill level since (18 today). There are people out there who will see beyond the age, if you look for them. I also fully agree with investing in open source portfolios, and being able to explain how / why you made the choices you did in projects. If you want to go freelance, I'd also suggest talking to local smaller businesses, since that's where found it easiest to find willing clients. But there, again, having a show-able portfolio of work that's similar to what you'd want to be doing goes a long way.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#72

Post by saluki »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #65
saluki wrote: post #7

Don't use UpWork or similar. The rates are low even for a teenager. The best projects and rates are through your network. Family friends, businesses your family uses like you mention. So start asking around who needs a website or web application. Those will be your best gigs, projects and clients. Look for ways to setup recurring revenue. Maybe a business needs a website offer to build them a basic website, maintenan…

$100 a month for website maintenance and backups? In the UK the low end of website design has been eaten up by the DIY web-builders (eg Wix). Usually you can tell, because of the inferior (!) design the small companies that aren't using such tools - often they appear to be using "bedroom companies". When you get up to a reasonable price then IMO you can't expect to get a good enough product from a singleton worker an…

For local businesses you can sell a package at $99/mo for creating the site, providing hosting, backups, maint. for a simple 4 page site. You take a little risk forgoing the initial payment for building the site but once they are on board you'll make more over the next few years. For a teenager once you have a few of these on board you won't be as hungry for taking low budget projects. But yeah lots of businesses expect a full site for $375.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#73

Post by thesephist »

whoami_nr wrote: post #64
throwmenow_0140 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it is possible to build hardware projects with low level stuff to show your expertise regardless? This story sounds a bit depressing. I hope you will find a way to do what you love. Maybe there are some hardware startups where you can work.

I don't exactly work that close to hardware. Sure, I have done hardware projects involving arduinos and other micro controllers however, I would like to get into/work on the systems level. I am currently teaching myself reverse engineering(I play CTF's sometimes), systems programming etc but the opportunities for such stuff in India seems to be non existing(at least for a non CS graduate). Also, adding to the fact th…

>Also, adding to the fact that I am entirely self taught I sometimes wonder maybe I am missing out on a lot of theoretical stuff they teach in a CS degree.

Short answer is very probably not.

Theory helps, and it can help a lot depending on what problems you're solving. But if you know the basics (Why's and How's) of the code that you write, that'll be enough theory to get you where you want to go, especially in the late teens/early 20's (in my experience).

Source: I'm also self-taught, and proudly so. I don't really find that people ask why I don't have a CS degree, as long as I write good code.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#74

Post by monk_e_boy »

edburdo wrote: post #70

Start a blog, create a course or two for something like PluralSight or Lynda. Check out Simple Programmer. As others have said, this is more an investment than a direct payment... but it will pay off.

Sounds like he/she wants cold hard cash. But if an investment is on the table then writing some open source is a wonderful way to go. I wrote some and have a few hundred thousand downloads, a few million page views (for the manual) and it is amazing the sort of businesses that like that on a CV. It's opened up a lot of doors for me.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#75

Post by thesephist »

cube2222 wrote: post #39

I am in your position right now. Being 18 and working part time when having school / full time now because of summer break, and doing this since I've been 17. My biggest advice: get involved into local meetups. Talk to people, try to make a good impression. Try to get friends with the organizers, so you can become a coorganizer eventually. I'm getting a lot of job offers, but really, the only worth looking at, are th…

One thing I'd add: be eager to find opportunities that aren't just money-makers but that help you move up, meet people who are better than you at what you do, and can help you grow.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#76

Post by saluki »

Mandatum wrote: post #46
saluki wrote: post #7

Don't use UpWork or similar. The rates are low even for a teenager. The best projects and rates are through your network. Family friends, businesses your family uses like you mention. So start asking around who needs a website or web application. Those will be your best gigs, projects and clients. Look for ways to setup recurring revenue. Maybe a business needs a website offer to build them a basic website, maintenan…

Start with minimum wage for your first project. You're likely going to suck, and you don't want to piss off your family friend or have an awkward money discussion. That's for strangers for business relationships. You should up your rate every 2-3 months to begin with as you build up your portfolio.

y, increasing your rate is a good idea. Don't start with minimum wage though. For early clients I liked to try to do things at a fixed fee that I had a good handle on how long it would take. With a fixed fee they can't see your hourly rate and won't raise a red flag if they are paying you more than they make. Some clients are really sensitive when they hear things like $50 or $100 per hour.

For starting out I would target at least $20 per hour as your target hourly rate. Sounds like you have a bit of experience so you could probably go higher. Use this target hourly rate to set your fixed fee prices.

As you gain more experience and get better clients and projects increase your hourly rate. You'll get faster at things too. So you can increase your rates over time up to $50/hr and $100/hr+.

Learning Rails or Laravel to expand your skills and earning potential. Plus they make working on even small projects easier/faster. I'm a big fan of Laravel. Check out forge.laravel.com for setting up and deploying to VPS.

Also break projects down in to phases. That way you don't have a large fixed fee phase that takes up too much time.

For new/most clients get 50% up front and 50% upon completion for each phase.

Create a simple contract that outlines the scope of work for each phase. If there are changes or additions make sure to send the client an addition to the scope of work with a price increase to approve for that phase.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#77

Post by giancarlostoro »

Not sure of age requirements but maybe try bountysource is the only thing that comes to mind:

https://www.bountysource.com/

I've not used it, but seen projects I keep an eye on put down some good rewards (even users / companies do as well) so maybe worth checking out.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#78

Post by threepipeproblm »

I started working as a programmer the day I turned 16 in the early 90's, at $50/hr. Freelancing is a good idea... I would focus on small organizations, possibly non-profits. Learn about what organizations do and talk to people there about ideas you have and/or your ability to implement their ideas. Basically, you need to learn sales.

A few decades later I still rely on the approach I learned back then. While many of my peers have a mentality that they are at the mercy of the job market, and need people to create & define work for them, I can create customers wherever I meet people. I have a number of small business customers who would likely never have done development if I hadn't sought them out.

While this isn't the top way to earn a lot of money as a software developer, I continue to work heavily with small businesses because I like it, and because it eliminates a lot of the factors that others seem to dislike about a programming career. Regardless it's a great way to get your foot in the door... companies who can't afford $80,000 programmer salaries -- or the contract equivalent -- can't afford to be prejudiced against your youth and inexperience.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#79

Post by majewsky »

If you're a student, Google Summer of Code is an option. It's bad timing because the application period is around March/April (so that the work period falls within the summer break), so it would only be something for next year, but I can highly recommend it.

The idea is that Google chooses several open-source projects for the program each year, and then students can apply to the projects with their own ideas (or by taking one of the ideas proposed by the project's contributors). The project chooses the best proposals, pairs the students with mentors, and has them work on the chosen topics for about 3 months. Reviews are submitted to Google at multiple times during that period, and the student is expected to both deliver code and engage in the project's community. Also, the student gets a nice payment from Google for each completed milestone. (I think it comes out at about 4000 dollars or so.)

So in the end, you have a small pile of money, some code to put in your portfolio, actual work experience, and the "Google Summer of Code" checkmark for your resume.

Disclaimer: I have served as a mentor for KDE in GSoC 2009.

Re: Ask HN: How do I earn money as a teenage programmer?

#80

Post by dbattaglia »

whoami_nr wrote: post #56

I am in a similar boat as you(a broke teenager) but I don't like freelancing that much. I tried a few websites and they mostly make you do uninteresting work at low rates which doesn't justify the time you put into it. Sure, you can do all of this for the sake of learning but remember time is limited. I don't study CS at college and I've done projects in freelancing websites which I regretted later. It affected my re…

When I started my first development job I didn't even know how to write HTML, I came from writing Windows applications (MFC and Winforms) and AVR/Arduino. Over the past 10 years I've learned that there is actually quite a lot of interesting stuff to be done in web development land outside of UI/JavaScript. Right now I'm working for a company building a Docker/microservices framework, touching nearly every part of the modern software stack (UI, web APIs, networking, Linux, etc). For me being able to code professionally was far more important than being able to code the stuff I was interested in specifically at the time, and it's worked out very well for me.
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