Surprise surpise, childcare is expensive and the cost of life doesn’t get any cheaper. I am thinking of getting a job on the side. I’m a reasonably good developer, so that is an obvious route to look at.
I’d rather keep my main job going, so basically I’m constrained to things I can do from home in my off hours. On paper that would not be too much of a problem, according to some articles I read online, especially since my primary job is reasonably flexible and I’d still be able to have meetings in person and so on whenever necessary. However, after some searching all that I could find was about the kind of jobs - how can I put this? - where this just won’t happen. They want the physical person there, from 9 to 5 Monday to Friday (more like 9 to 9 Monday to Monday, but that’s another story).
Recruitment agents won’t or can’t help - the ones I know concentrate on traditional contracts or full time consultancies - working remotely is not going to happen with them.
There’s Guru.com, but it looks like I’m competing with chaps working from India and China for very little money. It also looks like many offers there are a bit on the scammy side.
I live in the UK. Are there web sites that specialize in this that are not scams?
Well I do lawncare for my neighbors on the side for extra money. Have you ever thought about just looking in your neighborhood for things that need done?
I don’t think those Web sites are scams, but you’re competing with people whose cost of life is way cheaper than yours. They’re in a great position to massively underbid you. On the other hand, I tried hiring multiple people and they did absolutely worthless work and I’ve completely given up on using sites like those to source people. I’m sure there’s talented people on those sites but I certainly don’t have time or money to waste finding them.
You said you’re a reasonably good developer. 1) You need to sell yourself a lot better than that. 2) Do you have any particular niche you can focus on?
For instance, I’ve made a really nice amount of side money freelancing for local small businesses, but I never sell myself as a (reasonably) good developer. I sell myself as someone understands how small businesses operate and can actually help them, not yammer about technical details they don’t care about. That might sound like a little hokey sales pitch but when we actually start talking it becomes clear I really do get them.
I’m certainly not saying it’s definitely right for you or for anyone else, but the advantage is that my clients will never have the capability to manage some developer in south Asia, even if he’s willing to work for 10% of my rate. They couldn’t afford me full time anyway, so they don’t expect someone sitting at a desk all week.
For the record my freelance work includes wide range of IT related things, including a lot of software development.
Hmm, that kinda confirms my gut feeling about this particular kind of web sites.
[QUOTE=Fuzzy Dunlop]
You said you’re a reasonably good developer. 1) You need to sell yourself a lot better than that. 2) Do you have any particular niche you can focus on?
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I’m more than reasonably good - I’d say I’m very good, and have a lot of experience, but at the moment I wrote my post I was distracted by money concerns, and so was not in a “Permanent Self-Marketing mode”.
If I’d have to pick out a niche, I’d say it’s putting together quickly server side systems that people can rely on for the user-facing components. I use a lot of Python, Java, Postgres and MySQL, but I can pick up tehcnologies fast - I am expanding into web and geographical based applications, it’s really fascinating.
I suppose my ideal scenario would be to find a place - a web site, a recruitment agency, a broker of some kind - where both potential clients/employers and potential contractors are vetted somehow (difficult, I know), where small business owners as well as larger companies with larger problems that can be somehow be decomposed into coordinated fragments could post their needs. That in an ideal world, and of course that’s not going to happen easily. Mediators/brokers of some kind are fundamental in real life, but I’ve not been lucky enough to meet any that operate in that kind of area and are actually good - and not necessarily interested in pushing full time contracts on everyone because it makes their lives easier.
I can certainly see how that might be ideal. I had an opportunity to work with someone recently, but passed it up because I didn’t have enough hours in the day. Basically he was in his 60s and throughout his career had built up a base of a few clients who were very happy with him. He didn’t want to retire completely or give up all those relationships, but he didn’t want to do the work or manage anyone full time either.
So essentially he wanted to manage/maintain his relationships and pay me to do most of the work. It would’ve been perfect for me if I needed more work, because I don’t like the process of finding and signing clients. I’m sure it’s easier said than done, but possibly you could find a relationship more along those lines? Rather than somebody who is expressly holding themselves out as a broker?
On the other hand, what has actually worked for me has been almost the opposite of what you call your ideal. I’ve had very few long term clients I met organically. I won’t say ‘on my own’, because I basically networked my way into them, but I wasn’t introduced by anyone who set out to bring consultants and small businesses together. I don’t personally enjoy doing that much but it doesn’t matter - they’ve turned into long term engagements and I’m booked solid now. I don’t have any need for a broker to make frequent introductions.
First thing I thought of. The difference in salary would be so small as not to make much difference, with the job market in the state it is now in the UK, and I would lose lots of benefits and perks from my current job.
Furthermore, I would definitely consider doing it, to be honest, but dozens of people had exactly the same idea and advertise on Gumtree (local version of Craigslist) and on the newspapers, and lots of little stores offering “computer repair and setup services” have sprung up over the last few years.
Oh, and we get lots of unemployed kids and adults knocking on our door offering to do gardening maintenance stuff. We had a retired Army veteran do our lawn and our hedge. Nice chap who fell on hard times.