Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047736

by zerego • 8 years ago

311 160 8 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm a javascript developer working in London and I want to become a remote contractor so I can travel the world while working remotely. Where can I find people or companies that can help me getting into the world of contracting and even be a intermediary? Is anyone in this situation that want to share how they did it and how is going?

gremlinsinc4• 8 years ago

Best thing to do is look on r/forhire on reddit, build up a portfolio on upwork/etc, and check all the remote job boards like remoteok, weworkremotely, etc..

Freelancing is hard to start - -you need to be part marketer, you don't get paid for the time finding new clients, but AFTER you have a steady stream of good business, it gets a bit easier to keep filling your pipeline with jobs through word of mouth / etc.

laurent123456• 8 years ago

About how much can a relatively skilled developer get on upwork or similar? My feeling when bidding for projects there was that I needed to go incredibly low to compete with businesses in India or Pakistan. Or does it get better as you get more clients?

gremlinsinc4• 8 years ago

I'm still aiming a little low, but I've seen a lot of profiles of devs who charge 80-100/hour and seem to have a solid history on there.

My thinking is you need to start low till you build rep/reviews then you can start charging more per hour.

Edit: Also there's a lot of people who want u.s. or english native speakers. I'm in u.s. not planning on traveling much but I like working out of my basement and not wasting time commuting.

borplk2• 8 years ago

r/forhire and upwork are absolute piles of garbage with 90% of the jobs being "edit my shopify theme for $25".

If you are an experienced engineer with more sophisticated skills and don't live in India and Pakistan just don't bother.

gremlinsinc4• 8 years ago

I totally agree it's my emergency site when I can't find clients or need money. Reddit had been real good for me as has word of mouth on LinkedIn as well. I think remote job boards are good to if a steady but remote job is preferable over freelance contracts. I definitely am not stumping for upwork at all unless you're in a bind, but if you have a decent grade on there you can get the better jobs but it's still a pile of crap I agree.

If only there were like a global dev Union or something so the price of devs was standard everywhere or at least had a minimum wage of like $20-30 per hour.

cheez• 8 years ago

Surprisingly, you have to do a lot of meatspace visits.

3131s• 8 years ago

And if you're half way around the world and can't meet in person, people are really hesitant to work with you. I started out remotely with neither a compsci degree nor any prior experience at a tech company, and I definitely advise against being in that situation. The only good outcome was that it spurred me to generalize more so that I could build and deploy something for a client from start to finish on my own.

throw_this_one• 8 years ago

Nice. How did you get the job? Did you build a complete application from front to back on your own? Or was it through a connection?

raleigh_user2• 8 years ago

I did this building a small agency in the marketing and ad space.

Happy to advise on specifics but in general here’s how we did it:

Build up a portfolio of content (since we develop content) that shows we know what we’re doing.

Go on speaking circuit for your niche and give lectures on your expertise.

Take whatever comes your way for first few deals. Always get a solid statement of work & contract.

Rinse and repeat. If you’re ok with going slower this works well. I manage a team of 9 now and after some serious time spent training them I mostly just approve work and put out fires with clients.

raleigh_user2• 8 years ago

Also work entirely remote. Maybe 15% of my time is spent in the same city as cofounder. 85% is spent in others. Slack works best for communication.

8 employees are spread across world.

BrentOzar2• 8 years ago

Build up a portfolio of content (since we develop content) that shows we know what we’re doing. Go on speaking circuit for your niche and give lectures on your expertise.

Cannot emphasize this enough. I started a database blog years ago, and built it up into a 5-person remote consulting firm. Inbound marketing is king: build up your brand and people will bring you exactly the projects you want, for life (rather than you having to seek out work and settle for stuff you don't really want to begin with.)

osrec• 8 years ago

Mind sharing a link to your blog (if it's still active)? Thanks :)

vemv• 8 years ago

Become a contractor in London first, which I assume you aren't. That should get you started into this world!

It has world-famous daily rates even for generalistic sectors like JS/React.

Try to save some money, so you can afford the luxury of choosing clients later.

lbutler• 8 years ago

I lived and worked in Edinburgh for 2 years working as a contractor for an engineering consultancy, I had to eventually leave the UK because my visa was going to expire.

They were so desperate for skilled engineers in Scotland when it was suggested I could keep working remotely they jumped straight on it. I'm now working 100% remotely for them in Canada.

As others have suggested getting yourself into the contracting market in London and then going remotely can work if you're a developer with the right skills though it may be slightly slower then trying to find remote work first.

isp• 8 years ago

May I ask which consultancy this was?

I have found that there is not a huge amount of remote work for companies based out of Scotland.

shishy• 8 years ago

Check out www.moonlightwork.com

Saw them on www.indiehackers.com, think that might help you!

boffinism• 8 years ago

It may make you feel dirty, but get on LinkedIn and connect with a bunch of recruiters. This is literally what they are there for. My LI feed and inbox are a constant stream of contracting opportunities in London, and a (small, admittedly) percentage of them are remote.

(Of course, they're no use to me, as I'm very happy as a mostly-remote startup CTO, but these opportunities are out there.)

Contracting tends to be something that's hard to break into but easier once you're there - what people want to see on a CV is previous contracting experience. So even if your first gigs aren't remote, they may help you in the long run.

mrleiter2• 8 years ago

Yes, this. A lot of recruiting goes through LinkedIn.

mancerayder5• 8 years ago

I do this, too. Unfortunately, recruiters suffer from two really big problems for a contractor:

1. They take a cut, a very big cut, of your hourly or daily rate. Thus, to the client, you seem very expensive, and to you, you seem cheaper than you should be. It becomes a new effort to maneuver a proper rate.

2. Recruiters suffer from the fact that they are salespeople, and salespeople often intuitively omit information for fear they'd lose the deal. So they operate the same way as they do for employee recs. Here's a concrete example: several times in the last several months, I received offers of "contract to hire" even though the recruiter told me it was contract only. They failed to tell the client I was contract-only, and they failed to tell me it was a contract-to-hire. Believe me, they knew. Then the inevitable question, where I have to be careful not to be too mean in the response, "Can I ask you why you want to stay as a contractor? It's a really exciting company and there's stock opt... yadda yadda." For a contractor doing it right, every invoice is a bonus or an opportunity to purchase stocks with no vesting and no strings. :-)

HillaryBriss• 8 years ago

Recruiters suffer from the fact that they are salespeople ...

reminds me of the real estate agent trick of posting a listing for a home that's too good to be true. when a potential buyer calls that agent, the agent says the home is no longer available, but asks "are you currently working with an agent?"

OpenDrapery2• 8 years ago

I'm really surprised that so many employers use the middle man to find contractors. How do you tap into that market and skip the middle man? Seems like a win-win to me. (Except for the recruiter who's left out in the cold)

acconrad4• 8 years ago

Here's my master list of remote job sites - you should be able to find something through here (my first remote gig was from HN who is hiring thread):

HN - http://hnhiring.me/

Remote OK - https://remoteok.io/

Stack Overflow - https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=True

LiquidTalent - http://www.liquidtalent.com/

Working Not Working - http://workingnotworking.com

Hired - https://hired.com/contract-jobs

Gigster - https://gigster.com/

Mirror - http://mirrorplacement.com/

Metova - http://metova.com/

Mokriya - http://mokriya.com/

HappyFunCorp - http://happyfuncorp.com

Savvy Apps - http://savvyapps.com/

Clevertech - http://www.clevertech.biz/

Workstate - http://www.workstate.com/

AngelList - https://angel.co/jobs

Authentic Jobs: http://www.authenticjobs.com/

Github Jobs: https://jobs.github.com/

- https://www.workingnomads.co/jobs

- https://remoteworkhub.com/remote-jobs/

- https://www.crossover.com/

- https://remote.com/

- https://weworkremotely.com/

- https://getbetterluck.com/

- https://remote.co/remote-jobs/

- https://remotive.io/find-a-job/

- https://www.skipthedrive.com/

- https://www.outsourcely.com/remote-business-services-jobs

- https://www.wfh.io/

- http://jobscribe.com/

- https://www.remotelyawesomejobs.com/

- https://landing.jobs/

- https://remotebase.io/

Crew: https://crew.co/

NoDesk - https://nodesk.co

FreelanceDevLeads: https://freelancedevleads.com/

FlexJobs: https://www.flexjobs.com/

mancerayder5• 8 years ago

Thank you for generously sharing this! I wonder if we should have an HN contractor github wiki or something similar.

desertedisland2• 8 years ago

Thanks! Bookmarked!

DebasishPanda• 8 years ago

Looks like the LiquidTalent site is gone.

mrleiter2• 8 years ago

I am a remote executive recruiting contractor. Applied through a job listing. They liked me. They hired me. Now I look for senior and executive people online, remotely.

hbcondo7142• 8 years ago

What’s the best way to contact you? I’m in the market for a remote tech exec role but found all these remote job boards cater towards engineering roles.

philip12098• 8 years ago

I'm a digital nomad who as in the same position. I couldn't find contract work for high-skill engineers. So, I started building a marketplace for it. Today that's Moonlight - we are still small, bootstrapped, and growing, but we have companies ranging from startups to a publicly-traded company hiring through the site. Hourly rates average a little over $100US.

https://www.moonlightwork.com

mekpro• 8 years ago

Looks great ! Just hope your product or Stripe would provide payment system to more countries as soon as possible. Looking forward to join.

orware• 8 years ago

Neat site, I just signed up...hopefully I can find a neat company to do some additional work with (working for a college is great from a stability perspective, but it doesn't always force you into the most interesting of projects...so the ones I come up with I have to find time for outside of the normal day to day work stuff that comes up...hopefully if I can find a good company to do some extra work for it'll help provide an outlet for me to continue my personal growth :-).

philip12098• 8 years ago

Definitely! It's a great way to experiment with technologies that you are passionate about, or use open-source libraries that you have been working on!

flarco• 8 years ago

Awesome. Can you share with us how it's going with getting more clients on your platform to hire contractors? I know competing with upwork and toptal must be a challenge.

philip12098• 8 years ago

Yes! It's our #1 focus. We continually experiment with marketing and product changes to increase the number of jobs. The good news is that, when a client starts hiring, they are likely to work again with their contractors, and they are very to post additional jobs using Moonlight. We launched three months ago, and the money we pay out to contractors has about doubled every month since then, and we are on track for another record week this week.

acconrad4• 8 years ago

I've been on Moonlight since it has launched and has not panned out very well for me. I'm in that ballpark of rates and most projects have been duds. Only 1 lead to a prospect and he balked on the rate (again, in the ballpark of what Phil is advertising here).

m1n1• 8 years ago

How have those projects been duds?

philip12098• 8 years ago

Thanks for being on Moonlight! We have been working hard to increase the number of jobs. It's been about doubling month over month and has been our #1 focus. We are working on a lot of product and marketing initiatives focused on that.

It looks like you've submitted a few proposals - unfortunately, half of the jobs stopped before selecting a developer. If we had more posts on the site, getting declined would be more of a numbers game and less noticeable. Still, keep at it - looks like you have two open matches right now!

The good news is that, among people who get selected for jobs, they often get rehired again and again by the same client.

fmntf• 8 years ago

Really nice. I signed up. I have a question: why are you forcing me to setup stripe in the signup phase? I would prefer to do it later (when I get some work). Of course getting paid would be a priority for me, but not now.

philip12098• 8 years ago

It's mainly identity verification and fraud reduction. The whole app strongly relies on Stripe Connect, so we also want to make sure you can get paid automatically.

alexman• 8 years ago

Would be great if you give hint about how much info/time is need to complete the signup on the developer onboarding page: https://www.moonlightwork.com/onboarding/developer

philip12098• 8 years ago

That's reasonable - thanks for bringing it up. Our #1 focus right now is improving the client experience to get more jobs on Moonlgiht, but redoing the developer onboarding experience is next up on the list. I've logged your feedback for that project!

leetbulb• 8 years ago

Just signed up :D Thanks!

langitbiru• 8 years ago

I am still waiting for cryptocurrency or Paypal support. Stripe is not supported in my country.

philip12098• 8 years ago

We looked at cryptocurrency very closely. Basically, money laundering laws and slow adoption of crypto among businesses make it really hard to get adoption among clients: https://www.moonlightwork.com/blog/cryptocurrency-and-compan...

I have a moral opposition to Paypal after using it personally, but we are looking at solutions such as Payoneer to expand country support!

It's worth pointing out that you can incorporate in Estonia or the USA (e.g. through Stripe Atlas) to get access to Stripe.

elephant0xffff3• 8 years ago

What differentiates you from freelancer.com and upwork.com?

The Problem at freelancer.com (currently testing that) is that it is hard to differentiate yourself as a good contractor it seems more like quantity then quality. However isn't that just the result from getting big?

Maybe there is an inherent stochastic process in freelancing platforms that lowers the average rate as more people get on it. So your main challenge should be to avoid that but that seems like a hard problem.

Toptal does screening, which does not scale, Upwork and Freelancer do nothing (or do upselling via courses, bid-boosts, etc.).

bowlich• 8 years ago

Cool.

Signing up, to give it a try. I've got a FT day job but have been wanting to try to crack the nut of how to land a contracting position on the side for a while now.

lza• 8 years ago

Just a word of warning. I signed up and their signup process requires you to link your card or bank account with stripe. And then the nightmare starts when you want to have access to the account at stripe. Stripe says you need to contact moonlight, moonlight says you need to contact stripe. I asked both of them to cancel my account. Moonlight replied that they cancelled it but stripe says they still have it and I can't get it cancelled. So yeah once you sign up your payment account is at the will of moonlight website.

Reminds me of that friends episode when Chandler tries to quit the gym LOL.

chrisa• 8 years ago

I recently started posting about this here: http://www.breakintoconsulting.com

My basic advice is: become a visible expert in the space by starting a blog, posting articles, and go to meetups and speak. Then, start with your network (old jobs and coworkers) to look for work, and expand out from there.

The good news is there is a ton of work for javascript developers right now, so that’s one advantage you have.

sebleon• 8 years ago

What's your email?

esaym• 8 years ago

so I can travel the world while working remotely.

I thought the same thing. Perhaps it is because I work for someone else instead of for myself, but since I've been full time remote for the last 2 years, I've had 0 free time for anything. I rarely leave the house. Pretty much everything I need comes from online purchases or grocery delivery as I don't even have time to do that.

mancerayder5• 8 years ago

Fellow contractor (non-remote) here. First if it makes you feel better I piss away 40m each way on a commute to the client site, and that's on pub transport (a car would take longer). Time is money and that time is lost.

Second are you sure you're compensated sufficiently? You should be able to take time off with that money you earned?

pault• 8 years ago

Something that people don't realize about remote work is you get into a routine of being home all the time, and it's a hard habit to break. I have been working remotely for ten years and I've developed some pretty serious agoraphobia. Running errands is extremely stressful for me. I am considering taking an office job just to get out of this rut.

Axsuul2• 8 years ago

Sounds like you need to set some boundaries. Don't be afraid of setting more realistic deadlines as well.

johnvanommen2• 8 years ago

This x 1000

Before I worked remotely, I thought that working remotely would allow me time to exercise and eat better. I had dreams of going on a daily bicycle ride, instead of being stuck in my car.

The reality is that working remotely just allows me to put in insane amounts of hours. About once or twice a week I'll start my workday at three in the morning due to insomnia, and just work 12-16 hours straight.

I think this is particularly prevalent when the entire team is working remotely, because ALL of us are wrapped up in this crazy schedule.

elliotlarson• 8 years ago

Wait. You've made a choice to engage in unhealthy work habits. It may not seem like it, but this _is_ your choice. I've been working as a remote contractor for almost 20 years. If you want to remain sane and happy, you need to set boundaries, both with clients and yourself.

viraptor• 8 years ago

You're still paid for a standard day of work. This is insane and you can just stop. Set the alarm for 17:00, disconnect, and go cook something.

You pretty much have to do it at some point unless you think you can happily spend the rest of your life like this. I'm working with a primarily remote working people, and yes - due to flexibility sometimes people get caught up in something and work later. But mostly we're telling each other that things can wait and to go offline. Normally we all still save time since there's no commuting.

desertedisland2• 8 years ago

Wow mine was completely the opposite.

I told my clients that the largest number of productive hours you'll get out of a developer in a day is six (which I believe to be largely true) and that's how many I worked. Start at 9am, you're finished by 4; most of the places I worked the commute was a 15 minute scooter ride and I'd have the rest of the day for swimming, learning guitar, doing my own projects, etc.

I actually moved back to London for a short time because I worried I was getting too relaxed.

mclide• 8 years ago

If you have more consulting work than you can/should handle, increase your rates.

imhoguy2• 8 years ago

And delegate some stuff. Negotiate!

fsloth• 8 years ago

Jeez, sounds awful. Is there some specific reason 8 hours a day of work-work does not suffice?

dsego• 8 years ago

Join toptal.

isalmon• 8 years ago

It's funny how with all the job sites and modern tools we still live in the world where employees and employers can't find each other. I'm the CEO of a US based startup, but we're hiring everywhere. We actually have a few digital nomads at the company. Somehow we still have troubles finding more talent.

There are a few job boards dedicated to digital nomads, but the volume there is surprisingly low.

JustSomeNobody• 8 years ago

You should have a link or something in your profile.

claudio-viola• 8 years ago

Here some talent for you https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudio-viola/ :-)

nikhildaga• 8 years ago

Hi @isalmon, I can definitely solve your problem.

To put in context, we, at Idea To Startup (https://ideatostartup.org/), have helped startups from 5 different continents around the world create the best remote team in the shortest time.

Let's discuss this over chat. What's the best way to contact you?

Thanks, Nikhil

stephenr• 8 years ago

Is there a specific tie for you between being a contractor and working remotely?

I started contracting on-site for a Federal government department (leaving a salaried state government position for it), through an agency, then moved onto more on-site contracting for a telco, through a different agency (in a different state), before finally starting to take on clients directly.

For several years I worked primarily with a single company, effectively as a regular staff member, but paid based on invoiced hours.

I moved overseas while still working for them, started a new company ( I operated as a sole-trader before ) to allow me to invoice from my new country, and then started working with companies initially through word-of-mouth from existing acquaintances/former colleagues, and more recently through HN's "Seeking Freelancer" threads.

If you just want to travel but dont want the hassle of finding new clients, I'd suggest looking into a company like X-Team (https://x-team.com) - the company I was working for/with when I moved overseas - as they're 100% remote, and have (or had) a number of nomad-ish staff already.

thibaut_barrere• 8 years ago

Here is exactly what I do to get quality remote work:

https://www.wisecashhq.com/blog/how-to-have-clients-find-you...

Axsuul2• 8 years ago

I'd like to expand more on this subject. Can anyone suggest the best strategies or resources on how to raise your contracting rate?

jackgolding• 8 years ago

doubleyourfreelancing.com is a great resource

sph• 8 years ago

I've quit my day job in 2012, found a contract with a great client on Upwork (forget how it was called at the time). Initially a 6 months project, I've worked with them for 2 years.

Got a few other contracts off that site, until one day I've asked one of my main clients to move out of that platform and work with me directly. Worked with them 2 years, until I got an offer in January to become a full time technical director and shareholder.

What I've learn contracting:

1. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place.

2. Increase your rates every year, as you get more experience and technical knowledge.

3. Upwork was bad, and now is even worse. Move out of those kind of sites ASAP, when you can trust your client.

4. If you do good work, you'll have old clients pinging you once in a while with new opportunities. So, do outstanding work, and you won't have to look for new contracts as much.

5. Don't be afraid to learn. Try not to specialise too much. Generalists/full stack devs are very sought after. You'll start a contract as a web developer and soon you'll be doing DB optimisation and securing their infrastructure.

6. Increase your rates.

Keloo• 8 years ago

Upwork previously was oDesk AFAIK.

icebraining• 8 years ago

Elance-oDesk, it came out of their merger.

Kluny3• 8 years ago

1. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place.

What if you're mediocre, though?

Ma8ee2• 8 years ago

Then you belong in the cubicle. Stay there until you are good. (Which won’t happen automatically, you have to put in the work.)

joshvm• 8 years ago

You should still aim for charging quite a bit higher than what you think is reasonable. There are an awful lot of bad developers, so even mediocre is probably fine. I've had consulting gigs where I've charged $200 an hour to answer a survey as a domain expert, and I learned later that I probably undercharged. People will pay, don't worry about that.

If you land a job that you feel got a bit close for comfort, lower your rates and re-calibrate. But assess why before selling yourself cheap - was it really beyond your skill? Did you just need more time? Don't forget that if you charge more, you can better devote your time to those projects. If you charge less you have to spread yourself more thinly to remain solvent.

mikeleeorg3• 8 years ago

It depends on which vector you deem yourself mediocre. If you think your technical skills are mediocre and want to be a technical contractor, then focus on being a great solutions provider.

And by "solutions provider," I mean take the time to deeply understand the root causes of your clients' problems, then help them find the actual solutions. Sometimes these solutions are not even technical, which is totally okay. Clients will love that you're helping them solve problems in addition to providing technical services.

tptacek• 8 years ago

If there is a list of annoying false things technology people believe about business, this notion that bill rates track technical ability would have to be near the top of it.

Your rate has almost nothing to do with how good a programmer you are. Sorry, excellent programmers who've had a hard time getting consultancies launched.

Your bill rate roughly† tracks how much value you provide to your client. "Value" is complicated and situational. For programming work, for most clients, extreme technical excellence is of marginal value. Clients that engage third party developers tend to see software as a cost center and/or are simply trying to solve a business problem. They care about how quickly that problem can be workably solved, and (please take notes:) how predictable the costs are.

You can be thoroughly mediocre at programming and an excellent business value, if your mediocre code solves business problems people will allocate budget for and if you can deliver it predictably. If you can deliver predictably and fast, you can ship bog-standard PHP code and charge integer multiples of what a much better developer might implement in Rust or Haskell.

The market tends to pay a premium for problem domain specialization, and less of a premium for elite skill.

None of this much matters for someone just getting their feet wet trying to get their first couple clients. Do whatever gets you started. But get out of the habit of convincing yourself that you have to qualify somehow to charge more money. Even the consultants who are constantly telling people to raise their rates are also not charging enough. I'm a varsity member of team "raise your rates" and I thought we were undercharging 4 years ago. Since then, FTE rates have gone through the ceiling and our rates have not scaled with them. It is very unlikely that any consultant chatting about consulting on HN is charging their real market rate.

I have one bit of bad news for you: if you want to make a career out of being a contractor or consultant, you need to get off freelancing sites ASAP. It's fine to get started there, but you're not developing your practice in any meaningful way as long as you're using them; you're just getting better at slinging code (which doesn't earn you better rates!), while radically undercharging clients. Getting off freelancing sites is rough, because freelancing sites tend to provide a comparatively stable revenue stream, and real consulting revenue is lumpy. If you've never experienced "lumpy" before: it's (a) terrifying and (b) really easy to screw up, by assuming you're flush with cash when really you've effectively just been pre-paid for the next N quarters.

Some people reasonably don't want to work under lumpy consulting conditions. Better you figure that problem out for yourself early rather than wasting your time pretending, or, worse, forgoing a fuckload of income by chaining yourself to freelance sites.

† Roughly because most serious clients allocate a budget that establishes a range of what they're willing to pay to solve a problem, and an invisible component of that budget is how much work they're willing to put in to sourcing a contractor --- the first credible contractor they talk to might win the deal, meaning there's no competition to aid price discovery. Corollary: one way to "provide value" and charge a premium is to be easy to source. Something that people who build consulting firms, the kind with lots of consultants, learn quickly: clients put a premium on firms that are always available.

iovrthoughtthis2• 8 years ago

What does mediocre mean?

iovrthoughtthis2• 8 years ago

You can produce quality work.

onion2k• 8 years ago

Increase your rates regardless. Clients don't know, or really care, about quality so long as what you build works.

Where quality is important is in keeping your costs low. Having to revisit old code to fix bugs or trying to work with bad code to add features has very little impact on your client. It affects you. Strive to write good code for your own sake.

Plus, if you take on fixed price projects writing code you don't need to go back to really increases your profit.

Spooky23• 8 years ago

Doesn’t matter. People pay too much for broken crap all of the time.

csomar7• 8 years ago

I've seen mediocre to really bad people getting paid $3000/day for their mediocrity and not delivering results.

Increase your rates.

thrawaylost1125• 8 years ago

You are making a huge mistake assuming that everyone has ability to tell a mediocre from a 10x engineer, which is patently false assumption to begin with.

Market has information asymmetry baked in. Not everyone is informed, that's where you earn your bucks.

xfitm3• 8 years ago

Persistence and QA. Find your own mistakes before someone else does.

dangero2• 8 years ago

Isn’t it against your contract with upwork to move off the platform with a client?

jsi2• 8 years ago

Upwork makes you jump through code challenge hoops and competes you against people in countries where $1/hr is kingly. Doesn't exactly engender loyalty.

skj• 8 years ago

1) who cares? And,

2) what could they possibly go about it?

Strom• 8 years ago

Upwork terms of service require you to funnel funds through them for 2 years, then you are free to move elsewhere. Upwork also allows for early leaving if you pay a fee of $3500 or some other number based on crazy calculations.

https://www.upwork.com/legal#noncircumvention

elephant0xffff3• 8 years ago

5. Don't be afraid to learn. Try not to specialise too much. Generalists/full stack devs are very sought after. You'll start a contract as a web developer and soon you'll be doing DB optimisation and securing their infrastructure.

Nice tips but I don't agree with this point.

Being specialized makes you stand out from the crowd and being "the person who does <foo> in the <bar> industry using his extensive knowledge in <baz>". Otherwise you are just "the person who does <computer-stuff> for all industries".

I agree that it's simpler to not be picky at the beginning but later on you should specialize - not just in technology but also in an industry.

1_player• 8 years ago

I agree to disagree :) you might be right, that point is mostly a personal opinion.

My personal goal and career path has always been to be a jack of all trades, I even entertained the idea of explicitly writing that in my resume.

One might prefer to specialise in something instead, and master it well. That's absolutely fine, I just happen to love to learn about anything, mostly because I easily get bored if I'm on the same thing too long.

It's suited me fine, but it's definitely not the Only Way to be a consultant.

technofiend• 8 years ago

Excellent advice. Imposter syndrome is very real and can cause people to low ball themselves but people should be asking for far more than they think. A contractor has to cover every benefit for himself and build a nest egg for downtime to boot.

But for a new contractor what to charge seems to be the struggle. I exited contracting when the .com bubble burst. These days I'd want to charge double my previous rate, possibly more.

wolco• 8 years ago

What I have found on upwork is the smaller the contract amount the more difficult the client and more likely to get a dispute.

40 dollar for a small task seems to be a magical cutoff point where any task less has a checklist of dozens of smaller tasks bundled in.

800 seems to be the level where above that you can expect some professional-ness

kinnth• 8 years ago

We run a mobile game design agency - https://mobilefreetoplay.com helping people create apps. Some tips from me

   1. Get yourself an account on Transferwise.com so you can accept all currencies. It then works well to bill people in their local currency as they pay quicker.
   2. We use Xero for all accounting and invoicing. It works and saves time at end of year.
   3. Slack. I am on 9 different teams. I binned off email a long time ago.
   4. Write content on a blog and blog posts, this is the single best way we get new clients.
   5. Keep your prices high. We work with Google, Amazon, Warner Brothers and we got that through recommendations. High prices = top quality.

csomar7• 8 years ago

We work with Google, Amazon

What kind of work do you do for Google/Amazon?

miesman• 8 years ago

I 55 and have worked remote many times during my career (including currently). The best way I've found is to work onsite initially and dazzle them. Then when the contract is up tell them you are willing to continue remote.

johnvanommen2• 8 years ago

Interesting!

I'd always negotiated remote work upfront, but doing it this way is clever.

flyingcircus3• 8 years ago

The key insight is to have a better alternative if they say no. You have to be in the position to speak authoritatively about your subject matter to the extent that your client realizes your time is too valuable for tire kickers. Make the case that your best work is done on your terms. It's not that you don't want to negotiate it, there is simply no mechanism for you to provide the advertised services in suboptimal working conditions.

If you have no plan b, this tactic loses all of it's teeth.

edw519• 8 years ago

I have done this so many times that now, it's my default routine. "Dazzling" includes not only the work that I do for them, but also by doing it as if I were already remote. Writing emails, requirements, specs, and reports becomes as important as writing code...

- impeccably written emails detailing everything about every project and keeping everyone in the loop

- documenting every issue, question, and plan of action via email, letting nothing fall through the cracks

- status reports like clockwork

- precision on requirements and specs, spelling everything out, leaving nothing to chance

- a great attitude and team player (barf barf) in writing

Do these things and insist that others do (along with all you other dazzling work) and they'll have no excuses not to keep you when you decide to go remote. They'll already know you're a "professional".

sibeliuss• 8 years ago

Upvoted! This is absolutely the way to do it; then, once you've built up your "remote work portfolio" things get much easier

borplk2• 8 years ago

If the organisation is not setup for remote work you will sign yourself up for hell.

I guess it can work if you work alone and with high autonomy.

For many jobs just having someone say "yeah fine" is not good enough for success.

imhoguy2• 8 years ago

I agree this way is difficult to help you catch truly remote-first job, as requirement of sitting butt in an office contradicts it.

I recommend screening company with Glassdoor (WFH hints etc.) and at interview asking about communication/collaboration tools in use, remote teams etc.

Nowadays there is a large middle ground of companies which have globaly distributed offices. They may ask you to show up for some initial period to gain trust and mix into culture - definitely important for a long-term cooperation. Afterwards switching to remote is like relocating to different office but staying in the same project, which is pretty common practice. Tested myself several times.

dvdhnt• 8 years ago

Consider finding a reputable and talented agency to work for. I some people automatically reject working for an agency, but when your goal is to travel, it's nice to have someone else maintaining the infrastructure for you e.g. generating leads, signing clients, and taking the liability.

That's what I did, I took a job with a great _local_ agency who is actually remote first. It has allowed me to spend more time with my family and plan actual world travel.

dangero2• 8 years ago

Work on your social media reputation and presence. People pay more if you are top of your field as determined by how many twitter followers you have, etc. On one hand it’s a bad metric, but we all value social proof.

neillyons• 8 years ago

YunoJuno.com

arrtz3• 8 years ago

We actually have a few interviewers at Karat who are doing exactly what you're doing. (Disclaimer in case it wasn't clear: I work at Karat :)) It's remote contract work, but we find the work for you, so you don't need to spend any time finding clients etc. This can be really helpful for contractors who are just starting out like yourself, or for existing contractors who are looking to supplement their work.

At a high level how it works is: You put availability on your calendar; we schedule you for interviews in those slots. You can set as much or as little availability as you want week to week, at any time of day. The interviewing is all online, so you can do it from wherever you want as long as you've got a quiet location and a reliable high-bandwidth internet connection.

All we look for are solid technical chops and interpersonal skills, though prior interviewing experience is great. We train you on how to conduct interviews (generally takes about 25 hours including mentoring and practice interviews); training is paid and again on your own schedule. The only real restriction is that we ask that you be able to interview 10 hours a week on average, just because otherwise the time investment and ongoing training stop making sense.

If that sounds interesting you can apply here: https://jobs.lever.co/karat/d44ab283-c7c0-4bbd-b8c3-4dc0ced6...

Also happy to answer any questions about it here or via email: josh@karat.io

mcjiggerlog• 8 years ago

I don't quite understand the proposition. Why would I need to do 10 hours of interviews per week?

arrtz3• 8 years ago

First, I think my first post left out some context so I should be a bit more explicit that the job is being an interviewer: You interview software engineering candidates on behalf of our clients. (Possible you already get this, but mentioning it just in case.)

As for the 10 hours, we spend a lot of time onboarding and then continuously training our interviewers. Between that and the overhead of managing the relationship with the interviewer, we find things work best with interviewers above a certain activity level. Put another way, it's easier to work with 10 interviewers doing 10 hours a week each than 100 interviewers doing 1 hour a week each.

Does that make sense?

dep_b• 8 years ago

Working remote only with a mix of direct customers and customers through TopTal. To have TopTal as a backup is great. Land a new gig in a week perhaps two if you're picky (and your reputation is good).

hbcondo7142• 8 years ago

I just got contacted from a company called NewtonX that connects tech leaders with companies that need an initial phone consultation. I haven't gone through with it but it looks like a decent way to do remote work.

https://www.newtonx.com

thrawaylost1125• 8 years ago

1. Get foot in the door. Bid lowest and touch the codebase, oh now it's dirty and you've access to their secret.

Tell them, oh it's dirty code - it's unmaintainable crap. I quoted you the wrong rate, to deal with this I'll need $500 per hour I've other contracts waiting for me. But yeaa this is something which I had done last month for a different client. Now, I am busy, so just drop me a line on whatsapp if you don't find anyone else to do it. Leave this, "Anyone who can really do, will charge at-least 2x of what I am quoting"

2. Wait

3. Wait

4. You get the contract.

Don't regret for the ones who never get back to you, you'll make plenty from the one who tickle you the second time!

At $500/hr even if you are not the expert of the task you are undertaking, you'll find plenty of people on upwork to do it for 100-200/hr. Why? Those people just want to talk with a technical person who has clearly defined the scope of work! Most of those people are technically good from Russia.

ryanwaggoner3• 8 years ago

So lie, cheat, and steal, basically.

You sound like the type who makes contracting and consulting so much harder for everyone else, because you exploit your clients ignorance and trust for your own personal gain.

Ironically, you'd make a lot more in the long run if you had a more long-term outlook instead of being so transactional.

thrawaylost1125• 8 years ago

I don't force them to make any decision. How am I exploiting them?

Most people end up with less money, not because they lack skill but because they've not used their skill at the right place at right time.

Buffet advise doesn't work for everyone.

csomar7• 8 years ago

cut the chase and just show up with a gun next time. You are not building sustainable relations. Quite the opposite.

thrawaylost1125• 8 years ago

Both of you guys are posting from your real accounts a politically correct statement but you guys have showed no evidence that your method is really the superior one.

People at exon, large banking companies, stock brokers can make promises and a consultant/contractor can't change his mind?

No body cares about building sustainable business, most just want enough cash to retire peacefully.

chasd00• 8 years ago

network and get to know directors/upper management at very large companies. You can do a lot of this by just hanging out at happy hour spots near a large corporate campus. Those people are the ones that get tasked with implementing large programs or processes. If you they know you and your skills are even remotely relevant then they'll reach out to you when they can't get anyone in the internal IT/tech department to give them the time of day.

Also, huge veins of money run through these places you just need to stick in a needle. Cutting a check for $150k means absolutely nothing to them. I've seen million dollar budgets burned with absolutely nothing to show in the end and the business team just shrugs and moves on.

Those are the gigs you want.

lifeisstillgood• 8 years ago

How close to stalking are you suggesting ?

csomar7• 8 years ago

Don't stalk. If you hang out very frequently, you'll get multiple real random encounters.

rbitar• 8 years ago

We help senior remote developers around the world contract with companies here in the US, mostly Startups, for freelance work. Feel free to check us out at Skillhire.com

You’ll have to go through a technical interview process but most jobs are seeking JS developers, especially Node, React-Redux and React Native devs.

Hopefully we’re one more resource to help devs like yourself who want to travel and work.

pknerd• 8 years ago

Copying the part of my old comment on a similar past post:

I (re)started my tech blog after several years and made it more active and discussed things which were kind of like a "niche" that is web scraping and automation. I wrote posts how things are done and put the code on Github. At one side I was building my Github and in other hands, my SEO optimized posts attracted Google and eventually developers and..site/business owners too that helped me to get contractual work.

The biggest issue with us, techies, is that we don't know how to sell ourselves. Blogging could be pretty effective to get consulting work.

scruffyherder2• 8 years ago

Just ask them. I had this world thrust uppon me, as I offered to help with night time, so now I live in SE Asia.

It's not all roses, internet connectivity and being available is a must. Travel is incredibly stressful as you need to be always online, so that means always having batteries, cables multiple phones, tools and travel SIM cards. You cannot leave anything to chance.

Get ready to be cut out of the office politick, which is great, but also means I didn't know our SVP walked out as he was signed onto the online collaboration tool for another 3 months after he stormed out. And it didn't help that he would ignore me from time to time.

Devops has more opertunity just because of the following the sun model.

So yeah, be flexible, add value and just ask, create the crissis and the solution. If only people were fully awake and always available and knew the infastructure@3am....

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