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ruigomes

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OpenNode | Senior Backend Engineer | Los Angeles, CA | Remote OK

OpenNode is building the future of money through simple, secure, instant, and low-cost Bitcoin payment infrastructure for businesses everywhere.

We are now seeking a Senior Software Engineer (Backend) to deliver distributed, resilient and high-performing backend services using Node.js + TypeScript.

More details available at https://bit.ly/3e112tc

You can reach out at rui@opennode.com

I've been there while I was still in the first year of college of a 5 year MSc in CS course and needed some extra cash.

I started on Upwork with a very low rate (~$20/h) and applied to as many jobs as the platform allowed me to, with a custom cover letter for every single one. It was time intensive, but without any reviews it's your only way to stand out.

After I got my first project, I made sure that my client was blown away by everything: communication, turnaround time, code quality, etc. When I was sure the client was happy with the result, I asked him if he could leave me a review describing the process of working with me. By asking, you're letting him know that his review matters, and he'll probably put some extra effort instead of just writing something for the sake of it.

I kept (slowly) increasing my rate and continued sending custom proposals for clients. This is your advantage over all the low bids you can be sure they're getting.

After a few projects under my belt, I've built my personal portfolio, making sure Upwork reviews were there, along with a small description of the projects I completed. I've published my portfolio around in a few relevant websites and this has brought me client work directly to me a bunch of times.

After a while, you'll notice you're getting more proposals than you can handle, mostly uninteresting and low pay. That's when I've set my Upwork rate to something high enough that clients that weren't serious just wouldn't contact me.

I was 20 when I started doing this. I'm 23 now, with my MSc almost complete (just delivered my thesis this week) and a remote job working full-time at a startup with a great salary.

This is not a fool-proof plan, I may have gotten lucky here and there, but it is absolutely viable to do this without a resume. I've never had a resume to this day.

I'm in a very similar situation and about a month ago I posted this exact same question here on HN.

Since then, I went ahead and built a functional job board for part-time jobs for students/parents/etc.

I'm currently looking for some early adopters who have part-time jobs to post (for free!), so if any readers have part-time jobs to fulfil, email me at hello@ruigomes.me. Even though I'm currently booked for months, it'll help people in the same situation I was a month ago, and in the situation the OP is now :)

I'm using a Raspberry PI with transmission to handle my torrents.

I can go to the web page and just paste the magnet URL and it just downloads it for me.

I also have flexget running from time to time which checks if there are any new episodes of TV Shows I'm following and automatically downloads that for me and places them in the correct folders after downloading.

I was mostly inspired by this tutorial (http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47084) but I've made some changes along the way.

I can publish my flexget config if you want to take a look, I believe I had to make some changes in it after an update. I'm also not using the Trakt.tv functionality. I find it easier to just edit the config file than to sign up for a website and create a bunch of lists and whatnot.

Is it realistic for a fresh graduate (with a masters) in Informatics and Computing Engineering from Portugal to go straight to NYC and be able to live alone (as in not sharing rooms) and actually have some money saved by the end of the year?

I would absolutely love to experience NY, since I'm a passionate web developer.. There's so many companies in this field over there that I feel that my career would grow so much faster than if I stay here in Europe (at least in Portugal).

I would personally prefer NY over SF since it's way closer to "home".

Any thoughts on actually being able to financially live in NYC as a fresh grad?

Go Fucking Do It 12 years ago

I am planning to run a similar challenge, and I have been struggling with correctly naming it, since I won't actually be creating startups (no actual business plan, no nothing).

I think 12 sideprojects in 12 months would be more appropriate, at least to the approach I'm planning to take.

Regarding this project, I follow the creator on Twitter and he announced it yesterday I believe, and today I was thinking about it and ran into the same question "does the money go to the website or to the friend?".

Logistically, I don't think paying the friend would be something easy to do (does Stripe even allow for something like that?). Going 100% to a non-profit would leave no room for profit, so I would personally go with 80/90% to a non-profit of choice and keep the remainder as a fee.