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Ask HN: How do you find a side job?

10 points by mrfish ↗ HN
I want to know what is your current most successful strategy for getting good side jobs? i.e. Do you have an Elance or Guru account? Do you comb craigslist for postings that are legit?

And what are some of the hurdles you are faced with that you have overcome? i.e. How to detect a client on craigslist won't pay...etc.

The reason I ask is I want to make a site similar to Elance but for local developers to compete against the craigslist people. With support by it's own developer community (i.e. developers are the moderators not moron staff). Also I have experience working for local recruiters and I want to use them to get jobs as well. Thoughts???

Also if anyone has any good ideas on how to do escrow without sucking at it please let me know.

10 comments

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binarymax
I've never tried it but is this similar to what you are looking for? http://www.peopleperhour.com/
mrfish
Well not entirely. The differences I was thinking about was to do that, but also have people post their jobs to bid like on Elance. The difference is that a client would see local developers to their location first. I was also thinking of getting recruiters involved and having developers do the moderating. So yes like that but more.
cperciva
My current strategy for finding side jobs is to wait for them to come to me. I have it easy -- I have widely recognized expertise in several narrow fields.

The biggest hurdle I've faced is US tax paperwork -- companies like to ask for W-8 forms. Fortunately I recently had a client with a tax lawyer on staff, and I now know that being a non-resident working outside of the country means that I'm not subject to US tax withholding and no paperwork is required.

I've never bothered with escrow; if I'm sufficiently uncertain about a potential client that I would even consider escrow, it's a client I don't want. This is in part because of the nature of the work I do -- fly-by-night operations generally can't afford my rates and don't need my expertise anyway.

abalashov
Banal nitpick, but I'm pretty sure you mean W-9. :-)
cperciva
No, I actually mean W-8. A W-9 is for US residents; a W-8 is for non-residents subject to withholding.
zach
I would recommend networking within a local programming user group (Python, Ruby, Cocoa, etc). Introduce yourself at a meeting or on the mailing list letting people know just a little about your background and that you're looking for a side project and would be interested in getting in touch with anyone who knows of an opportunity.
tbrooks
The RoR Meetup in Nashville does a good job of sourcing jobs to its active members. We're a b-list town and there aren't that many Rails devs here, so I'm curious how RoR Meetups in larger cities function...
jefurii
I've had a number of recruiters contact me through LinkedIn. There are also language/framework/technology-specific sites like http://djangopeople.net/. I've gotten a number of calls through that site, including the one that led to my current side job.