HN Explorer

Offer HN: Will write Ruby for Food

30 points by flacon ↗ HN
Hello HN,

Happy New Year to you all.

I wish I was writing to you under more successful circumstances or had some awesome side project to show off. I do have one cool project that will have to wait for the time being.

Instead I am financially hard up and looking for some side work to help reduce debt and help pay for a new baby due in Feb. My wife is an entrepreneur an recently fell on hard-times with her biz. I need to jump in and help save our family at this point. My current fulltime position isn't enough $$ and I need to freelance. Enough sob story.

About me: Experienced Rubyist and general web dev with 6 years exp. I helped build one well-known ecommerce startup from the ground up and recently left after 2 years. I also worked on four different startup side projects in the last 2 years for different entrepreneurs. Email me for the details. I also built web apps for some major Fortune 500 companies.

What I am looking for: One or more moonlighting gigs coding Ruby, Rails, Javascript, PHP or CSS. I can do frontend work well if your just looking for that. I live in the Midwest so my hourly rate is pretty affordable. I need $$ so equity is not really interesting to me at all.

Please check out my profile for links to my portfolio.

Thanks HN!

EDIT: Added PHP to the list

31 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 89.5 ms ] thread
elliottcarlson
Your resume on the portfolio site also mentions PHP - any interest in side work like that?
flacon
Possibly. I have exp with Zend but not much in the last 2 years. Send me an email (see profile) with your thoughts/projects etc.
elliottcarlson
Your email is lacking from your profile, as well as no contact info on the featlabs site and you need to be registered for the portfolio site to see contact info. Perhaps you could add it to your profile or website to make it a little easier :)
flacon
Hey sorry. Try this: thoughtcoup@gmail.com
elliottcarlson
Sorry, emailed a different one you had up momentarily before you changed it to this one on your profile ;) Will resend to this one for consistency sake.
mmaunder
You're mistaken. You're a fucking Zend master. Now pitch the guy.
flacon
I dont get it? I am missing something?
stevenbrianhall
OP can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he just wants you to market yourself a little. :)
YuriNiyazov
Yes. When you are financially hard up, you should say "I know XYZ well". If a project using XYZ materializes, you brew a huge pot of coffee, and spend the next 24 hours internalizing everything you can find on the web (and in the bookstore, if you are so inclined) using XYZ.

If your immediate inclination is to think that this is lying or misleading, hear me out - it's not so cut and dry. In a conversation, you don't know what kind of experience level the other party considers "well" vs. "not so well" - e.g. some people think that "wrote my own gem" in Rails mean expert, whereas others would be more skeptical and say that there really are very few experts out there, and someone on Rails core team qualifies, but that's about it.

So, in your situation, especially if you are hard up for cash, why not bet your skills more?

orenmazor
pretty much this.

be a shark. sharks have no necks and can't look back. necks are for sheep.

jarin
Fake it till you make it.
david_shaw
> About me: Experienced Rubyist

Time to show off that side project, buddy! Seriously, contributing to well-known open source projects or releasing your own projects/research that shows off your knowledge is a great way to demonstrate your skill and get a great job. How can we hire you without seeing your portfolio?

tuxychandru
His portfolio is in his profile.
david_shaw
Ah, so it is--and impressive work, at that. My mistake, thanks for pointing it out!
jarin
Kind of in the same boat right now, sans wife/kids, due to a non-paying client. If I had cash to pay you right now I totally would, since I have a small backlog of other client work. I see that you've worked on some pretty cool sites though (alice.com, etc), so I will pass your info along :)
phreanix
This is sort of unrelated, but I would love for you to swing back around to this thread and give some feedback on how this whole thing worked out for you. It'd be interesting to see how HN as a community was able to swing meaningful $$ your way. =)
lachyg
Could you code a PSD into html/css and make it into a Shopify theme?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
cvinson
I was just about to post on 37 Signals job board; we're looking for both freelance and full time rails developers. Our company makes CMS tools for entertainment markets. We've been around for 7 years, are stable and profitable. If you're still in the market, email me!
flacon
Whats your email? I have'nt found anything solid yet. Maybe shoot me an email thoughtcoup@gmail.com