Ask HN: How do you get side gigs?
I'm a senior backend dev (Go mostly) and feel like I could be doing more in the evenings, when my kids are in bed, to make a few extra ££.
I have no interest in under-selling myself on fiverr etc, so how do you find the work?
223 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 248 ms ] threadWhich networks still exist that do not require this large upfront timesuck (regardless of how well it may filter candidates)?
Of all the solutions our industry can provide, why cannot we not solve for if someone is performant in the industry?
Trades figures this out centuries ago.
However, our industry retains a hint of mystery. A magical sauce that cannot yet be taught.
But more importantly, a level of some mystery remains that cannot be detected without forcing the recruit through a rigorous course. Its biggest attrition being a the large potential for no return.
The difference with “us” is that our skills are still evolving - and quickly in many spaces…. The tools change, the methods change and the skill sets are constantly evolving to match.
What about for a React/frontend role. Surely no leetcode
https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
I did all tests in half the required time, 100% success rate, had a bug during the interview with the screener, in the last of 5 overall I've done, I probably could've fixed it with 2 more minutes but no, I failed and was asked to practice leetcode puzzles and apply again one month later.
Yeah, I don't think I will.
The thing that bugs me the most is it was obvious the interviewer wasn't an engineer. There weren't able to tell how close I was to the solution. I dunno, that method might work in some cases, but I've been doing software engineering for 16 years. I guess I'm not good enough.
Also fuck having to solve puzzles with a timer with someone looking over your shoulder. I have done emergency "servers are on fire" maintenance in the middle of the night for big customers and it's less stressful than that.
I had the impression that you have to bid yourself down to catch work over there due to that discrepancy. There are people in Eastern Europe more qualified than me, willing to work harder than me, at 1/3 the cost of me. Thus I preferred local contract hunting.
Anybody of that opinion here?
Yes, the interview process is a bit long, but opportunities have been non-stop for several years in a row now.
Never an issue with pay, although it can border on 6 weeks in arrears due to billing cycles with the client and bi-weekly deposits from Toptal.
It has varied from me being the only person working on it to full time work.
It's been easy enough that I've always taken 2, 20 hour/week jobs so that I don't lose all my employment at once when one ends. It's never been a problem picking up the next contract.
I've never worked with anyone else from Toptal, though I have been the replacement.
I haven't been using them for a while, but it's been non-stop inquiries from them, even though I've set my availability to 0hr/wk.
Going by the ££ signs I'm assuming you can get a job in London, where you can make >£200k total compensation as a good software engineer.
Does it really matter? I'm on £200k gross in the UK, outside London ... but i'm not done climbing that mountain. Of course £200k is "enough" for anyone, but that doesn't mean you can't aim higher.
Ambition should be celebrated
Every ethical dollar earned is a byproduct of value creation. Maybe you meant something more like "as long as he's not ripping off his customers," but otherwise that's an odd thing to say in response to someone who makes good money but is still looking for side jobs.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdR7WW3XR9c&t=48s
Say's Law: supply creates its own demand. Or in this specific case, this is the lump-of-labor fallacy.
Perhaps if the left had some basic understanding of economics past Marx, they wouldn't be blinded by their comically unreasoning hatred of Thatcher.
Well it sounds like you got it figured out what's best for everyone's health, ethics, and economics. Thankfully we have wise people to tell us what we can and can't work on...
Personally, the way I see it, the more money goes to wages, the better, and if that's because some guy is earning millions a year, I still think it's good.
Income from people starting new companies, that's fine too. What's bad is rent extraction, ossification, monopolies and private institutions that have power over people.
I might agree with this depending on what the specific goal is. But why should ambition be generally celebrated?
There is certainly ambition that has brought about improvement in life. There has also been ambition applied to the wrong ends or failing that has brought suffering. I'm not sold on the idea that the goal of continually increasing comp above an already luxurious level is meaningful or worth a third party celebrating. I especially feel this way about our industry where comp seems detached from the contributions are not easily attributed/calculated.
With the caveat that no small number of companies are not OK with that if it could be perceived as competitive in any way.
Personally (and more selfishly), I tried to raise my salary to be able to afford not working for extended periods of time.
Working with “ambition” could result in more stresses that counteract this gain. Hard to say.
Also possible that the gain would disappear outside of a culture that places so much value on jobs and wealth.
1: https://crr.bc.edu/briefs/do-men-who-work-longer-live-longer...
I suppose I'm in the camp that finds it skeptical that it would be much benefit at that level. I might also view it as a negative to society as that gig could go to someone who needs it more. Granted we would then be admiring the ambition of the lower earner, which brings me back to me saying that the specifics matter more than generally celebrating ambition.
Based on the struggle to hire qualified candidates, it seems this is an unrealistic view. Also, there is a difference between someone having a single job, and someone double dipping.
1. It's about the money, because you never know when you may have a 5-10 year underproductive period due to health/other unforeseen emergency.
2. It's not about the money, it's about the experience/knowledge gained/distraction/self-worth of accomplishing more.
To me, a side gig means accomplishing more of what someone else wants, with the trade-off of being less able to accomplish (or learn about, or distract yourself with) what you want. Which seems like an odd thing to want unless you need the money. I suppose for some people having a £200k income and not needing the money seem less synonymous than they do to me.
See: John Carmack at FB.
Edit: To be clear the repayments on a £1m mortgage would "only" be like £60k a year, you only need £>200k to initially buy the place.
The money outcome isn't a zero-sum game. If someone works more, they can put that towards their children's education fund, retirement or other investments, or anything else at all.
Only if you mean skill growth and self improvement.
But pure greed - no, we have more than enough of that.
That will help me become a better axe murderer since people are less likely to see me. Still wanna celebrate my skill growth?
That said, I would suggest that at that level of comp, maybe just use the extra time for your own enjoyment - hobby, relaxing, FOSS personal project, etc.
For instance, I have been working on a product in my spare time and I don't want to finance it through loans or giving up equity. Having £200k job (only £9,500 net per month) would get me closer to get the required tools, inventory, securing a rent for the workshop and storage, but that still not really too much money for that kind of endeavour. Unfortunately I am coming from a poor working class and I don't have a rich daddy to fund my start up, yet when people learn how much I earn they think I am rich, but reality is that kind of money is not enough to make anything sensible with it (you still have to save for years and live modestly), but people think it's the level of private jets and heated pool in a large back garden of a mansion.
If you're just talking side gigs be really clear this doesn't interfere with your own job performance. The first target you hit because of your "side gig" will be your downward spiral.
Now .. running your own business is another option. For me I encourage my staff to have "side gig" of their own business, but will not sign off on them contracting on the side.
One is a valuable option where you learn new skills - the other is...
I'm not clear on how that works. Could you provide an example?
My day job is very demanding, but my leadership team are aware, and the HR folks at my employer have documentation that supports me having a side business, and so if I say things like "I have to go the bank/lawyer stuff for my business", no one bats an eye as long as I am hitting my targets for the day job.
The expectation is that I will largely be available and focused on my day job during the 9-5, and where needed, provide support on escalations/on-call.
If I started taking on consulting contracts or was regularly juggling contracting or side-job related tasks against my day job, then it wouldn't be a good fit for delivering on that 9-5.
Imagine believing that you have the right to "sign off" on what your employees do in their free time provided they're not directly competing with you.
You can care about your team member's welfare and support them 100%, but part of that support should be defining the rules of play so that all parties know what the agreement is.
If they stop delivering, you do what you do if they stop delivering. Coaching, performance discussions, reassignment/termination. Whether it's because of a side gig or not is irrelevant.
If they get sick more often, you...? What would you do normally? Hopefully the answer is "support them." If this is cover for "they're saying they are sick but I think they're just working on their side gig" then refer to #1 but you better be right about it.
> You can care about your team member's welfare and support them 100%, but part of that support should be defining the rules of play so that all parties know what the agreement is.
I agree with this 100%. The agreement is that they're paid a full-time salary for full-time work (whatever that means whether it's ass-in-seat for 40 hours, or WFH or whatever). Whatever they do outside of that time isn't the company's business unless they're directly competing with them.
So if you have a side gig that matches your day job and your work output is covered by copyright: yes, you need your employer's sign-off.
> if you have a side gig that matches your day job
Well this is competition, isn't it? That's completely different.
Why not start your own business? The upside is much better. Yeah, it might fail, but you can decide to start another one what you learned.
I'm happy in my day job; it's secure, I'm paid well and I get a lot of time with my family. Starting my own business would put family time in jeopardy which isn't an option, especially as I'd have to give up my main income.
But, perhaps not unsurprisingly, there really isn't a general source for short side gigs paying a few hundred dollars an hour--especially for asynchronous tasks you can do nights or weekends.
That said, be cautious about conflicts. If you work for a mega corp like a hyperscaler it is going to be very hard to avoid the appearance of conflict.
FTFY.
For engineers based in the UK that are shocked by this number I'd recommend reading this [0] article. It's about compensation in the Netherlands but the same principle holds for the UK.
[0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...
And considering the way the economy is going (at least in the West), it's probably smart to work a side gig and make as much money as you can, while you can, because work is going to dry up soon.
I am surprised by this. You can check levels.fyi to target the right companies. I guarantee you 100% that you can easily make > 230k base outside FANG for a remote position.
Really? I don't personally know anyone making that much. My mother is a software engineer with an additional 20 years of experience on me and has never made that much (currently makes less than me, in fact).
Been wanting to transition into another role. Not sure what exactly but within software development.
Can I send you an email?
I found it really hard to find jobs that pay anywhere close to US salaries in EU. Unless things are very different now, I would plan to move to US to make 'that kind of money'.
US has its benefits, but I would consider age as a factor ( if you are younger, you may be able to worry less about insurance and whatnot ).
It also helps if you have an established profile, e.g. an active Github profile with open source contributions.
For 10 years I spoke at every conference, user group, etc. that I could find. I sustained a 9 person consulting company finding gigs through the network of other speakers and attendees that would come up and ask me questions. Every question can be rephrased as “I have a problem you can help me solve”, but you also have to qualify to make sure there is a company with a budget for solving that problem. That takes a little business development.
For conference attendees, you have to have some free giveaway to keep a connection… like a free 2 hour code review of your existing project, or “I’m willing to do this presentation for an in-house user group as a lunchtime thing if you’re interested”. Those little giveaways get you closer to the management and the confidence you know what you’re talking about.
Where I've had the most experience with using consultants and agencies for short-term/part-time are things like the following: -- You have a specific problem related to, say, ball bearing design and you really need to consult with an expert specialist. -- You need a speaker for an event and want a name of some sort -- You need a discrete project that you could probably do in-house but an agency specializes in that sort of thing -- You need a fractional share of some specialty (e.g. public relations)
For me it is consulting in crypto and algorithmic trading, but there are other high-paying areas to consider. Like adtech, but I am not sociopathic enough for that.
It is harder to find a side gig as a generic (no pun intended) Go developer, you’d want to specialize in something.
Also, at least in crypto, nearly all people are here voluntarily, they know that they are in the adversarial environment, a fighting arena. In adtech, you are up against the innocent.
In my experience, there will be about a 3-6 month delay between looking for work and securing a contract.
A couple things:
I undersold myself at first to get a couple of very pleased customers that then gave me much more work. However, it's very tricky... the customers that scoff at your price are not the ones you want. They are also going to be a PITA in every other way, and they'll grumble and make you feel like shit even when you deliver what you promised, on time, for the price you agreed to, with excellent value compared to the market. You don't want them.
....But it is a balance. Consider some way to mitigate risk on behalf of your customer in your first couple of contracts: hourly with a Not to Exceed number, or bid the job. Etc. Anything to get your foot in the door and get word-of-mouth recommendations.
Also... when pounding pavement, don't chase after individual customers! If you do, make sure they are whales. Do your best to find someone that will feed you lots of customers... Maybe partner with someone that does a complement to your work, like frontend or something of the sort?
Also... in partnerships, don't be greedy. There's ENORMOUS value that can be had when all the people you work with or around know that YOU want THEM to make money.
And finally... in my experience, having a "side gig" is really hard or impossible to pull off. It's always been a pretty binary situation between: "I have no work, nor prospects" and "Holy shit, I have way too much work and more is coming in." Work doesn't trickle in organically. You're either in or your out of the network of people that need work done, and if you're in, people paying top dollar want work done now. Trust me, those are the people you want anyway. The ones looking for a bargain will screw you.
Don't be afraid to say no to people that give you red flags, but I will warn you that every time you say "no" you are killing a connection on your network graph that could have led to a lot more work.
And this is true broadly. It's very hard to find/make a 10-20 hour job that lets you take off a month or two and isn't some $5-10/hour sort of thing. To the degree there is, you probably have to create it yourself.
I ended up trying to approximate this for a time by sharing work with a shop of 3 people. We were each 3 separate companies, but we would bring in clients under one contract and then just exchange labor via internal market-like exchanges. It worked pretty well for quite a while.
But even then... while it did sort of allow one to frequently (but not always) work part time and to take a couple weeks off and just distribute work with the other guys in the shop, it didn't attenuate the feast or famine issue as much as I'd hoped. In practice, 2 out of the 3 of us did the business development, and 1 guys served as the guy we could offload work onto.
If you already have some software and an active community, you did all the hard work for an SaaS. What's the advantage of focusing on individual client needs at that point instead of expanding the tool and getting customers?
Otherwise I'd learn new skills, if not tech maybe management? I did an OU MBA online which was fun, I didn't want to be a manager but helped me work more effectively in the organization.
The only scenario where this might work is if your family/friends actually work in corporate America. Why? Because they might understand projects, scope, vendor payment, etc...and they might likely connect you with clients who have similar understanding of project work, etc. I've never had such luck...but maybe that can be a good direction.
Should I remove my business from my resume? A lot of my exciting experience comes from my business whereas the 40hr stuff is just standard work I've been doing for years.
It’s a white lie but I’ve often explained those periods as “consulting” instead of freelance / “entrepreneur”. Then when I discuss it I always make it about the project and work. I never talk about the client except maybe the industry as a lead in to the problem. This way it sounds temporary or something. If they think you have an active client list you’re maintaining, that is always going to be concerning for them. They don’t know if you’ll be distracted or will make the clients the priority. They want to be your top and ideally only priority (sometimes even over family).
If they really press you they’re probably trying to understand how you managed so much project work while being employed full time. This is when you force a step-back from the details and say, “I do occasionally take on a project outside of work, it helps me work with emerging tech and things I’m interested in. I view it as a form of continuing education that is required in many professions. It’s never effected my performance at my job and I ensure to never causes a conflict of priorities. I find I can be 50%+ more productive due to having less meetings and organization overhead.” Or something with that gist
Or pick a well known library / framework and contribute. Or rescue a "looking for [co-]maintainer" library out there.
Basically, look around / do some targeted searches on GitHub / ask in lang discords / slacks if anyone needs help. Lots of work to do out there.
Could you share what it's done for you?
That said, the peak I've pulled down as a SRE is a total comp of CAD$600k a year and I'm presently a CTO of a barely-in-the-media startup.
I'm doing ok.
No idea what this means, but I love it.
My experience has been that serious networking has been more effective than anything else.
I recently moved to the US, and ever since I keep getting messages on LinkedIn offering contract/freelance jobs.
However the hourly rate is so poor that it would pay less that my current job base pay (not counting stocks and bonuses).
In Europe the rule of thumb is that contract job should pay 2x your full time job rate. This is based on the associated overhead plus lack of benefits (e.g. you need to pay your own pension contribution).
This made me think, is anyone taking these contract jobs? I see several possibilities:
a) Contract work in the US is not attractive.
b) People reaching out in LinkedIn are the bottom of the barrel. There are better rates out there.
c) People run several contracts in parallel, or with a full time job.
Is any of these true or am I missing something?
The 2x calculation is similar in the US. I've also seen "3x your hourly rate as an employee" if you're relying on the contracting income. It's important to account for the time you'll spend doing sales and misc. non-billable business building.
There are lowball contracting offers all over the internet and people sometimes accept these for various reasons. A higher tier of sustainable contracting does exist though, with most of the higher paying work sourced via networking, not via job boards.
One side believes that contractors are cheap, disposable labor that costs less than hiring an employee with benefits.
Another side believes that contractors are a way to access temporarily needed expertise they lack in-house and cost more than hiring an employee with benefits.
Some firms' views depend on the skillset. Other firms have the same view no matter what.
In my experience, the more general a position, the more likely it is to be put in the "cheaper" group. The more specialized a position, the more likely it is to be put in the "expensive" group. Neither of these categorizations necessarily is correct, just how the firm is viewing things.
I did a tiny bit of work for them, but they haven't managed to pay me even after 100 days :)
Just adding another data point, that YMMV, and it might not be worth your while.
There are high paying contracting jobs, but they are only available to people that know people that offer good contracts. A friend of a friend has a 6mo contract with a Fintech company paying $500k.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32606348
What I meant by side gigs was the more typical model of finding small gigs with flexible (read: resource constrained) buyers.
In the alphabet book is A for activist or agnostic? Secular could mean more than one thing.
Good luck.
I've worked evenings once. It's always tempting to think "well, I'm doing nothing anyway" but actually, you're recharging.
Even if you're normally coding on your own stuff, same applies.
Thanks though :)