Ask HN: Where are the good platforms for contract work?
Is there really no other platform for decently paid contract work that's not a complete race to the bottom? I find I'm close to having to abandon 10 years of consulting because I have no idea where to find anything else than full-time employment.
The other two job boards I've been keeping an eye on are mostly about React and other frontend roles, with offers few and far between. Linkedin is similarly dire for contract work.
Is Toptal the only option for someone with 16 years experience that wouldn't want to work for peanuts? Or just going back to being an employee?
(In case anyone's reading that's looking for a senior Elixir/Rust/Go engineer/sysadmin, resume's in my profile. I'm based in London.)
EDIT: excellent responses so far, thanks. I like how many are suggesting going through recruiters, while the common motif on other similar posts is to avoid LinkedIn. I've started cleaning up my Linkedin profile this week, and I already have a dozen recruiters setting up appointments with me. I will try and explicitly request contract jobs with them.
144 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadWhen you can afford to risk it, become your own boss.
When something hard in life is coming up, it's better to be employed.
Less stress, more benefits, lower chance of being fired.
If time is a concern I'd recommend some part time (albeit I realise it's not that popular in the USA).
There are two routes: 1) Get in touch with local hiring agencies, there are tons of contract positions 2) Become a studio yourself and take on clients (much harder than #1)
Good luck.
Emailing the CEO of small, local software companies with your experience and your rate.
Also, posting your info on the monthly HN Who's Hiring Freelancers post.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32701641
Same with that HN who wants to work thread, you are just racing to the bottom and making it easier for others to emulate your own posting in terms of skills.
I don't really have a good answer, I really think its down to mostly luck or you have a skill market fit
My response rate improved considerably when I shifted from highlighting my tech stack to my actual effectiveness. I haven't had sufficient availability to pursue HN-based leads in about a year, though.
You have to network on your own.
As a fallback, you can approach a larger agency and see if you can subcontract through them on some of their projects.
Successful freelancing requires a lot of outreach. Start with your network and then move on to cold outreach to companies that might need your services.
Hint: If a company has full-time job postings for your work domain, it means they need your services. You can pitch them on contract work and offer to augment their teams on a contractual basis while they search for a full-time hire.
You might try job boards such as RemoteOk (assuming you don't want to come into client offices) and just reach out to see if a company may be okay with that.
https://clouddevs.com/ is Latin-america specific. Came up in "Toptal trying to sue us for saying there are Toptal alternatives that cost less" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32472398) last month.
Jobs seem to be mainly split between full-stack, front-end, and mobile but there's quite a few openings for soft skills like PM work.
I clearly remember these folks. They acted in almost exactly the same way as literary or artist agents; searching out opportunities for their clients, and setting up interviews, etc. As a hiring manager, I dealt with them frequently, and had friends that used them.
They used to make a lot of money, because they would charge a percentage of the rate they negotiated for you.
Nowadays, it looks like they have been replaced by "race to the bottom" sites, like Upwork, or these contract companies, that hire you at a fairly low rate, and shop you out for very high rates. You get to "enjoy" the crappy treatment most companies give to contractors, but at rates lower than the employees that sit next to you, shooting spitballs at you.
I encountered this, when working with recruiters, after leaving my last company. The ones that didn't immediately hang up on me, after finding out I was older, started trying to lowball me into being one of their contract shop employees. They would love telling me that I shouldn't ask for too much, "because of my age," before "generously" mentioning that they happen to have a contract shop that would be willing to do me the huge favor of "throwing some work at me."
It's a real slime-pit, these days.
https://jobserve.com/gb/en/Job-Search/
Filter the results on 'contract'.
Hit me up for tips if you're thinking of going contract. I've been in and out of the game for years and making more than double than I would as a perm.
I can't help but feel like these platforms are like Uber for programmers: devoid of all meaningful professional contact and ultimately the commodification of programming as a job. The power dynamic has shifted to give most of the power to the buyer. Sad times indeed.
Partly because a lot of us have made good money building platforms that increase buyer power through commodification (most of e-commerce, plenty of other things). And partly because of persistently low standards in the profession that I see little enthusiasm for working together to raise.
This would be like, for example, if you set up a job interview from a listing at Indeed, and then Indeed demands that you do not use regular email to stay in contact with the employer, you must use their own messaging system. And you can't even voice chat elsewhere unless it's a link that is provided by Indeed so they can be aware of it.
Just the walled garden aspect of freelancer websites is what turns me off.
I was just thinking there could definitely be a niche like that, there must be a bunch of people that would love contracting but hate bizdev etc.
Up until know I hadn't heard those ever existed.
But I worked for one company for about 27 years, and never used one (except when hiring).
Recruiters in the US don't really seem to work that way. Instead, they have contract shops, and hire you as an employee, or 1099 (contractor without the money).
I am very disappointed in what has happened to the technical recruitment industry. It used to be full of older folks, that obviously made great money. These days, it seems to be all young folks, and they don't seem to make anywhere near as much as they used to.
The recruiter does the recruiting and provides access to an umbrella company but it's optional and up to you. The umbrella company is a separate entity that provides the service to the recruiter, 99% automated so fees for it are basically nothing.
The umbrella handles witholding tax, super payments, pay slips and a few compliance things like confirming you've watched your OSHA video quota for the year.
The typical model is for end clients or employers to hire a recruitment agent to find them either contract or permanent staff.
For contract staff, the agency will invoice the customer, keep approximately 10% and pass the difference to the contractor.
A contractor can choose to work as a LTD company or through an umbrella organisation depending on how much admin they want to take on and requirements of the client such as IR35.
Consultancies are a slightly different model where they own the outcome and more of the risk, and are perceived to be bringing IP and value as well as just the resource. This is where there is a the big delta between what the contractor is paid and what the consultancy charge.
In some cases, the agent can of course be disintermediated and the end client can recruit people directly.
In 20 years working in the London contract market, I have never heard of a situation where a contractor hires an agent to go out and sell their services. You can however build a relationship with agents to remain front of mine when their customers (end clients) have a relevant opportunity.
In a way, contract agents are operating as a match maker and making a living by taking a percentage of the day rate, so it is partly perception who is their customer. However, I think it's fair to say that they are hired by and represent the interests of the end client rather than the contractor.
I know you didn't ask all of these questions, but it seemed like the best place to respond :-).
IR35 is not a 'requirement of the client', it's HMRC's judgement of the relationship between contractor & client that matters.
Before you balk at the number, consider that during my almost 5 years as a solo contractor I've spent _zero_ hours doing sales. None. When I want a new assignment I send one email and within a week or two I have a 6 month contract.
I've seen plenty of the latter but hadn't heard of the former before.
That's nothing to balk at. In the US, being a contractor is like selling wholesale, and being an agency is like selling retail. I'd expect the contractor cut to be 30%-50%, and the rest to go to the agency.
I wonder if it is a US thing of employees having too little power. A couple years ago I heard an interview on Fresh Air [1] where a woman talked about her experience cleaning houses. She said she at first made $8.55/hour while the agency charged clients $20/hour (later it was $9.25 and $25, respectively). That means the agency got 57% (63%). I told my wife if we ever hire someone to clean our house I'm asking how much the person doing the work gets paid, and if it's not above something like 70% of the total, we're not doing it.
[1] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/689611873
Whenever I mention them, I'm scoffed at, like I believe in unicorns.
In a way they are operating as a match maker and making a living by taking a percentage of the day rate, so it is partly perception. However, I think it's fair to say that they are hired by and represent the interests of the end client rather than the contractor.
8 years ago in London I knew about some companies charging 1000+£ per day to customers and paying the contractors 400-600£.
You should still avoid those places, but many contractors didn't have the contacts to charge higher than 400-600£.
Funny enough, I'm finding myself doing this gap too. Last December I ended up consulting as a fraction CMO/VP for mid- to late-stage startups. As the business has grown I've had demand for more work than I can fill, especially related to software, data infrastructure and analytics. At this point I'm starting to bring people into projects to augment what I can offer and frankly can't do it fast enough.
I know there's a lot of people doing similar work as myself, so looking through your network and checking with people who have found their niche as a consultant are probably a great resource.
The downside was that we were a fairly small operation and so we only had one agent. When he left to pursue his own business venture we were unsuccessful at replacing him and ended up closing up shop.
A platform that facilitated this type of arrangement would be valuable indeed...
I suspect that the fault lies in the hiring companies.
There's lots of ways to build up work, but the way I did it was by creating a few fun projects and blog posts that ended up on HN. Each one had a "I'm doing freelancing work!" ad on them. (You're kinda doing this right now!)
It might not work for everyone, but I had by far the best success by creating something that would intrigue the people I wanted to hire me.
I get the sense that yes, contracting platforms are a race to the bottom, but also this is a pretty bad time to be launching a freelance career.
Another route is to apply for full time jobs and ask early in the process if they’ll consider hiring you as a contractor. Give your honest reasons why you want to go this route. If they continue with the interview process, knock their socks off so they can’t afford not to use you at whatever terms you want.
I'm based in Europe and I have mostly worked in EU countries, except for a couple of very lucrative contracts in the Middle East. I can see you are based in London: London has tons of contract gigs, especially in the financial sector (mostly using JVM languages I'm afraid). If you can move around, Switzerland has also lots of contract work at the moment - and low taxes.
Take a look at jobserve.com for UK contracts.
What has worked for me so far:
- Find some good recruiters from reputable hiring agencies. Once you establish a relationship with them, they can provide a stream of constant contract opportunities. You can accept or refuse, based on location, rate, tech stack etc.
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done, because the bar for entering an hiring agency is quite low these days and you get all sort of cowboys. Personally, I prefer to work with older dudes with at least 10 years of experience in the fields (reverse ageism!).
- Never, ever leave a company slamming the door. If you do a good job, they will call you back
- Linkedin lists contract gigs sometime, I have never really got anything out of it, but it's good to keep an eye
- At some point, I wrote a book that landed me a couple of good gigs. I'm not suggesting to write a book, but you can try to establish yourself as an authority is some field (Elixir, Rust, etc). Again, easier said than done
Ultimately, the hiring agencies are the gateways to the majority of contract gigs, so you really want to talk to them.
Good luck!
I think this is somewhat distinct from ageism. You could find some relatively young folks with that level of experience and folks who are much older with less.
If you are in the EU, check out Freelancermap, Austin Fraser, Hays, Malt, Darwin Recruitment, Upper.co (for less pay, but startup work).
I think one thing which is restricting your search is your tech stack. I'd honestly concentrate on finding something for Go, as I think you'll have the easiest time with that. You can try https://www.golangprojects.com/ and https://golang.cafe/ for that.
I'm sure that many of the clients you made happy during those years will gladly work with you again or make introductions. Between you and an unknown, you have a leg up. That's one of the advantages of consulting and having a track record of always delivering.
If you want to start your own thing, I've written a tiny Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965...
It's also good you included your contact information in your profile.
I did a quick search for companies using Elixir. One site for example: https://elixir-companies.com/en
You could reach out to them and do the same for Rust, Go, etc.
This drew my attention:
>Starting as a freelance consultant, was hired in 2018 as Technical Director to oversee the engineering aspect of the company. In 2020 took on part of the administrative concerns, such as managing the employees day-to-day and preparing for a smooth handover in case of sale.
You can't mass produce people who can do this. That comes with real world experience. You can package that Interim Savior experience and make it lucrative. What are the signals and selectors of an organization that needs that?
You can also reflect back on all the entities you served during these years and can segment by sector/industry (and many roles), by one role across sectors/industries, or by problem. Then decide the approach you want to take depending on your preferences: maybe you like to work within a certain sector, maybe you like to work with certain roles (devs, salespeople, marketing people, designers, etc.)
When someone sees glowing reviews and completed jobs, you become the "easy button" and they will pay more to decrease their risk. When they see 10 completed jobs with 5 star reviews, all mentioning the exact type of work they need, they can be pretty sure the 11th will be successful. It's possible to charge $125 or more an hour on UpWork and have to keep your settings updated so that you are not spammed with invites.
All very professional - answered promptly knew his stuff + the necessary meet and greet in the beginning.
People say it's underpaid or terrible, but part of that reputation comes from people doing one or two jobs and quitting. Plus, I've hired developers on UpWork and a lot of people suck at writing proposals. I have a lot of advice on that too.
Not all comments need to add to the original discussion. Saying I do not suggest someone uses Upwork and giving my first hand experience of using the platform adds some value to someone.
Stop backseat moderating.
Also, you’re in London so start meeting people - go to tech meet-ups, go to marketing meet-ups and tell people you’re a freelance developer.
Networking is the way to success in the freelance world. Also reach out to old employers and clients and ask if they have work.
(The reason I say marketing meet-ups is that many marketing agencies need dev work doing but don’t want devs on staff - I get freelance work for this)
Also speak to other agencies as offer yourself as overflow resource.
That's a good long term plan, and one I really do not enjoy, but that's a shortcoming of mine I am aware of.
The question is "where can I find job now?", not "how can I avoid this situation again?", though yours is very good advice.
(Also thanks for the CV/resume tip. But if one is confused by me using an American English synonym for CV and doesn't notice the header of my PDF says "London, UK", I wouldn't be optimistic about their hiring process.)
Oh and bold all the technology keywords on your CV. Make them pop off the page a little so if someone if just keyword scanning it’s really easy for them to pattern recognise you as a suitable candidate.
Best of luck!
Seeing the disparity in pay between UK dev roles and US dev roles, I would assume one would do the opposite and lean into presenting yourself as someone who can work on projects for US companies. Curious why you would recommend positioning for UK work.
If you’re looking to avoid all the sales work and differentiated value you can bring, then you can jump on the platforms, but then expect to be compared against everyone else on the platform rather than against everyone for whom a trusted associated has vouched for.
Find an extroverted person with a sales type personality who seems to attend all kinds of tech meet ups and offer them a 10% referral fee for any work they find you. They’re already networking constantly.