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Ask HN: How can I moonlight as an infrastructure contractor?

4 points by JohnMakin ↗ HN
Background: - BS in CS with an emphasis in compiler/language theory from a decent school. - 5 years experience doing a mix of light dev, heavy ops.

I have mostly dealt with rebuilding/refactoring/optimizing large. distributed on-cloud kubernetes based platforms from the ground up. I have a wide variety of cloud experience, but am most proficient at AWS/terraform, and can program well enough that I have patched buggy providersand taken a stab at writing my own. I have spearheaded several company-wide initiatives and projects on my own and have some light project management experience. I have a smidge of SRE experience on a very large ecommerce website.

My question is - how can I leverage this experience into being a solo contractor? I don't have the faintest clue other than I know I can do it, because my last few jobs have been based on rebuilding/refactoring the last mess that the contractor they tried to hire before me did, and I see the quality of work that's accepted.

I have no idea what to charge, where to market, how to sell myself and my services. How can I begin? With inflation, my retirement plans are starting to fall apart and I want a second income without a second employer.

6 comments

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NtochkaNzvanova
There have been a lot of "how do I become a contractor/consultant" threads on HN in the past. Most of the advice isn't specific to infra, so searching for those will be a good starting point.

To summarize: the best way to get started is always within your network. Reach out to people you know who might need your services, and ask them if they do. If those work out, they'll refer you to other people they know. If things go well, you'll be able to keep yourself busy through word of mouth and never have to advertise.

There's a lot of debate over whether to charge by the hour, the day, the week, or by project. If you're just dipping your toes in the water, it doesn't hurt to start with hourly, because it's low risk for both parties involved. Here's a heuristic: start with the hourly rate you're making at your current full-time gig, and double it. That accounts for the fact there's overhead in contracting that isn't as visible to you as an employee in a full-time job (insurance, employment taxes, etc.), and also for the fact that you may not be able to keep yourself employed full time initially, so it gives you some wiggle room.

If your first client doesn't balk at the rate, increase it by 10-25% for the next client, and repeat. Stop when people freak out at your price or you're retired, whichever comes first.

JohnMakin
Hey, I really appreciate the thoughtful response and guidance. That makes a lot of sense, thank you. Tapping my network is something I definitely underutilize as well and a good starting point.

I have done hourly contracting work in the past but found the projects troublesome or management unwilling to listen, or sometimes people taking advantage. It’s not so much finding the work that’s the issue, but more of a good fit that is worth my time and energy.

NtochkaNzvanova
You're welcome!

> found the projects troublesome or management unwilling to listen, or sometimes people taking advantage

You have two options: reject those projects, and prefer to work with people you've worked with in the past and trust (even if at a lower rate); or raise your rate for those projects until they either self-select out, or you feel like it's worth your time. :)

screwturner68
There are benefits to charging hourly, if the customer doesn't want to listen, drags their feel or are simply indecisive who cares you just bill another hour, it doesn't matter if the project takes 6 weeks or 6 years as long as the check clears. On the other had I really dislike T&M gigs because I am really good at what I do and I bust my ass when I am engaged, working hourly is great for the customer and not so great for me. I am constantly asked how long it will take me to do this project or that project and if I give them a real number it's not worth our time to engage -we spend more time getting the sale than the actual service. That said the number only works for me, another consultant might take up to 5 times as long to do the same project due to lack of experience and the fact that they like to work slower. Fixed bid is great if you are allowed to knock things out but if it's a highly regulated site where everything requires a meeting or two go with th T&M.
JohnMakin
True, but it gets into weird situations where say something can take me an hour that takes most people 3-4 hours. How do you bill in those scenarios? It rarely ever ends up fair to me vs what other people would likely charge.
screwturner68
That's where a flat rate comes in, it's $1000 if it takes an hour or a week. They are buying your knowledge as much as they are buying your time. I used to stand up equipment that my company charged ~$6000 for and I could do the job in about 2 hours, my company thought it took 4 days. Normally I'd take my time, do long lunches and knock it out in 2 days (it's hard to work that slow). Then one time I was in a pissy mood and knocked it out in 2h, I called up my boss to tell him I was done and I'd be on the next plane home -we had a good relationship so it we weren't at odds with each other but he asked me to look busy and not tell the customer that I was finished until the next day. I get it people think if you can do something quick that there's no value to it so when I do deliveries I try not make it look too easy and even if I can be done in 15 minutes I might take an hour or two.