| [HN Gopher] Ask HN: Where can I find small companies to work for...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Where can I find small companies to work for part-time?
I dislike going through interviews and all the rituals that involve
working for a company full time. I don't like to stick to one
project for a long time, which is visible on my resume, and
recruiters don't like that. I've been thinking of a way to work
around these traits, and what I have come up with is - work part
time, on B2B, with invoices instead of employment contracts. I'm
hoping that with B2B it will be easier to find work, fast. It
should be more flexible to employers. But where do I find people
to do work for? Edit: I'm a full stack developer, mainly focused
on Go and React.
Author : ggktk
Score : 223 points
Date : 2022-07-21 12:02 UTC (10 hours ago)
| rodrodriguez wrote:
| Would you help us with General Bots (github.com/generalbots)?
| LouisSayers wrote:
| I had a friend introduce me to a coworking space startup which
| wanted small fixes 5-10h per week.
|
| I was the only person working on the codebase, deployment was
| broken, but the code was actually pretty good and had a test
| suite. The guy I was working with was easy going and let me take
| the reigns.
|
| It was one of the best gigs I've had. Sadly the work stopped
| (their business was a casualty of the pandemic).
|
| I'm not sure how you'd go about finding these types of jobs, but
| they do exist!
|
| Best of luck.
| [deleted]
| nekoashide wrote:
| I found that Linkedin job search can be refined to find these out
| of band jobs as well. When I was looking for a side hustle it
| helped me land a support job that was part time and after hours
| remote. It was a small company and there was one interview before
| I got the job.
| mellavora wrote:
| Not a recommendation, no affiliation, but Angelist maintains a
| job board for startups
|
| https://angel.co/jobs
| jmconfuzeus wrote:
| You can try Toptal.
|
| I heard good things about them but haven't got in myself because
| they require leetcode puzzles which I suck at atm.
| sph wrote:
| I did one interview with them with flying colours, 3 puzzles
| with 100% score, I had one employee contact me before I was
| done with the whole process to tell me they had a client that
| needed my exact set of skills, so interviewed with them as
| well, and passed.
|
| But during the last technical call I couldn't finish one out of
| two puzzles in time because I initially went for a sub-optimal
| strategy, so I got told to practice leetcode and apply later.
|
| With 16 years of professional experience, I shall do better
| with my time than getting good at solving timed Fizzbuzz-type
| puzzles.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| Anyone know the payment structure / cut for TopTal?
| JCoder58 wrote:
| You can set your hourly rate as part of your profile. That's
| what you get paid, they add something to cover their costs
| when your profile is sent to the client.
|
| To change your rates, you have to go to their support group
| and ask for the change. I'm not sure how hard it is to change
| I haven't needed to change it yet.
| lowercased wrote:
| I just had a short interview the other day with 2 folks.
| Screensharing, we went through the first 'problem'. They gave
| me some SQL tables with dummy data, and asked for some
| data/queries.
|
| "How would you get X?" "How would you get all X who are not
| retired?" etc
|
| After 3 questions, the guy stopped and said "no one has ever
| gotten this far this quickly before - I don't have any other
| prepared questions right now. Let's try one more..."
|
| That one took another 10 minutes - I sort of 'knew' it but...
| doing 'live' pairing being on display adds a bit of nerves,
| and... I just need to hammer through multiple trials. Felt
| awkward, but got there after a bit of time.
|
| Then... person 2. "Leetcode" exercise... I reviewed it again a
| bit later, and one of the things that tripped me up is that the
| description and the expected 'sample in/out' answers were in
| conflict. At best, the description was ambiguous, but to my
| reading was in contradiction to one of the expected answers.
|
| I struggled 20 minutes in front of them... and we were out of
| time. The question was (to my reading) relatively abstract and
| doesn't map to any of the sorts of problems I've tackled over
| the past 20 years in development.
|
| They thanked me and closed the interview. I wrestled with the
| leetcode for another 30 min or so later that evening and 'got
| it', but... annoying.
|
| I reply with this partially to say "you may never get better at
| the leetcode stuff" but don't let that get you too down. :)
| bityard wrote:
| Not sure if this is how the toptal screening works, but a lot
| of hiring interviews will contain somewhat vague questions on
| purpose because they want to see how (or if!) candidates will
| ask questions to hone in on the real problem.
|
| I learned this the hard way... a couple times...
| lowercased wrote:
| Last I interacted with toptal, the 'leetcode-style' UI was
| 'work on your own' as a filtering mechanism. I hit similar
| problems before, where the problem itself was - to my
| reading - ambiguous and confusing. And you just had a 30
| minute timer ticking away - no way to ask a question of
| anyone at all.
|
| In the example above, I was, indeed, talking out loud to
| someone and we had some clarification and discussion, but
| it was still more contrived (imo). Working with the first
| person with real SQL and a set of real life tasks (write a
| query for a report to give number of active employees in
| each area, etc) was far more straightforward vs "find non-
| repeating chars in a string". I can _do_ the second one,
| but I wouldn 't work by starting off fresh pairing with
| someone. I would start off a problem on my own,
| document/test/trial things, then if/when I needed to pair,
| I'd be able to walk through things in a more measured
| process. Give me 10-15 min on my own to digest the problem
| first before I talk to someone.
|
| Even writing this, I can hear people say "but that's how
| the real world works! You have to jump in to unknown
| problems immediately pairing with someone, and just ... ask
| away for clarification..." But even then... it's not how I
| work well in contrived online tests. In a business setting,
| the team is likely all 'new' to at least some of the
| problem. In the 'exam' setting, I'm still 'pairing' with
| someone who knows it all, and the 'hrm...' and 'do you need
| help?' interjections every few keystrokes is just not
| conducive to real work (for me), nor is it how I would ever
| work in real life.
| jmconfuzeus wrote:
| I don't like leetcode myself that's why I cancelled my
| application.
|
| Someday if I'm desperate for work I might work on it and
| apply again.
|
| Still, it's still better than begging around on upwork or
| fiverr like some people are doing.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| There are brokers for IT consultants.
|
| I don't know any where you live, but it is a thing. They'll
| connect you to clients and my experience is that nobody throws
| leetcode interviews at consultants.
|
| If you are willing to work full time you can also join a
| consultancy and they'll find you something to do.
| guzik wrote:
| Have you ever thought about starting teaching people or selling
| tutorials in Go and React?
| asn0 wrote:
| I've used a recruiting company https://www.facet.net/ that also
| handles contract work, and works with a lot of startups. They can
| add you to a mailing list to send you opportunities that match
| your criteria.
| bgibbons wrote:
| I'm one of the founders here. Yes, we work with hundreds of
| startups and large FN 500 companies. Happy to answer any
| questions. That's why we created Facet - trying to eliminate
| recruiter spam and create a better experience for engineering,
| product, or design contractors. Dev founded - dev run.
| p_l wrote:
| Quite interesting system you have made there.
|
| Do you perhaps publish (or could publish) some statistics on
| earnings and the like?
|
| Also, how often the jobs are available for non-USA
| candidates?
| probotect0r wrote:
| This seems interesting. How was your experience?
| davidzweig wrote:
| If you are by chance in Eastern Europe, our project might fit:
| languagereactor.com .
| ushakov wrote:
| try Advisable: http://advisable.com
| mattbee wrote:
| I write and train for Skiller Whale (skillerwhale.com) who train
| teams of software developers on React, Go, Typescript &
| PostgreSQL (with lots of other curriculums in development).
|
| We're always looking for experienced software developers who are
| personable and can go deep into a topic with learners, work
| through exercises, help them correct mistakes and so on. It's 1-2
| hours of well-paid work per session:
|
| https://apply.workable.com/skiller-whale/j/2D3E071FD5/
|
| (Warning you do have to prepare each session quite well - it's
| much harder to teach something that you know as a working
| programmer than as a teacher, because you're probably not used to
| saying what you know out loud!)
|
| But if you know the topic and like helping other software devs it
| might be exactly the kind of short-term you're looking for.
|
| Happy to answer any questions here, and I'd probably be involved
| in an interview session too.
| its_bbq wrote:
| I am looking for some part time work. I have a good amount of
| TS experience in different contexts -- can I get in touch with
| you all?
| mattbee wrote:
| Please do! If the long form doesn't fit your expertise just
| email matthew@skillerwhale.com and I'll pass you along to the
| right person.
| ezekg wrote:
| I've had success with https://moonlightwork.com in the past.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > I don't like to stick to one project for a long time, which is
| visible on my resume, and recruiters don't like that.
|
| This is first to me. Why'd recruiters not like if you've worked
| on only one project for a long time? On the contrary, I think
| it's a plus - shows stability and 'long-term' mindset individual.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| From my experience, part-time roles are few and far between.
|
| (It certainly doesn't help that agents post jobs as part-time
| only to lure you to apply so they can start nagging you.)
|
| The part-time roles that are available are usually either very
| simple, short-term tasks, Or companies with extremely limited
| budgets that will under-pay you, and try to squeeze the most out
| of you and give you trouble with payment and hours worked.
|
| I suggest opening a company, adding some friends, and taking up
| multiple contracts simultaniously.
| pmelendez wrote:
| > I don't like to stick to one project for a long time, which is
| visible on my resume, and recruiters don't like that.
|
| Have you considered the consulting industry? Project rotation is
| high (2-3 projects/year) but you don't look jumpy in your resume
| (although to be honest, I have done the same before and only once
| a potential employer brought it up as a red flag)
| gspencley wrote:
| Your mileage will vary there.
|
| I've worked for two consulting companies, enjoyed both but one
| company had me on 3 projects within 8 months while the other
| had me on the same project for a year and a half and only moved
| me when I told them I needed a change (to their credit they
| accommodated me, but I bring this up because every consulting
| company will be different).
|
| A lot of the reasons why this variability exists has to do with
| the types of projects that the company takes on. In the second
| case, being on a project long-term, the client hired us because
| they wanted to outsource their software development in general
| and had created long term relationship with the agency. In
| other cases the client will just want a proof of concept
| developed, or a bit of additional help on a project that it is
| in the weeds etc.
| M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote:
| do you have any contact info that we can reach out to?
| ggktk wrote:
| Yes, I just added my email to my profile. If you click on my
| name, it's in "about".
| joeld42 wrote:
| I do this, what I do is avoid recruiters and look for job
| postings that are a good fit, then send them an email asking if
| they'd be interested in discussing part time contract work
| instead of FTE. Often they say no, they want full-time
| (especially at larger companies) but sometimes they are willing
| to chat about it.
|
| I think you have to have enough experience that you (and the
| employer) are comfortable skipping the interview gauntlet. After
| all, if you're contract if you're not doing good work they can
| just stop. One thing that is helpful is to suggest working on a
| small, limited project for like 2-4 weeks, and they can decide if
| they want to continue working with you or not. (of course, you
| have to do a good job on the project).
|
| It's a little weird, there are times when I'm scrambling for work
| and it seems like there's nothing out there, and other times when
| I'm turning away work, but if you can deal with the
| unpredictability it can be good.
| bizzleDawg wrote:
| It sounds like you're looking for freelance work?
|
| In my experience as a python/full stack freelancer, you're best
| off starting with a full time and then reducing your hours per
| week after getting familiar with the project. I've done this
| several times, either because the project went in to more of a
| maintenance phase, or at my request (normally to spend more time
| on a side project).
| nottorp wrote:
| Freelance work usually means full time projects serially. The
| OP doesn't want that. Neither do I, for example, but I'm
| looking to meet new people through part time projects.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| There's an interesting "reverse job board" for Rails devs ->
| https://railsdevs.com/ that sounds pretty close to what you're
| looking for. I'm not sure what stack you work with but it might
| be of interest.
| drekipus wrote:
| I've thought about this sort of "reverse job board" for the
| traditional labour market..
|
| How well does it work for rail Devs?
| kvothe_ wrote:
| isn't that just LinkedIn? Companies reach out in dm
| scrollaway wrote:
| I don't know about rails but I've been part of Codementor
| (https://www.codementor.io/) for a while now and I found it
| works really well for small time contracting and building up
| relationships that can lead to bigger contracts.
| tasuki wrote:
| > I don't like to stick to one project for a long time
|
| Why not?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Your best source of work will be former coworkers and bosses who
| enjoyed working with you.
| [deleted]
| tommoor wrote:
| If you're interested in working on Outline
| (https://github.com/outline/outline) hit me up - big backlog of
| fun features to build on an open codebase.
| smithmayowa wrote:
| How to reach you?
| dieselgate wrote:
| This topic comes up relatively often on HN - my opinion is it's
| difficult to find these sorts of gigs and if there was a great
| resource for it we'd probably know about it? I'm not pushy with
| the opinion just my two cents
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Depends what industry you're in. Given HN audience I would guess
| there's a fair chance you're an engineer or in some tech role, in
| which case beyond Upwork there are many more bespoke sites that
| either let you bid on roles/projects (there's a company that uses
| the blockchain and is like a more upscale Upwork but the name
| escapes me now and the old classic TopTal) and some other ones
| that are a little more high-end that vet projects for you (e.g.
| Tribe.AI- disclaimer, I used to work with them and a friend runs
| the company)
| clementmas wrote:
| Startups are probably more flexible to work with.
|
| I'm looking for a contractor at the moment:
| https://travelmap.net/jobs/fullstack-web-developer
| clementmas wrote:
| Or you can work for a remote digital agency.
|
| This one accepts part time: https://www.zdigitalagency.com
| rishidevkota wrote:
| You can look up for freelance platforms like fiverr, upwork. It
| is not boring everyday have different task/work, It is feels like
| puzzle solving everyday.
| b1476 wrote:
| I'd strongly recommend against a platform like Fiverr. I spent
| some time doing various odd DevOps and Linux jobs on there. I
| basically had to charge next to nothing for my services because
| the sheer amount of other people doing the same thing (probably
| to a very low standard). Despite this I thought building up my
| reviews would be a good way to increase my prices and still get
| work on there, which it was. Unfortunately the attitude of
| quite a large percentage of the people who hired me was just
| absurd. Difficult language barriers in many cases, endless
| disputes over deliverables, constantly changing requirements
| and even some cases blaming me for things completely out of my
| control. What I was hoping would eventually lead to a nice
| little side business of odd sysadmin type things just made me
| really stressed and frustrated and I realised why I work for a
| company where there's a barrier between me and the end user and
| their insane demands.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Those platform are pretty bad unless you are a beginner or
| you're into a very specific niche.
|
| I started on those platforms and I couldn't scale up my rate
| well enough as without those platforms.
|
| At the same time I know a few crypto devs who built their
| reputation there and can get good rates.
|
| For high paid normal web development, nothing beats a good
| network of wealthy companies who constantly need crap done.
| [deleted]
| stevesearer wrote:
| The part-time developer I've frequently used is one of the main
| contributors to a WordPress plugin I use. They were able to help
| with some plugin specific customizations as well as on other
| general work.
|
| Because they were well-respected in the WP community, there
| wasn't much interviewing needed other than discussing the
| specifics of the project.
|
| I found them via the plugin GitHub.
| Mave83 wrote:
| 4dayweek.io maybe
| kidgorgeous wrote:
| Upwork. Just spend an hour a day submitting proposals, and you'll
| be drowning in offers at the end of the month
| juice_bus wrote:
| From my experience they may start drowning in $1/hr offers.
| n4bz0r wrote:
| What's the purpose of those? There are countries where this
| pay is acceptable? Can't really think of a reason to attract
| attention this way.
| dewey wrote:
| They usually want to build up reviews / ratings on their
| account so that later on when they have a lot of 5 star
| reviews they can raise the prices.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| You do a great job on crap jobs to get a good rating so
| people will look at your proposal for decent jobs. A friend
| did that for financial modeling jobs on Upwork after doing
| a CFI course and was making $50 an hour within two months.
|
| And yes, there are many countries where a $1 an hour job
| would get a lot of applicants.
| n4bz0r wrote:
| The way the parent phrased it, I assumed it's the other
| way around - $1/hr job offers are being sent out to
| potential job applicants.
|
| Despite the confusion, though, I think I can see now that
| there is a place for $1/hr jobs, too, since people are
| actually looking for these offers.
| scrapcode wrote:
| My experience has been very short of "drowning in offers,"
| however I am also reluctant to list certain things on my
| profile such as my current and previous employment, and I'm
| also reluctant to work for nothing. Any suggestions are
| welcome.
| scottydelta wrote:
| I used to be a top rated developer on upwork even before they
| renamed upwork from Odesk. I stopped using them since 3 years
| ago and I would suggest you to keep away from it since the
| platform has become very predatory over the years.
|
| You need to pay upwork continuously to be able to bid on jobs
| and you can pay even more to see other people's bids. It has
| become sort of pay to play scheme.
|
| For example, they advertise and allow you to create a free
| agency account but you can't apply for jobs until you upgrade
| to agency plus.
|
| There was also a recent case where upwork permanently suspended
| a freelancer's account without any recourse where the
| freelancer had $2000 in their account. I am sure that's not an
| isolated case knowing what Upwork has become.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I said no-thanks to Upwork the first time I realized that
| they monitored for computer activity to "prove" you're doing
| work.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have not had a good experience with Upwork, as far as looking
| for work.
|
| My experience was that I got 100% scam and dangerously unhinged
| contacts. Not one single valid proposal ever came my way.
|
| I have heard great things about Upwork, but always from people
| who wanted to hire, as opposed to be hired.
| spapas82 wrote:
| Is it possible to get paid in cryptocurrency in Upwork? If not
| does anybody know of a platform that would allow that? Register
| using stunt crypto wallet, do the job, get paid in your wallet.
|
| I'd really like to avoid all the bureaucracy of banks,
| government etc for my side projects.
|
| Ty
| frittata wrote:
| There was a concerning post on HN about upwork's impersonation
| problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32096656
|
| I don't think I'd ever put my information on their platform,
| and I'm also considering getting off linkedin for similar
| concerns.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| The spam profiles on UpWork tend to borrow identities from
| other parts of the internet and not other UpWork profiles.
| When I reverse image search my applicants' profile photos,
| the fake ones are mostly taken from LinkedIn.
| wnolens wrote:
| I did this for a few years.
|
| Find companies for whom you are a total catch of a full time
| hire, and negotiate a part time contract.
|
| I was on a 20h/wk max retainer for one co, and another I could
| flexibly bill anywhere from 15-40h max depending on load. They
| both asked me to come full time before and after working a few
| months. But I held the advantage. I also worked for slightly less
| pay than ideal, but the lifestyle was the point for me.
|
| That's my big takeaway from freelancing. The power relationship
| is different. You want to be in a position where they really need
| you.
| [deleted]
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Could you offer to consult for a former employer?
| cliffwarden wrote:
| Have you been self-employed before?
| ggktk wrote:
| Yes, although it didn't differ much from regular, full-time
| work. Basically only for tax reasons.
| tepitoperrito wrote:
| Build a profile that says as much on Hired.com and see who
| reaches out. So far a handful of companies that fit this bill
| pretty closely have shown up that I don't think I'd have found
| otherwise. It couldn't hurt and I'll be watching this thread
| closely for tips because while I don't mind interviews/ritual I
| just love small B2B shops.
| panda888888 wrote:
| Early-stage startups, ideally ones with fewer than 50 employees.
| If you can be employee #10 or so, you can work on the
| project/company for a year or two; at that point, it should be
| obvious if the company will be successful/get acquired or if it
| will fail. It's a lot less weird to job hop in the startup world,
| and if you can get your foot in the door, smaller companies are
| more likely to be flexible about contracting, part time, etc.
| _jal wrote:
| I worked variously as an individual consultant, or either leading
| or as a member of small ad-hoc contract teams, or as a co-founder
| of a consulting firm, for about 14 years. If you don't like the
| process of selling yourself, you will not like this life.
|
| We did eventually build up a stable of long-term clients, but we
| got those by doing lots of short-term work, each one of which was
| at least one interview-equivalent. You also have to learn how to
| judge when to pitch - you will get a lot of nibbles for jobs that
| don't make sense, are not serious, scams or beyond your
| capabilities. You need a well-tuned bullshit detector, and
| especially when you're hungry, correctly judging situations can
| be tricky. But writing proposals and estimates for everyone will
| bleed you dry, and you'll probably develop a rep as a sucker - a
| lot of companies solicit proposals they never intend to act on
| for various reasons.
|
| In any case, good clients for consultants generally come from
| word of mouth. So you want to do good work for someone who knows
| lots of small business owners. Go look for those people. Small IT
| support shops are less plentiful now with the rise of cloudified
| commodity services, but that was my angle.
|
| FWIW, I went back to full-time employment. We cold make it work,
| but we couldn't thrive, and it is hard to grow a shop on contract
| work (2x the workload generally means 2x the employees - there's
| very little leverage). I make significantly more as a wage slave
| than I did as "my own boss".
|
| But you might well do way better. And there absolutely is a
| bright side - freedom is a big one. It was very hard to give up
| ownership of my time again. You also meet a lot of folks who can
| be very different from the sort you run in to in HugeCo technical
| silos.
| rsstack wrote:
| I have hired through A.Team and Moonlight. Both seem to have good
| engineers and good employers, both allow for part-time roles
| (Moonlight afaik _only_ has part-time roles). I heard from the
| engineers I hired through the platforms that they are happy with
| it from their end too.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Is that https://www.moonlightwork.com/ ?
| rsstack wrote:
| Yes.
| jdsleppy wrote:
| Try web development agencies. You may be able to get on an older
| project that isn't in such a rush and can be moved along by a
| part time contractor. That's what I'm doing now. I found the open
| position on the agency's website.
| switz wrote:
| If you have any experience with the game Counterstrike, reach out
| to me. Email is in my profile. I run a small, bootstrapped B2C
| business and have a number of interesting projects I could hand
| off to people.
|
| It's a weird prerequisite, but without it there generally isn't
| enough context to do meaningful work sans a lot of hand holding.
| atom-morgan wrote:
| Are the projects all development related?
| melony wrote:
| Most likely either building bots, in-game automation, or
| related to some sort of trading system for virtual assets.
| rofo1 wrote:
| Haha, I am global / ~3000 ELO Faceit player, curious what do
| you do with regards to CS?
| fosefx wrote:
| His website states he is affiliated with popflash.site, which
| you probably have heard of.
| eklavya wrote:
| I am curious, why the weird requirement?
| MAMAMassakali wrote:
| Do you have any work for iOS?
| smithmayowa wrote:
| Sent you a mail.
| pc86 wrote:
| How many hours should I play before reaching out? I'm only sort
| of kidding.
| switz wrote:
| In all seriousness, a few hundred hours in recent years. I
| could definitely work with people who have none, but it ends
| up being more effort on my part and negates the hand-off
| effect.
| _puk wrote:
| Ah recent years..
|
| I was #16 in clanbase globally for a brief period in CS1.6
| way back when - I've always thought I was wasting my life
| at that point, but now I see I should have stuck with it :D
| rodrodriguez wrote:
| Work for us: github.com/generalbots. Reach us.
| smithmayowa wrote:
| How to reach out?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You will still need to interview for part time roles. Unless it
| is freelance, in which case you will need to sell yourself
| instead. Probably no way out of this unless you find a network to
| tap into.
| sph wrote:
| I'm in the same position, and I am once again asking for "talent
| management" to become a thing. I am a software engineer, I am
| willing to pay a recruiter/manager some percent of my revenue to
| keep sending work my way and find new quality clients.
|
| Yes, I would pay a recruiter to keep around so that I do not have
| to spend time sending resumes and searching job boards whenever a
| contract dries up.
|
| Right now I am looking for work. If you're a recruiter (or
| another engineer for that matter) interested in such an
| arrangement, email is in my profile.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| When I was a recruiter I did this. It was difficult though. It
| worked best when the dev had a specialized skill set. In
| 2015ish a lot of companies needed native ios or android devs in
| Chicago. I had 1-2 folks who would dive in, build a mobile app,
| then leave. They were awesome. Clients were okay with it
| because they needed something fast and it wasnt their core app.
| I remember doing it a few times with vue, ember, and react
| (early in the react days) as well.
|
| We were a lot less likely to be able to talk a company into
| doing that for a typical full stack dev.
|
| That being said you will probably have to talk to a lot of
| recruiters to find someone who has the right relationships to
| do this. Like 2 out of the 80 recruiters at the company I
| worked for would have gotten you to me. The rest would have
| pressured you to interview for a full time role. That is just
| at one recruiting agency.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| I haven't tried it yet but I've seen 10x Management[0]
| mentioned on Hacker News. It's essentially the model you're
| describing.
|
| [0] https://10xmanagement.com/
| sph wrote:
| I've seen this one yet the fact that it's the only one
| recommended over the years (AFAIK from the same user that
| works with them) means it's a very rare and scarce service.
| ethanwillis wrote:
| This is exactly the conclusion I've come to as well. It's not
| that I don't have the soft skills capability to do it myself.
| And maybe it's an ego thing but I think I'm also pretty strong
| on the soft skills front.
|
| HOWEVER, and it's a big "however" -- I don't truly enjoy it. I
| don't mean that I don't like building a relationship with
| clients, putting thought into my communication, etc. In some
| way I do enjoy those facets of it a lot. But, I'm an introvert
| by nature and when managing clients, acquiring clients, etc...
| It feels like I'm putting on a persona that's not truly myself
| and it's very draining emotionally and intellectually which
| ends up actually impacting the quality of my work over time.
|
| I would _love_ to be able to find a "talent manager" who can
| do the job of "talking to the customer and bringing the specs
| to the engineers."/officespace I think to most people this
| sounds exactly like just "having a job." And people will ask
| what's the difference from simply having a manager?
|
| I think this perspective is also why there's not a solid
| existing industry that fits the needs here.
|
| As well, I don't know if this is necessarily true but having
| someone with at least some basic level of software knowledge I
| think is a huge plus to being a talent manager as you or I
| would think of them. That helps to ensure that the quality of
| working coming in meets at least some base level. The problem
| of course is that anyone with the right knowledge will either
| be a developer themselves or in some other role already. To
| make this work they might need to be able to manage multiple
| talents.. but then it runs the risk of turning into an agency
| of sorts, right?
|
| And I don't off the top of my head know exactly what the
| qualitative differences are here between an agency managing
| multiple contractors and a "talent manager" but I think there
| _are_ some and would love to hear thoughts on what those would
| be. I think it 's all centered around how the relationship
| actually works. As you say you want to hire/pay a percentage
| and I would as well. That keeps the talent manager working
| _for_ the engineer(s) versus the other way around.
| sph wrote:
| Actors don't have to go door to door knocking at film
| studios' doors asking for a job. They pay an agency, get a
| call once in a while to star in some crappy movie, or, if
| they're lucky, a blockbuster. In exchange, the agency gets
| 20% of their million dollar salary and a place in the
| credits.
|
| I don't get why freelance software engineering can't be the
| same. I would pay a recruiter handsomely to do that exact
| service. I mean, we're not actors, but this is a rich sector,
| there's a ton of demand, it's a worldwide market, so where
| the heck are they?
|
| I want to act^H^H^Hwrite code for a living, not getting real
| good at job hunting.
| badpun wrote:
| Bad analogy. Actors go to dozens of auditions to get one
| role. It's basically interviewing hell.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| How is this different than just working with the same recruiter
| over and over?
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| There's plenty of part-time work out there: launch your own LLC
| and multiplex between clients.
|
| Source: I launched my own software consulting business back in
| July 2022 and I work with a handful of customers "part-time"
| (e.g. project based work, 10 hours a week).
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| Would you mind sharing how you found your customers? That feels
| like the hardest part
| city17 wrote:
| Would also be interested in hearing about this. Especially
| finding clients with 10h/week projects can be difficult.
| busterarm wrote:
| If you dislike going through interviews, I'm not sure that
| freelance work or going into business for yourself (which is the
| normal model for this kind of thing) is really the right answer.
|
| When you're freelancing you're essentially interviewing for your
| job every single minute you're in front of or have an active
| project with the client. Soft skills and doing work that has
| nothing to do with engineering is even more of a requirement.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| I work for myself and I feel this is quite different.
| Freelancing, the client finding you already has some interest,
| and you don't really compete with others. A freelancing
| interview is more about sorting out the details, making sure
| both sides want to go through etc, rather than trying to
| impress the client.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Soft skills I don't mind; grown up interviews I don't mind. I
| have done freelancing for 30 years now and had 0 requests for
| balancing binary trees, time/space complexity of sorting algos;
| things that are often associated with interviews here on HN and
| things which I did, you know, in uni, for which, you know, I
| have a degree to prove I could do them and know what they are.
| They are generally 100% useless on modern jobs (I worked on
| specific embedded jobs I needed knowledge like it, but you can
| look that up as well). I just give my company's (it is a 1-3
| band gang depending on what the others are doing) portfolio and
| no one requests weird things like that.
|
| Now soft skills are different and 2 of us are good at those and
| one of us is really bad; so we hire out based on the client,
| wishes and need for soft skills and a lot of communication
| overhead or not. And I agree that needs to be a match, however
| I cannot see how that requires 6-8 gruelling interviews spread
| over weeks instead of 15 minutes and a portfolio (which is how
| we get hired).
|
| So yeah, I think OP would do better in a small collective of
| freelancers or even small consultancy company; I find it much
| easier to get into anywhere that way than the employee route.
| [deleted]
| corrral wrote:
| > Soft skills I don't mind; grown up interviews I don't mind.
|
| BINGO.
|
| I'm good at the job and good at _normal_ interviews. I more-
| or-less enjoy both, even. I like talking to clients, and I 'm
| good at it. I can sell myself. And I can do the work.
|
| _Specifically_ software developer interviews practically
| make me hyperventilate and break out in hives. Fuck that. A
| pop quiz over a huge potential space, probably over something
| I will _never in my life_ actually use on the job, to be
| solved live while people watch and judge me? Oh my god, no.
| No. Why the shit that 's considered acceptable in a world
| where we're so touchy-feely that projects are supposed to
| have Codes of Conduct is beyond me. It's straight-up abuse.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > balancing binary trees, time/space complexity of sorting
| algos .... I needed knowledge like it, but you can look that
| up as well)
|
| In my experience, it is now about knowing _how_ to do these
| things but _when_ to reach for them when solving a problem.
| ttymck wrote:
| Agreed! And I _never_ reach for them, because I work on web
| apps. If I was a database developer, the story might be
| different. But I don 't feel the need to be interviewed on
| those topics over and over again. Subsequently, I don't
| know _how_ to do those things.
| switchbak wrote:
| Having worked in this space for decades, I think most
| people I've met agree it's ludicrous, but there's strong
| pulls to keep it in place.
|
| The most compelling argument I've heard is "we get so
| many applicants at $bigcompany that we need a fast and
| objective way to filter people out". And sure, that
| works, but think of the masses of great people you're
| turning off with that approach? Most great devs I know
| won't put up with that crap, including myself. Not a
| problem if you've optimized your company to build masses
| of code with early-career employees I suppose.
|
| Knowing the tradeoffs we're making in data structures and
| having a broad understanding of different algorithms to
| throw at a problem is very handy. It's also almost
| completely unnecessary at the typical web shop (like you
| say). I use these things a bit in my work (not the
| typical web shop), but mostly indirectly via DBs and
| similar tools where I need to understand the tradeoffs.
| I'm certainly not implementing anything with red/black
| trees, making my custom bloom filters, etc. We have an
| ecosystem of tools for a reason, that would be silly to
| reinvent the wheel everywhere without a damn good reason.
| joshuahutt wrote:
| One thing I realized after doing some studying is that
| your approach is limited by the concepts and tools you're
| familiar with. As I learned more about data structures
| and algorithms and as I practiced using them and
| evaluating the complexity of my implementations, I felt a
| lot more clarity and confidence about solving problems
| and structuring my code efficiently.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Yes! I doubt companies grill you about binary trees
| because they expect you to actually implement any of the
| algorithms in your day to day work.
|
| They want to know if you have studied the fundamentals,
| so you at least have a chance of understanding whatever
| you are going to be copy-pasting from Stack Overflow.
| rg111 wrote:
| > _When you 're freelancing you're essentially interviewing for
| your job every single minute you're in front of or have an
| active project with the client._
|
| There is one significant difference. In this perpetual
| interview, you have access to the internet and can find factual
| answers from there.
|
| The problem solving part is what makes someone a good
| engineer/scientist. Not knowing particular algorithms, or
| knowing formulas (in case of DL jobs).
|
| Interviews focus on the wrong things.
|
| I am okay with the perpetual interview as long as I don't have
| to rote memorize a bunch of stuff like some poor middle-
| schoolers in 1970s communist country.
|
| I threw away many recruiters who even mentioned technical
| interviews. I am doing more than okay financially and career-
| wise, btw.
|
| This might change in the future just as a step to do something
| I want to do. I will hate all the interview, HR initiation,
| onboarding, etc. forever.
| [deleted]
| akhmatova wrote:
| Interviewing != "soft skills", and it wasn't soft skills as
| such (in the legitimate sense of the term) that the poster was
| objecting to.
|
| But rather that set of weird, contrived rituals (which pretend
| to measure soft and other skills, but basically don't really
| measure anything other than the candidate's ability to game up
| answers to questions they looked up on the internet) -- not to
| mention the frequently appalling lack of decency, common
| courtesy (and common sense) has come to stand to in for the
| interview process these days.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| From the description, it would probably be a better fit to work
| as a contractor via an agency. You get the hit of the agency
| comission but at least most of the talking will be through some
| Project manager assigned to the client.
| carlmr wrote:
| That hit in commission can be very efficient, since you save
| a lot of time you can bill at a high rate.
| giobox wrote:
| I have literally never seen this, in my experience the
| agency is usually not much more than a body shop - every
| agency I've worked with charges a significant hourly rate
| which is not reflective of what the agency employee will
| receive. It is almost always significantly more than a few
| percentage points.
| bragr wrote:
| We hire out to various agencies, and I'm not sure any of
| them disclose to us what their cut is, but from talking to
| the people, it sounds like most only take a low single
| digit percentage on the hourly rate (1~5%). e.g. engineers
| on $150/h contracts saying their paystub says $140-145/h.
| YMMV
| ptero wrote:
| What region is this, if I may ask. I have (as a full time
| engineer; large engineering org; Boston area) worked
| alongside a few folks on contract and my impression was
| that almost all of the contract folks were _scalped_. A
| few exceptions were engineers initially from the
| organization who switched to the contract for more
| flexibility. Just a single data point, would love for it
| to be refuted.
| dhsnjqj wrote:
| Those are agencies.
|
| You can find recruiters that will clip a small fee and
| dump you through a contractor management platform. It's
| all automated. You're effectively a freelancer, still
| need to sell yourself a bit to get hired but the
| recruiter vets leads on both ends to streamline things.
|
| Contracts are short and sweet so it's not like interviews
| are multiround or anything, 15 minute coffee with the
| client to check if you're aligned on stack / interest and
| off you go.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| My feeling is in line with the sibling, The feeling I've
| gotten from working with contractors is that it's common
| for agencies to take about 40%. Seems pretty brutal for
| everyone except the agency.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Important to know if the "contractors" were employees of
| the agency, or subcontractors.
|
| Early in my career I worked for a consulting firm as an
| employee, and I never found out exactly what I was billed
| at but I'm guessing it was around double what I was paid.
| We worked on site at our client's office, and people
| there called us "contractors," but we were employees of
| the consuting firm. We had benefits, training, overtime
| pay, etc. and we got paid our salary between jobs when we
| were not on a client project.
|
| If I were an indepenedent contractor using an agency to
| find work, I'd expect them to take a much lower cut, as
| they have much lower overhead and risk.
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