3 ms·

It all depends on how unique and in-demand your skillset is. I did it over a year ago, but had the benefit of working at a company which was basically a consult

by kohanz 11y ago

It all depends on how unique and in-demand your skillset is. I did it over a year ago, but had the benefit of working at a company which was basically a consulting firm itself. When I had already decided I was leaving, one of the clients I had worked for expressed an interest in retaining my services. With the blessing of my former employer, they became my first client. After that, my former employer realized how difficult it was to replace my skillset and I essentially became a subcontractor for them. This may not sound great, but I set my own hours, worked from home when I wanted, and was payed about 1.75x what I made as a FT'er. I've able to spend more time with my wife and infant son, work less, and make more money than I did as a 9-5 'er. However (and I say this not to brag, but as an important piece of information), I only believe this was possible because I was in the top X % (where X is maybe 5? 10?) with respect to my peers. I've seen other people attempt this and fail and it is because they were more replaceable than I was. So a lot of it comes down to where you are located (e.g. supply) and how many prospects there are around (demand). Over a 1.5 years now I've had about 5 clients (not many), but they all knew me personally beforehand. Your personal/professional network is your biggest asset. Use it.

jxm262 11y ago
Yeah, everyone is telling me to rely on personal/professional network. The problem is that most of them are fellow "enterprise" type programmers without any actual work to give (ie. not hiring managers). Also.. the big issue I have now is finding evening and weekend/part-time jobs. It seems pretty easy to find a decent contract at a company if I transition, to say, full-time for 6 months or whatever they offer. When you say you were top X% , was that in a specific tech stack or niche industry? I'm really good at certain tech stacks (JavaScript world - Node+React+AWS, or Java/Scala world - Spring, Play, etc..). How do you actually find work that will help you "level" up, per se. And more importantly, show others that you're an expert in the field? I can do _awesome_ work for some people but it might not be broadcasted to the rest of the world if it's just known internally.
- kohanz 11y ago
  Starting on evening and weekends is tough. I know one of my clients is alright with that, because our relationship is more casual, but I don't think the rest would be comfortable with me operating so casually for their business (they want me to be available for calls, e-mails, etc. during the business day). The thing is, the kind of service I provide is not just "let me go away and program something for you", it walks them through the process from conception all the way to deployment. I'm in a niche field (medical), but the people I'm dealing with are generally non-software folk. To them, I am a product guy, project manager, developer, architect, etc. all in one. When I say top X%, I don't mean in a pure technical sense. I mean in the sense of, from management's perspective, if they had a project that they valued highly and knew they wanted to deliver on, who would they pick as the technical lead for that project. Which technical person would they put in front of the customer? Who would they want to be alongside them during the hiring process to find more technical folk? Those are the ways in which I've found I've been valued. I feel like I am a good programmer (who doesn't?), but I'm not the best programmer in the room. It's a more rounded skill-set and a willingness to do valuable non-programming things. A perfect example is a guy I used to work with - excellent programmer and very well-versed in computer science (whereas my background is engineering). In terms of speaking about best practices, patterns, development philosophies, etc. - he was very good, better than me (truthfully some of that stuff bores me). However, in terms of getting a project done in a high quality way, with predictability (estimation, scheduling, etc.), those are the things he didn't really care for, but I paid attention to. He's a great programmer and a good asset to any organization with a team, but I don't think he's do well on his own. Make sure you are confident in your estimation skills before going it alone.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    I don't think I've worked with an organisation, or a PM that could actually estimate well in software without using padding. I think the prevalence of story points, and probability based estimates(markov), proves that hard deadline estimates just don't work. I don't trust anyone who says they can actually do it on large projects, because they're either padding or lying.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago

by kohanz 11y ago

jxm262 11y ago

Yeah, everyone is telling me to rely on personal/professional network. The problem is that most of them are fellow "enterprise" type programmers without any actual work to give (ie. not hiring managers). Also.. the big issue I have now is finding evening and weekend/part-time jobs. It seems pretty easy to find a decent contract at a company if I transition, to say, full-time for 6 months or whatever they offer. When you say you were top X% , was that in a specific tech stack or niche industry? I'm really good at certain tech stacks (JavaScript world - Node+React+AWS, or Java/Scala world - Spring, Play, etc..). How do you actually find work that will help you "level" up, per se. And more importantly, show others that you're an expert in the field? I can do _awesome_ work for some people but it might not be broadcasted to the rest of the world if it's just known internally.

kohanz 11y ago
Starting on evening and weekends is tough. I know one of my clients is alright with that, because our relationship is more casual, but I don't think the rest would be comfortable with me operating so casually for their business (they want me to be available for calls, e-mails, etc. during the business day). The thing is, the kind of service I provide is not just "let me go away and program something for you", it walks them through the process from conception all the way to deployment. I'm in a niche field (medical), but the people I'm dealing with are generally non-software folk. To them, I am a product guy, project manager, developer, architect, etc. all in one. When I say top X%, I don't mean in a pure technical sense. I mean in the sense of, from management's perspective, if they had a project that they valued highly and knew they wanted to deliver on, who would they pick as the technical lead for that project. Which technical person would they put in front of the customer? Who would they want to be alongside them during the hiring process to find more technical folk? Those are the ways in which I've found I've been valued. I feel like I am a good programmer (who doesn't?), but I'm not the best programmer in the room. It's a more rounded skill-set and a willingness to do valuable non-programming things. A perfect example is a guy I used to work with - excellent programmer and very well-versed in computer science (whereas my background is engineering). In terms of speaking about best practices, patterns, development philosophies, etc. - he was very good, better than me (truthfully some of that stuff bores me). However, in terms of getting a project done in a high quality way, with predictability (estimation, scheduling, etc.), those are the things he didn't really care for, but I paid attention to. He's a great programmer and a good asset to any organization with a team, but I don't think he's do well on his own. Make sure you are confident in your estimation skills before going it alone.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  I don't think I've worked with an organisation, or a PM that could actually estimate well in software without using padding. I think the prevalence of story points, and probability based estimates(markov), proves that hard deadline estimates just don't work. I don't trust anyone who says they can actually do it on large projects, because they're either padding or lying.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago