3 ms·

What are your skills? What skills do you want to be using?

anovikov 10y ago
Is this important? As far as i seen the ceiling is about same everywhere on Upwork, about $40 an hour for long-term full-time work and $70-$90 for short-term gigs. For someone who programmed since the age of 10 learning a new programming language is easy. I started on oDesk as a Flash developer (it was 2009 - heyday of Flash), then gradually moved onto other stuff, my most recent new language was Go (i did PubNub Go SDK). Right now i am coding in Python but i can easily be doing something else next month. But really, i don't think skills are an answer here. At least not technical skills. There is no way i could be making $200K instead of $100K by learning any kind of technical/programming skills. What i need is new markets.
- CyberFonic 10y ago
  Some enterprise Java devs, big data experts and algo trading specialists earn $200k+ in the top cities. Not sure what you mean by "new markets". Do you mean new markets for your programming skills? Or are you thinking of changing careers, for example going into sales or big ticket consulting?
  - anovikov 10y ago
    Top cities - in the EU? Like, which ones? Currently i am in Vilnius which has quite a low cost of living. I don't think i want to go to say Paris for $200K pre-tax. I will be clearly worse off there. Also once i get passport (i am a Russian immigrant), i plan to move to Asia where cost of living is lower yet - unless by that time i get enough to stop worrying about money. New markets - some new way of selling my programming services which don't share the 'race to the bottom' style of Upwork bidding. I kind of assume that if i am one of the just a few top people on Upwork there must be a way to get several times as much if i am on a market where average skills are comparable to mine.
  - anovikov 10y ago
    Big ticket consulting-maybe! Where do i start? Any links to read?
anovikov 10y ago
So i am looking for advice which i imagine could look like 'you have to take some authoritative skill tests at %s, attend networking events at %s and %s, and learn how to write killer cover letters as the guy in %s book says, and you'll get to $200k a year working remotely within a year or two'. I am not looking for a full time job - any one which could be better than what i get now will be in a place which is very expensive to live, and where taxes are high (in Lithuania we pay lowest tax in EU), so unless there is a magic job which pays $500K or so, i don't win anything.
- codegeek 10y ago
  To get to 200K a year working remotely, the primary skill you need to learn is how to sell. Forget about authoritative skill tests etc. There is no magic answer to this. It is going to take a lot more than a killer cover letter though. Networking events may work if you know how to use them effectively.
- ddorian43 10y ago
  Best job I interviewed was for up to $250+K/year remotely. I didn't get the job though (from stackoverflow). I will hopefully soon have your problem too on upwork. My idea is to: 1. extreme specialization. Example: I like backend, high performance, low-level, databases (rdbms & nosql). So I'll probably go into lowe-level java/c++/c database coding. And then either contract on this or get a job Example: antirez gets a nice San Francisco wage coding full-time open-source redis. 2. startup Different ideas. But if I get good at the low-level-high-performance-thing even something with that.

Is this important? As far as i seen the ceiling is about same everywhere on Upwork, about $40 an hour for long-term full-time work and $70-$90 for short-term gigs. For someone who programmed since the age of 10 learning a new programming language is easy. I started on oDesk as a Flash developer (it was 2009 - heyday of Flash), then gradually moved onto other stuff, my most recent new language was Go (i did PubNub Go SDK). Right now i am coding in Python but i can easily be doing something else next month. But really, i don't think skills are an answer here. At least not technical skills. There is no way i could be making $200K instead of $100K by learning any kind of technical/programming skills. What i need is new markets.

CyberFonic 10y ago
Some enterprise Java devs, big data experts and algo trading specialists earn $200k+ in the top cities. Not sure what you mean by "new markets". Do you mean new markets for your programming skills? Or are you thinking of changing careers, for example going into sales or big ticket consulting?
- anovikov 10y ago
  Top cities - in the EU? Like, which ones? Currently i am in Vilnius which has quite a low cost of living. I don't think i want to go to say Paris for $200K pre-tax. I will be clearly worse off there. Also once i get passport (i am a Russian immigrant), i plan to move to Asia where cost of living is lower yet - unless by that time i get enough to stop worrying about money. New markets - some new way of selling my programming services which don't share the 'race to the bottom' style of Upwork bidding. I kind of assume that if i am one of the just a few top people on Upwork there must be a way to get several times as much if i am on a market where average skills are comparable to mine.
- anovikov 10y ago
  Big ticket consulting-maybe! Where do i start? Any links to read?

anovikov 10y ago

So i am looking for advice which i imagine could look like 'you have to take some authoritative skill tests at %s, attend networking events at %s and %s, and learn how to write killer cover letters as the guy in %s book says, and you'll get to $200k a year working remotely within a year or two'. I am not looking for a full time job - any one which could be better than what i get now will be in a place which is very expensive to live, and where taxes are high (in Lithuania we pay lowest tax in EU), so unless there is a magic job which pays $500K or so, i don't win anything.

codegeek 10y ago
To get to 200K a year working remotely, the primary skill you need to learn is how to sell. Forget about authoritative skill tests etc. There is no magic answer to this. It is going to take a lot more than a killer cover letter though. Networking events may work if you know how to use them effectively.
ddorian43 10y ago
Best job I interviewed was for up to $250+K/year remotely. I didn't get the job though (from stackoverflow). I will hopefully soon have your problem too on upwork. My idea is to: 1. extreme specialization. Example: I like backend, high performance, low-level, databases (rdbms & nosql). So I'll probably go into lowe-level java/c++/c database coding. And then either contract on this or get a job Example: antirez gets a nice San Francisco wage coding full-time open-source redis. 2. startup Different ideas. But if I get good at the low-level-high-performance-thing even something with that.