> The typical situation is that employers need techies LOCALLY and can’t find them in the sort of numbers they’d ideally want which drives rates up: +1 techie.

> The typical situation is that employers need techies LOCALLY and can’t find them in the sort of numbers they’d ideally want which drives rates up: +1 techie. There are local jobs here, but they are mostly pretty standard and boring (small business web sites and marketing), which I am not really interested to do. Although there is a lot of competition on freelancer.com et al. at least there are jobs for most areas of expertise. As mentioned, I am aware of the drawbacks (pay-cut by middleman, competition with a large pool of other workers), but it seems like a good idea to find your first clients. Hopefully it is not bad reputation later on (this guy worked at Upworks) ...