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If you're in a situation where you're competing with low cost foreigners on price, then you're doing it wrong. There is a huge market for freelance software eng

If you're in a situation where you're competing with low cost foreigners on price, then you're doing it wrong. There is a huge market for freelance software engineers who are based in the U.S. and speak English (or who are based in Germany and speak German, or whatever). If you have a client who will benefit 5x+ from the money they pay you, they don't really care that there is somebody in Eastern Europe or India who will do the work for 1/3rd the cost; the overriding importance is on getting the work done well and quickly. Fluent communication is critical to this. You just have to find the clients (the hard part). What has worked for me is making myself visible inside of my particular niche, then forming relationships with established freelancers so they send their overflow my way. Still in my first year, but this strategy seems to be working.

toasterlovin 8y ago
Case in point: I just got an email from a client who wants me to take an image from their designer and turn it into HTML + CSS (not what I normally do, but you end up doing weird stuff to take care of good clients). They are going to pay me about 10x market rate for this kind of work. But they probably need it for a sales demo and they know that I'll get it turned around for them quickly and it will be done right. That's what consulting clients are paying for: an assurance that things will be done right and on a dependable timetable.
- mattmanser 8y ago
  People still pay for that? These days I usually get it from the designer as HTML/CSS.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Not something I've ever been asked to do before. Was just a very timely example of what I was getting at.
  - derangedHorse 8y ago
    That sounds like a dream, I rarely see a designer who also codes. Do you work in a big corporation or freelance?
vasco 8y ago
This meme that people from Eastern Europe or India are less capable purely because they live in lower cost-of-living economies is a disgrace. Sure, there's horror stories with big corporations farming out work to random consulting companies whose primary goal is to squeeze money instead of delivering value, but if we're comparing individual people as we are in this thread, that's a very different story. I also doubt that the advantage of being a native English speaker matters much if you cannot express yourself in a clear and concise manner, which has less to do with country of origin, and more to do with your grasp of the subject at hand and your ability to think straight.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  > This meme that people from Eastern Europe or India are less capable purely because they live in lower cost-of-living economies is a disgrace. To be clear: I didn't say that. > I also doubt that the advantage of being a native English speaker matters much if you cannot express yourself in a clear and concise manner, which has less to do with country of origin, and more to do with your grasp of the subject at hand and your ability to think straight. You need to both have a firm grasp of the subject matter and be able to speak a shared language fairly well. There are lots of companies where the overhead of dealing with somebody who doesn't speak English well and is in a vastly different timezone just doesn't make sense. I mean, when you're dealing with technical subjects, below a certain level of fluency, it's hard to even know if the other person understands the subtleties of what you're talking about.

toasterlovin 8y ago

Case in point: I just got an email from a client who wants me to take an image from their designer and turn it into HTML + CSS (not what I normally do, but you end up doing weird stuff to take care of good clients). They are going to pay me about 10x market rate for this kind of work. But they probably need it for a sales demo and they know that I'll get it turned around for them quickly and it will be done right. That's what consulting clients are paying for: an assurance that things will be done right and on a dependable timetable.

mattmanser 8y ago
People still pay for that? These days I usually get it from the designer as HTML/CSS.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Not something I've ever been asked to do before. Was just a very timely example of what I was getting at.
- derangedHorse 8y ago
  That sounds like a dream, I rarely see a designer who also codes. Do you work in a big corporation or freelance?

vasco 8y ago

This meme that people from Eastern Europe or India are less capable purely because they live in lower cost-of-living economies is a disgrace. Sure, there's horror stories with big corporations farming out work to random consulting companies whose primary goal is to squeeze money instead of delivering value, but if we're comparing individual people as we are in this thread, that's a very different story. I also doubt that the advantage of being a native English speaker matters much if you cannot express yourself in a clear and concise manner, which has less to do with country of origin, and more to do with your grasp of the subject at hand and your ability to think straight.

toasterlovin 8y ago
> This meme that people from Eastern Europe or India are less capable purely because they live in lower cost-of-living economies is a disgrace. To be clear: I didn't say that. > I also doubt that the advantage of being a native English speaker matters much if you cannot express yourself in a clear and concise manner, which has less to do with country of origin, and more to do with your grasp of the subject at hand and your ability to think straight. You need to both have a firm grasp of the subject matter and be able to speak a shared language fairly well. There are lots of companies where the overhead of dealing with somebody who doesn't speak English well and is in a vastly different timezone just doesn't make sense. I mean, when you're dealing with technical subjects, below a certain level of fluency, it's hard to even know if the other person understands the subtleties of what you're talking about.