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A few years ago, I took up three on-site freelancer opportunities with different clients I met via LinkedIn. All of them initially agreed to not giving people

A few years ago, I took up three on-site freelancer opportunities with different clients I met via LinkedIn. All of them initially agreed to not giving people/project management tasks because I told them upfront that I was neither good at them nor enjoyed them. Unfortunately, all three ended up with such tasks creeping in mid-project. Put me in a difficult spot of having to do fairly stressful unwanted work which I was not good at in addition to my actual technical work. This time, I think I'll try teaming up with a management specialist and approach clients as a consulting team. Working remotely is something I hadn't considered deeply, but will explore now. Do you have any tips on how to go about building a network of contacts as an older engineer? The typical tech meetups in my area seem to attract only employed engineers and very few decision makers. Thank you very much for your very useful and encouraging advice.

gregjor 7y ago
I built a network of professional contacts by working for 40 years and keeping in touch with people. Some of them still write code, some have gone into management or founder roles, some moved on to other things. I would not tell a client I can’t or won’t do something (within legal and ethical boundaries, anyway). I would tell them that’s not my strongest skill and then help them find someone for the task, or reframe the problem. For example I don’t do design/graphics work or CSS on web sites, but I can outsource that and make sure my client gets what they want. I want my clients to think of me as someone who can solve their business problems, not as a PHP or Rails or AWS expert. Just today a client asked me to look at a Hubspot workflow. I know next to nothing about Hubspot, but with my experience I can catch on a lot faster than a marketing agency guy can and understand the logic and see the problems in their workflow. They don’t always need an expert, just someone with more expertise than they have (which may approach zero), or another set of eyes. When clients ask me to get involved in project management or bringing someone into the team I might suggest a different approach to development, or letting me outsource to someone I can work with. When clients try to throw their solution at you try to step back and figure out the problem they intend to solve, then you can offer alternatives.

gregjor 7y ago

I built a network of professional contacts by working for 40 years and keeping in touch with people. Some of them still write code, some have gone into management or founder roles, some moved on to other things. I would not tell a client I can’t or won’t do something (within legal and ethical boundaries, anyway). I would tell them that’s not my strongest skill and then help them find someone for the task, or reframe the problem. For example I don’t do design/graphics work or CSS on web sites, but I can outsource that and make sure my client gets what they want. I want my clients to think of me as someone who can solve their business problems, not as a PHP or Rails or AWS expert. Just today a client asked me to look at a Hubspot workflow. I know next to nothing about Hubspot, but with my experience I can catch on a lot faster than a marketing agency guy can and understand the logic and see the problems in their workflow. They don’t always need an expert, just someone with more expertise than they have (which may approach zero), or another set of eyes. When clients ask me to get involved in project management or bringing someone into the team I might suggest a different approach to development, or letting me outsource to someone I can work with. When clients try to throw their solution at you try to step back and figure out the problem they intend to solve, then you can offer alternatives.