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I wrote this article based on my last 3 years as a contractor with increasingly interesting clients (I'm currently doing open source Rust work for ISRG, the mak

• bippingchip 3y ago
  Thank you for the write up! Very enlightening to see how things went for you. I was on the fence recently whether to go for contractor work but ended up just switching companies in the end. In part because I didn’t know what to expect. Articles like these hwould have helped!
  • tstrimple 3y ago
    If you want to explore what consulting looks like without the risk of going it alone, consider joining a company that does consulting. It's a good opportunity to learn about the sales cycle as well as get a taste for what sort of challenges consulting provides while still being a FTE with benefits.
    • couchand 3y ago
      This is useful infotmation to learn, but I can tell you from having done all three that consulting for a shop is as different from freelancing as it is from an in-house job.
      • tstrimple 3y ago
        I guess it depends on how close you are to the sales process. I have had a chance to get a lot of experience working on proposals from a tech point of view and am involved in the pitch and negotiation. There is definitely carryover from those activities. But if you are consulting as a heads down IC and leave other aspects of projects and bids to the “business people” I can see where you may not learn as much that will be helpful as a freelancer.
  • wofo 3y ago
    I'm happy you liked it!
• phara0h 3y ago
  Super interesting to find out that you're a fellow Catholic! It's sometimes hard to bring up faith in IT spaces, I feel like most of my colleagues are athiest or agnostic. I always feel good when I see people mention God, as it reminds me that being God fearing and in IT is not mutually exclusive. Aside from that, awesome article and it was great to read your story. I am, like you, uncomfortable with unemployment, but I'm happy to see it can be done!
  • wofo 3y ago
    Yeah, I'm making an effort to avoid being preachy, but since God does play a genuine role in the story, people might as well hear about it (otherwise I'd be hiding crucial information to understand my decisions!)
    • lelanthran 3y ago
      Your belief or faith in God played a genuine role in the story. If you had evidence of a god playing a role in anything you could start your own religion :-)
      • wofo 3y ago
        I'm not going to engage in the eternal atheists vs believers debate, but I'm trusting here that my experience is based upon reality (i.e. I've found convincing evidence). I don't expect what convinces me will convince everyone else, but you and I will die some day and then we'll know (or if it turns out we no longer exist, at least we won't care :P)
        • vouwfietsman 3y ago
          Using a word like "evidence" freely without rigour is a big part of the problem we are in relating to misinformation and mistrust in institutions. I ask without expectations that you refrain from using such words when talking about opinions, experiences or beliefs, so that we may protect our languages from further erosion.
• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Just wanted to give props for volunteer work. It's been my raison d'etre for decades.
  • wofo 3y ago
    I know it's a cliché, but it's true that you receive more than you give ;)
• angarg12 3y ago
  I am a Sr. Dev at FAANG in America, but I yearn to go back to my home country in Europe. However doing so would result in a massive paycut, even with prospective high paging jobs. One possibility is to transfer internally with my current employer, but in this economic setting it's unlikely they will approve my request, much less allow me to work full remote, which is a deal breaker. I have been contemplating freelancing for a while as a way to work remotely from home with a competitive salary (not US level, but better than EU market rate). I have decent experience as a Big Tech Sr. Dev. on ML/MLOps (e.g. I designed and implemented a real time inference service serving millions of RPS with single digit millisecond latency), so I believe my skills should be in demand. Do you believe this is attainable or I am deluding myself?
  • _huayra_ 3y ago
    You can always try this out first by searching for contract work as if you were in your home country. Just set up a website (perhaps not using your real name, in case your employer gets suspicious) and see if you can actually seek out the work. You can even try to purchase advertising on Google to see if you get any clicks / contacts. Overall it's a pretty cheap way to check. I get that this may not be possible, but these sorts of trial balloons are much easier to float first to get an idea instead of taking a leap of faith.
    • angarg12 3y ago
      Unfortunately my L1 visa doesn't allow me to have any other source of income than my current employer. But definitely this is something to look into once I get a Green Card.
      • _huayra_ 3y ago
        Sorry for being unclear, I meant to just go through the process of seeing what you could get in terms of contracts as if you had already made the move, not to actually follow through and start any contract. Some of the "expat threads" I've seen on Reddit where people yeet themselves to the other side of the world and hope it works out only to fall flat on their face are pretty eye opening. By testing the waters with "proto-contracting" like this, you can at least give yourself some idea of what you could get were you to move. edit: grammar