Slashdot Mirror
Remote Project Level Work?
Genjuro Kibagami asks: "With regards to the current environment in the tech sector and the difficulties finding good positions, I was curious if anyone had taken to running freelance work from their own computers at home? I'm not talking about your regular dodgy fly by night 'Make up to 10,000$ per week with no risk!' type thing. But perhaps problem solving, coding, professional advice, or remote administration / fix functions, payment via paypal or some such thing. Any assistance appreciated."
I'm starting to get involved with a company that is trying to build an Ebay-like system for technology support.
Basically users would use the website to be partnered with service providers. Providers would bid on contracts - anything from as small as $100 on up - and the money would be held in escrow by the website until the work had been completed.
There are quite a few hurdles to solve - but it might end up being a great way for individual developers to farm out their talent and time and make money on a case by case basis.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Hi i need a job my resume is attached please post it on the front page of slashdot
You're going to be making a whole little money if you're up against overseas IT workers: Chinese, Philipinos, Indians, Pakistanis, Brits, French, Germans, sheesh, the whole planet.
Bet that Indian dude undercuts you by 80% of what you expect to make.
Otherwise, good luck and best wishes,
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I dont care what kind of security you have no company is going to want to allow their mid project data sent to a freelancer offsite.
-- Insert wisdom here:
Just to drag out the old cliche:
1) Devise scheme for making yourself money.
2) Present details of scheme to large community of people from the same demographic as yourself.
3) Look on bemusedly as the job market you identified becomes flooded.
4) ???
5) No profit!
You should check out www.elance.com -- though I've heard lately that it's getting flooded with lots of entry level people doing the low-bid-wins-regardless-of-output sort of thing.
Anon to protect /. account.
;-) It works!
I highly encourage this. I put my site up a while ago and received a few clients. Although I have not yet stopped looking for actual 9-5 work. This is great to see what the true needs of the market is. Also, it really develops your problem-solving skills beyond the mundane tasks inside a cube farm.
Have a look:
http://members.rogers.com/frankrpennington
Notice the web format?
Contact me if you need any further assistance.
Frank
Yeah, I do just that sort of thing. Basically I freelance for a friend I met on the internet who knows only the barest basics about web applications yet somehow finds himself as the owner of a web company. Essentially I maintain these sites when theres a problem, and he does the bulk of the changes such as "change 'the' on this page to 'a'". When there's larger amounts of development to be done than i can handle with my present job (which i also telecommute to) I have him send it out to another agency in his area, then I maintain their work. works out pretty well, puts an extra 12k a year into my pocket, and everybody's happy.
I've had a number of long-term remote host/site administration gigs and a few short "web development" projects that worked out very well, even though the client was several time zones away.
A friend referred the client, we discuss the project on the phone, fax a contract back and forth to set rates, duration, and scope, then mostly just do status updates by email.
This works for web development and for system administration because the client is more likely to be accustomed to everything being online and remote, and in thise case, they trust me because of the personal referral. I'm not sure this approach would work as well for other types of projects.
IMHO, remote freelancing has many of the same drawbacks as corporate telecommuting -- most managers just aren't ready for this.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Yeah, I do freelance at-home work. I've always been a bit of a generalist, so I dabble in several areas. I've also been lucky enough to generally scrape by on jobs which pretty much fall outta the sky at me - almost all my jobs have come from unsolicited offers by people who know I can do computer stuff. My primary customer is actually the company I used to work for 9-5 as an IT tech, 'til I quit 3 years ago when I noticed I was doing mostly database admin stuff (and not being paid for it). But - for several reasons - it's been a financial roller-coaster.
My main employer, despite its recession-resistant business, has been in their own fiscal slump unrelated to the tech market collapse. I had too many eggs in their basket and was, as a result, essentially unemployed for almost a year. During that time I tried to launch a consulting business with a website and cards and etc, but my (no-$$) marketing efforts resulted in no new business - all my clients have been people who already knew me beforehand. I also do small websites and video projects for half a dozen friends I know who are comedians. And I've got some database-related stuff on the side. But primarily, at the moment, I'm back making good $$ writing software (in Delphi) for my main employer. And that'll end in about 2-3 months tops, so I dunno what'll be next.
In general, I think there are a number of websites which are attempts to broker this sort of thing, but I don't know if any of them actually work. I'm about to find out 'cos I have a serious problem with ODBC drivers, trying to hook a proprietary app which uses Pervasive to an Access system, and I've decided to subcontract that little bit rather than waste my time trying to solve it. So, I'll soon find out here if the system works...
Perfectly Normal Industries
The quick answer is "yes." If you happen to either get lucky and land on one (or two, or three :) of these kinds of engagements, or if you work hard at finding them and/or have someone who can refer you into such engagements, you can quite suddenly find yourself sitting at home in your underwear (ick :) hacking away at code for a project across the country, or being a sysadmin for a box in the next state (of course you need an RPC or someone local to flip the switch when hardware breaks ;), or even working on a webhosting company's helpdesk by remote.
The good news here is the webhosting business especially, but other more traditional businesses like ISPs and other IT-heavy companies are on the rebound; those who've survived the dot-com bubble bursting by being frugal and not running up debts are now snatching up super-cheap, sometimes not even used equipment and real estate to get their own plans underway.
Take the average webhosting company. Any company of even decent intelligence recognizes early on that a big majority of their helpdesk tickets are software related. Usually they're newbie questions or "reset my password" requests or other things that are quick to fix, and require no in-person presence. You stick a skeleton crew at the data center to push reset buttons and swap out bad hardware, and pay your helpdesk techs to work from home. It's cheaper for you, more convenient for them, and far better for the customers.
The same can be done for software development and some forms of sysadmin work. While of course you can't write code simultaneously for two or three different companies (unless they're all asking for exactly the same thing :), you can work two or three helpdesks simultaneously. The impressions I've gotten from those I've spoken to about this tactic is that they don't even consider it unethical to be working for two or more companies at the same time (i.e. you work 9am-5pm for two webhosting companies at the same time, splitting your time between the tickets of the two companies) as long as the work still gets done. On a helpdesk, there's going to be downtime. For companies who pay by the ticket instead of the hour, it's even more economical; you get paid when you work. By working for more than one at a time, you're getting more work.
Back on subject a bit more, it is entirely possible to make (very) good money working from home if you can get into a comfortable position. The reason it can be tough to get into is that with a work-from-home position, you tend to be fairly far away from your employer. S/he can't meet you face to face for an interview; IRC/ICQ/AIM/whatever and phone calls are all you get (gone are the days of "sure! We'll fly you out for an interview!" unless you're disgustingly lucky :). Having a friend who knows the boss-to-be vouch for you is a big help. It's always better to get your resume into someone's hands by having someone else who's trusted turn it in for consideration.
The other challenge of course is dealing with teammates. Since you're not physically present for staff meetings, you may not even get to participate in them at all (hurrah! :). You can't see body language or moods; all you've got is the text (and perhaps the voice if you call in). If you're high adaptable to your teammates' work habits and methods, you'll be fine. If you have to do things your way, though, and they don't happen to match what the in-person workers are used to, you'll lose every time.
I lost my job last Friday (the 19th). I started my new one today (the 29th). Instead of working in an office run by stuffy ex-bankers turned overnight know-it-all techies, now I'm working for fellow geeks my own age at a very comfortable wage, in my own home, doing the odd jobs they throw at me. I can work as many or as few hours as I want (I want a lot of hours ;), it pays the bills, and I'm doing what I enjoy. You'd be amazed how fast even ten hours a day goes by when you're at home, at your own workstation, your spouse and pets nearby, and plenty of stuff to do on breaks. And when you want lunch, you just walk to your kitchen to get it :)
Anyways, go for it! Look into the smaller webhosting providers -- the ones who are proud of their data centers because they had to work hard to get them, the ones who have just a few employees -- they tend to need general-purpose people to work equal parts sysadmin, programmer, and helpdesk tech. The pay ranges from modest to good, and if you work hard, you'll be in a very pleasant position for advancement when the company really takes off.
Good luck!
Read my stuff.
I do this, been doing it for some time. It's basically just the same as any other business... You stay at it long enough to get more customers while keeping your current customers satisified.
I have clients from all over the united states and a couple of foreign nations as well. Nothing that really pays well. Most of the work that keeps me in business comes from the local community... A couple of meetings are usually required to set up a contract of a couple of grand or more.
If you want to do that type of work remotely you have to establish a client base and a reputation.. Slowly over time you will start to receive virtual business. But in the beginning you will have to either work extremely cheap or focus on your local community. Takes a couple of years before you can command decent prices without a face to face meeting.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
You've got me scratching my head. Right now, I work from home 90% of the time in my position as a senior UNIX (Solaris) administrator. I can hardly think of a viable scenario where I could do project level work for various companies.
From a UNIX admin perspective, it takes time to ramp up to the particular ways that various places do business. The policies and procedures and all of that. As well, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism in place for landing sysadmin projects like that. (Well, with the exception of working for a contracting company.)
Maybe I am limited myself by just looking at what I do best, which is systems administration, and not my broader set of skills. But I just don't see how I can freelance, not to mention to it and gain a benefit over what I already have going...?
sounds like what you're company is doing. Is that correct?
Sure it could work, but how to you get hired in the first place. I've quickly discovered that there are plenty of jobs out there that need fillment (that or there are plenty of reqruiters pretending to have jobs to keep their resume bank filled, I'll bet in the middle). The the problem is they want absurb levels of specialization. As I told a Carpenter friend of mine, he should have never got his last job because he has 5 years expirence using Senco guns, and his new company uses Pasload.
They want to see 5-10 years expirence, but what they really get isn't 5 years of expirence, they get 1 year of expirence repeated 5-10 times.
Any good programer can pick up new languages and envieroments in less than a year. They might not learn all the tricks, but they know most of them. I know people who have been in mainframes for 30 years who still learn a new trick, but they aren't that much better than a 1 year mainframe programer because those new tricks don't apply very often.
Sorry about the rant, I'm looking for a job too, and it didn't take me long to realise there are plenty of jobs out there that I can do, but they won't look at me because my expirence is with something slightly different.
Non-Profit. If you're just starting out, go for your local non-profit agencies and small businesses. Check with your chamber of commerce, ask around. There's not a whole ton of payola in it for you, and its usually not glamorous, but in my (limited) experience its the easiest way to get a foothold in to these types of work-at-home gigs, and will help you network around, get your name out, and bolster your resume for the big money deals. No one starts at the top, eh?
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November