Slashdot Mirror
Jobs for Moonlighting Geeks?
BreadWinner asks: "My wife and I are adopting a baby in 2003 and it's very expensive. I work for a non-profit that can't pay me what I feel I'm worth. However, I really like my job, my boss, the time off, and my co-workers. So I'm considering moonlighting. I've done private contracting, but I don't think I can do my private clients justice when I'm working full-time. So what kind of job can I find that: I can leave at the job; maximize my $/hour? Anybody done commission-based electronics sales? I'm not an uber-geek, but I'm interested in whatever you folks at Slashdot can suggest."
Yes, you are right, but the poster was commenting on the fact that working at Best Buy reduces the cost of the entertainment portion of the budget. This reallocates money to thing like paying bills and such. I don't think the example of a plasma TV was a good example. Nor are most of the products at Best Buy aimed towards a child. Therefore, I'm not sure Best Buy would be the place to work for him. If the guy spends a lot on electronic goods, though, it'd help a lot.
You could always try your hand at making a useful software product. Note that I said useful. If you can increase productivity with your software then you have a much larger chance of a business buying it, and they tend to be much more scrupulous than the general populous. To make it less risky and intrusive into your life, make it something you will use at work, or your co-workers will use (that way, your life is made easier, and you also get brownie points at work). Obviously, you need to be reasonable in your expectations, I would not expect to earn more than a thousand bucks for each application you release. A variation on this is to use the Microsoft model and create knockoffs of current very popular software- especially software that has gotten ridiculously bloated over time (*coughcough* Word). IE, Implement wordpad with a table of contents feature, page numbering, slightly more advanced formatting, etc. and keep the size small. Market it as a cheaper version of whatever software. There are alot of people looking for legit copies of cheap productivity software that gives them the best features of huge programs w/out the bloat. Most likely, you will make very little money, but mebbe enough to buy a new TV. But, you also have that one chance in hell that your software will catch on, and you could make a considerable amount of money. And programming in the comfort of your home is alot better than working at Best Buy on the weekends.
You won't have time for anything else. You won't be permitted to sleep for a while either.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
Another thing to consider is how much stress this second job will cause especially now with a very needy addition to your family.
Think about working smarter rather than harder.
A year ago I sold almost everything I owned to move back to my hometown where I now work for the library at about half my former pay. At first I took the job as a stepping stone until something better came along. Like you I found that I really love the job and to my surprise I don't really miss the pay or the stress.
My life is more stripped down than it was but (now that I'm used to it) I don't feel the least bit deprived. In fact I am actually saving a bit of dough where I used to live nearly check to check before. I still travel and indulge in the arts and geeky hobbies and spend time and have fun. Mostly I just drive a payed for car and don't pay full price for stuff or eat out as much. Oh, and I won't be too extravagant about the Holidays although I never really was.
Think not about what you can do without, but what you could be free of. The quality time with the wife and kid are worth a lot more than any part-time job will pay.
Programmers ought to contact graphic designers or even "web designers" who are light in the pants when it comes to coding, server side work, etc.
With the WYSIWYG boom, lately, it's becoming easier and easier for non-pros to emulate pro work... any graphic designer who changed 47 style sheets on a few hundred pages by hand because they forgot to put the text in Paragraph tags will tell you that they wish they had the skill and knowhow to efficiently do the programmy stuff based off of their illustrator or photoshop spreads.
I can get a web job for $3,000 as a designer. I can come up with the design (paper prototypes) for about 1/3rd of that. The other 2/3rds is spent hacking through code, when a "pro" would take not even 1/2 that time. . . it is then, obviously, profitable for me to hire a freelance programmer (repeatedly)
-- The truth is the only thing that nobody will believe.
Before we had kids, my wife and I both spent long hours working and I could not really understand people who weren't "committed to their jobs". After kids, our hours aren't as long because of other commitments (ballet, bowling, music lessons, play dates, etc) and I'm a bit more sympathetic to those people. It's changed our lives a lot and there's no way we could have seen the whole impact except to live through it.
Anyway, you've both decided that you want kids badly enough to adopt them. I assume you want to spend some time with them, but you're planning on taking a second job. When will you spend time with the kids? Instead of increasing revenue, can you maybe reduce expenses? I'm not trying to be mean or judgemental here, just want to make sure that you realize the tradeoff you are making.