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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."
You could do consulting, but not for development. You could do something that takes lots of time, but not lots of hours, such as HCI (Human-computer Interaction) analasys. Consult for owners of websites and/or small application developers to perform various levels of HCI evaluation, such as analysis and testing. Some clients may want just a detail of obvious (to an HCI designer) problem areas, others will want results obtainable by user testing, and some of them will want designs.
The first suggestion, simple evaluations, can take you only a few hours at a time to do, and then another couple hours writing a report of suggestions to the client. User testing can be a bit more hairy, but the rule of thumb is for each round of user testing, you'll find all the snags with 4 test subjects, and tests should be 30 minutes or less per subject. Then you use about the same amount of time analyzing the results as the above option. The design-work can take many, many hours of designing, prototyping, and testing, but not every client wants immediate results. Some actually feel better if it takes you a couple months; they feel as if you'd been spending all that time musing over it and tweaking it.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Share the secret of how you have a full time job...
Darkness Productions spoke the following out of his ass...
"Best Buy might be an option. The money isn't the best (about $7 to start), but they get 90% of the stuff in the store at 5% over cost. Which means a cheap plasma TV..."
If you read the actual question he was asking, he's looking opportunities that will allow him to bring in extra income, not ways of spending an additional low-wage paycheck on material goods that he doesn't necessarily need. Someone who's thinking ahead and planning on how he can leverage his knowledge and skill set into a better life for his expanding family (and kudos to him for deciding to adopt instead of 'DIYing his own.') has better things to spend his money on that expensive trend-whore gadgets.
And yes, I posted this as a response, instead of just slapping you with (-1 offtopic).
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
No, I mean wait tables. I do this now, but only on Friday night and Saturdays. I get a little gas money from the hourly wage of $2.13/hour, but I also make between $60-$150 in cash.
This leaves me Sundays off, and Mon-Thur evenings for time at home, and in your case with Wife and baby.
Sig? What's a Sig?
I used to work in retail and I can tell you it is good money to have on the side. Usually, the people who do the schedule are flexible and will let you work whenever you would like.
However commission based sales are a tricky business. Several years ago, I worked at a well-known department store that paid you a base hourly rate and commission. The thing is, if your commission did not meet or exceed what you would have been paid at your hourly rate, you only got your hourly rate and on the next pay schedule, you had to make up the difference before you could start counting the commission you earned toward your next paycheck.
Some people who work at these stores are also very aggressive and will do nearly anything to get their commission, even if it means sometimes taking credit for a sale you made. Trust no one at first. Handle all of your transactions yourself. Find out what items on the floor pay the most in commissions. Sell the extended warranties.
I had some internal conflicts before. There was a particular camera that paid $10 for each one you sold by the manufacturer. The thing is, it was a piece of junk that I think was designed to break in 6 months. I sold the daylights out of those but I hated myself for it.
Finally, it's a little late in the holiday season to be thinking about a retail job. Most department stores are going to start laying off their holiday help in the next week or so. And with retailers reporting less than impressive profits, it will be hard to find work there about now.
GOBACK.
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.
This not only benefits your wallet, but it also improves your professional skills (which is a great bonus if your employer gives you flack about moonlighting).
This is #1 from a top ten list of ways to make money with your computer:
#1) Get a nice solid all steel serve case. Hide in a dark alley. As people move through the dark alley hit them with the case. While they are outcold take their money and other items of value. Wash, Rinse, repeat.
Somewhere near #5 was:
Find a not-too-ugly exhibitionist [female] and a web cam. Start collecting the checks and mailing out the once-worn panties at $20 a pop.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
You could advertise your pc tinkering/fixing skills in the local newspaper. Plenty of people buy computers and do not have a clue - the going rate in the UK is 10-15UKP an hour or part of, approx 15-22 USD. Some of it's going to be routine and mundane ("I can't find my Bonzi Buddy...") but you get to meet loads of people and cut loose from the house for an hour at a time and i'd suspect most customers would come back again if you were good - i've never met anybody yet who only had an hours worth of questions about their computer...
And as we're coming up to Christmas, just think of all those computers that have been bought as presents and therefore the amount of stumped newbies on the 25th. You might be busy...
By the way, good luck with the new addition to the family, too!
seany
I was considering this for a while, the only problem being
Hiyas!
Not sure if that helps or not since I couldnt find what exact area you would like to work in, but here it is:
Rent A Coder
The main site has problems right now, but I can get to specific subsites by bookmarked URL so it should be back soon.
With an account you can bid for small scale software dev projects.
A says "I want an TCP Stack for my microwave oven"
B says "I've done 10 projects so far and to implement your project I want 100 bucks!"
C says "I've done 1 project so far and to do your stuff I want 75 bucks!"
No a gets to choose if he wants to contract B or C.
I've created an account but due to lack of time didnt land a contract yet, but I've heard some quite positive things about this site.
I stumbled accross that site when people where talking about making some money in their freetime on some bulletin board - if you're good you can make like 1000$ a month with that.
Hope this helps!
Good luck to you & your family!
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
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.
A hitman is the perfect job for you. You go, shoot someone. When they ask where you were, say you were at work! :)
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
What about ebay?
You get to buy electronics gear at 5% over a national chain's cost. I bet that for certain items that leaves you with a pretty healthy margin. Shop for fairly expensive items with good margins and you should be OK.
Let's say you can pay $500 for an item that normally sells for $800. Throw it on ebay and hopefully sell it for 600 to 700 bucks. For this example let's say you make an extra $150.
If you're only working at BB 10 hours a week, you just made an extra fifteen bucks an hour. Add on the original $7 per hour and you're looking at a gross of over $20 bucks an hour for the week. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Round here, $20/hour isn't all that great. However, in some areas, you could cover your mortgage doing this. There are better paying opportunities I'm sure, but this one comes with very little stress and a flexible schedule.
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.
I work security at a night club on Friday and Saturday nights.
I have to tell you, it is a lot of fun. In a way it is like being able to live out the BOFH fantasy. I work at a pretty swanky place, and I get no end of catharsis through getting in the faces of executive-types.
I guess what I am saying is that variety is the spice of life. It is great that you are doing something that you enjoy doing during the day, but there might be something else you can do that you'd like just as much at night.
Good luck!
-Peter
If it works out well, you could even expand and get more babies. This is great, because your revenues will scale linearly with the number of babies (at least until you start to reach market saturation), but some of your expenses will scale up at a lower rate (that first baby is the most expensive, doesn't have any hand-me-downs, etc).
Another good thing about a massive baby rental business, from a geek point of view, is that you can handle some of the issues in innovative ways. For example, suppose the couple on the street behind you wants a baby for the evening, and they have a special request for Little Joey. But here's the problem: do you have Little Joey in stock right now, or is he still rented out to the Finkelstein family? You go out to the baby stockade where all the cribs are, but it looks like the cubicle complex in Tron (which you recoginize due to being a geek). Fortunately, you've planned ahead: every time a baby gets back, you use your CueCat to scan the barcode that is tattooed on the back of each baby's neck. This updates your MySQL or PostgreSQL database so you you always know which babies are available. When the family on the street behind you asks you on the phone if Little Joey is available, you have an instant answer.
But that's not all! Put a web-based front end on the database, and they can look up the availability themselves, without you having to man the phones. Now do you see how well this whole adoption thing can work out? Well, we're still not done. You see, that other family wants you to take the baby over to their house or get a large discount if they have to pick up Little Joey themselves. But as a geek, you can come up with all sorts of clever ways to handle the transportation. There's solar-powered rovers with robot drivers (fun to design!!), pheumatic tubes, etc. And it can all be automated and run at a profit. The sky is the limit!
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