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What Do People in the IT Field Do for Side Jobs?
Flagg0204 asks: "Growing up in a primarily white collar household I wasn't exposed to 'side-jobs' until I met my girlfriend whose family was mostly blue collar. This got me to thinking. What do people in the IT field do for side jobs? Electricians, plumbers, HVAC, mechanic, these fields have many opportunities for a little extra cash on the side. What are some IT/IS side jobs that Slashdot readers do for extra money?"
it depends what kind of IT skills you have.
i am working for few online games like iclod and xmoo, they generate a bit of incomes and open up opportunities for other jobs.
the advantage is i don't need to be there physically to carry out works, but with that advantage, i also get the disadvantage of having thousand of similarly skilled people fighting for the same work.
i believe hardware-IT may have more opportunities. just post an ads on local newspaper to "Fix Your Computer Problems At Home" and there bound to be some elderly people who would rather get a local service from a local person at home.
Play iCLOD
I learn fun new stuff, I get to take things at my own pace, I get fun email from other people, and I make enough to cover my car payment. Best of all, it feeds my megalomania.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Because the company I work for owns everything I think and do, according to my employment agreement. Nothing is considered "side-work."
--Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
and spam from people in the neighborhood.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
I have started my own IT consulting business for home PC users. I advertise locally in the neighbor hood and work nights and weekends.
I find that it's a very fun, and profitable, hobby to have on the side. I'm playing enough now that I do consider it a side job... in fact, I make a better hourly wage than at my real job! The best part about it is, I can play whenever I have a spare hour or two... I don't have to schedule it in.
I've started getting all of my other friends in IT hooked on it as well :)
Well, I am not sure it counts as a side job, as I don't have a job in the first place, but when I am not toiling at either school or theatre, I do lighting work for a local production company (owned and operated by some old friends). Being production work, it is very gig-oriented, but by the same token it is well suited to side work, as there are no long term commitments involved.
So, yeah, sound and lighting design and operation for small/medium productions.
Phus. Sysiphus.
I spend my spare time writing open source software.
I proofread books, both treeware and e-books for three different publishers, including doing scan-and-proof of old books for electronic republication. It's a great way to relax and put my computer skills to use without having to dive into the details of the bits-and-bytes after hours.
Many universities cater to people who work a 9-5 ...
I hope that you see the obvious side job for the white collar worker: teach an evening course at the local community college. Of course, you'll be making less per hour than the janitor, but it is white collar.
See what I've been reading.
I preach for money. (many churches look to seminary students or former seminary student to do fill in preaching - they call it pulpit supply - when a pastor is on vacation) I've been tempted to put together a business card with that side job on it, "Serving God and mammon since 1997." Also, I work in a children's home. The overnight shift at the home allows me to work online during downtime. And then sometimes I do the freelance gig too. Who doesn't?
yes. that's all I'm going to say in all comments from now on.
The gray market for services has grown consistently since I moved out to the bay area. Since the dot-com flame-out and the massive spending binges have ended, it's easier to hire someone for some quick "consulting" work than to employee people full time. A lot of people I know do on-the-side consulting for a few dollars here and there. Mostly IT stuff: companies small enough to not be able to pay someone full time but big enough to need someone to call on when they are in trouble. Lots of "checking the CEO's laptop" type jobs.
You have to be careful with this kind of work, though. As the name implies, the gray market is somewhere between the black market (totally illegal) and the normal market (regulated by industry and government). Some companies will 1099 you and report what they paid you, some companies won't. It is illegal, AFAIK, to receive money for work and not report it as income.
The money can be good, but if you are unlucky enough to be caught, the back taxes can be quite expensive.
Jeff
By day I work for IBM as an engineer. By night, I'm an investigator for my wife's private investigations company http://www.travisinvestigations.com/ . I get to help spy on cheating wives and husbands, catch people in insurance fraud and other such things. Probably the part I enjoy the most is when I get to make use of new electronic tools like covert GPS tracking devices etc... What I dislike are the long nights surveiling some cheating spouse or watching someone to see if they are poor parents in custody cases. Of course I also take care of the company computers (mostly Macs believe it or not).
The speaker was, for the first time in his pathetic life, speechless. No one had ever challenged him on the issue of Tibet.
n my experience, the nature of IT work tends to rule out being able to hold down a side job. The biggest obstacle is the fact that almost all IT work (or salaried work in general, really) tends to have at least one or two "crunch times" per year where you have to work weird hours.
I think this is spot on. A lot of IT jobs are salaried, and there is a huge difference between hourly wages and salary. Waged employment usually has a very fixed set of hours you are expected to work, and any work outside of that is overtime and more expensive for the employer, so it's discouraged. You are being paid for a fixed set of hours, so time outside that is your own, allowing for work on the side. On the other hand salaried work is essentially paying you to "get the job done" regardless of hours. They're paying you up front for as much of your time as it takes. Side jobs just don't come into it.
Having worked both waged (as a baker) and salaried (as a research mathematician) jobs, that's exactly how it generally worked for me. Both have their advantages, and side jobs is simply one of the advantages of waged employment.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
The moment they know you're in I.T. everyone in your family, and all your mother's friends, want you to fix their PCs
I had to give up my family and friend side job of building them computers. I now reference them to the small business section of www.dell.com (much better deals then the regular home section) and www.slickdeals.net for references to Dell SB deals. I've had enough of giving out lifetime free tech support. I traveled to my home town for Thanksgiving and spent about 10 hours of my long weekend fixing computers for friends and family. Sure, I will still help them with spyware and such but I am now the second phone call after Dell for those I've pointed in that direction and not the first. Sorry for the diehard white box builders but I had to get out. Not worth it to me.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I've taught math and computer science part time at two different universities.
One side job that doesn't have the problem of clashing with office hours is writing. Over the past few years, I have co-authored two O'Reilly books: "SSH, The Secure Shell (The Definitive Guide)" and "The Linux Security Cookbook." In addition to a substantial second income, I have had several follow-on writing and consulting opportunities (white papers, articles, etc.). Of course, there's the question of whether you want to spend even more time sitting in front of a computer in your off hours...
On average I do 2 or 3 small cabling jobs a year and for a few days of work I can make some fast cash. For an office of 10 people you've got ~30 cable runs or more depending on how much expansion they want to pay for. These kinds of jobs can usually be cranked out in 3 days or so, depending on size, and they are always afterhours.
How much you want to be involved is up to you. I usually only like putting down all the passive equipment: racks, patch panels, 110 blocks, cable, jacks, feeders, etc. I'll test the permanent lines, hand them the results and walk away (or charge them more for a lifetime warranty :). Sometimes I'll install a small switch and make some drops "hot" so they are ready for move-in. I'd advise to stick with the passive installs, much less complex.
Also I should add a disclaimer. There are licenses needed for this kind of work (at least in my area), specifically a low voltage contractor's license. You can obtain one with some studying and 1 test. Furthermore, to get into telephone rooms to run feeder to office suites, most building owners/maintenance will want to see a million-dollar liability insurance or something similar - in case you yank somebody's T1 down there or something.
Aside from that I'd recommend it. All the info you need is online and if you didn't know much about your network's physical layer you'd also gain from the experiance.
Once or twice, I've thought about setting up a "Computer Guy" shop for the apartment complex I live in. I'd limit work to only those who lived at the complex (which means no traveling everywhere) and maybe I could get the complex to post a sign up on our billboard or mailboxes or something. It'd be a few extra bucks here and there and people would have someone close to load their printer with paper and turn their monitors on ;) Maybe later...
While it's obvious the original poster seemed more interested in IT-only side jobs, I think non-IT side jobs are worth a mention. I worked in room service in Las Vegas for a few years after college to help pay off my IT schooling. I finished paying it off just this last September so I promptly gave my two weeks notice.
Though honestly I do really miss it at times. My job is computers, my hobby is computers, it was nice to make some cash and spend my time on something other than sitting in front of a computer.
And up until my most recent IT job, I was making far more money doing room service.
"Excellence in Mediocrity"
For money - well, I'm involved in web hosting. Building sites doesn't pay any more - not for me anyway - so I just do the hosting side. The money isn't great, but it's fun.
I also buy and sell stuff at garage sales. Hey, don't laugh! There's money to be made there if you know what you're doing ...
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Or more accurately, guitar player in a local band selling CDs on the web and online stores like iTunes. And of course not for money, but certainly for the potential of "making it" (and thus making money). But given how long we've been at it such a reality is looking increasingly unrealistic. Though we did make some decent $ a couple of years ago when we were touring.
Like most indie bands of our ilk and time period we just wanted to be as "famous" as Pavement and as long-lived as Superchunk.
IT Sales and Apple Certified 10AM-7PM, 9PM-2to3AM - Bartender at the major music venue here in town. Best of both worlds.
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
I don't really have a side job. Instead, I go out and help build houses for Habitat for Humanity. I'm a computer nerd by trade but I'm a carpenter by heart. I love to build things and building for those who otherwise would never own a home is very rewarding. I also do the occasional church raising out in the rural areas.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
If you're teaching the same old class from the same old book, prep time should be less than class time, but if you're teaching from a new book, with a new syllabus, it can be more than the class time. Since you're adjunct faculty, you typically don't get to choose your syllabus or book, so the prep time will generally be 1 hour plus per class. Therefore, you get $3800 for about 15 hours per week times 16 weeks, or about $16 per hour.
I guess that's a little more cash than the janitors get, but you're not getting health benefits, and the janitors are.
See what I've been reading.
I work at best buy as side work. Amazingly it is great place to work, the discounts are insane, new videos cards with 100$+ off, tv's, digital cameras.. The prices are great, plus I get paid to play with a bunch of new toys.
Maybe he should. When I get home, I know that I loathe opening up a programming environment. I've thought about some various side projects and stuff, but I never follow through on them. The reason is that I get paid to program. I think it's fun, but I don't find recreation in it.
I also have quite a bit of IT knowledge: fixing up computers, abolishing ad-ware, fixing user accounts, training, getting things to "work..." I hate it when my aunt says to me, "Mike, I've got a problem with my computer. My scanner..." First off, I dislike the headache I get when trying to fix things, when I could be doing something fun (i.e. playing pool). Second, I hate that I feel an obligation to work because she's my aunt.
A good side job is what I had a couple of years ago. I was a barista in a coffee shop. I could relax, talk to the customers, shoot the breeze with my co-workers, and generally not think about computers at all. I came home tired, but happy. I was refreshed in the morning as well.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
My daughter's sunday school teacher is a single mom with teenage boys. She doesn't have a lot of money, but a family member gave her a new computer last Christmas, and the phone company is selling DSL for only a few bucks more than AOHell. Knowing she can't afford to pay anyone to set it up, I agree to help her set it up, no charge.
A few months later, she's having trouble - can't log in to some site to sign up for a credit-card processing account so she can accept CC for her Mary Kay side business, and she asks for help. I go over one night after work, and one of her boys is doing his homework at the kitchen table, PC in the living room.
She shows me the error, and I immediately point out that CyberSitter or some similar censorware is blocking the site. "Yes, I installed that to help keep the porn off the computer." I pull up the logs, and it's FULL of porn sites being blocked at times when she was at work. He tried to blame it on spam and spyware, and I was non-committal, just wanted to get the thing working for her, but I think she had a little talk with him after I left.
Can you say "uncomfortable?"
P.S. Still can't figure out why cybershitter blocks a credit card merchant site, but I just told her to disable the software when she logged in to do CC stuff.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Just like if your brother's a plumber and you have a clogged toilet.
Why should your family pay you to do what you can do? They already did what they could for you, or you wouldn't be here.
Friends and acquaintances are a different story. However, the story's not much different whether a plumber or a computer guy tells it.
-Graham
Perhaps, but in return for fixing my Uncle's computer he gave me a $3000 iron filter for my water. (it was broke, but he had the parts to fix it)
Its the family joke, Christmas at his house to fix the computer, Thanksgiving at ours to fix the water. Easter, birthday parties, graduation, and other family get togethers you count on either a water softener being rebuilt, or a computer being cleaned up.
I trade shares for hobby and at the current rate that hobby will pay enough for me to quit by high paying day job (senior computer systems engineer in a defense company) in 3-5 years (I've been doing it for 2 years). This takes aabout an hour a week (value investing, not day trading).
I also went back to study phsychology and ended up as a qualified counsellor where a see a couple of clients a week to help keep me in touch with real humans. I also do some tutoring work for counselling students (which is all weekend and evenings). This takes a few hours a week plus 8-16 hours when I'm tutoring.
I write written scripts (have done two cartoon episodes for The Toons: Where are they now?) and am working on a self help book and a novel. Not to make money but because I like writing. This is usually only a 1-2 hrs a week (averaged over a year)
Because my day job in IT is so senior I don't get to do interesting technical/creative stuff I do little PC setup jobs for friends and write php/mysql apps for friends businesses (currently doing a 1.5TB image management and workflow system). This is about 10hrs a week at the moment.
I'm also developing some self help workshops which I hope to start running early next year. This takes 2-3 hrs a week (at the moment).
This is on top of my 50hr a week job, a wife and 4 children. I do as much extra stuff as I can after everyone else is in bed (eg 10pm onwards) and sleep about 5 hrs a night (with the occassional 10hr night to catch up).
The idea is to develop paying work that has a very high hourly rate so I can work less hours. The share trading is best, earning several hundred dollars an hour and in future for the same effort this will increase as profits are simpy reinvested and not consumed. Secondly the counselling is experience towards doing the workshops, where you can charge 30 ppl $200 for a weekend workshop (16hrs) to give a similar hourly rate (minus overheads and prep time).
Currently all this augments my income by about 30% (up from 10% last year) so I'm on track to retire within 5 years.
I also used to play in a band (did 3 albums) which was an aweful lot of fun but an aweful waste of time. Once kids came along that something had to give!
The best way to relax is playing with the kids, programming and writing (for me at least).
I still toss around ideas of high tech startups (I had one in the late 90s with angel funding but we never got to the big venture capital stage) but nothing is as assured as 1) value investing with shares, and 2) a 9-5 job.
If money and creating spare time weren't a concern I would probably just counsel people and write, but I wouldn't make a good living out of it (well, I might but it's unlikely - I'm not abuot to plan on an improbably income stream when I have a mortgage and kids!).
pithy comment
With the small town I'm in, they need all the help they can get.
So, by day(and night) I'm a not so mild mannered computer geek; while by night (and day) I run into burning buildings.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
My side job is purposefully different from my work. I referee ice hockey and inline hockey. The pay is pretty decent, $10 to $50+ for a one hour game, depending on the level of play, league, and location. Plus, you get some exercise, meet new people outside of IT/CS, and get to teach new players how to play the game.
Up front costs do stink a little if you start from scratch, $200-$300 is typical for all new gear and 1st year registration. But that's deductible, and if you referee a few games per month, you're back in the black pretty quickly.
I have also performed freelance home computer services, but playing & refereeing hockey have generally been more fun and better for my % body fat.
I used to use a single box for everything at home. Pentium 133, with 128MB of ram. It was my jukebox, firewall, mailserver, database server, web server, etc. Worked fine, but I didn't like having a single point of failure.
These days, that box *was* my mail server (just now replaced it with a P2 550), and I have a separate firewall, and 'everything else' server (PIII ... forget the speed). The 'everything else' box is hooked to the tv, and has web browsing, Xine, Xmms, and such. (I'm too lazy to build a real mythtv box :) In addition it is doing dhcp, mysql, apache, etc.
Right now, I am using a P75 with 16MB of ram as a smoothwall firewall (that will be the P133's new function), and of course the other two servers I mentioned.
So, yeah, I know what you mean about older hardware. It's great being able to use it. Heck the stuff I have is way overpowered for the amount of work it has to do (watching videos being the exception).
I also own a Toshiba Libretto...now that thing is 'low power'. I have it overclocked to 266MHz, and it can play Mpeg-1 videos pretty well. It runs firefox respectably too. The real bottlenecks seem to be the non-DMA drive in it, and the 64MByte memory limit. But it is a great little box to use as a car jukebox, wireless stumbler, photo repository, and browser when I need it. I put a 20Gig drive in it, and partitioned the LVM so that I can still hibernate it (the bios dumps hibernation right at the 4 Gig mark).
My girlfriend's dad is a highly skilled plumber - he was hired at the nuclear power plant for some special work there. He definitely knows what he's doing.
Nonetheless, when the pipes freeze or a toilet clogs, he, without fail, always calls someone else to do it.
I'm a western man living in Beijing. Westerners are often used here as foreign experts in TV commercials to lend some additional semblance of credibility to the product pitch. I have played a doctor, an Australian scientist, and suit & tie businessmen. Products have included breast enlargement kits, hi-tech underwear, and chinese herbal medicine (the Strong Bones Particles of Six Flavors). Usually I just have to mouth some words because they'll do a voiceover in Chinese later, but occasionally I have to speak - and translate very bad English into something a real person might actually say. Its not very lucrative but it is diverting.
I require them to make a $25 donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They can use the receipt in email as proof.
That way they don't feel like I'm just trying to make a buck off them, and I feel more inspired to actually do a decent job of solving their problem. Plus it help out a good cause.
Mind you- I don't consider some basic stuff as "above and beyond".. Eg: configuring outlook for someones IMAP server &etc. Cleaning off adware / viruses definitely warrants a donation- and a short lesson in "what not do to on the Internet."
I work part time as a paramedic. I agree with most posters, after 50-60 hours a week of startup grind the last thing I want to do is IT or programming for someone else. What little spare energy I have goes into my personal bits for myself.
Being a paramedic is everything IT is not - lot's of people interaction, some physical labor, outside time. It's also personally rewarding in a way that programming isn't. I've never been applauded for my work as a programmer, something I have had happen a few times as a medic. I've also never been offered a blow job as a programmer, but I have been a few times as a medic. As a married and ethical man I do not require applause nor accept the blow jobs but as a human being and a terminal male I appreciate the consideration present in both.
I originally became a medic because a bit of volunteering as an EMT showed me I loved the work and I thought that (as my plans were at the time) that the medic job would provide a salary baseline and benefits when consulting wore thin. Well - the bubble burst and I'm an employee again but I keep up the medic because it's a perfect escape from the office and if things really go south it's one job I know they _can't_ ship to India.
The wages are not great but when you can work a 24 hour shift and get paid 24 hours for one calendar day it does add up even for a few days a month enough for even an overpaid technoweenie like me to notice.
After 15 years in the development trenches I would love to work full time as a medic and have the energy to expend my skills part time on programming but then I couldn't afford a new GeForce 6600 or flying as often. I also like not sweating that I'm getting the $4 latte instead of the $1.25 cup of joe, something most full time medics have to worry about.
At some point I may make the trade of money versus time for lifestyle as we achieve certain financial goals, but for now it works as is.
I used to work tech support at one of the rare well-managed, worker-respecting tech support places, and fairly frequently we'd get calls about things we don't support. Standard procedure was to refer them to the consulting companies we had deals with. Because of these contracts, our users got good deals from them, but only for major projects, since they'd typically have minimum fees that would be rather exorbitant for the small odd jobs they often needed. We'd often get calls back asking if anyone wanted to drop by for a half hour after work and do whatever the odd job in question was for $30 or so. Our manager actually encouraged this practice, since we were still supporting everything we were supposed to and honoring our contracts, and our users were getting the unsupported odd jobs done that were too small for formal consulting. This required our manager paying attention to make sure we were really doing our jobs properly and not trying to screw our customers, but I believe I already mentioned we had good management.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
In my Sociology 101 book I found some interesting facts.
When they are at home, blue collar workers don't do anything. They usually watch TV and do small tasks. Thats because their work is so physically hard that they are exhausted when they arrive at home.
White collar workers when at home usually do some hobby unrelated to their actual work. They do some sport or any other hobby.
Managers (or the upper class) usually do the same job when they come home. In a way they do the same job the whole day. That is because their work is not physically demanding so they can work the whole day.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
get over your myths
Get over your own.
If Tibet was so miserable before the Chinese "liberated" them, why did the flood of refugees leaving Tibet occur AFTER "liberation"? Your myths are just Chinese propaganda used to excuse China's imperialism. Though the Tibetans had a theocracy, not a democracy, it was still based on things they believed in.
The Chinese invaders simply want to take their land, and are imprisoning, torturing, and killing anyone who tries to stop them. You must be so proud of them.
I speak Chinese, and I picked up a couple of People's Liberation Army soldiers on the road near Mt. Everest in Tibet recently. They were bragging about how they had just managed to capture some poor families trying to escape over the mountains. These soldiers were so proud at how they had hunted down these poor, half-frozen women and children. Real People's Heros.
I asked them if they didn't consider it ironic that they called themselves Jiefang Jun, the "People's Liberation" Army, yet their job was to prevent any hope of liberation. Their answer, not surprisingly, was the same Chinese propaganda coming out of you.
don't try to pretend like it's not one country now
Don't try to pretend it IS one country. It's two: China and Tibet, but Tibet is full of Chinese soldiers ready to imprison and torture anybody who dares say so, so I'll say it for them. If the Tibetans could vote, they would overwhelmingly vote to throw out the Chinese occupiers, but the "Chinese People's Government" doesn't even allow its own people to vote, much less people in neighboring countries that they have invaded.
Your argument that fifty years of occupation makes it one country didn't persuade the Chinese that Hong Kong was British, or that Taiwan after more than 50 years is now an independent country, so why should it make Tibet the property of the Chinese?
It doesn't, and it's not.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."