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Finding Programming Work on the Side?
vistaconfig wonders: "I work as a developer for a certain fairly small company. I'm very happy with my work/pay and I wouldn't consider changing my job. However, I find myself bored at night since I never take any work home (as per the boss's orders). Since I'm not capable of working without some kind of motivation, I'm trying to find some kind of a side job that pays whatever money, and has deadlines (that's the only way I can work, unfortunately). There doesn't seem to be a website for side jobs. I'm willing to take something on, but I don't know where to go. How do other Slashdot readers deal with finding the side job in the first place? "
However, I find myself bored at night since I never take any work home (as per the boss's orders).
You are bored, because your boss won't let you take work home. You're kidding, right?
OMFG. What are you working for, anyway? Jesus H. Christ! Go out and HAVE SOME FUN. Meet a WOMAN (or a man, if that's your thing).. Go out and DANCE. Go to a production of something. Take some music lessons. See a provocative movie about provocative people with provocative people. Learn how to play bridge, backgammon, how to take pictures, how to bluff a Texan out of a pot. But for fuck's sake DO SOMETHING. EXPAND YOUR HORIZIONS.
Kids these days. Ay carrumba!
Since I'm not capable of working without some kind of motivation, I'm trying to find some kind of a side job t
Working? WORKING? What are you, a retard? This is your SPARE TIME. YOUR TIME OFF.
Find the nearest tall building, and jump. That's my advice, for you are not living and I see very little hope for you.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Ask Google: contract programming
Have you looked at Rent A Coder? That's the first outfit that comes to mind. (As of writing this post, there are no other posts showing, so forgive me if it's redundant.)
Also check your local (or not-so-local) Craigslist boards, people frequently post there looking for small programming projects.
Also also, call around to local charities, political groups with whom you agree, and other similar operations. See if you can identify ways their operation could be streamlined, and implement them.
Rent A Coder.
I tend to agree with the comment suggesting that you look for something different, like a life.
... project?
/., of course).
However, if that's not feasible (e.g., maybe you need more money; maybe you don't want a life right now), then how about a pet
You could work on an open source project. Or you could think of an "unmet need" and code the solution, get some angel money, parlay that into VC funding, cash out and criticize the government full time (on
I'd check out guru.com. It's a good site for finding programming jobs of all sizes and in all fields. I've taken several jobs from the site while in between jobs and on the side.
I, for one, would recommend TopCoder: http://www.topcoder.com/ . I am a member (blue-rated), and it's an interesting place; half devoted to algorithm competitions, where you have short timed problems to complete, and half to software development. All of it involves money in some way, either as prize or compensation: I suggest you check it out.
Rentacoder is full of people trying to get cheap work done with a poor idea what they want and no intention to pay at all if they can get away with it. No-one needs Rentacoder to find a programmer. Instead, there should be a site called Rent-a-networker. No, not the kind of networking that involves cables and routers, the kind of networking that involves going to conferences and smoozing. There should be a site where programmers can go, enter their skills and availability and some business guy goes out and finds real customers who need those services. The business guy gets a cut of whatever you make, so he will be trying to find clients that really need your services and are willing to pay top dollar for them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If you're happy with your pay, why not join one of the many thousands of open source projects out there that could use your help?
I don't know your situation, but your boss may think he's doing you a favor. Talk to him, take on more responsibility. Run the company. Do you think there's nothing more to do there? It's a rare company that can't use some extra, motivated, help.
You could always do a code bounty.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I registered on RentACoder in hopes of basically freelancing as a summer job and eventually abandoned the idea. The site is extremely popular with overseas coders of varying quality (from worse-than-crud to top-notch), many of whom put in bids which are just ludicrously low if you're duplicating them from a base in the US or another first world nation. Take, for example, a project the complexity of an undergraduate CS lab (not an ACTUAL undergraduate CS lab, although there's no shortage of students using rentacoder to cheat that way): I would assume eight solid hours of effort would get this done. I was thinking of bidding in the $100 range -- $12.50 an hour seemed like a pretty fair valuation for my time for a college student with a specialized skill set working as an independent contractor. Within an hour of the project being posted, there were I kid you not a dozen bids offering to do it for $20. Many of them had the feel of a copy-paste job of questionable English skills, but there were some capable individuals in the bunch. I mean, programming for pocket change beats working at McDonalds, but programming for $2.50 an hour... not a worthwhile proposition I don't think.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Yup, I was in the same predicament that you're in; home after work, and bored out of my skull. So, I started contracting at night working with a small firm writing accounting software, and with a hotel writing banquet management software. One night when I finally got to bed at two in the morning, my wife looked at me and said "you've been so distant for the past six months, have I done anything wrong?" That broke my heart. I realized that I'd come home from work, eat dinner, and head on upstairs to my home office and code all night.
It was also affecting my full time job. I was constantly late, and groggy and grumpy until sometime around lunch. My boss at the time finally got tired of the complaints and gave me an ultimatum: fix my attitude problem or find another job.
I finally realized what an a-hole I'd been to my co-workers and more importantly to my wife. So, I gave up the contracting work.
What I'm trying to say is that instead of burying your head in coding 16+ hours a day. Take some time for yourself after hours. Hang out with friends. Surprise your S.O. by doing something that's fun, offbeat, and different from your normal routine. To sum it up, enjoy life.
-ScottMy other sig is a Glock
I'm starting a company and looking for a programmer to write a couple of databases that interact for the website which will sell many products. The pay is small, $500 a month, as we are trying to start it up without the help of greedy investors, but if you can create a good finished product, we are willing to give you a percentage of stocks, so in the future it could be a great investment.
Someone mentioned OSS...but that isn't the only path for free time. Have you ever contacted local non-profits and seen what kind of help they need and if it fits with the type of programming you'd like to do?
Side work is rarely worth it. Most of the time you are going to bust your ass, for what? A couple hundred extra bucks a month? Is that really worth two sets of work deadlines in your life? Side work obligations are usually hard to shed and once you make the decision to stop, you are looking at a good 6 more months of weaning people off.
Get a hobbiest project. Doesn't have to be OSS, just something cool you like to do. I spend time at work all day writing glue code and database reports. When I get home that's the _last_ thing I want to code. So I have a few hobby projects invoving gumstix and servos and other embedded type programming.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Apply to work for slashdot - Taco is hiring read his journal
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
I'm probably not the only person who can provide the structure. (There are a bazillion project sites out there, but sites != structure.) There are an amazing number of projects out there. The problem is that there are simply not enough people to go around, and the lines of communication between coders and projects has traditionally been poor. Proper requirements analysis and project specifications are rare to non-existant outside of the best-of-breed elite institutions, paid or otherwise. Most of this is because geeks are often poor communicators, so the projects that are interesting (ie: geek-run) are the ones people know least about, and the ones with the best PR (run by marketing) often have the least novel or interesting work involved in them. This makes it hard to find out what REAL work is out there.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Chase what you love, first and foremost. That said, you should surf Sourceforge and sign into one of the projects there. It will help "the cause" of forwarding FOSS.
If you want extra money, you'll find enough few contract programming jobs (if you're competent) at places like Hire A Programmer or Xperts 4 Hire. There are others but you know how to google, right programmer?
For example, my side projects include:
- FOSS Sudoku
- Postgres Build machine agent
- General BSD OS fiddling
- Local C++ work
- various "skunkwork" projects at my local job (.NET)
The rest is non-tech. I must stress that having a non-tech side makes your life whole.
In addition to rentacoder.com and guru.com that other people mentioned, there is also scriptlance.com and craigslist. Craigslist might be better in that work will be local, and thus you are also lining up potential new jobs if the current one disappears.
However, the people telling you to get a hobby or life are right.
I would advise joining or founding a local robot club. The robotics stuff is technical, but the mecanical part is different enough from what you normally do that it will take your mind off of that. The arena type contests they have every once in a while will provide you with the deadlines you need, but the real way to keep motivated is to form a team of like minded individuals and work together.
While I think the idea of Rentacoder and other bidding sites is good for getting quantity of work through, it's really the wrong type of business model. Basing a service on discounted labour is a short way to make very little money. Not only that, but it de-values your worth. I've been working as an independant programmer for almost 15 years and I've tried a few different ways of finding new work to do, advertising in newspapers, journals, 'door knocking' around businesses with flyers, but by far the best way of getting ongoing well paid work is by referral.
Getting that first customer is the tricky bit, but once you've done that the rule is simple, when the work is either complete or well under way, ask them for a minimum of three referrals for businesses they know personally who may require work, and ask them to put in a good word for you. Always push for three as it covers the odds pretty well and you're nearly always guaranteed new customers. It's difficult to do initially as it feels awkward asking them for that kind of information, but you have to see if from their perspective, they have a valued service that has helped them and their mates should benefit in the same way. I've never had a customer who was not willing to give me referrals in this way.
Fix a rate, do some research into the going rate for your area, don't undersell, don't oversell. After a while you get used to spotting risks, be they technical (in most cases you have to guage the amount of technical risk involved, this will aid in contingency) or political risk.
Don't be afraid to contract other people into the same job with you, just choose people you know, even if they have flaws it's better the devil you know. You can be fussy about the type of work once you have quantity coming through the door, until that point be prepared to do any type of development work.
The discounting thing is the real point though, don't be tempted to do it. Instead of discounting, reduce your services for the same job. Otherwise you'll find yourself doing the same work for one customer at the discounted rate for 10 years and have a hard job trying to increase your rate.
Getting that first customer though, not really as hard as you think. I try to avoid working for friends and family, but if you can get references from friends and family that's the next best thing.
Know your own process. Understand what it takes to go from the handshake to getting paid from an invoice is very important. It's good to know how to gather meaningful requirements, build your own practical specifications, manage customer expectations, managing variations to work and learning to say no at the right time. It's easy to skim over some of these, especially when you first start doing it by yourself, but after a while you realise why they exist and how they can save you time when done right.
A low priority is insurance, professional indemnity is a good one, cover yourself after a while. Not that you're going to be careless about what you do, but the insurance is there for when you get hit out of leftfield. When you get enough income in to pay for the insurance get a broker and invest.
Task Mangler
As the subject says.
Instead of programming in your spare time, find another area of interest and pursue it. You never know when you're going to snap mentally and not be able to write a single line of code again. My employer doesn't know it, but in the last month, I haven't done a thing, and I don't know what will happen when he finds out... I have reached a point in my life where coding absolutely disgusts me. And I'm not alone - many programmers I know are in a similar position, some have even resorted to drugs to be able to work.
Not helping the fact is that my right wrist is starting to hurt. Sooner or later, I fear that it will require surgery.
Anyway, lately I've been into digital photography. I go out and take pretty pictures of people, animals, flowers, buildings... I love it, but I don't think I can make a career out of that. Who knows, though.
So my advice is that you find something that would classify as a backup plan, in case you wake up one morning, look yourself in the mirror and ask what the hell you're doing with yourself.
If it isnt the pay thats important to you, you may want to consider a balance, maintianing much of your free time yet finding new exciting projects to keep you busy where you are part of a team, and expected to fulfill your role in that team. look into a few things like your local LUG (linux users group) or http://sourceforge.net/. both are places always looking for help, and both are worthwhile causes, linux users groups because you can be part of your community, get out and be involved, and still write code for them. Sourceforge for becomming part of a team working on a new upcomming project, maybe they need exactly someone with your skill set and you'll help write the next apache. Sourceforge would probably be my second choice even though it is more directly related to writing code, because the LUG will find a person who knows what they are doing and is willing to help others around them as an invaluable asset, so you'll get that good feeling of helping your local community as well as still getting to code some.
Others have suggested finding an OSS project, which I want to add my support for. However you mentioned specifically that you need deadlines. For that I suggest finding a large project that puts out a roadmap and commits to releasing on schedule. I'm a fan of KDE, and right now they are developing KDE4 and porting all the KDE apps to QT4. There is plenty of work to do, and plenty of it can be done in reasonable clumps. Find a small app, convert it, and keep moving on. The QT4 framework seems pretty nifty and a nice thing to learn.
Personally, I'd love to see Shareaza ported to QT4. It is currently written on MFC, but none of the original developers are active anymore. The Shareaza team has discussed moving away from the MFC framework and rewritting the app for over 2 years, but no one has done it. QT4 would allow for the program to become multiplatform as opposed to being Windows only. It is the only P2P software package that I've seen that handles torrents, Gnutella, Gnutella2 and eDonkey all at the same time with a robust client. It allows you to easily configure discovery services, import security filters, the works. It truly is a great app, and you'd be my personal hero if you managed to port it.
That's my suggestion.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
If you use computers, I know that you have run into software that totally sucks. In fact, not only did it totally suck, but every piece of software that came close to doing that thing sucks. Or you have run into wanting to do something that simply no software out there does.
There are still LOADS of gaps like this anywhere from tiny utility software up to enterprise level stuff. Pick one. Whatever one bugs you the most. Write some really good software. Open source it and sell support. Or don't.. whatever. Just write good software.
So you need some deadlines to keep you going? Not uncommon. Have someone do it for you (isn't that what you would do by contracting?). Either get yourself a partner (preferably someone who is keen on handling all the _other_ parts of creating and running a company in exchange for the possible rewards) who is also a good deadline-setter and will not let you slack. Or hire yourself a business coach if you do want to try your hand at the other aspects of running a company and just want someone to egg you on.
Read Paul Graham's essays for encouragement and why starting your own software company is (still) a good idea. http://www.paulgraham.com/
Oh yeah - ALSO find yourself another engaging hobby or two. They must involve at least the following:
Social interaction. Yes you need this. You cannot work in front of a computer at work and do programming all day and then come home and do it all night. Your boss made that rule for a _reason_ . In order for your creative programming side to flow the rest of your mind must be fed. If you just program all day every day for primary job and then your side job your productivity will drop like a rock. This should ideally involve more than one person - a significant other will severely cut into the time you can spend on the stuff you need (socializing with more than 1 person and getting outdoors (see below)). It is a trade off.
Get out. Out of the house. Out of buildings. Gardening maybe. Or hiking. Bicycling. Whatever appeals really. This is important for all the same reasons that social interaction is. It will tend to give your mind a break from thinking too heavily and the opportunity for creative thoughts to bubble up. It will also keep your body healthier. Not Olympic gymnast healthier. Heck - gardening will leave you a fat slob (if you are, and want to remain so), but it will bring your health up a slight notch nevertheless. If you want to be time-efficient, find a hobby that combines social activity plus getting out - this would possibly allow the space to date. But I do feel that doing something relatively mindless (BUT NOT IN FRONT OF A SCREEN - no video games and no TV. They are not mindless enough) is also fairly important even if it is only for a short amount of time..but regularly. At least once per week. Heck - just sit outside in a lawn chair in the sun and make chain mail. No thought involved, but you get fresh air and sun.
Remember, the hobby must be engaging enough that you will continue to do it in spite of the pull to spend all of your time in front of the computer. Try out a few and see which one sticks with you for a while. Plop a reminder in your calendar a few months down the line to start the programming part (ie: don't get so sucked into the hobby that it cuts off your original plans). Plop a reminder in your calendar a few months down the line to re-examine your hobby(ies).
Yes, this will severely cut back on the total amount of time that you spend in front of the computer programming. In fact, you might get only a tiny bit of code done per week (best done in extended-concentration burst I know - maybe one weeknight and 6-8 straight hours on one weekend day). But it will be much higher quality and you will get a LOT more done during that time.
If you are concerned about the time issues and you happen to watch TV cut it out. Watching TV fulfills neither of the requirements for a healthy body and mind needed for programming. If
Start a side business.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
There are TONS of Free Software projects that Need Your help.
You can impose deadlines on yourself. And you probably should if that is the way your mind works.
Just make sure that missing the self imposed deadline has some real repercussions.
No cafeine for a month or something like that.
Seriously though. Get A Life. Find A Wife. Have some children. Watch them grow. Go with the flow. Try to remain sane til then.
Children can easily fill your empty hours. They are the most challenging programming (education) project you are likely to have ever worked at.
Contribute to free open source software. There is lots of projects out there. I bet you can find something that interests you. If you are happy with your current salery, then why do you need to get payed for doing it? Be happy that you help making the world a better place when developing free open source software.
thomasdamgaard.dk.
Well, ya know, there's internet in India...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm trying to find some kind of a side job that pays whatever money,
Why do you need extra money when you say you are happy with your pay,
and evidently don't have much to spend it on anyway?
If it has to be computer work, do some for a good cause that needs your
help, or work on something fun you don't get a chance to wrestle with at
work, or just make something that you think ought to exist, but forget
about the money.
If I can tempt you away from the keyboard for a second:
Learning a new skill is a good way to provide the ind of focus that
some people need in order to enoy free time. There must be some sort
of language (human), sport, game, instrument, craft, artistic activty,
or alternate profession that you would like to master or dabble in?
If you have all those boring nights to expend, you have a good chance
of progressing rapidly in whatever catches your interest.
Some people even have personal regimens of "learn something new
every (other?) year" or similar, which may be of help if it has to
"feel like work/a project" to motivate you.
Some skills require or invite you to meet and interact with people
for learning them. This is great if "just meeting" new people in
purely social contexts is diffiult or bothers you, since here
everyone's focus is still mostly on the task.
sudo ergo sum
Yes, you are right! Dialup was popular in India till a few years before. Providers like BSNL, Airtel have started providing broadband (starting at 256kbps), neverthless a good speed to start with. It has pulled quite a lot of students into freelancing...
I'm an Indian student. I find RentACoder extremely useful. With a week's effort, i can fund my semester. The only problem I face is during transferring funds (from paypal, which takes more than an month). Competition is quite high and that forces people to bid at lower prices, atleast to make some money instead of doing nothing. Now that I have subscribed to Broadband, i have to make atleast $15 worth work per month to compensate my extra payment for broadband....
it moves on...
If you're not motivated enough to type "freelance programing" into Google or search Craigslist, you're not cut out for "off hours" contract work. You even say yourself you're not good at self motivation. Do you think your client is going to call you at 11:00 pm to keep you motivated?
A good contractor is self motivated and can produce quality work without having someone getting in their hair all day. They also have more availability than "after hours". Are you ready/able to handle client communication during your business day? When the contract project goes into crunch time, are you willing to let your day job suffer? Or give your part time job the finger? Are you familiar with the 1040 form and the schedule C?
If you are not fully committed to it, please do the rest of us a favor and don't bother. We don't need the bad rep. But if you are, go out there and take a big bite, and we're glad to have you, it can be very fun and rewarding.
You sometimes go to movies without your girlfriend?
You should treat her better!
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
if motivation is your issue then volunteer to help a charity. Good IT help is hard to find for these kinds of operations and you can go to sleep at night happy that you've helped others less fortunate.
Well, if you know anything about windows driver programming, why don't you click the link on my sig and help me and my project with what's left to do? Otherwise look at the sourceforge.net "jobs" thing (although it's unpaid).
But huh, as all the others said, you need to get a life, and if you really suck at hookin up with girls in a club or something, find yourself one on Myspace or something (whatever people say about Myspace out here it's still the best thing on internet to meet girls), unless you're married (which I hope your not)
You just got troll'd!
Repeat after me "Old World. New World. Third World."
I'm sorry to be pedantic, but this is one of my pet peeves.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
and a girl works for him called Molly
But I will quote Mallrats when I say "What you need is a fatty-boom-batty blunt, and I guarantee you'll be seeing a sailboat, an ocean, and maybe even some of those big-titted mermaids doing some of that lesbian shit."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
My current project, negotiated independently: $2000. Lines of code: approx. 4000
Rent-a-Coder: ripoff. Only reason I bother is that I can say I have worked as a programmer before. I am sorry if I insult people from India, but essentially, Indian coders turned RAC into a piece of crap. In addition, I have noticed a lot of foreign coders who do things like copy/paste GPL code into a non-GPL project, something which would ruin my reputation here in New York. Yeah, I know the laws of India are different, but unfortunately, the buyer who intends to resell that code must abide by US law -- and those who even notice the discrepancy don't come back to RAC looking for American work, they say, "RAC is shit and nearly ruined my business" and leave. Don't misunderstand me, I am all for GPL code and am an exclusive Linux user, but the laws and business views of this country do not agree with me.
Palm trees and 8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
Being pedantic is fine, as long as you're correct.
I have been in the same boat you are. As a web developer I have approched small businesses in the area and started a name for myself making them their websites such as the Local bird store (I love my parrots, I have 4) and my brother's company (booksacrossamerica.com - small plug hehe) and a car audio place... Just as an on the side type of jobs... they know I will not update their sites during normal business hours and I make like $500 a site here and there and it keeps me motivated to learn new things and look outward for new things to do while not at work.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Boom Headshot!
Lord DumbAss.
The original usage was:
- First World: Countries aligned with the West (e.g. US, Western Europe)
- Second World: Countries aligned with the Soviet Bloc
- Third World: non-aligned countries
The whole "Old Word", New World", Third World" thing is a neologism at best, an ignorant fabrication at worst.
And, if he is like some geeks, it's hard as hell or else just not interesting to do 90% of the stuff you listed.
I don't give a shit for dancing, because I think it's a useless expedinture of time. I've done horrible in relationships, because I think it's all useless emotional blackmail.
The "see a movie" advice is plain bad -- a good movie hasn't been released in years.
Arguably, coding is useless too, but it happens to be one of the useless things I can focus on and enjoy. I'd be surprised if this guy doesn't feel the same.
This is what the guy likes. Give him a break.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I wouldn't necessarily assume they're oversees. A lot of them are just people trying to get into programming and looking for projects to do, and they're litterally willing to work for free. But they usually fail to complete their projects, and the owners normally end up either throwing the project out altogether or they go looking for a better programmer. I used to do a lot of freelance work, and I'd say 50-60% of my work was from someone who said the last guy they hired was unable to make progress and asked for assurance I could complete a task. So focus on your ability to actually program.
I work for the State and we are not allowed to work another job in the same field. I have no idea why or how it would be enforced. I thought about taking my 6 weeks of vacation and going to Iraq as a contractor. Great money. But the university stomped it flat, especially since I was on their insurance. I can understand that.
So I do volunteer web work for no-profits.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Don't be too qujick to blame those pesky foreigners. It's also likely that the majority of applicants were simply more skilled than you. The difference between a coder who is still in college and a professional with 5 or ten years of experience is immense.
You say this was a simple CS lab type project. It is very likely that some of the coders already had usable code in their own library to accomplish the purpose of this task.
I personally have bid 8 hours on projects which would be considered complete network applications. I know in college these projects would have taken me 2-3 weeks to complete. Which is why I can get projects bidding 10x that per hour now.
Regards,
----- 70% of all statistics are completely made up.
There's the old saying about people on their deathbed- no one ever wishes they spent more time at work.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
The question I have to ask is how you got away with that for 6 whole months?!!
... the site uses *gasp* frames. *wink*
When I met my wife to be, I was at my computer easily 14+ hrs a day. Now after 6 years of marriage, I can hardly get 14 worry free minutes! Worth the trade off to have a loving wife.
I'd post a link to my wedding site, but last time I did that I got mega flamed... not my wife mind you
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I have found that many people were glad I was from the US, spoke English, and was available at roughly the same hours as themselves.
There are plenty of opportunities on RAC, you just have to keep bidding. I highly recommend it.
So far in this thread people have mentioned:
Guru.com
TopCoder.com
RentACoder.com
Two other sites I've heard of (but haven't used -- they were recommended to me):
ProgrammingBids.com
Sologigs.com
Just thought I'd share. If someone has used these two sites, please let me know, as I'm considering working some freelance stuff (to help support my gf in grad school).
If you're going to be taking on multiple projects, especially if they are short and all under different contracts (or even if you have different charge numbers at work, which you probably won't until you work for a larger firm) you're going to need something that helps you accurately report your hours worked and progress made. The best (GUI-like) application I've found is GnoTime (http://gttr.sourceforge.net/), but it is no longer being developed and is in a woeful state. I'd recommend giving this some polish before trying to juggle all your new programming tasks. In addition to Doing Good(tm), you can use this as an example of your skillset to prospective contracts.
I recommend that you use your spare time to study for some kind of exam. Collect more papers for your CV
Lars
To scratch my technical itch outside of work, I work technical theater (among other things). You get to play with geeky toys, and possibly get paid for it, along with the social experience of working in the theater system. If you don't have any experience in it, your local community theater is probably looking for stagehands, from which you could work your way up to sound or lighting.
How do I find side jobs? By asking around. Most small (and very tiny) businesses have some needs that you are the prime person to fill. You need to be prepared to "do it all" for Invoice work. That means they will give you a hand wavy requirement (e.g. "We need to have a database on the web for our customers" [note that they most likely don't *know* what a "database" is - they may mean a spreadsheet or something they saw]). It's up to you to write up a requirements doc and give them an estimate. If they're interested, then the *real* requirements and tech spec, help files, et. al. And then you do the work by the deadline, cut them an invoice, and Voila! Extra Cash! And don't forget to report it on your taxes (Schedule C and SE for you U.S. denizens).
Your pet peeve is either wrong, or needs to be explained better. The OP used the term "first world" correctly, and it has nothing to do with "Old World" or "New World" except in the sense that it has "world" in it. Unless you're 70+ years old, in which case you can think of it as another newfangled term the young'uns are using lately (where "lately" means "any time after 1950").
That's what you really want, your job is too comfortable, too predictable, too much happens right. Every once in a while we want and need a project that's crashing and burning but savable, to give us that "mighty mouse" "here I come to save the day" rush and the deeper sense of accomplishment that comes from being able to say "if it was easy, then anybody could have done it, but I had a lot of help from the team". Too many and you become a burned-out crispy critter, too few and you become unsatified and unchallenged.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It isn't healthy to mix what you do with your free time with what you do during work hours.
Just because it's programming doesn't mean it's the same thing. Of course one should have other interests, but if it weren't for hobby programming we wouldn't be having this discussion here today.
I know guys who have been writing mainframe reports for 20 years, but go home and groove in Objective-C. It's a good way to not lose your sugar-daddy job when they decide to go modern.
While I'm posting, it would be great if somebody went out and setup a wiki for employment FAQ's for the open source crowd. Cover NDA's, incentive stock plans, moonlighting, getting paid, and all the other stuff that comes up here every few weeks or so.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
tinker with the code of life.
tidokoro
what turns a man's karma neutral? lust for gold? power? or just a heart born full of neutrality?
My last full-time position ended when my boss found an empty, one-page web page owned by me and assumed I was Building An Empire To Crush His Company (yup, seriously). Well, he didn't like me and needed an excuse, but whatever, he got it.
:)
If you're going to do work on the side, make sure your boss has no claim to it. Look at all the agreements you've signed. If you don't have copies, request them. If you're clear, keep the Golden Rule of Moonlighting in mind - don't tell anyone at the day job what you do at night. People will use the information as currency in their quest to gain influence, and it's pretty easy to twist things to make you appear less loyal to the corp if you work on stuff at home - especially if they see you answering your cellphone in the office or SSH-ing to domains you own.
My suggestion - don't bother. If your workplace isn't challenging enough for you, leave and do something else. If you can live with your job, though, and you're enjoying the stable income, there's nothing wrong with that either - take up rock climbing or something, with someone you DON'T work with. Computers should take up no more than 9 or 10 hours of your weekdays, there is more to life
Good luck!
I don't know if you have kids. It doesn't matter, really. Find a kid in your family or circle of friends & see if they're interested in learning to program. Teach them about open source, Linux, etc. Maybe use video game development as the hook.
http://www.rentacoder.com?
http://www.programmingbids.com/
If you're against the FOSS idea, you should be able to find something here that pays.
When I'm feeling down, I like to whistle. It makes the neighbor's dog run to the end of his chain and gag himself.
Wow... didn't know anyone else suffered from this...
This same thing happened to me several years back. I was a happy Java engineer working on a JSP project and I just couldn't program anymore. I just ended up trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life until they eventually laid me off.
I haven't held a programming job since. I moved over half a step to low-level IT and am slowly working my way back to coding. Just Javascript and some PHP for now; easy, basic stuff. I still don't know if I could write a real application of any complexity again.
Coding is a hard train to catch. Once you've left it, your skills quickly become outdated.
If you're staring in the mirror, trying to figure out what you're going to do with yourself, it's time for a change. Don't wait.
Parent is completely correct about Rent-A-Coder etc (and there are many more) We get a lot of work from such places, but it's a lot of work GETTING the work - more than it is doing the work, usually. This isn't the kind of investment for someone who wants to program for fun.
Regarding the gp comment - I want to work less and feel less pressure to make money, so that I have more time - to work on the programming projects that I WANT to work on. I do plenty of other things with my life, but programming is wonderful and powerful and expressive and I'd still like to do more of it than I do. Furthermore, programming is broad - you can go home and do very significantly different things than you do at work.
If OP (or someone else) is good at what they do and interested, email me (use a subject like Slashdot Resume) or reply to this with some way to contact you. We have a steady stream of these smaller projects, we have many that would be appropriate for you to do in the evenings and we'd take care of the non-programming management for you.
Some sibling post mentioned programmers trying to find someone to do this business side - this is a big part of what we do.
(Furthermore we have at least one and possibly more projects that are definitely targetted at making the world a better place, if that adds to your preference for working on those projects.)
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Life isn't defined by kind of work or how much you work. I see hundreds of unhappy engineers everyday at work. High stress, anxiety, obesity, and loss of hair/marketable skills to pay the bills is ending a lot of careers. Learn a few foreign languages so that you can work on many different types of software projects here and abroad. Don't work for free!
http://jobs.perl.org
1) This is Slashdot. Predictable jokes are allowed here. If you'd made more than 4 posts you'd know this.
2) "I live with a woman" is a funny way to say "I live with my girlfriend / lover / life-partner". My Mom is a woman and "woman" is a word I might use to refer to her, to someone like her, or of her age, or to my landlady, to a customer of mine, or a female I met in the street who I wasn't attracted to. A female I happened to meet whom I am attracted to I would probably call a "girl" or a "lady".
3) If I was writing this from my parent's basement, then that would've made my joke one at my own expense, yes? We do that here.
In particular, posting to the "Ask Slashdot" section is considered to be setting yourself up as a target. I don't believe in flaming someone for posting here, but old and predictable gags are, to me, what makes Slashdot great. With his phrasing - as I explained in (2) above - your hubby was REALLY setting himself up for that - this search will show you a typical example of "the Slashdot humour" and other ways that he can set himself up for similar gags in the future.
I'm really trying not to be confrontational in writing this reply to you. If your reply had made a joke at my expense then I would have laughed about it &/or tried for a witty rejoinder. I mean, the logical answer your question, am I writing from my parents' basement is "duh! yes. where else?". The subtitle of this site is "News for nerds, stuff that matters" and those of us who don't live in our parents' basements pretend to. As it is, I'm reading your reply as having taken offence over comment which is so obviously trivial in the context of Slashdot, and reading you as having gotten snitty at me in response, and I'm struggling not to be catty back at you.
Oh, and BTW my opinion is that your bloke should get himself known to an open-source project and take the opportunity to do some good with his coding skillz. It sounds like he doesn't really need the money from a second job and this would allow fulfil his criteria for deadlines, because many larger OSS projects do set release dates that they try to keep to. OSS projects vary in how formal they are & some would be pleased to see his CV, others would expect him to pick some open bugs in their database and submit patches in order to make himself "known". Becoming an "authoritative" source in an OSS field is very satisfying - although I don't code myself, I have written a couple of long HOWTOs - I'm a little proud to think they're comprehensive (or were when I wrote them - I can't be arsed to maintain them), it's kinda cool to see my own work come up as a top hit when I Google for something and it's satisfying when I get emails from people saying that they've found my work useful. Your partner would surely find a project that interested him if he browsed through Sourceforge, and find many projects that not only really valued his skills, whether that turned out to be working on a database back-end or a Windows port of an instant-messenger, but also helped him to expand them. Be warned, tho', that OSS projects, at least the larger ones that have the formal release schedules that might suit your guy, tend to have ego conflicts occasionally; you can't please all of the people all of the time and he needs to be prepared to shrug it off & say "that guy's an idiot" when someone criticises all the hard work he's done for nothing. It's no big deal - it happens.
Stroller.
Pound the pavement and do some moonlighting. Overcharge for your services. You obviously don't need the work that badly. Ask for a high rate. You might just get it. Make it twice what you'd normally ask an employer. Don't waste your time online. Go meet with people face to face. Put a professional front to your work. Get a couple of those 'me too' sales books for tips. You've got nothing to lose.
The real money in business is not in selling your skills. The money kicks in when you can package those skills as a service to other business. How many quasi-techie people do you know that run second-rate consulting businesses. Their service stinks. However, they package it to the customer.
If entrepenuership doesn't float your boat, find an exotic project to work on. Build a simple desktop search engine. How about an OSS OCR program. How about something involving speech recognition. Better yet, take some graduate courses. Many universities (IIUC, Columbia, FSU) have distance learning MSCS degrees. Stanford, JHU, CMU, and most state schools have some sort of evening courses as well. That little pet project of yours (or your advisor) may end up being your thesis. Just make an OSS project out of something.
I don't disagree with the other posters that said you should go out and enjoy yourself. However, if you are young and motivated, there's no reason to damper your enthusiasm. Work will do that all on it's own.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
If you need something to occupy your mind may I suggest booze, it's great with friends or alone and after a while you won't have so much of a mind to worry about. If you're not the drinking type there's also drugs, same basic end but with better visuals.
If you still want to work for other people, see craigslist.org. I pick up around two new clients a month there.
really, though, especially if you already have enough money, buy a VPS and write a webapp. If the dayjob needs more time, eh, you can always delay the webapp. Hosting these days is almost free. Heck, if you have a good idea, e-mail me and I'll give you hosting in exchange for a hosted on a prgmr.com Xen VPS link.
I've used Kasamba.com to hire programmers for small projects I didn't have time to complete myself. There is a Kasamba competitor, but the name doesn't come to mind.