Getting Started With Part-Time Development Work?

fortapocalypse writes "I'm getting paid a good salary as a Java developer and the hours are great. It is also very stable, which means something in today's economy, especially with a family to feed. However, I'm very unmotivated both because of the work that I do, which is boring, and because the organization I work for is highly political, disorganized, and lacks accountability. I've done what I could to try to change things at work and have pretty much given up on that. I want to go out on my own, either starting my own company or just working as a contractor doing Java development, but I'm not sure of the best way to get started, and my family needs the stability of my current job. I'd really like to start out part-time at 5-15 hours a week to use it as supplemental income (which my family could really use at the moment), but I really don't know where to start. I doubt many contracting agencies would be interested in a part-time worker. What would you suggest for someone in my position?"

Comments

Best of both worlds

[ilovegeorgebush]

As you're probably aware, Freelance Contracting can be quite profitable and allow you to get a decent wage and time off. I've heard of plenty of people that work 3 months, take 3 months off etc. If you were to go this route, you'd need to ensure the following:

• Your qualifications match your experience. JEE developer? Get SCWCD at least
• If you're not in a large city, or near one that has a decent size business district, be prepared to travel
• Sign up with a large but respectable contracting agency

I'm not sure what part-time work is available in the IT industry: contracting would probably be the most representative of what you're requiring.

Failing that, try and get qualifications and see if your current employer will support you financially (training, certification, degree?). If you're improving your CV, they may be more inclined to give you different work.

Don't.

[Escogido]

Just don't.

What you're saying pretty much translates into 'I want to work more and get paid less.'

If that is exactly what you're looking for, then be my guest.

Otherwise... like I said, don't. If you're tired, get a vacation, for chrissake.

Re:Don't.

[jcnnghm]

Being self employed is, in many ways, the same as being permanently unemployed.

Good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

.. I'm very unmotivated both because of the work that I do, which is boring, and because the organization I work for is highly political, disorganized, and lacks accountability.

You've just described every job I ever had.

Don't quit

[Animats]

We're at the beginning of the Second Great Depression. If you have a job that you think will survive the depression, keep it. Even if it sucks. Ten years ago, you could have moved to a hot job at a fun dot-com in a week. Not now. Google just had a layoff. Microsoft is rumored to be laying off 17,000 people.

US manufacturing activity is now down to its lowest level since 1948. That's right, we've lost 60 years of growth. It's going to be a long recession. Japan's housing bubble popped in 1989, and twenty years later, Japan still hasn't recovered. The Nikkei index is around a quarter of its peak in the 1980s. That's what a crash in housing looks like. Japan also has a better "safety net" than the US does in the post-Reagan era.

If you're bored, code something in your spare time. Read books on dealing with dysfunctional organizations; over time, you might be able to improve the place.

Re:Don't quit

[cheezedawg]

US manufacturing activity is now down to its lowest level since 1948. That's right, we've lost 60 years of growth.

Good grief. If people misunderstand basic economic indicators as badly as you have, it is no wonder that they are so pessimistic about the current economy.

I assume you are basing your comment on todays release of the Manufacturing Index by the Institute for Supply Management because of this statement in the release:

"New orders have contracted for 13 consecutive months, and are at the lowest level on record going back to January 1948."

That is the index for new orders- not the overall index for manufacturing. That overall manufacturing index is at 32.4%, which is a horribly low number, but not as bad as the recession in 1980. And none of these indexes describe an absolute level of manufacturing activity like you seem to think. The indexes are derived through surveying manufacturers and asking them if they expect to expand or contract their activity levels in the next quarter. An index of 32.4% means that almost one third of the manufacturers surveyed still expect to see some expansion. It has nothing to do with 60 years of growth.

I've learned to lower my expectations for honest reporting of the economy- especially when current political leaders are unpopular. Just this morning in the local news one of their headlines was that 1 in 5 local businesses were planning on laying off employees this year. The article was full of doom and gloom about unemployment and the economy, but buried at the very end they mentioned that "only" 16% of businesses planned to hire new employees during that same timeframe- almost the same % as were planning on laying off employees. Good grief.

What would your employer think?

[Samschnooks]

Many employers do not want their people to moonlight. They may even fire you over it. And these days, with all these folks who are out of work doing exactly what you're thinking of doing, you will have plenty of competition - meaning, your rate will suck unless you have experience doing some very specialized work.

This is NOT a very good time to take risks with your employment.

Re:Mix Fun and Fair

[oskard]

Dude, he's just showing a website/service he made. He's proud of it, and it sounds like it would actually be helpful in this instance. Why call him out? Just get over it.

Re:urk.

[moderatorrater]

Part time work doesn't pay the bills unless you're getting more than about $35 an hour

Freelance PHP coders (of which I know several) can easily make $75 / hr, $125 with some experience and a decent customer base. I'd be surprised if java coders couldn't beat that quite easily. The trick is building a customer base, which starts to take care of itself after a while if you do a good job.

Re:Mix Fun and Fair

[FishWithAHammer]

Rent-a-coder is a joke. Crap developers writing crap code for clients who think $200 for a full CRM is a reasonable price. Hell no.

Re:I need java developers.

[infinite9]

My company needs Java developers. We're looking to build a list of available contractors to do work over the next year as demand for our services grows. If you want to work in S. Florida, e-mail me.

I'm sure there are similar opportunities elsewhere. You just have to find them. A recruiter might be a good place to start.

Why does he have to work in south florida? Can't he work anywhere? He's writing software, not painting houses.

For software development, and a lot of other professions, we really need to get out of this location based mind-set. It's totally unnecessary. It's a waste of time commuting. It's a waste of energy commuting. It's a waste of gas, office space, the expense of computers in the office, space on public transportation, business clothes. It goes on and on. We should all be working from home.

Advice from Employer and Contractor

[Geisel]

There are several things you can do to get started and there are plenty of places where you can make very good money working part-time. Here are some of the important points I've found working both as a contractor as well as an employer who hires contractors.

#1 Learn the business as well as the development.
    You can be a great developer and not make money (see any of the previous "Contracting sucks" posts). Improve your networking skills and just start talking to people, be willing to fail occasionally in order to succeed.

#2 Start with online sites.
    It sounds like you're not ready to make a move from your current job (see #3), so you may want to start with some online sites. I use ODesk to look for potential contractors and have considered using it for jobs. There are plenty of sites out there which help facilitate matching developer skills with company needs.

#3 Be willing to move when the time is right.
    Most of my clients came from full-time contracts or previous employers I had worked with. If you're good, you just need ways for people to see that and you'll never go hungry again :-)

#4 Don't be afraid to raise your rate.
    This is actually a two-way street. If you set a low rate, I assume you suck. You are also not happy b/c after a while you realize 15 hours probably *is* worth more than $150 (before taxes). If you don't know what others are charging, do some research and ask questions. Don't be a jerk, but don't be afraid of the social faux pas of asking money questions. Ask employers what they pay an average Java developer with your experience. Generally, I charge an 80% to 100% premium over a salary for hourly work (i.e., 100,000 / yr = $48/hr. $100,000 salary would instead charge an $86 - $96 hourly rate). YMMV

And finally, try to spend less time reading our posts (loosely known as "advice") and more time building your clientele! ;-)

-geis

P.S. This advice is not for developers who suck. If you suck, unsuck (read, learn, do, repeat) first.

Re:No way.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What you're missing is that they can get that work done for $250 or less.

No, they can't. Not even outsourcing to (competent) people in lower-paying countries would get you close to that. But since the average person posting a job spec on sites like that thinks they've got the world's best idea but will drop it as soon as they realise they're being wildly unrealistic, it doesn't really cost anyone anything.

Re:I need java developers.

[mangobrain]

It's totally unnecessary. It's a waste of time commuting. It's a waste of energy commuting. It's a waste of gas, office space, the expense of computers in the office, space on public transportation, business clothes. It goes on and on. We should all be working from home.

That may sound like a nice ideal, but there are many reasons that working from home isn't (yet?) a given.

I think you underestimate the importance of being able to walk up to a colleague and work with them face-to-face. The trouble with your ideal is that "work", in this context, rarely - if ever - just means writing code: it can mean giving someone a helping hand with a bit of debugging, going over design documents, giving feedback on a demo, performing knowledge transfer, or simply taking a break and having a chat. These things needn't be as formal as they sound: I quite often offer to help just because I can hear someone else's cries of anguish, or get asked to cast an eye over something for a minute or two simply because I'm there and my opinions are valued. A lot of this stuff just wouldn't happen if we weren't sat in the same building.

Coming back to that throwaway comment regarding opinions, how do you create an accurate picture of a person's abilities - especially those which may be of use, but are not part of their job description - without spending time with them?

There are also pure practical concerns. Being able to look over someone's shoulder at their monitor/piece of paper; body language; the ability to physically show someone what you mean during moments of confusion because they're *there*.

On the other side of the coin, there are also reasons why somebody may not want to work from home. I enjoy having the option to go to lunch with my co-workers; I like knowing who people are at meetings and release parties; I don't like my one year old daughter coming over to pester me and can't move my computer out of the living room because I can't afford anywhere bigger than this crappy two-bedroom flat; VMware over a VPN sucks. I have worked from home and I don't enjoy it.

If you could honestly do your job just as well as you do it now without physical contact with any of your colleagues, you aren't doing it right, you work for a "software factory", and/or your office environment is all wrong.

In closing, I'd like to offer up the idea that perhaps this thread isn't as off-topic as it may at first seem. The whole concept of part-time development work (which, if you're still holding down a full-time job, I assume means working from home) being somehow more satisfying than full-time work is slightly alien to me: unless you're writing cookie-cutter code, so well-defined as to be rather boring to churn out, it will take the majority of those 15 hours a week simply dealing with the practicalities of getting to know the code and other developers you're working with. You really think working this way could be more organised, more accountable and less political?