Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work?

224 points by shinypenguin 1 year ago | 174 comments

Hello HN

In a short form question: If you do, where do you look for a short time projects?

I'd like to put my skill set to use and work on a project, I'm available for 6-9 months. The problem seems to be for me, that I cannot find any way of finding such project.

I'm quite skilled, I have 15 years of experience, first 3 as a system administrator, then I went full on developer - have been full stack for 2 of those years, then switched my focus fully on the backend - and ended up as platform data engineer - optimizing the heck out of systems to be able to process data fast and reliably at larger scale.

I already went through UpWork, Toptal and such and to my disappointment, there was no success to be found.

Do you know of any project boards, or feature bounty platforms, that I could use to find a short time project?

Thank you for your wisdom :)

paxys 1 year ago |

Having the right technical skills is only 50% of the requirement (and realistically even less than that). The harder battle is being a good salesman. Push yourself and your services at every opportunity. Send mass emails to friends and old collegues. Write daily puke-inducing posts on LinkedIn. Write blog posts and make toy Github projects with "looking for work" blurbs at the top of each one. Set a goal to post N times a day on X/Threads/LinkedIn/Reddit/wherever else you can think of, and hit those targets. Keep doing all of this for an extended period of time and the leads will start flowing in. Then you need to start putting even more effort into closing those leads and signing contracts.

ryandrake 1 year ago | |

Ugh. This is probably one of those "Thanks, I hate it!" moments. You're probably 100% right, and this is why I could never be an independent contractor. This kind of self-promotion and lead generation seems so demeaning, slimy, and shameful, and I'd probably die of embarrassment if I ever had to do it. Yet it comes so naturally to some people. It sucks that this kind of skill is required to make it on your own.

kmoser 1 year ago | | |

Independent contractor here. Admittedly, it's not for everybody. But once you've built up a base of clients who need your services regularly, you don't need to keep seeking more, at least not at nearly the same rate. Also, word of mouth will keep people coming to you. The reality is that I almost never have to sell myself. But I've been doing this for decades, and YMMV.

Of course, your ability to do this will be somewhat dependent on your stomach for communicating with strangers who come your way.

ghaff 1 year ago | | |

How else would anyone actually know that you were available? And that they should give you money?

And, even if you get referred, you still need to seal the deal.

And even within a larger company, unless someone like your manager more or less does it for you, "advertising" your accomplishments is pretty essential if you want anyone to reward your accomplishments.

aaronbaugher 1 year ago | | |

Yeah, it's definitely a separate set of skills, and probably not one that typically fits personality-wise with the typical computer guru set. I was self-employed for a couple decades, and while I usually didn't go hungry because it paid well when I was working, the work that walked in the door on its own never got me ahead either.

No one's fault but my own, but I should have realized a lot sooner that real success would require a lot more proactive "sales" effort; and that if I wasn't willing to do that, I needed to go work for someone else a lot sooner than I finally did.

quectophoton 1 year ago | | |

The way I would describe it is: "How do you like applying to new jobs and doing interviews? Now imagine that being half your job."

jraph 1 year ago | | |

> Yet it comes so naturally to some people.

Maybe, but I think many (most?) people doing it don't like having to do it, and for many people, it's probably not that natural. It's practice, learned and trained skills.

> I'd probably die of embarrassment if I ever had to do it.

If it's because a lack of self-confidence, work on this, being reasonably self-confident makes life so much more enjoyable.

Otherwise, I believe this embarrassment would be ill-placed, and therefore I would suggest, if you haven't done it already, that you think hard on why. And if you've already done that, I'm quite interested in the deep reasons why you think you'd be so embarrassed :-)

> This is probably one of those "Thanks, I hate it!" moments

Yep, can't agree more xD

doright 1 year ago | | |

I just see it as a "mask" you put on for a specific audience that has the potential to greatly increase your prospects and then take off everywhere else. At a certain point the prospects (not going broke) override any shame you could feel.

I don't think selling oneself is something that reflects on one's character given what's at stake. The important people who know who you really are will also treat that mask of yours as fake. But they could also play up your appeals in the LinkedIn comments section to ultimately improve your chances of... getting a job. Which is all that really matters at the end of the day.

fragmede 1 year ago | | |

It's totally cringe, and the first couple of times you have to do it it'll be uncomfortable. But growth happens at the edge of your comfort zone and you'd be mistaken that everyone's a born natural at it. Most people have to practice at it in order to get good at one. Few people just born with it. So what, you're not one of them. You weren't born knowing how to program either.

As far as slimy, I mean, yeah, don't break ethical boundaries; don't lie, don't take credit for other people's work; and it'll be fine. The ick feeling comes when we see others do amoral things like that and get ahead, but all you have to do to avoid that slimy feeling is to not lump all self-promotion together, and then just don't do the unethical bits.

rijoja 1 year ago | |

Won't you just get shitty clients if you write shitty posts if you excuse my french

AbstractH24 1 year ago | |

I'd add a 3rd requirement - scoping & project management, particularly when being "surgical" and coming into an existing project.

That's a skill I'm trying to learn, and not sure where to turn. If anyone has any advice.

sukiorigami 1 year ago |

I think your network is the best place to look for this sort of work. Sometimes people will reach out to me with short term projects which is the best way to get gigs like this. Maybe start looking at your colleagues on linkedin, see what they are up to, and think of ways to contribute to what they are working on. The best people to contact in this scenario are leadership and decision makers. A SWE II isn't gonna help you much but a CTO at an early stage startup might be a good person to send a DM if they are friends with you (or even if they aren't!) :)

thekevan 1 year ago | |

I've found when people ask this question, it's usually because they don't have a network to ask. Or, right or wrong, they just don't like the social aspect of going to their friends for work.

Nextgrid 1 year ago | | |

To be fair, there's a good argument for never mixing friends and business. You wouldn't want a project that goes wrong (which is a risk of doing business and somewhat expected and budgeted for on both sides) to jeopardize an friendship, and similarly you wouldn't want someone exploiting your friendship to get an unfair advantage in business (that they will often not reciprocate if the situation was reversed).

limbero 1 year ago |

I did this a few years ago and the winning recipe was a shameless (i.e. deeply shameful) linkedin post where I pretty much just summarized my skillset and explained that I was looking for a senior engineer equivalent of a summer internship, with no chance of extension.

Got me 3-4 offers. None of the offering companies had ads out for roles like this, so this was pretty much the only way.

ernestipark 1 year ago |

Your network is always the best bet to start. Leverage past co-workers who can vouch for you, reach out, let people know you're available.

If you're a part of YC or other similar investor/tech networks, often those are very strong referral networks.

Beyond that, there are various niche job boards and sites like https://www.fractionaljobs.io/, https://www.hirefraction.com/, marketerhire.com depending on the type of work you do.

Sites like upwork/toptal can be good but often are a race to the bottom.

Relevant: I started a newsletter a little while back exploring this space for tech workers

leros 1 year ago | |

I haven't found these fractional sites to be very useful for development work. The rates are low and the few dev jobs already have 100s of applications.

menaerus 1 year ago | | |

I see rates around $100 all the way up to $200. Is that really considered low in the States?

Nelkins 1 year ago |

Not to be too much of a recruiter, but I started a software consultancy where we get this kind of work. Typically projects that last a quarter, but with some potential for extending (although they also frequently just last a quarter). I actually have a project in the pipeline right now that I'm looking for a dev for (if I can't find one, I'll end up just taking on the work myself).

Email is in my profile if you want to connect :)

toptal 1 year ago |

CEO of Toptal here. If you like, I can ensure we review your profile and client matching history to see if there's anything we overlooked. I'm available on Slack or taso@toptal.com. We’ll see if we can optimize your visibility to clients needing backend/data optimization experts.

While we look into this, Opire (an open-source bounties site) has lots of short-term opportunities.

sampton 1 year ago |

It depends on how badly you need the money. If you really need to get paid you are probably better off finding a full time job and quit after 9 months. Otherwise invest the time in yourself. Work on a passion project or a blog.

prepend 1 year ago | |

Usually that will burn a bridge with that employer and look bad on your resume.

Much different career wise than having short term contracts that are designed around a specific job.

I know that companies don’t necessarily follow an ethical standard but I find that I can at least follow personal ethics and that’s within my control. I’ve always treated my employers like I would like to be treated, even if the employer was being a jerk.

Over 30 years I’ve found that people remember and it’s surprising how acting ethically sticks in people’s minds and comes back in positive yields. I like to think I’d act the same way no matter what, but it’s a plus that acting properly ends up being better in the long run.

eweise 1 year ago | | |

Ethics are great but so is feeding your family and paying your mortgage.

rsanek 1 year ago | | |

You don't have to add it to your resume, right? If you want to mention the work in future interviews, you can easily talk about it as short-term contracting work.

I'm not sure what's wrong ethically about it though? Is it that you wouldn't have provided enough value to the firm in 9 months?

zetazzed 1 year ago |

In a past startup, we had at least one person apply to our regular job postings with a cover that transparently said "I know this is a full-time, long-term posting, but I really want to be a contractor for a bounded time." Since it was a great fit and they were available right away (and we urgently needed more people), we made the "hire" and ended up working together for a while. Only worked because it was quite transparent and up front in the application though.

aylmao 1 year ago | |

There's plenty of comments about searching one's network, but I was looking for a comment that mentioned this. Startups do tend to prefer permanent full-timers, but hiring the right person takes time and startups also very much like getting the work done.

At one point I was unsure about joining a startup and it was them who suggested doing a temporary contract as a way to test the waters. In that case it was only a week but it was also enough for me to decide to join full-time. If joining full-time is a possibility you'd consider, I'd also mention that to the startup early on.

reaperducer 1 year ago |

Look in unexpected places, like temp agencies.

I was once in a similar position as you. I signed up with an agency that specialized in placing people in temporary jobs in creative companies. (Ad agencies, design studios, architecture firms, etc.). I ended up with a temporary web dev position that turned into a full-scale full-time warehouse automation job.

Once they see you're reliable and can think, many non-tech companies will find places where your skills can be put to use.

Tech is everywhere. Look outside the SV bubble.

_ink_ 1 year ago |

Everybody says your network. Is this an US thing? Everyone in my network is employed in bigger or smaller companies. They might search for a full-time hire, but not for project work. Is this different in the EU or is my network too small?

lnsru 1 year ago | |

In Germany freelance work is killed by “Scheinselbstständigkeit”. Authorities will eventually require to pay some taxes afterwards if you have only one client. Both from freelancer and the company. Companies don’t want that and shady body leasing agencies are thriving. The people from these agencies have separate offices and companies go sometimes too far to separate real employees and rented staff. Network does not help much.

creer 1 year ago | |

Bigger or smaller companies is exactly who hires consultants and contractors (yes, medium too).

A few companies aim for full time only - but I don't feel that's many. Some companies have overall contracts and outsource to specific services companies - and will rarely consider individuals (both US and Europe).

Your network is not people who will necessarily hire you for a project. They are people who might at some point know something.

Your network should also include other consultants and contractors who are likely to be over- or under-worked at any time and could use your help.

zhs 1 year ago |

You could check out https://www.gofractional.com, it's built for this kind of thing.

murph 1 year ago |

Try former employers.

You've already got context, know the stack, whatever.

They might be happy to have a known contributor solve some problem or project for them.

ryandrake 1 year ago |

A lot of people are probably going to reply with "Use your network!" which has always struck me as kind of vaguely incomplete and unhelpful advice. It's like telling an investor "Buy low and sell high." and leaving it at that. OK, thank you, Captain Obvious, that's wonderful, but how?

Maybe it's different in the independent contracting world, but I've found my "network" only semi-helpful in gaining employment. They can give good ideas about companies to try, they can help you refine your resume, and do interview coaching, and if you're lucky they work at the same company you want to apply for so can submit your resume with the "recommend" box ticked, but that's all they seem to be able to do. I've never once had someone in my network who had his hands directly on the "hire this man!" lever at the company.

weitendorf 1 year ago | |

I think someone in OP’s situation is likely to have several friends and acquaintances that are at least engineering managers at this point in their career, who in many companies (not huge ones) can have a lot of influence over hiring. If you work in startups and stuff it’s highly possible that some friend or acquaintance is a founder that is currently hiring.

The main reason I’d second the advice to use their network is that I get tons and tons of unsolicited contact from developer contracting firms and basically don’t trust any of them. The only people I have contracted with are people I knew already and trusted. Also, if I did end up paying contract developers who I didn’t trust already, I’d still probably not be willing to pay any of them exceptionally unless they were a known entity, whereas someone I trust already would be less of a financial risk since I’d have a sense of what value they’d actually add.

Anyway, I think the answer to your problem is “build your network” but I always found that advice kind of silly. The actual valuable parts of your network are people who you’ve built relationships with while working, which is more of an incidental than deliberate process in most cases. I guess maybe you could be a little intentional about it though by carefully choosing where you work and who you work with, and how you engage with others at work.

alaithea 1 year ago | |

This is going to go pretty OT from the original post.

The handful of times in my ~20 year career that I've gotten a shortened interview process because of connections, the organization has turned out to be a dumpster fire. Admittedly, I ignored red flags that I wouldn't have if I wasn't feeling special for having an "in," so part of that is on me. But lowering hiring standards to preference one person means they'll lower the standards for others, too, and that has consequences. As much as I'd love there to be shortcuts in life, I'm not sure they really exist.

james_marks 1 year ago |

Publishing articles, etc to demo your skill helps you stay top of mind.

Even if only the 5 people in your network see it, they are the 5 people that need that steady reminder of your skills and availability.

I’ve also hired people outside my network this way, when I happened to stumble on someone with a great article in the exact thing I’m working on.

bob1029 1 year ago | |

I've started thinking about this. Articles/blogs/repos to generate interesting opportunities.

It's one thing to network and talk about your skills. It's a different thing to demonstrate them.

zelphirkalt 1 year ago | | |

In my experience, admittedly not that long term yet, no one even looks at repositories. I got really good stuff in there, that demonstrates my developer skills, but hiring people never seemed to even have taken a look, nor shown any interest in what I might be able to present to them. Instead they me gave BS ad-hoc coding tasks in the interviews. Could also be, that they are unfamiliar with any of the not mainstream stuff I did and did not dare ask questions, because they felt out of their own depth.

brudgers 1 year ago | | |

Yes they are different. Sales is much much harder.

Clients don’t care about your skills.

Clients care if you can solve their actual problems.

ivanmontillam 1 year ago |

I'd believe you're better off working on yourself.

Maybe do toy projects for your potential portfolio, learn an additional skill (AI?), and build many weekend projects until something sticks.

dpz 1 year ago |

Most ad-hoc work I've picked up has been people I've previously worked with/for. Maybe worth reaching out to people you have a prestablished relationship with

liammoore 1 year ago |

A lot of the advice here about networking and marketing yourself is solid, but I want to address this part of your question directly - “Do you know of any project boards or feature bounty platforms to find short-term projects?”

I’ve faced a similar issue with traditional freelancing platforms, so I ended up building a platform where experienced engineers can work with agencies to manage and deliver projects. It’s a different model from traditional outsourcing, where you can either bring your own projects or get matched with ones based on your skillset. You’d be in a technical leadership role, helping build and manage a team of developers to deliver the project. You can also have as much hands-on involvement with the coding as you choose. It could be a good fit for you given your situation and experience. I’ve written a blog detailing the idea in more detail, feel free to check it out and reach out with questions - https://sourceror.co.uk/blog/how-tech-leaders-can-gain-exper...

em-bee 1 year ago | |

this looks interesting. but i am missing steps for engineers to join the talent pool. the frontpage only addresses projects and agencies looking for people, but not people looking for work. there i no way for engineers to sign up.

liammoore 1 year ago | | |

We’re currently only working with a handful of tech leaders and agencies as part of our beta, so we don’t have a sign up for this just yet. I think you’d be a great fit - you can contact me at liam@sourceror.co.uk and we can get you on board

gamegod 1 year ago |

As others said - use your network. Making a post on LinkedIn and trying to get your network to reshare it could help a lot.

4b11b4 1 year ago |

Sign up for small company at bottom, find things to fix. Set timeline and expectations to leave in 9mo. By then you'll be running parts of the company. You may not actually want to do this long term, or it may be a nice side income. Plan for not continuing to do it, document well, and everyone will be happier

em-bee 1 year ago | |

where does one find such a company?

perrygeo 1 year ago |

Don't focus on finding work, you'll just be selling your time to the lowest bidder.

If you can afford it, build something for free, blog what you learn, and ship it. Build a portfolio of real working software and technical writing. If your software has users, talk to them and you should find plenty of work.

em-bee 1 year ago | |

that's a lot of ifs. your project has to solve a needfor the right audience (people that are hiring) and you still have to put a lot of effort in to promote it.

cauliflower99 1 year ago |

6 week contract at my company (not sure what your skillset is though): https://zinkworks.teamtailor.com/jobs/5678393-dba-graphdb-6-...

shinypenguin 1 year ago | |

Thank you for the link, sadly I don't have enough experience with graphdb, so it's outside of my skillset.

peterarmstrong 1 year ago |

Write an in-progress book about some niche = lead magnet for this type of work :)

(disclosure: founder of Leanpub)

mhitza 1 year ago |

I find contracts through my network and Upwork, the later became slower last x months, as general investments did.

Play the numbers game. If you have a specific speciality you can use platforms like LinkedIn to reach out to companies that might need your service (through decision makers).

You can also connect directly with digital agencies and let them know you are available if they need to offload some work.

The LinkedIn jobs platform itself feels useless for contract work (at least in the EU) as most contract jobs are employee-like contracts disguised as contract work (full-time availability, no subcontracting/delegation).

dj_axl 1 year ago |

Any niche? I mean, possibly large-scale data processing, yet I've seen people go more niche than that. In other words if your resume has 5+ years in one particular industry then that might be whom to target.

shinypenguin 1 year ago | |

My niche is basically - I'm building distributed systems with minimal external dependencies that are fast and work reliably on the minimal amount of hardware/complexity. I do focus mainly on data processing and gathering. The result is, that my client does not need that many servers or that big of a devops team to manage the service and it's reliable and scalable.

For example, I have build events gathering distributed system in Elixir (without external systems) that handled 930m events (33k reqs on peak hours) per day on 2 dedicated servers and that was only because minimal HA was required. It resulted in processing and aggregating of few billions of rows per day, in almost real time (few seconds behind realtime). It's still up to this day, few years later with only outages being updates of OS and Elixir/erlang updates to the app.

I love learning and understanding things - do you know of any niche that would fit mine and where I could go deeper with my knowledge and experience?

rkpandey4tech 1 year ago |

I may have something for you. Please DM me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ragpandey

brokegrammer 1 year ago |

I've been wondering the same thing. Been blogging and posting on Reddit + Freelancer Seeking Freelancer threads on HN but nothing came up so far. Don't know if it's because I'm using an old tech-stack (Python + Django) or if my communication needs improving.

It's definitely tough to get even one client these days.

zdragnar 1 year ago |

In my area, it's not uncommon for companies to use short term contracts to scale teams up temporarily. These companies often work with local recruiters, and some of those even specialize primarily in short term contract placement.

In short, they're a quick and easy way to expand your network, so to speak, since they're always willing to take your resume even if they don't have anything immediately available.

Ken_At_EM 1 year ago |

I'm game to talk to you if you want to ken AT erdosmiller DOT com, we're always on the lookout for fantastic talent.

swalloweddotai 1 year ago | |

ull be hearing from me kenneth

FilosofumRex 1 year ago |

I offer two services to my clients, consulting/expertise and firefighting. The former pays for food, gas and grass; the the latter pays for everything else including skiing in the Alps and sunbathing in Cancun.

The purpose of business is not to sell but to create a customer...

em-bee 1 year ago | |

how do you find your clients?

tony2016 1 year ago | | |

He says what he does but never mentions how he gets clients which is the most important piece of information.

hakaneskici 1 year ago |

In your situation, I'd focus on rephrasing my existing skill set in such a way that it emphasizes how I can help solve the current problems with scaling AI deployments.

As for the "where" - keep an eye on growing AI startups that need to scale fast.

snow_mac 1 year ago |

My suggestion is talk to small, indie recruiters. Big recruiting firms will not likely have these types of roles. I'm currently doing a 2 month contract, 40 hours a week, for a small tech consulting agency.

em-bee 1 year ago | |

where do you find those recruiters?

asdf6969 1 year ago |

Just get a regular job and quit after a few months. Don’t put it on your resume and don’t work anywhere that the burnt bridges matter. They would have no problem laying you off after 6 months

bdcravens 1 year ago |

I've had good luck here, having been contacted based on what I posted on the the monthly Seeking Freelancer post.

I think it's dried up now, but I found some projects from Codementor a few years ago.

stuaxo 1 year ago |

I the UK I go on job sites and search for contracts.

Though linkedin has eaten a lot and a bunch have merged.

tzury 1 year ago |

A. Within your circles. Make sure everyone knows you are available.

B. Think of best creative solutions you came up with throughout your career.

Use LLM to write a post every other day (!). Within a month, you have 15 posts, which people will find useful as they search.

At the bottom f each put your contact details and a closing paragraph that you are available for consultancy.

arandomhuman 1 year ago | |

>Use LLM to write a post every other day (!). Within a month, you have 15 posts, which people will find useful as they search.

I don't think anyone will find this useful.

dubeye 1 year ago |

It would seem that marketing was not one of your responsibilities in past roles

shinypenguin 1 year ago | |

Definitely not, I was always in strong technical roles - any pointers where to start with marketing? :)

whalesalad 1 year ago |

I found my current gig using moonlightwork.com but that was over 5 years ago now.

deadbabe 1 year ago |

Short term work is more plentiful when money is easy and there’s a lot of entrepreneurial activity going on due to some recent catalyst such as mobile app platforms or the dotcom boom etc.

Right now we’re in the AI boom and some people may be making money peddling agentic solutions but money is tight and businesses are hurting.

It’s also hard to trust a short term dev who doesn’t really need the money. You have no leverage over them. They sort of just do as they please.

aprdm 1 year ago |

Networking with people you know in your career

nathias 1 year ago |

what's this network people keep bringing up?

zb3 1 year ago | |

It's the thing OP and I don't have, otherwise we'd not be asking these questions. HN being helpful as always..

taormina 1 year ago | | |

I mean, don’t undervalue your own network without trying. Maybe you haven’t worked with anyone famous, most of us haven’t! But someone you know might be in the right place at the right time and mention you to the right person. Of course it’s imperfect but you have interacted with a lot more people in the past than you are giving yourself credit for. It’s about putting yourself out there and allowing that to happen. No one said to just pray to the network and quit looking though. But people who already know you are a good apple from past experience are the best.

Zigurd 1 year ago | |

It's based on the template for most question forum responses that aren't actually responsive to the question.

If I could figure out how to fix that, I'd be pitching a Quora-like start up that actually works.

GiorgioG 1 year ago |

Now is not a great time to be looking for this kind of work unfortunately.

sbrother 1 year ago | |

That's not true in the AI/ML space. But for everything else I would agree.

develatio 1 year ago |

lemon.io :)

swalloweddotai 1 year ago |

behind the wendys dumpster typically