Ask HN: Is there any part-time dev jobs listing?

78 points by ruigomes 11 years ago | 18 comments

Hey HN!

I'm a CS student and also a web developer on my free time. I've been freelancing for several companies with modern PHP frameworks (Laravel) and some other companies that use Ruby (on Rails) for the past couple years, mostly backend and API work.

I've been getting most of my jobs from oDesk (yeah..), which is a major PITA. Even when the client is decent (which is hard to find but possible) I still have to deal with a 10% pay cut and that stalker tracking software that doesn't even work properly on OS X.

There's an huge offer for full-time jobs listings and I was wondering if:

a) Is there a listing for people looking for part-time only?

b) If not, are there enough companies and freelancers looking for part-time jobs/people?

I'm currently running out of work and I'd be up for creating a simple website (similar to http://nomadjobs.io to give you an idea) for this specific situation if there's a need for it.

TL;DR: CS Student. Finding part-time dev work is hard. Should I create a website for people in my situation?

sebringj 11 years ago |

The problem with these sites like oDesk is it ends up turning you into a marginalized commodity and its hard to stand out from that view point of the usually numb-nutted clientele that trolls there. You want to get in front of dollars, not squalor, yah heard me (hands up).

What worked for me is instead create an open-source project or even mini-project like some JS plugin, make a LinkedIn account, get your StackOverflow account, make sure each refers to the other, then (drum roll), you'll get offers flying in and you'll have to fend them off or start ignoring them as they will get annoying and that's a better problem to have.

The funny thing is, if you create that site, you'll probably get great offers because of that rather than a listing itself but beware of making another odesk that marginalizes its workers and try to attract big dollar companies to look at that rather than chump-changers.

ufmace 11 years ago |

Creating a site like that is straightforward enough, and lots of people have done it. The hard problem is the market - how do you filter/rate clients by who can come up with a reasonable, practical project and will pay market rates without being overly difficult about anything? How do you filter developers by who can execute a project in their advertised languages and frameworks, estimate it accurately, and finish it on-time and on-budget to professional quality standards? I wouldn't bother unless you have some practical-sounding idea for how to fix that.

mooreds 11 years ago | |

Good points. That said, all these issues are faced by sites that focus on full time employment.

I am definitely interested in part time development work, and am not aware of any sites that have that as their main differentiator.

OP, it'd be interesting to see this site up and running. However, I'd think carefully about what kind of part time work you are trying to have listed on the site:

   * project based (which may spike to more than 40 hrs/week, but only lasts for 3 months)
   * retainer (I want 10 hours/week forever)
   * employment (I want to hire someone who is willing to work for 15 hours/week)

Part time work is harder to find because there are certain fixed costs of managing labor, and it's nice if you can amortize those across as many hours/week as you can, but as a contractor it helps me have more than one opportunity to earn income at one time.

Ryel 11 years ago |

Creating a social site is not easy.

It's hard to attract jobs without candidates and even harder to attract candidates without having open jobs. Worst of all in your case is that you content(job post) has a short lifespan.

It's possible but don't do it unless you're passionate about it.

Try these for PT work. http://gun.io http://codementor.io http://meetup.com

Assuming you live in a major city, there are lots of Meetups hosted at co-working offices. These spaces are brilliant for someone like you looking for work because they are flush with bootstrapped companies who only need a little bit of work. They have a little bit of cash, motivated, and potentially right on the verge of launching/reaching scale.

Once you're in the office space, find out how to get invited to whatever messageboard they use for internal communication. You will use it to advertise your services. After you get signed up into their chat system, just walk around the meetup and start introducing yourself.

MichaelCrawford 11 years ago | |

I'm a codementor mentor. I enjoy the work, but don't really get enough that I don't need to look for other work.

Also it's frustrating that many of the "mentees" are students who are desperate to turn in a homework assignment the very next day after they post for codementor.

I enjoy teaching the younguns, but please don't leave it until the very last minute.

intrasight 11 years ago |

I think that it is a great idea. It might be already served by a site like http://www.internships.com/computer-science. I say this because really what you should be doing as a student is doing an internship. If you didn't want to treat it as an internship, and build your own site, you do still need to provide some way for prospective employers to see your school transcript. I think this company provides such a service: http://www.ellucian.com/. See http://www.ellucian.com/News/Ellucian-and-National-Student-C.... I assume that using their API has a fee, so your students are either going to have to pay to enroll in your service, or you are going to have to have the capital to pay for the API calls.

mpierce9447 11 years ago |

Hey, I work at Hired and we are adding contract and potentially part-time work into the product. I'd love to meet up (if you are in SF) or hop on the phone. Feel free to reach me at matt.pierce@hired.com to get something scheduled.

Cheers,

matthewarkin 11 years ago | |

Contract work or part-time would be awesome. Hired seems really cool, but would rather finish school before I go full-time somewhere for more than a summer.

dmichulke 11 years ago |

Apply at http://www.toptal.com and please say I referred you!

You'll have some challenges to solve in order to enter but IMO it's worth it

mrfusion 11 years ago | |

How well do they pay?

dmichulke 11 years ago | | |

Sorry I didn't respond earlier. You can set your rate however you want, however, your toptal guy will have to think it's credible.

I believe it pays way more than elance / odesk (however, I didn't really try hard there because prices are so low it would have barely sustained me) but my rate is still way below a good consultant rate of say 1k$ per day.

But it's good enough to live well even in an expensive city such as Luxembourg.

Just mind it's an investment so you should be good at what you're doing and have a few spare days spread throughout the next weeks in order to jump through all their coding / interview hoops.

larrydag 11 years ago |

http://hnhiring.me/. Look at the freelancers wanted/seeking postings.

27182818284 11 years ago |

Even if nobody uses it, you're left with a piece for your portfolio / GitHub account. Built it.

kristiandupont 11 years ago |

I would love a site like this! I find consulting through agencies which works but that limits me to what they happen to know about. There are finally some remote-working job sites appearing but they still focus on employment over part time or contracting which is what I prefer.

Axsuul 11 years ago |

Hi there, can you reach out to me @ james@funnelthecake.com? I may have an opportunity for you.

IndianAstronaut 11 years ago |

A service like this would be great. I recently had a spike in expenses due to some home repairs and some part time work would have been great to deal with it.

morenoh149 11 years ago |

Try asking around some hackerspace in your city. SF has noisebridge.net and NYC has hackmanhattan.com and meetup.com

AndrewKemendo 11 years ago |

Sounds like you found a good project to work on.