Me so hungry. Me program for you long time!

December 2, 2007 3:30 PM

I'm a broke but quite talented programmer. How do I earn a steady income working from a remote location for a company, and programming? I'm tired of freelance gigs, I need something stable (like a 6 month contract with monthly payments, deadlines and remote checking in of code?)

I'm working on my startup, and I'm starting to realise that perhaps this startup idea is equivalent to the writer who has been writing his novel for the past 4 years and still works at McDonalds. I'm tired of being poor and hoping on the big payout when my project is done. I need some stable money. How do I go about doing this, but still have enough time left over for my masters degree as well as to continue working on my dreams?

I've done the Rent A Coder thing, and I easily land $2000+ jobs because I'm quite skilled at some specific areas. However, it's time consuming finding the right projects and often the work involved is massive, and the deadlines are extremely tight. This takes away from my study time as well as the time I need to work on my own project. So I don't want to do the freelancing thing anymore.

I'm not a bad programmer because:

1. I do pretty complicated stuff in C++ and the people I've freelanced for are always satisfied.
2. I've been improving myself, and I now know quite a bit of Django+Python+SQL, in addition to my 5 years of C++ and 8 years of VB6. So I do good web based as well as desktop stuff.

I could find a job in a real physical dev shop job easily, but that requires fixed hours, and I just don't have the time. My workday at the moment already runs at around 10 hours.

I love programming, and there is really nothing I'd rather do. But I have my dreams and my project, and I don't want to give this up for money, but reality is kicking in. I need some cash badly.

Where do I find such a steady income job with a perhaps 5 hour daily work load that will not demand impossible deadlines or exploit me?

posted by anonymous to work & money (9 comments total)

You can find all sorts of contract jobs online, not all are per-project. Craigslist springs to mind.

But honestly, I don't think you're going to find anything without impossible deadlines or exploitation. That's the entire point of non employee income. Fucking the non employee. Learn to stand down when people demand ridiculous shit, they probably know its ridiculous, and your stepping up doesn't make you any more money, just makes you seem like more of a sucker.

And don't take any more startup gigs unless they are paying you.
posted by shownomercy at 3:46 PM on December 2, 2007

It honestly sounds like you may be spreading yourself thin. If you take up a six-month job, how many hours a week would you want to work? Can you take a part-time job instead? Will you even have enough time to work on a master's and work on your start-up in what little time is left?

In any case, that's beside the point. You mention that you're working on a Master's degree. I've seen job posts for programmers from other departments in grad school, so that's where I'd start. If you have any experience working with statistics or physics packages (ala ROOT), or MATLAB, then you should be able to market yourself fairly easily. If you don't, ROOT is open-source, as is the GNU scientific package. MATLAB is, um, "obtainable" through nefarious channels.
posted by spiderskull at 4:08 PM on December 2, 2007

This might be worth checking into.
posted by The Deej at 4:39 PM on December 2, 2007

Let me see if I have this right.

You want a short-term contract job...

• ...where you don't have to go to work...
• ...that doesn't have tight deadlines...
• ...that pays well...
• ...and doesn't conflict with:
  1. ...getting a graduate degree...
  2. ...and building your own business from scratch.

Did I leave anything out? No? OK.

Can't.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:47 PM on December 2, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Find an agency. Work for them -- they assume the risk of finding you work, you accept less money in return. This is generally how such things work.
posted by effugas at 5:31 PM on December 2, 2007

Geez. It sounds pretty reasonable to me. The OP wants a steady part-time programming job (20-25/hrs week) with flexible hours and the opportunity to work from home (and preferably this job has reasonable deadlines). An old roommate worked part-time in a similar arrangement helping a small investment management firm revamp their software.

I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how to find these jobs, but I'd start on your college campus, since a lot of work-study jobs are set up to be part-time. I also imagine there are other places that could use someone part-time. To find these, you could try to talk to someone with a lot of contacts or who already has an established consulting practice.
posted by salvia at 5:31 PM on December 2, 2007

You could apply for funding for your startup through Y Combinator.
posted by spacewaitress at 6:28 PM on December 2, 2007

Authentic Jobs or 37signals Gig Board might be useful.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:02 AM on December 3, 2007

Freelance work really is your best bet; just not the crap you find on sites like rent-a-coder. Jobs posted on open marketplaces like that are always bad; the clients don't have any way to judge the competency of the coders -- many of whom simply aren't competent -- so everyone winds up competing on price, and it's a real race to the bottom.

Longer-term freelance gigs with realistic pay and timeframes do exist, but they tend to get handed out by word of mouth, not tossed out for open bidding somewhere. (It's a real shame; as hard as it is for good freelancers to find work, it's just as hard for clients to find good freelancers.)

Many corporations routinely use freelance developers -- it's not about "fucking the nonemployee," though some bitter failed freelancers do seem to think of it that way; it's about flexibility (sometimes they don't need coders on staff year-round, and some less cutting-edge industries find it difficult to find quality developers willing to work for them full-time, so they turn to the freelance market.)

Your best bet if you don't have any contacts would be to work through an agency, as effugas suggests; they're going to want more than five hours a day, but they'll also have more realistic time expectations than what you've been seeing on rent-a-coder.

Or, if there are large-ish companies in your area that you suspect use freelancers, you might try calling them to ask to be put on their vendor list; I've never tried coldcalling like that, so no idea if it'd work, but it's worth a shot. You'll need a portfolio somewhere they can look at; also they may or may not call it a "vendor list" -- some places have complicated formal procedures for selecting freelancers, others use the handwritten-list-of-names-some-project-manager-once-put-together-once strategy.

The bad news is that this isn't the sort of thing you're going to find without devoting your full attention to it; finding good freelance jobs is in many ways more difficult than finding good full-time work.

Your situation, IMHO, boils down to: Masters degree, startup project, paying work. Choose any two.
posted by ook at 12:49 PM on December 3, 2007