IT would be nice to work at home

March 4, 2008 1:57 PM

I want to be an IT mercenary, how do I get started doing freelance/contract SysAdmin/Programming?

I've decided I'd like a more flexible schedule and start making motions toward being self-employed and working from home. My skills are along the lines of "Senior Sysadmin" and while I am learning more programming techniques (design patterns and OO) most of my experience is in hardcore Linux and Windows admin.

Sysadmin functions seem to me to be in-house, but am I being too narrow here? I'm learning Ruby/Rails right now and have plenty of HTML/CSS/perl/PHP awareness, would that be better to focus on as far as contracts go? I don't have resume-level experience as a web programmer and I wouldn't want to have to start fresh on the ground floor at $10/hr. However, my sense is that web programming is much more amenable to remote work and freelancing than shell scripting, performance tweaking and monitoring.

I know about Metafilter Jobs and Craigslist gigs and those things, but the offerings can be a little slim for the level of work I'm talking about. Are there agencies who specialize in this kind of thing (rather than the typical headhunter staffing agencies)? Does it make sense to plan to take longer contracts rather than shorter ones? Is there even a choice there? I'm stuck!

posted by rhizome to work & money (6 comments total)

"However, my sense is that web programming is much more amenable to remote work and freelancing than shell scripting, performance tweaking and monitoring."

I took over a Helpdesk type business for a friend about a year ago, and from what I've learned there, I would say your comment is fairly accurate. (I'm in about the same exact place you are with regard to Sysadmin skills and trying to learn coding/programming/design -- because I'd like to just do it at home)

"I wouldn't want to have to start fresh on the ground floor at $10/hr."

Wouldnt want to?.. or cant afford to ?.... The world of freelancing is competitive and there are times when you will pretty much be required to make sacrifices in the short term to get ahead in the long term. This might mean taking on crappy projects no one else wants, or lowering what you charge/bid in order to win projects you REALLY want.

I dont keep up on it alot.. but FreelanceSwitch looks like a good resource (or may lead you to other sites like that)
posted by jmnugent at 3:09 PM on March 4, 2008

One thing you may want to consider is starting your own PC Support/Consulting business, and (for the short term) take general PC Support/Helpdesk type of clients to build up your client base and earn enough money to pay the bills. Once you get that rolling, make sure you save yourself enough time each week to play with hobbies (coding/programming/design)

For example. In my business, I charge $95/hour. Assuming I have steady business, I can get away with working 10 or 15 hours a week and make enough each month to pay my bills. In theory this should leave me with alot of time to do other things. (at the moment it doesnt, because business is slow and I'm actually working 4 different jobs, but thats another story :)

Working as a freelancer has really reinforced the lesson that resourcefulness,creativity and stubborn determination are much more valuable skills than flat out intelligence.
posted by jmnugent at 3:19 PM on March 4, 2008

If you are a good sys admin for performance and linux work, perhaps contacting every gimmiky startup that is running rails and offering to manage their servers for them on a part-time basis (ie. patches, setup, tweaking etc...) would be a good niche you can fill. Learn enough of the rails environment (not rails itself, but capistrano, god, lightty and so on) to be a very valuable resource to these companies.
posted by cschneid at 3:42 PM on March 4, 2008

This has been answered ad nauseum here, but my answer is always -- blog, blog, blog, and then go start posting on forums and answering people's questions using links to blog articles you've written... and always link to your blog in your sub.

The jobs that are really worth it are the ones where you do stuff over time for a customer, not the one-offs.
posted by SpecialK at 3:52 PM on March 4, 2008

Take a look at Minutefix.com.
posted by toastchee at 6:23 PM on March 4, 2008

"I wouldn't want to have to start fresh on the ground floor at $10/hr."

The "ground floor" is a lot higher than $10/hr.

That said, the reason you're not finding many job listings for freelancers to handle sysadmin tasks is that those tasks are rarely handled by freelancers; those are ongoing responsibilities which, from the company's point of view, it wouldn't make sense to give to some freelancer who might disappear on you (unless you're outsourcing your entire IT department, in which case you'll give it to a business, not an individual.) So if you want that type of work, you'll probably need to follow jmnugent's advice and start a business rather than working as an individual contractor.

It's better to hire a freelancer for discrete, one-off tasks; many web development jobs fit the bill perfectly (which is why there are so many people working in that area.) Don't think about 'resume-level' experience -- freelancers don't have resumes, they have word-of-mouth networks and portfolios. Huge difference. If you're interested in that sort of work and have the skills, you don't need to start at the ground floor and work your way up; that's not how freelancing works. Charge what you're worth.

Does it make sense to plan to take longer contracts rather than shorter ones? Is there even a choice there?

While I get a lot of repeat business from the same companies, most of my jobs wind up being either very short-term (1-4 weeks; I tend to turn down anything smaller than that as they're too much hassle) or relatively long-term (6 months up to 2 years) -- very little in between. I have no idea if that's typical, but it's been consistent over a fairly long period.
posted by ook at 10:39 AM on March 5, 2008