←back to thread

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

224 points shinypenguin | 5 comments | 13 Mar 25 15:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

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 :)

Show context
limbero ◴[13 Mar 25 15:27 UTC] No.43354305[source]▶
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.

replies(5): >>43354550 #>>43354628 #>>43354798 #>>43354967 #>>43355687 #
valbaca ◴[13 Mar 25 16:20 UTC] No.43354798[source]▶
> deeply shameful

Your feelings are what they are, but this is the least shameful post I would ever see on LinkedIn. It's someone actually looking for work! and not just posting some super cringe low-IQ engagement-farm copypasta.

Finding work is exactly what LinkedIn ought to be for

replies(3): >>43354907 #>>43355138 #>>43355553 #
1. ghaff ◴[13 Mar 25 16:32 UTC] No.43354907[source]▶
I certainly don't think it's shameful. But, while that's more or less what LinkedIn was intended for, it's also become sort of a last man standing medium for professional professional posts--or at least pointers to such--unless you can organically drive enough traffic to a subscription or a website.
replies(2): >>43355866 #>>43357936 #
2. inetknght ◴[13 Mar 25 18:12 UTC] No.43355866[source]▶
> it's also become sort of a last man standing medium for professional professional posts--or at least pointers to such--

With you so far...

> unless you can organically drive enough traffic to a subscription or a website.

Ahh no, I hope you don't mean to "organically" drive "enough" traffic from LinkedIn to a subscription or website elsewhere? Because that's exactly the kind of thing that's killing LinkedIn for job search and professional networking.

replies(1): >>43355974 #
3. ghaff ◴[13 Mar 25 18:23 UTC] No.43355974[source]▶
Professional networking mostly happens in-person anyway. For me, LinkedIn is mostly an updating Rolodex. But, if you have a newsletter or website, you probably need to drive traffic somehow. LinkedIn isn't the only mechanism and maybe not a very good one but it is a channel at least in the tech industry.
4. doright ◴[13 Mar 25 22:44 UTC] No.43357936[source]▶
I guess the reality is, what we term "shameful, amoral, slimy and vapid LinkedIn spammers" are actually thousands of relatively like-minded people all saying some variation of "please let me get/keep a job or I won't be able to keep living" in just a creative/repetitive enough fashion that one or more recruiters/persons who know other people will keep them in orbit for the next source of income.

I have been on the other side of this (not doing it) and the effects are fairly straightforward: no more paychecks.

I guess if you're not a recruiter or your job prospects are taken care of, you can safely pretend the LinkedIn social feed doesn't exist - it isn't written for you. Its sole purpose is for people to get what they need to survive and carry on. So I've resolved to not blame others for having to post there so much. This is money - hence life - were talking about here, unfortunately or not.

replies(1): >>43362964 #
5. em-bee ◴[14 Mar 25 14:28 UTC] No.43362964[source]▶
i don't quite understand what caused the no more paychecks, if you were on the other side of this...