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224 points shinypenguin | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.209s | 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 :)

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limbero ◴[] 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 #
cushychicken ◴[] No.43354550[source]
Why’s this shameful, exactly?

There’s no shame in saying you’re available to work.

replies(2): >>43354646 #>>43355422 #
ForHackernews ◴[] No.43354646[source]
IMHO selling yourself (selling anything, really) is a bit demeaning. But this is probably a class affectation on my part, not real moral intuition.
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1. hathawsh ◴[] No.43355533[source]
I can understand what you're saying, but there's a different way to look at it. Imagine yourself in the future. You're in a position of leadership and people want your advice. Let's say a student asks you how they should get a high level job in a competitive marketplace. What would you say?

Personally, I would tell the student they should be ambitious and tell people what their skills are. They should ask for responsibilities and compensation. They should tell people that they are worth the risk.

If you agree with me about giving that advice, then you should now put yourself in the place of the student. Shouldn't you receive the same advice? Shouldn't you be ambitious and ask people to give you responsibilities and compensation? If so, then you can understand why selling yourself is actually important and there's nothing immoral or slimy about it. It feels wrong sometimes, but that feeling may not be aligned with reality.