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

224 points shinypenguin | 1 comments | 13 Mar 25 15:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.417s | 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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ryandrake ◴[13 Mar 25 16:39 UTC] No.43354973[source]▶
A lot of people are probably going to reply with "Use your network!" which has always struck me as kind of vaguely incomplete and unhelpful advice. It's like telling an investor "Buy low and sell high." and leaving it at that. OK, thank you, Captain Obvious, that's wonderful, but how?

Maybe it's different in the independent contracting world, but I've found my "network" only semi-helpful in gaining employment. They can give good ideas about companies to try, they can help you refine your resume, and do interview coaching, and if you're lucky they work at the same company you want to apply for so can submit your resume with the "recommend" box ticked, but that's all they seem to be able to do. I've never once had someone in my network who had his hands directly on the "hire this man!" lever at the company.

replies(2): >>43355592 #>>43357083 #
1. alaithea ◴[13 Mar 25 17:40 UTC] No.43355592[source]▶
This is going to go pretty OT from the original post.

The handful of times in my ~20 year career that I've gotten a shortened interview process because of connections, the organization has turned out to be a dumpster fire. Admittedly, I ignored red flags that I wouldn't have if I wasn't feeling special for having an "in," so part of that is on me. But lowering hiring standards to preference one person means they'll lower the standards for others, too, and that has consequences. As much as I'd love there to be shortcuts in life, I'm not sure they really exist.