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

224 points shinypenguin | 2 comments | 13 Mar 25 15:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.833s | 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 ◴[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.

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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

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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.
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1. 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.

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2. 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.