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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: 0.427s | 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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ernestipark ◴[13 Mar 25 15:45 UTC] No.43354447[source]▶
Your network is always the best bet to start. Leverage past co-workers who can vouch for you, reach out, let people know you're available.

If you're a part of YC or other similar investor/tech networks, often those are very strong referral networks.

Beyond that, there are various niche job boards and sites like https://www.fractionaljobs.io/, https://www.hirefraction.com/, marketerhire.com depending on the type of work you do.

Sites like upwork/toptal can be good but often are a race to the bottom.

Relevant: I started a newsletter a little while back exploring this space for tech workers

replies(1): >>43355097 #
leros ◴[13 Mar 25 16:53 UTC] No.43355097[source]▶
I haven't found these fractional sites to be very useful for development work. The rates are low and the few dev jobs already have 100s of applications.
replies(1): >>43360562 #
1. menaerus ◴[14 Mar 25 08:16 UTC] No.43360562[source]▶
I see rates around $100 all the way up to $200. Is that really considered low in the States?
replies(1): >>43362313 #
2. ghaff ◴[14 Mar 25 13:13 UTC] No.43362313[source]▶
Probably mediocre. Even absent being a source of full-time income accounting for the fact that there's going to be a lot of unpaid/dead time, I personally won't take a job for less than $1K for a day+-ish unless it's really interesting or I'm doing a favor for someone I know.

(One of the issues with short-term fractional work as an income source is that you can end up only being paid for a fairly small percentage of your total time. If the rate is good, that may be fine as a part-time job. But in my prior industry analyst stint, we actually had quite good day rates but we spent most of our time keeping up with industry happenings and writing free stuff.)