Ask HN: How do I earn money? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I earn money?

21 pointsthroaway6578910 comments

Pardon the stupid question. So I'm a freshman in college, been programming since age 11. Worked with C and C++, Common Lisp, PHP, frontend stuff, Lua, etc. Had awards at competitive programming competitions, national/international, contests, stuff. So money is extremely tight, my country's economy is abysmally bad, yadda yadda. What are my options even? Software companies here don't seem to offer internships outside of summer. I work on and off doing frontend dev with a small company but I'm sick of the micromanagement and inefficiency there and the projects are sparse. I just can't believe I'm not good/experienced enough to earn even a junior dev's salary. Any suggestions welcome.

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There is a high demand for engineers right now so with a little bit of patience and hard work you will find your way I am sure. Here are a few things you can try:

1- Start by creating a web presence for yourself, a simple bio website that explains who you are and what you do a long with links to some of your work.

2- Create a GitHub (or Codepen) account and open source any reusable code, plugin, etc. Just make sure you actually own the work and are allowed to do this.

3- Create a profile on UpWork and find freelance work there.

4- Pick a side and a language and start specializing a bit. It's great to be well rounded and have lots of skills but it is a much easier sell to say I am a front end engineer and love building UIs, I am experienced in CSS, JS, Angular, etc. versus I do C, C++, front-end stuff etc. You can mention that you are comfortable on any side (front or back) but it is better to say which is your stronger skill.

Good luck!

Remote jobs - Upwork (formerly oDesk, with Elance joining it shortly).

If you have some portfolio, you can try monthly "Who's hiring/Who wants to be hired/Seeking freelancer" threads here on HN, the next would be in just a few days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring

You've got pretty impressive range of skills, and at least PHP/frontend are very remote-friendly, with enough demand on the resources I added above.

Since you're familiar with C++ and competitive programming, you might also try things like TopCoder/CodeEval; it's more about competition, but the corporate sponsors are watching competitors and might hire the best.

My email is in my profile, feel free to get in touch if you have more questions. Best of luck!

The first step is to wad up your self-doubt and chunk it in the nearest incinerator. If you've been tinkering with code for eight years and have won competitions, odds are pretty certain you can do good enough work to justify a junior dev's salary.

Anyway, the topic of actually finding work is broad, but this might help you get in the right direction; pick some things you'd like to work with, and look for specific job boards for them. For example, I'm pretty proficient with the Drupal framework/CMS, so I'll usually watch the official Drupal jobs board when I'm on the lookout for a new gig. There's also LinkedIn; you should at the least have a profile there, even if you aren't actively searching for jobs there. It also helps to have a personal site and do a little SEO on it so that it comes up if someone searches for "Lua developers in [your city]."

That's a basic answer, but it might be enough to get your foot in the door at a few places.

>Had awards at competitive programming competitions, national/international, contests, stuff.

Try codementor.io, your credentials will most probably help you to find some gigs and you'll be paid on the hourly basis. Also you can try toptal.com and gun.io.

So you want to get gigs from people looking for devs who know certain technologies? Put yourself in the shoes of the people who will hire you. How do they go about finding good technical people? I'd start with forums that are specialized into whatever technologies/stacks you are great at. If that doesn't work out, you can try generalist sites for coders.

In general, the way to overcome lack of experience on your first gig is to win on price. But as soon as you have one official project under your belt, your marketing should be that you make you customers successful. Don't drop prices anymore (on the contrary, raise them).

Publish the code you have written on GitHub to build a portfolio. Then see if you can get a remote job at some company. In the beginning you want to take whatever you can get. Once you get the hang of it you can start being picky.

Out of curiosity, have you tried anything yet? What about posting on "Who wants to be hired" or sending emails to job descriptions you find interesting in "Who's hiring" monthly thread?

How much money do you want to earn? If you want $20-$40k then you can make that pretty easily freelance, even in your first year, a lot more with experience and contacts. If you want $100-$250k then you're probably going to need experience at the right places, a bit of luck, and a visa for US/UK/Aus etc, or your own product/company.

Another option is to apply at Galvanize.com or other accelerated 3-month engineering programs. This will give you the credentials you need quickly.

I know Galvanize has some funded scholarships. I am sure other bootcamp-style programs will also have this.

(Full disclosure: I work at Galvanize.)

Charge for your work.

Good luck!

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