Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

437 pointsnoddly329 comments

I'm a dev with almost no experience in a 3rd world country. Considering the COVID situation, In the worst case scenario I'll be without a job for a while. I have finances to manage for (probably) a year and a month or two.

I want to ask what are the ways with good probability of making ~ $1-1.5/mo (enough to live and still have considerable remaining in my situation)

I'm asking for ideas because the popular ideas are out of question:

- Domsetic Freelancing/Consulting does not have much scope, SMB don't seem to be doing well so site-dev work for them also isn't viable

- Making software for companies and govt. here isn't much of an option either, there's corruption and they don't particularly care about having a $99/mo solution when there are people willing to work for that rate

- More of a opinion, but overseas freelancing opportunities aren't gonna hire a newbie and fiverr is a race to bottom.

I'd appreciate any advice on how to proceed, any problem you think is a opporutnity to have a solution for or just your experience from another economic depression.

Meta: Started coding 3.5 years ago and probably have enough under my belt to try multiple projects over this duration. Made a new account as I don't want to link this to my real identity. I'm not looking for job offers out of sympathy. This is just considering the worst case scenario, and I want to have something to fall back to if it turns out to be the case.

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What I've seen that has worked in the past is this:

Pick an open source project that is in a language that is respectable and commit to contributing to it for three or four months. Full time. Try to make sure that your written English is clear and professional in things like PRs.

Try to keep your code as clean and as well tested and linted as possible. Once the core team gets to know you a bit you'll be able to reach out for introductions to people hiring for remote jobs that you just wouldn't have had access to before.

I've seen people make $500k a year doing this. Just make sure that you choose wisely on the language and project. If you want to do frontend then it's probably going to be a project in TypeScript or JavaScript, but if you want to do backend then there are a lot of projects in tougher languages like Rust. Python isn't a bad choice either, even though it is easy to learn. Google has a Python style guide that is pretty good so look it up.

If I knew you were good at Python and you were asking for $1.5k a month I would hire you and laugh all the way to the bank. Set your aim hirer than what you need to survive.

Top notch comment.

Agree, but OTOH, this advice is pretty well disseminated at this point.

It can be hard to find an opening to contribute in a decent OSS project that one can keep up with, especially as a beginner, with many others clamoring to do the same.

I think an alternative would be to create and finish a simple open source project yourself, for the purpose of showing off. Scratch an itch. But keep it finishable. It's not about being perfect, it's about showing you can solve many problems.

I think you missed the main point. The most important part of root comment’s advice is networking —- to meet and work with other devs. If you start your own open source project there’s not guarantee people will work on it with you.

As a beginner myself I wouldn’t even know where to begin to contribute to something like Kubernetes and agree with your point. Those projects have a lot of eyes on them and the talent to follow, what value could I add as a beginner that someone with experience couldn’t do in a heartbeat(or hasn’t already).

People with more experience have all their time taken up by big features and refactorings. In a big project, there are always small things to fix or improve. It's not like they run out, because those big changes create more small things to fix all the time. Linux is 30 years old, and it still accepts patches from beginners regularly.

I don't know about Kubernetes, but lots of large and well-managed projects have issues labelled as "good first issue" to help you know where to start.

Agreed. There are certainly challenges to working on big, high-visibility projects as a beginner. But, if it's primarily part of a strategy to get a well-paying job, it makes a lot of sense to work on something that has people from the companies that are hiring developers at decent salaries working on it.

Also, it's a very risky path to take. If you made an error in your assumptions about your open source investment, tech stack choice, etc, then you won't see any good return, but you burned through your savings.

Contribute to something that has gotten big, quickly.

I chose Rails 14 years ago and have been riding that train ever since.

If I were choosing a new space and starting out, I’d contribute to Kubernetes. Lots of need in that space and I’m sure you could demand top dollar once you have a few merged PRs under your belt.

> I've seen people make $500k a year doing this.

That even crazy in California onsite level and you've seen that in remote?

I liked the part about positioning in your comment, it does matter a lot.

It’s textbook survivor bias. Who is going the reveal their anecdote? The person who knows someone with a story. And 500k is a hell of a story. My bet is spending 3 months doing free OSS work on average has a lower EV than applying to a shitload of jobs, levelling up on interview challenges and technique et cetera.

I wish someone told me this sooner..

Instead people told me to do personal projects.

Sure they are impressive, but I can't get an interview.

This is bad advice for someone who has only been coding for 3 years (according to OP).

People who can make $500k/year through connections they make contributing to open source projects could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly.

It is way more common to see brilliant developers make $0 from open source projects.

> People who can make $500k/year through connections they make contributing to opensource projects could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly

This vastly overestimates the efficiency of FAANG hiring channels.

Yes, like the Brew guy interview at Google.

For context: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768

The tweet from Brian Acton[0] that someone replied with is truly legendary. I want to frame that and put it in the lobby if I ever found a successful business.

[0] https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/3109544383

People seem to assume Google was wrong not to hire him.

Is Google in the business of building open source package managers?

If not, why should his experience there mean he should have gotten the job?

Because he develops a tool that other google developers use daily. If hiring him and directing his efforts leads to even a 0.1% productivity improvement in those developers, it would be Worth it.

Google devs dont use homebrew.

The author of homebrew seems to think they do. I was quoting him.

They don’t

Interesting! Did you work there? Do they have an internal package manager of some kind?

(in a meek voice) ...do they use MacPorts?

Not OP, but Googler here. We use an internal Linux distro for all our development. It's very similar to Ubuntu (so the default package manager is apt). People who have a Macbook use it as a thin client to ssh into their Linux desktops. So OS X package manager isn't really needed or used.

They cannot work remote if there's no wifi?

Apt -- that means it's a Debian based distro right? Interesting that it's not Fedora

Guessing you're not on the iOS team :)

The year of the Linux Desktop

You are trying to say they are using a different OSX package manager?

Incorrect. I know several people working on Google projects as temps (with Google-provided laptops and @google.com domains) and with the code and technologies they're working with there is no way they can work without Homebrew. Maybe it's different for full-time employees but I doubt it.

Or underestimates how many others they compete with

What if among x00 ppl actually talented enough to work there, maybe faang only needs to hire x ppl

That's no problem for faang but could be for those who applied

Not true. One of the people I'm referring to was under 25 when he landed a $500k USD remote job at a FAANG company. I'd share more, but too many people would figure out who it is. He didn't get that offer by applying directly.

The point is not that OP is going to make $500k a year. The point is to be smart about the language and project that you pick and to be reliable, professional, and open to learning quickly and delivering. He's asking for such a paltry amount that even if he only gets an $80k offer it's still leagues better than what he's asking for.

Or he could grind it out on Upwork and land a $30k offer after finally hitting a client that likes him and has long term work.

> I'd share more, but too many people would figure out who it is.

Feels like your example is very specific and would not generalize to the average programmer.

3pt14159 did not say "Any programmer can make $500K by doing open-source full-time for a while," though.

But the statement is in response to "this is bad advice for brand new developers." If the advice is so specific you end up doxing the single person in the world who's ever done it, then it sounds like that's a perfectly fair criticism.

I think the point is more "this general strategy works for most people; but not everyone is going to get a $500k job from it".

It's a reliable strategy to get noticed and make a good impression. How much money you manage to make from that opportunity obviously depends on many more factors.

Sounds you're like just walking around the point

> It's a reliable strategy to get noticed and make a good impression.

If its so reliable, there should be many repeated examples of it happening. So far, all we have is a single case.

The problem is that people are conflating "one guy got lucky and got a $500k remote job" with "here is a repeatable process to generate a full-time income by working on open source on spec." Even getting a $50k remote job is not a guarantee, and telling people to work for free on open source is the Hacker News equivalent of telling a designer that you'll pay them if you like the logo they make you. Only this is much more insidious because you're telling them to work full-time, for free, for "3 or 4 months."

We complain about job interviews taking an entire day yet have no problem telling this person to dump 750 hours into something with the hope of "getting noticed."

People attend college and spend enormous money & time with no guarantees. The unpaid time spent is not throwaway.

If I was 19 today - and wanted to code for the most $$$ possible. I wouldn't be in college. I'd be building up skills + know people. Know people even tougher I'd argue for technical people who are often introverts.

And being a reliable open-source contributor on projects people use can open doors that college could never open. From personal experience Open Source is also a great way to get to know people, especially if the project has an active IRC or Slack.

I would love to contribute to open source but in 10+ years I've never found a project. Is there a good website that matches developers to projects?

What projects have you used over the last 10 years?

Probably a lot of utility ones but none that made me jump into the code

>People attend college and spend enormous money & time with no guarantees. The unpaid time spent is not throwaway.

It is throwaway for most people. 'Most' being >75%. Just my guesstimate.

Well there is another way to look at it if you wish, if you want to bolster your self-esteem and confidence by having a college/university degree, then do it. My observation is that most people who do not have a degree suffer a life long I-do-not-have-a-degree self esteem syndrome, despite being just as capable as everyone else.

> Only this is much more insidious because you're telling them to work full-time, for free, for "3 or 4 months."

Specifically, donating that time to a project which a company uses to make money.

I know many people that did this. Not all of them are making $500k a year, but here is some more examples:

- Multiple Rails contributors, one that turned core. Those folks are making well north of $200k a year.

- Ember contributors or contributors to projects around ember-data or similar. Multiple people making north of $200k a year.

- A guy that dove into contributing to Postgres. He wouldn't even share how much his offer was because it was so insane.

The point is that if you actually put in the work to projects and you network and learn from seasoned developers it's going to be far, far better for your career than grinding out little Fiver or Upwork contracts.

Put another way: Your pay is related to your skills, your professionalism, and your network. Working on the right OS project exposes you to people that are really good at software. Sure you can do the same working for money at the right company, but this guy isn't in that position. So, in my opinion, his best bet is to skill up and network and contribute. Even if he's applying to remote work positions absent a network, a string of commits to Numpy or Rust is going to look a hell of a lot better than "freelancer that did rinky dink work for marketing guys" or "I built a todo list app to show off my skills" and I don't really see why this is so controversial. I'd like to see a counterpoint, honestly. Someone here that worked on a real OS project for a prolonged period of time that has trouble finding work at a reasonable salary.

There is also tons of people that work on OS projects and get paid nothing. The ones that get paid a lot are the exception.

I hypothesize that the people who get paid are the people who actually set out with the goal of getting paid.

I really doubt there are many long-time FOSS contributors who want (as their top-level goal) to be paid to do FOSS, but still haven’t managed it after months/years of trying.

Most people who do FOSS don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it. Just like most people who play a sport don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it. For most people, it’s either a hobby, or a byproduct of the efforts they go to in their day job (i.e. fixes to their company’s private fork of a FOSS project, that can then sometimes be upstreamed.)

>Most people who do FOSS don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it.

It depends how you define "doing" FOSS. Yes, certainly there are many people who casually fool around with FOSS with no expectation of payment. And even a fair number of people who have some sort of spare time FOSS hobby.

But most of the big FOSS projects (especially server infrastructure/platforms) depend heavily on developers and others getting paid to work on them full-time.

Most of the big FOSS projects depend on their core contributors being paid to work on them. Most sports teams pay highly too. It doesn't mean that most people playing sports are playing on a professional team. It also doesn't mean the professional teams pay their fans anything—despite said fans doing, in aggregate, as much (in PR et al) to earn the team their high pay scales, as the team itself does. Both big FOSS projects, and professional sports teams, are long-tail efforts, with a hard line between the core contributors (paid) and everybody else who helps (unpaid.)

Also keep in mind that many critical FOSS projects aren't big. Many are one-man shows. HN has a habit of frequently "finding out for the first time"—to much amazement and distress each time—that some project everybody's using is just kept alive by one person in their spare time.

>Also keep in mind that many critical FOSS projects aren't big. Many are one-man shows.

Absolutely. That's why the Core Infrastructure Initiative was created a few years ago for example. While I haven't made an exhaustive study, my sense is that the situation is at least better today than it was a few years ago, especially with respect to security issues. Though always more work to do to support developers working on critical infrastructure of course.

Yes, there is a long tail on projects like the Linux kernel. But a lot of that long tail doesn't individually do a lot of work. And, according to the seemingly latest Kernel development report that I have: "Well over 85 percent of all kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work."

I'd love to be paid again for contributing to an FOSS project. There's something liberating about writing software that you own and get to decide how things are designed. A lot of devs don't enjoy that kind of flexibility if they work on projects used by more than a handful of people.

But yeah, it's hard to get paid. I was lucky enough to have a company pay me to contribute to an OSS project, but they didn't hire me for that purpose, I had to hustle for it and was blessed with a great manager who supported the idea.

I would put it this way: for a person in his situation, skills and professionalism are table stakes (others in more privileged position can get away with less of those). Pay is relative to networking ability.

You keep referring to the "right" OS project, what do you mean by this? A project in Github trending?

This frustrates me a bit, personally. I've been a professional developer (as in getting paid to do it) for 15 years, full time. I know a lot of tech terms are overused and misused, but I consider myself full stack. Frontend, Backend, Database, some devops. I've worked, in depth, with MSSQL, .NET, C#, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PHP, Python (Django/DRF), JS, NodeJS, React, Flash/Flex. I've dabbled in Java, Clojure, ClojureScript, Objective-C and probably some others I'm forgetting.

I'm in the low, low $100k range. Maybe it's because I'm introverted and don't really network? Maybe it's location: Ohio, now Orlando? Maybe I just don't push myself - imposter syndrome is very real. Maybe I just like the job security and steady paycheck over really reaching for the stars?

I know money isn't everything, I'd love to contribute and be known in the community, but not sure I have the chops.

Curious if anyone else is in this boat?

Yeah, that’s all on you. I don’t know if confidence training is a thing, but you could hit a huge ROI if you level up your extroversion/confidence game.

Location is definitely a factor. The only way I've heard people making make Bay Area money in places like Ohio is to land a remote gig with a Bay Area company, which isn't easy.

You probably have better quality of life in Ohio with your salary than many much higher paid people in the Bay Area. A starter home near Google costs around 2 million.

There’s more to life than owning a home as soon as possible.

Not much, if you want to have kids and raise them with a decent quality of life.

You can do that once you amass wealth in your 20s (and even early 30s if that's your style, not necessary though) and then move to a lower COL.

Great advice, but too late for me.

Amass wealth in your twenties sounds so ridiculous to me. My bank balance for most of my 20’s was barely positive. Now that I’m mid thirties my salary is finally high enough that the savings have started to increase, but it’s still far from anything resembling ‘wealth’.

That’s a shame. I’m sorry if you didn’t have the opportunity to do so. It’s very possible and practical to build wealth in your 20s and many people move to high COL places to do so when they don’t have the burden of kids or strong ties. Even small wealth in your 20s will balloon into big wealth 20-30-40 years later that you simply won’t be able to catch up to saving in your 40s and later. You’re investing in your future by delaying settling down, buying a house, and having kids in your 20s. Whether that’s worth it is up to you and your life goals.

I'd consider myself in the same boat. Also been a professional developer for 20 years. Wouldn't say I'm full stack anymore as I'm a little out of the loop with all of the changes with front-end development in recent years, but trying to improve in that area and become a better, more-rounded developer.

Also in Florida and in the low $100k range. Always a bit surprised to hear these stories on HN and elsewhere of developers making $150-200k+ salaries, and wonder how I can get to that level.

Imposter syndrome is very real for me too, especially in my current role where my coworkers all seem much smarter and more technological-savvy than me.

Would also like to contribute to open source projects, but not really sure where I'd start and whether I am good enough.

Sounds like you're my technical doppelganger. Hopefully some of the comments on my post are helpful to you as well. I can't change location right now, so I think I'm going to work on the imposter/confidence aspect and try to find some projects to contribute to.

col in florida is so low though plus no state income tax right?

100k in orlando is like 220k in sf so you're probably doing alright.

fastest way to big bucks is to create an auction market (have multiple simultaneous offers) at companies with revenues growing fast enough that they don’t care

I've been in a rather similar boat. I spent a few years in "the show", but am back down in the real world now. Not sure I regret getting it out of my system, but it did harm my life.

Am also an introvert, and it does reduce the possibilities, in my opinion. Still struggling with that. But trying to meet technical people who can hire or refer you is pretty useful (and try to maintain relationships like that when you leave a job).

Location is a problem. If you move to a place like BA or NY, you can probably double your salary right off, even if your skill level is rather low. This is very hard, though, if you have a family or your local social connections are important.

I doubt you're an imposter. Most of the people I met at my high-paying jobs were no more skilled than those I meet in the hinterlands. (And the brilliant ones are often insufferable.)

Rich companies are rich, so they can pay more. That's about it. There's a lot more competition for high-paying spots, but generally the people hiring are doing it pretty randomly. Having a resume that looks good and being able to talk a good game are more important than actual skill.

Appreciate the insight. Definitely seems location is a big factor, but I'm not incentivized to change that right now - so I'll need to look at this from different angles. Networking seems to be key.

Sure thing. Either way, don't torture yourself about it. Probably getting a dog or learning to ride a motorcycle would give you more enjoyment than working at a big-bucks tech job.

We have 2 dogs and a cat. Pets aren't my thing. I'd love to learn to ride though.

A lot of it is probably location, and also comparing yourself to anecdata.

But some percentage of it needs to be standing out. There are a lot of developers in cube farms working with stacks that look exactly like your resume. The javascript stuff is very quickly becoming devalued as boot camps crank out front end devs by the hundred.

Maybe becoming (or just advertising yourself) as a leading specialist in one or two of those technologies, or becoming an expert in an emerging technology would do it.

Location is a factor but also tech salaries have seen tremendous continued growth over the last 20 years.

new grads are getting jobs at FAANGs out of college starting at 150-200k+ tc these days.

granted these are mostly in higher col areas - sf, seattle, nyc.

you just need to get a new job if you want to make more money, it's that simple.

in 2015 i had my first job as a junior engineer at a startup at 60k. over 3 years i worked my way up to a tech lead and 100k. not bad but i could've made more faster had i just switched companies sooner.

i finally started interviewing and got up to a 150k offer at another startup of the same size, same area - my current company valued me at 100k and this new company 150k.

a year later this startup was acquired and i negotiated my way into a 200k+ offer at the acquiring company - mostly because the bigger company was bigger and just paid more in general than my small startup company.

making more money isn't that closely tied to your job skills actually. it's tied to your interviewing skills and desire to get a job at a FAANG or similarly large tech company that pays high comps.

i'm not saying it's the easiest thing - the FAANG interviews are fairly hard and require quite a bit of prep. But if you really want it I'm sure you could do it - it's more about dedication, preparation and time than anything else.

Fellow Orlandonian here, the salaries are not great. I haven't seen the ODevs salary survey from 2019, but if you look at 2018 you're good for the area: https://orlandodevs.com/blog/salary-survey/

I recommend working remote.

The first leap is the hardest. Once you've got your foot in the door of somewhere "prestigious" that you can list on your resume, a lot of doors open.

One of the easier ways to make that first leap is to attach your name to something marketable. I did a few contributor articles for PacketPushers back when they first opened up to letting pretty much anyone write articles. Then I added something like "Contributor at PacketPushers" to my LinkedIn and published a few of the articles on my LinkedIn feed. I ended up getting hired by LinkedIn as an SRE out of it.

I also think you have to find a way to differentiate yourself by having some kind of a personal style or mantra. You aren't just out there to prove you're good enough for a job, you're out there to prove that you're a better candidate than the other people they might hire.

For me, on the SRE side, I lean heavily on the people side of things (which I find is often neglected). Which is not to say that I ignore the tech side, I can hold my own against other senior SREs. But I use that focus on people to try to edge myself out against the other candidates who are equally technically skilled. SRE doesn't do anything a developer couldn't do given sufficient time and motivation. Why don't developers do it themselves? Because it's hard (read: out of their SME), and because it takes time. That's a UX problem to me, so I frame that as something I would fix by making it quick and easy for my developers. A system that increases your availability to 99% that is quick and easy to set up is almost always more valuable than a system that increases it to 99.9% or 99.99% but takes 6 meetings and a book to use effectively.

So find your style or flair. I don't know what that would be for developers, I've never done a pure developer job. If I were going to pick something off the top of my head, I would pick abstractions. Everybody does abstractions, but if you can be the person that can frame a hard problem in a simple abstraction, that's a ton of bonus points. I would talk about the time I can save other people by building a simple abstraction that can be reused over and over again.

Or you could go people oriented like I did. Maybe you can frame yourself as the person that's really good at getting key stakeholders and your PM in a room and translating what the stakeholders want done into actionable work units for your PM. Sure, it's often a thing managers do, but managers love people who can free up some of their schedule.

I've been interviewing people for jobs that pay in the 200k+ range for about 6 years. You have to have something that sets you apart. I've interviewed a lot of people that basically said "Yep, I can solve that problem". Cool, you get to go in the queue with the 7 other people that could solve that problem, and we'll probably decide who wins later on based on who we think we would like most as a person on our team (i.e who's not going to be a wet blanket at lunch). On the other hand, some people stand out. I interviewed a guy who was really particular about writing unit tests and documentation, and really enjoyed doing that stuff. That guy went to the front of the line, because those are two things most people are bad at. I would've given him a really good rating even if he was technically less able than other people.

Once you find your flair, market yourself. Tailor your LinkedIn to your flair. Publish some dumb fluff pieces on LinkedIn about why your specific flair is important to a company. It's not really to inform other people, those fluff pieces exist to cement your position as "that guy/gal".

If I were going to make a wild guess, I think you can do it. I've worked with plenty of people that were making 200-400k that didn't write their own RDBMS at 13. They were just normal go to school, get a job, then get an offer from FAANG kind of people. I've even worked with a couple people in that range that I think we could have replaced with an intern without problems.

I don't think I've done anything spectacular tech-wise, mostly CRUD apps, fairly run of the mill architecture and CLIs designed to make things easier or faster for devs. My LinkedIn and email still rings off the hook just from marketing myself as something more unique than another SRE that does SRE things.

> ike most people who play a sport don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it. For most people, it’s either a hobby, or a byproduct of the efforts they go to in their day job (i.e. fixes to their company’s private fork of a FOSS project, that can then sometimes be upstreamed.)

What would be good OS projects related to C++/Python that can generate the figures you're mentioning? Asking for myself here.

Your story is carefully tuned for "No True Scotsman" in advance. What are you going to say when OP spends 3+ months of their limited runway and ends up in the same place? "I said a real project, you didn't contribute to a real project" or "I said be smart with your choices, you must not have been smart", or "I said be professional, you must have been rude" or "I said network with experienced people, you must not have done enough networking"? "Worksforme"?

> I don't really see why this is so controversial.

This is you strawmanning. "Commits to Numpy or Rust are going to look better than a todo list" never was the controversial part, that is not controversial. "Be world class and people will want to hire you" isn't controversial, even.

The controversial part is "win the lottery - anyone can do it if they just try". Picking an appropriate project is a gamble. Becoming friendly with the core developers is a gamble. Picking the right issues to work on that people might notice you is a gamble. Being good enough that they actually do, is a gamble. That it translates into a job offer, is a gamble. That some people can do it isn't surprising, that everyone can and should prioritise that, is controversial.

That you should give away months of full-time equivalent work to profit-making companies, in the hope that it results in a job paying high above national average household income in first world countries, instead of spending that time elsewhere, is a huge gamble.

Upvote for you, I wish 3pt14159 quantified the probability of getting a $200 k for an average dev after having spent x month on an opensource project.

As a 26-year old at Google, this example sounds surprising to me. I'd rule out Amazon, Apple and Netflix, and you'd have to be ~L6 to get $500K at Facebook or Google, which I don't see any of them hiring fresh grads at no matter how good/famous they are, and definitely not remotely.

L6 is damn hard to get also, especially as an engineer.

Was it @feross?

3pt14159 isn't saying that noddly should try and make money doing open source.

Noddly should gain the respect of an open source maintainer. These maintainers receive lots of requests for job openings and contract positions. Most of it is just recruiter spam, but some of it is real and the maintainer would be happy to forward them on to someone they respect, along with a recommendation.

It's that recommendation that's worth its weight in gold.

I had very few job offers originate from FOSS (maybe 2 in 4 years?). I suspect there's a narrow field where people recruit using FOSS/GitHub and I'm not involved in it. JavaScript based projects seem to be doing much better from an outsider perspective.

I got more out of having a decent looking LinkedIn account.

I read it more like "get involved in FOSS projects to gain experience and trust, and base your CV (+ references) on that when applying for the jobs you want".

I've had quite a few job offers from my weblog over the years, most of them actually pretty decent from HN readers and such (rather different from LinkedIn and recruiter spam). Never from open source thus far.

In my opinion... LinkedIn gets you in the door, your Github profile can get you hired. I'm not sure how many job intros happen via Github to be honest... just from my own experience, I get a ton of calls from LinkedIn... and on the interview side, some higher profile contributions to open-source can help a lot.

For where I work now, our code challenge includes putting the solution on github/gitlab mostly to ensure they at least know git, but as a secondary to their gh profile, which leads to their dev and contributions.

It's not a hard requirement to me. I've known a lot of people in banking and secdef development that cannot participate in open-source, so there are definitely all types.

What kind of open source projects are useful to go for? This seems like by far the best way to spend a few months. I know Python best but I don't mind learning a new language.

Projects that businesses use to do something, or aid in doing something, that makes them money.

Okay. How do I go about finding such projects?

The inference I made from that statement is that if OP demonstrated skill and professionalism on an open source project, they might be able to ask the other maintainers for a job introduction. This is perfectly reasonable advice: earning people's respect is a great way to network, and networking is a great way to get job recommendations.

I don't think they were saying that most people who contribute to open source projects make half a million dollars a year as a direct result.

> could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly

Honestly most of those companies don't look at their resumes. Back when I was in college I submitted my resume to one of those companies no less than about 10 times.

And then suddenly out of the blue some PM at that company reached out to me saying they came across my website and saw a couple cool projects and asked if I would be interested in sending them a resume. (Yes, I did, and I got the offer, but ended up later declining it since I wanted to do a PhD.)

But that shows that clearly the previous 10 times my resume went nowhere.

In most tech companies any employee reasonably high up on the ladder can more or less whisk you into the interview process if they know you or your work and it's strong. Whether or not you get the job depends on the interview, but you'll at least almost surely get the interview. Multiple merged PRs on an open source project by that company is a near 100% ticket to the interview. Don't underestimate the power of knowing people, even if you are an amazing coder.

what were those projects?

> Could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly.

And dissapear into a black hole. Even contacting FAANG recruiters directly (after they asked for it on LinkedIn) leads to zero response.

I have no idea how these companies are hiring.

This is nice way to sum it up.

Let me say what what not to do.

Context: 10 year developer in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. Mostly Ruby on Rails (6 years), now Python (1 year).

I've dedicated my entire career for the companies and projects I worked for.

So I didn't built a profile, or strong connections.

The only thing right I got is financial reserves. So I quit from a interim CTO position (previous I was a Tech Leader), with 18 people below me, due to BURNOUT.

The only thing I got dedicating full time to one basket at time is:

1. financial reserves, that here in my country is enough for some months of food and shelter, but is less than that value you said in US Dollars. 2. Extreme BURNOUT. I'm 80% recovered after two months.

Right now I'm doing some online courses in DataCamp and Real Python. It's easy to stay focused.

Tried to start working contributing on FOSS and Tech Blogs, building some reputation, but I got worse some weeks ago, got back to these algorithmic online courses.

$ 1.5k / month for me is food and shelter right now.

Companies here demanding Spark certifications are offering this for late full and initial senior positions (I'm trying to go to Data Engineering field, because I love data).

Even big companies here are more picky than this, by not returning calls, emails, etc. 3 people from a big co. here called me, having multiple positions open right now, but no response (remember I have no perceivable reputation or connections, except a CompSci degree in a reputable Uni here).

So if you are a junior, let me say it: Build profile and reputation. Seek for good people to follow and be heard. Don't put everything in one company or project. I'm trying this right now.

Big COs. in developing countries are picky anyways. You'll need to spend a lot of energy to receive US$ 3k/month tops (it's the 80th percentile).

Try different. 10 years later you'll be much better than me.

> So if you are a junior, let me say it: Build profile and reputation. Seek for good people to follow and be heard. Don't put everything in one company or project. I'm trying this right now.

Fuck dude, are you me?

I did an MSDA, and I wanted to let you know that you're cutting off the majority of your opportunities for Data roles if you aren't specializing in a business component as well. For me, it was Sales. Started out as a Jr. Analyst and within a year owned all Sales Ops and Sales Enablement. Was a small 60-person, $23MM training company, but my skill with data paired with projects like forecasting models, process optimization, etc. made me a critical asset during a re-org. I'd say about 80% of my daily work was on data projects. The other 20 was in the sales channel itself. Kept things exciting. I worked 14-16 hour days. Never got tired of the grind.

So, consider pairing your data expertise with a business function. Really, anything from Marketing to Finance will open you up to a swarm of opportunities.

Thanks for your considerations. I have a soft spot for financial and educational things. More the second than in first.

For the first one is imperative (If I want a career in a company) that I move to Sao Paulo, and I have no desire to do that. Rio is already full of mega city problems, but I manage to have some good life here.

In Sao Paulo you need to make more concessions in quality of life to land on the nicest jobs.

Remote working is something that I really desire, because I like nature, doing crafts with wood, you know, some place to get energies back. But I have a intense fear for risking my family safety by doing that.

For the second one the payment is really low. ed techs here pay 30% less and have hard time to get some traction.

I'm trying to make some demos for both industries right now, that I hope will spark some more confidence inside me.

Thanks again!

> Remote working is something that I really desire, because I like nature, doing crafts with wood, you know, some place to get energies back. But I have a intense fear for risking my family safety by doing that.

Do you mean financial safety or personal safety?

I live in Argentina working remotely for over 10 years now. I moved from a medium city (1.5 M people) to nowhere in the mountains, and can't be happier. Right now kids are playing on the street, I'm working outdoors... will never go back to a city.

I heard that Rio/SP aren't that safe.

BTW, I'm also learning Python for Data. Finished the Data Analyst w/ Python on DataCamp.

Financial safety.

Personal safety is debatable. The city is dangerous, so as any other big city here (>1.5M). I grew up on a very poor neighborhood in south brazil, half way to BA :D, you learn how to manage "dangerous" people and places to avoid.

It's a short term loss if you got robbed or something. I've been there multiple times (ironically not in Rio), I carry a cheap mobile phone and money for transportation only.

The long term loss is not having a chance to make a decent emergency fund, a retirement fund, or a somewhat successful business.

People working for companies here and doing that three things I said are living with their relatives to make it cheap.

Including in Rio where workers for Big COs are living with 2 to 4 unrelated people near Barra da Tijuca or far away (2hrs) with their relatives.

But hey! They have snacks and videogames on their offices, forgetting about everything else on the long term.

I actually think this is excellent advice right now. I would add the caveat that I would target contributing to OS software that is maintained by a large company, not an individual. There are lots of them floating around.

This is by far the best way to get recognized at those companies that are hiring. I will admit it's a long sell, but it has fairly predictable results if you're steady with your contributions.

As a former college drop-out that made it into the industry this is the route I would have taken were I joining the workforce today when I was younger. Great way to learn on something real and get your foot in the door.

Note too this is possible for designers as well. There are lots of design libs floating around and contributions to those repos is so rare it's very easy to get stand out.

Many companies will not hire outside of certain countries i.e. US, UK....you may need to setup a corporate entity i.e. a Delaware LLC and work through a contract.

I would also add, try doing a keyword analysis on remote jobs to help guide the choice of the open source project.

This is correct. One has done it. He needed 4 months to join Gitlab from the day when he started contributing to Gitlab.

https://medium.com/@shinya_55783/how-i-joined-gitlab-and-wen...

I heard from my friends that because of pandemic, Gitlab is focusing on outbound recruiting. So I don't know whether the way still works or not in Gitlab.

But I concur that contributing to opensource is one of the best way to get a high-paying job.

I recommend these opensource projects: React, Vue, Angular, Typescript (because everyone is crazy about JS). If you don't fancy JS, pick Rust, Go, Deno (Deno is written in Rust), Python, Kubernetes, Flutter.

Is that the Gitlab that famously only pays proportional to your cost of living?

It sounds as if you don't like that -- in which ways would it be better from their perspective to ignore location?

This is how I think of it. The cliche is “software is eating the world” and it’s true - most companies hiring engineers are doing so because their bottom line is doing well thanks to specifically how scalable software is and how many real world problems it can help with.

So companies should be willing to pay a fair wage to good developers. I say should - obviously this is capitalism and if they can get it done for a penny then why not - but if developers refuse a bad deal it will create pressure for them to do so.

If I’m selling enterprise software in New York and someone from New York who happens to be residing in Mexico at the moment is working for me, I’m selling $10k/y licenses and paying him 20k/y something seems off.

OTOH if he moves to San Fransisco, Kensington in London, Monaco or Hong Kong I say ah ok here’s $200k. He’s doing the same stuff!

Doesn’t make sense to me. Instead say well he is worth $100k to us, he then chooses to live wherever in the world makes sense and is affordable.

For a remote first company that’s make sense.

Thanks for the reply

I too think things get weird, when a low living costs country person moves to a high cost place (or the other way around) and that now s/he makes more money (or less), although the same work.

> if developers refuse a bad deal it will ...

The thing is, I think, that it's a good deal to them

(Otherwise the company just raises the salary until it is)

To me, this is both confusing and makes sense at the same time depending on from which "angle" I start thinking

It's still good money for people who live in developing countries. In OP's case, OP can get much more than $1.5k / month by working in Gitlab.

I am from India and this is how I started my career about 14 years back. I used to contribute bits and pieces to Drupal and other open source projects. Drupal was really new in India but also like globally.

I got my biggest clients (all over the world) from there, then got into Google SoC, contributed to Drupal Google GData plugin. Made lots of money (through consulting)*, lost all in bootstrapping, rest is history.

Just wanting to add support for this strategy.

As I mentioned in another similar post awhile back[0] I did an in person version of this and have seen it first hand from those who were online.

I've worked with a bunch of people at this point who primarily were connected by a shared language or project and relationships that developed online.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21167473

If his goal is to guarantee a reasonable (actually very low) developer salary this feels like bad advice. There is no guarantee he will get hired, no backup plan if the project does not hire him, and he could very well walk away with nothing.

If your goal is to get a job just look at trends in job boards (probably very skewed towards web/mobile/data science), figure out which area you like/excel in and hone in on that. Keep iterating on your resume, upping your skill set, and learning from interview failures. Remember: selling yourself and your skill set is more important than actual ability. That is something you can really only hone with practice and repeated interviews.

I second this. I regularly hire remote devs who can prove themselves with react or node for $2500/mo

Can you point out some repos that you go looking for developers?

+1. I found my most recent hire at Microsoft this way. She was the top performer on my team and continues to do excellent work at the company. Also it’s important to choose your project wisely as well. I wasn’t looking to hire anyone in particular. The recommendation came out of a casual conversation with the creator of the open source project.

I'm curious, how does the interview look like for these people? Do they still have to go through all the coding/system design rounds?

I also would assume and sincerely hope the stupid tests around "can this person write software?" are eliminated when you have people on the team _using_ software the candidate wrote.

Not at google: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768

It would be the same as for anyone else. I also recused myself from her loop to make it as impartial as possible.

She got the job on merit. That's the important thing here.

> I've seen people make $500k a year doing this.

Any example of this or good project to pick?

Any recommendations of open source projects to work on for a C# dev?

How likely is it that one will get a job at the end of this? "Three or four months. Full time." is a hell of a commitment for a, what sounds like, 'maybe someone will notice you, and maybe they're hiring'.

It seems like it's better suited advice for between semesters in undergrad, and not while you are entirely dependent on your own sustained income.

Jobs paying 500k a year are very rare. You need to be a top programmer and you need luck.
It is like recommending to be an elite athlete.

Ok. Haha. That was my thought as well.
$500k seems outlandish, not that some aren't making that, but who pays that...
Maybe 1 in every 1,000 dev jobs can even approach $500k.

This just seems impossible. Any nontrivial open source project with a decent amount of stars (i.e. something that will give OP visibility) is impenetrable for a noob. I don't know why people keep recommending this as a way to break into software dev. It will take a couple months just to setup a testing environment AND get familiarity with the codebase where you can actually start modifying it. Then you need to identify an issue and hope it'll pass muster with the maintainers who have a bazillion years of experience.
Can you name a single example project on Github where you think a Python programmer with 2-3 years experience could contribute?

It's not just that they're impenetrable from a technical stand point. It can also be rather difficult to identify contributions that are useful and will get past the core gatekeepers.
Probably the best bet there is to target several projects, and then move towards the ones that seem to appreciate your work.

>> I don't know why people keep recommending this as a way to break into software dev
2 reasons IMHO: 1. It is a powerful albeit mostly imaginary image/story. A sort of American dream incarnated in SW. Everything is out there, open and within reach so anyone can do it and make it big. 2. A lot of the HN crowd are actually committers to high profile projects (this is the most popular hacker community after all) so they tend to judge by their own story or stories from their circle. I suspect though that the average dev is quite away from this paradigm.
Having tried a few times to just build kubernetes (by now I honestly believe that you need a server farm to do just that) I have to agree with the point you're making. The sheer magnitude and the speed that this behemoth is growing just makes me loose any incentive after a while. Not to mention that you have to actually antagonize with a lot of other noobs to get to these "good-first-issue" PR first. (Diclosure: I'm quite familiar with kube and an experienced dev).
And then there is the other thing. I'm afraid somewhere along the way we missed the point. OS is (was) about doing what you want with no strings attached. Something inside me is twitching in the thought that it has become a (difficult) way to get a nice job and that it is mostly controlled by big Co (which you are effectively begging to throw its eyes over you and your contributions). Dunno if I want to be part in this grind. I prefer doing my own stuff (and GPL them like the good old days).
My 0010 cents.

> Can you name a single example project on Github where you think a Python programmer with 2-3 years experience could contribute?
I'd love to find one too! :) And better yet, a project backed by a company that is hiring remote open source devs.

This sounds like a “follow your dream” pitch.
Great for the survivors, bad for 99.99% that did not make it. I’d be curious to know how many people tried that got nothing for their effort.

> If I knew you were good at Python and you were asking for $1.5k a month I would hire you and laugh all the way to the bank.
One way to avoid exploitation like this is to try to develop a number of offers simultaneously. Go in with the plan of getting a couple of offers early, and then let them twist in the wind while you develop better ones. Having an offer is good leverage for getting a better offer from another place without seeming "greedy". (Be courteous and humble, of course, or at least fake it.)
Also, the FAANGs seem to recruit endlessly, even when they're not really hiring. Good place for practice interviews, even if you don't care to work there. My offer from one got me a lot more money elsewhere.

Who is making $500,000 per year as a developer?
That seems outlandish. Edge case-ey.
Outside of maybe quants, what type of developers are pulling that kind of income?

> what type of developers are pulling that kind of income?
So, the subset of developers who make this much money basically amounts to "The senior engineers, at top tech companies, such as google/FB/ect"
Which.... is less unlikely than you'd think, if you are talking about the democraphic of users who read hacker news.
500k is still definitely up there, but making even something like 250k, at any of these top tech companies, as a mid level engineer, is completely standard. I'd expect anyone who has 5 years of experience, at these types of companies to be making at least this amount.
So, within that context, the people who are making twice that, would be maybe the team leads, or possible even a bit higher ranking than that.

I wouldn't recommend this method personally though, only a small amount of people can achieve it.
To give an alternative way:
Find a successfull expensive software product in a country that isn't in the same language as yours.
Ask to translate it and if you can sell the product in your country. Acting as a middleman.
Start selling, get the commission.
In my experience, I've seen this work more than the one i'm replying too. And I think it's unknown in big countries, eg. The US

This thread is great, every suggestion has a reply that says "This is terrible advice."
Might I suggest people stop giving advice if they haven't actually done it themselves? Just spewing what you think should work, or what you think you've seen people do could be super harmful to this person's career. Let's hear some first hand stories of what worked, not second/third/imaginary hard stories of what people think should work having never been in this situation.

I would even add: if they haven’t done it themselves deliberately and multiple times.
Survivorship bias and “after the fact rationalization“ are both way too common in those discussions.

"This is terrible advice." No exceptions.

> This thread is great, every suggestion has a reply that says "This is terrible advice."
That's good! Someone smart and driven will inhale every reply and pull out common tidbits for experimentation.

Where is the line between driven and desperate?

How closer one is to the end of the runway.

@noddly I have some actionable advice. You are in an excellent spot.
week 1, 2 maybe 3: search for popular android applications that have low ratings that you can implement, sort them whichever way you prefer, do some wireframes and plan your first project. Do not spend less than 3 weeks. Do not spend more.
Week 4: This is the most important week. Figure out the tech you will be using. Make lots of demos projects, fail a bunch of times, set up libraries, APIs, accounts, integrations, link them to your project, whatever you need to get this to work. You have to know what you are doing before starting the project.
month 2, 3: implement a very simple frontend and a backend for that project. Cut corners on features, but make sure it doesn't crash. Test, test, test. Plan ahead. When a feature is done, do not look back. Do not spend less than 2 months. Do not spend more. Monetize, that's why we are here. Free to download, but put 1-2 features inside the app that can be purchased via google play. Make them $10 each.
month 3 week 1, 2: Automate deployment on server side, deploy on google play, send to friends, go on reddit, HN, itch.io, spread the word. Your goal is to get at least 20 customers a month. So one person a day. Assuming you did something that has a conversion rate of 1/100 (worst case), you need 2,000 people to see it every day. Google play will do most of the work for you.
Start the next project. Hopefully the first project will start getting traction.
Repeat this 3-4 times. Let your previous project's ratings and money motivate you. Things will accumulate over time.
Things don't work? No problem. Now you have four apps on the market to show to your next employer and a bunch of new experience.

> Things don't work? No problem
i think that OP should also continue applying constantly for remote jobs in US while he's doing the aforementioned. if he spends 13 months writing android apps that go nowhere (which is an extremely high probability of that happening), he'll basically be no better off monetarily than before.

This is actually what I did, but with web application and services. I tried app development in the one of my first few projects but finally gave up for web apps because it allows faster trial and error ( mainly I can push changes in UI and UX faster to a wider audience ). My take away is that stay away from "hot" topics ( news, game app ) unless you have a solid background because you need a really polish product to compete.

What metrics do you use for web applications and services? I mean with mobile app, you have downloads and ratings. But for web apps, you have no such thing.

I'm not a web developer but I am aware of Alexa ranking. That can be used to see how popular some website is worldwide or in a particular country.

Can you give an example of a web app/service that you created? Are these SaaS or content sites monetized by ads/affiliate etc?

As someone in a similar situation to OP, I really appreciate this advice. Thanks.

If you actually did this you'd know that:
A. Things break. Especially MVPs. You can't just park it and move to the next project.
B. Nothing just grows on its own. It takes constant work to market and promote your app. It can be the most amazing thing ever and still get no traffic because you failed promoting it.

Good advice IMO, but I want to nitpick something: "Assuming you did something that has a conversion rate of 1/100 (worst case)"
The worst case is making something terrible that no one wants, despite all that effort. And it is definitely possible. (Don't let that hold you back though, anyone reading this! Failure is the best way to learn, because it sucks so much.)

Failure can be useful, too. I made an iOS app that completely failed to get any sort of traction, but it was useful in getting consulting work, because clients knew that I had experience in iOS, in completing a project, and in getting approved (the process was seen as more troublesome back then), plus they could look at the app and get an idea of what I was capable of. Complete failure as a product, but great success in marketing.

Some business-y ideas:
1) Build an affiliate site. Some of the older posts on /r/juststart [0] are helpful.
2) Organize information and sell it. See the stuff made by Pieter Levels [1] or BuiltWith [2]. I just put together LotsofOpps [3] (which is just bunch of information on online/offline ways to make money). There is lots of info out there that will be interesting to someone if you can find the right angle.
3) Unbundle Craigslist [4]. Craigslist is terrible for some things. I'm working on BuiltRigs [5].
4) Unbundle Zapier [6]. A great example is BannerBear [7].
None of these things are particularly easy. Marketing is the hard part, but it's most important to actually build something and release it quickly.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/juststart/
[1] https://twitter.com/levelsio
[2] https://builtwith.com/
[3] https://www.lotsofopps.com/
[4] https://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/345941486/the-spawn-of-c...
[5] https://www.builtrigs.com/
[6] https://kamerontanseli.ghost.io/first-it-was-craiglist-next-...
[7] https://bannerbear.com/

Bannerbear is actually an example that even if you have an audience, and yongfook has been at this indiemaker space for ages, it is still tough to break $1kMRR [1] . He is barely over $1,030/month after almost a year at this project.
[1]https://bannerbear.com/open

That's great then! BannerBear actually fits into OP's desire to be making $1-1.5k in 13 months!
Kidding aside - yes, I get it. SAAS products take a while and are hard. According to BareMetrics, after a year most companies are making $3333 in MRR [0].
But if you're living in a 3rd world country that's usually plenty of cash if you've got decent margins. The spirit of including BannerBear was more like "think about the things people do in Zapier and put together that product". Also, I just like the BannerBear story.
[0] https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-fast-saas-companies-hit-arr...

https://www.builtrigs.com/post-your-rig/
fyi: gives me a 404 (404 - page not found)

My view is coming from someone who hires people last few years.
1) People hate on Freelancer sites, but get on them and and build a profile. If you are good it will show in time. Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising.
2) Don't lie about what you can do. Always do a good job. I've tried a bunch of people from poorer countries and those seem to be the 2 main issues. Dont have a mentality of cutting corners.
3) Build stuff hired or not. I watch guys blossom from jr to mid/snr after work and work. You learn by doing. If your not working, work anyway. Pick a business, and build something that would be good for them. Contact them and see if you can sell it cheap. But keep building and getting better. This is a long term game. You might pick up a 1 decent client a year, but 5 years from now you will be flooded type deal.
Good luck - I think many of have the fear of what might be if this economy truly tanks.

> Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising.
This is terrible advice.
Don't work for free, all you're doing is allowing other people to take advantage of you... which, they will.
There's plenty of other great advice in this topic; this: "work hard and do a good job, for free and it'll be great experience / advertising / whatever the f" is total BS.

OP didn't say "work for free", they said "work for peanuts".
I agree that freelancer sites have some problematic aspects, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the idea that you need to start small and build a reputation/profile. This applies to any bootstrapped business, not just when working via freelancer sites.

I would argue work for peanuts and work for free are not significantly distinct on many freelance sites.
Unless you're suggesting that there's a meaningful difference in doing 40 hours of work for 5 bucks and working for free?

There is if you get non-monetary benefits such as a 5 star review pushing you up in the rankings, thereby making it much easier to get future bookings at higher prices.
Edit: conceptually, it's nore like an unpaid internship. I know someone who got a highly paid job by first doing it for free for 3 months to prove his skills, as he was lacking formal certifications
Edit2: I honestly don't get why this is being downvoted. It's neither unfriendly nor offensive and it is relevant to the discussion, even if you might not like this aspect of reality.

> I know someone who got a highly paid job by first doing it for free for 3 months to prove his skills
And I know dozens of people who got burned by being talked into working for "exposure".

In Germany, for such an unpaid internship you will have a contract that says that unless they fire you with a proper reason during those 3 months, your temporary contract will automatically convert into a permanent position. In many cases, it will also already list the salary that you can expect to receive after the 3 months are over. Plus you'll be meeting your future teammates every day in their office.
To me, that is a very different level of commitment by the company than working for "exposure" for someone who has no intention of hiring you.

> conceptually, it's nore like an unpaid internship.
People should get paid for work they do. If a task is worth $0 to a company, then they can do without it.
The whole "you're getting paid in valuable training/experience/exposure" thing is bunk, IMO.

40 hours for 5 dollars is well beyond working peanuts that's just robbing people... Even Fiverr isn't close to this rate

Well, there is a difference. With 5 bucks per hour the OP is almost in his target range.

Freelancing websites are about playing a game (reviews, ratings, stats) and you have to play the game to win.
The first thing I do when I write a game or software is send out advance copies for free.

This is real advice. You can expect whatever you want but if you are just starting you will get peanuts, as this is your level and fair pay.
Another situation is if you have experience but no portfolio. So you have two options - look forever for a project that will hire you without portfolio (usually this takes a long time, seen this many times), or you can complete few small projects for really small pay quickly and then you will be able to find a good-paying project way faster.

I disagree. I know someone who approached a company and said "I will work as a free intern for 3 months. If you want me to simply get coffee I will. It will be the best coffee you have ever had." 3 months later he had a full time offer and is now doing very well. Working for free indefinitely is bad advice, but offering a "freemium" model is rather savvy.

A company that responded to this kind of solicitation would be unethical, at best, and is probably breaking employment law in the West.

That seems messed up. Seems like survivorship biasor something

Yes, they will take advantage of you, speaking from experience. Right after graduating I was paid ~750eu/mo for 60+hrs a week as a frontend dev in a first world country. It barely covered my rent. I had to borrow money from my parents to pay for food.
I lasted 1 year at that first company. My next job, a small but awesome agency, took me -someone with an arts degree, 1 year frontend dev experience- as a junior full-stack developer and gave me the chance and challenges to develop myself further. Now, a few years later, I earn a relatively good salary as a JS consultant at another company.
Being taking advantage of (financially) can have the effect of developing a thicker skin. You won't let it happen again after that. That's growth in my opinion.
It doesn't take the fact away that you can earn just enough to survive while building up professional development experience, which you can add to your CV. It's tough, but it can be done! Grab any chance to gain professional experience.
Also, try to stay creative! I know, it is super hard when you're broke / low on funds, there is no freedom in your head to think about anything else then surviving day to day or month to month.
The comment above about contributing to open-source is really good. There are lots of projects that would love more contributors. Also it's a nice way to expand your network.
And please, create a stunning personal website. Do some research into graphic design and try to create a professional but creative portfolio site. Next to your Github account, this is your business card.

My friend told me don't study for free.. make sure you get paid

This is excellent advice.
I would like to add one thing, which is to regularly compare your skill level and your pricing to others on the platform.
You'll start at $10 an hour to get good ratings. Then you prove your skill set at $50 an hour. Then after 1-2 months of working in the same niche, you might have the experience and working speed to go up to $100 an hour. Once you reliably get bookings at that price, you're ready to hunt for projects outside of upwork.

For freelancing sites, you need to focus on stuff established businesses need and shy away from anything catering to individuals or startups.
Payment is all relative. Someone with an idea for a new social network might think of $10,000 as a lot of money, even if they want an entire app with lots of features built from scratch, which could be a months' long job. They will vastly underestimate how expensive this will be, particularly if they don't have technical backgrounds.
Meanwhile, an established business might pay $1000 for something that takes a few hours and think nothing of it, because they are thinking in terms of value to the company, not "I don't want to blow through my personal savings".
I hired freelancers at my last job. When going through candidates, I didn't look for the lowest bidder. I looked for someone who charged a reasonable amount who looked like they knew what they were doing. For example, one guy we hired charged us $400 for something that probably took him two or three hours. Considering that he was working out of Russia, this is probably a pretty good wage. Some of the bids were for $50-100, but from my company's perspective, $400 was nothing anyway, so I looked for someone with great reviews and who seemed like they knew what they were doing. I think we found the guy on Upwork, but we ended up hiring him directly to do a bunch more work after that.
I think that if you are targeting well-paying work, look for things that appeal to businesses. Businesses use Excel, so work on your skills in integrating Excel with your favorite programming language. Lots of businesses want web scraping, so learn that. Businesses might have old code written in language X. If you find the right opportunity there, it could be a long term partnership that can be fairly lucrative.

> I think we found the guy on Upwork, but we ended up hiring him directly to do a bunch more work after that.
Be careful admitting this. I believe going off-platform like this is against their ToS, and technically they could sue you for it.

> I hired freelancers at my last job. When going through candidates, I didn't look for the lowest bidder. I looked for someone who charged a reasonable amount who looked like they knew what they were doing.
+1, this is how anyone sane chooses vendors. Paying bottom dollar is a good way to end up costing the company just as much in hassle and in-house resources dealing with that hassle.

Unfortunately this is not what has been encouraged by freelancer sites. They advertise being cost effective instead of being able to find better/more suited talent.

Possibly an unpopular opinion on Freelancing work, but generally avoid anything that is highly saturated. Become a very deep expert in something older or niche.
These can lead to opportunities to maintain older software, or work on very specific projects. I did well updating and maintaining ancient Microsoft Access databases for small and medium size businesses who relied on them for day to day operations.
I'm currently utilizing several contractors who specialize in single products, and know them like the back of their hand (Lucine/ElasticSearch for actual full text search, not just elk stack)
There are TONS of "Full Stack" developers out there, so trying to work in that environment until you have a solid client base is, like you said, a race to the bottom.
On the local SMB side, I never told clients I was a Software Developer. I was a problem solver who could use technology when appropriate. Ask some local companies or SMB employees what the most painful part of their day happens to be. Maybe its something you can solve with some out of the box open source, a repurposed desktop as an SMB Server, or a little software development project. These things turn into recurring revenue as you save the companies money and time.

This is true, I made at least 10x OP's amount servicing legacy Adobe Flex applications and later on leading the transition to JS.
However, it might be difficult to get a good lead on that.

Good niche is intersection of two skills. For example, if you can do biology + programming, you can get jobs in bioinformatics. If you do education + programming, you're looking at ed-tech. Etc.
Being a domain-expert (even an armchair-level one) goes a really long ways.
Niche markets are less efficient. There aren't as many jobs, and when an employer needs you, they /really/ need you; if you go into narrow enough niches, there can be zero competitors qualified for the same position. That gives a lot of leverage. The flip side is there might be zero job openings for months. On the whole, I think that's an advantage, but it can go both ways.

You give good advice: avoid over saturated fields unless a specific customer wants to hire you but gives you a heads up that you need to ramp up.
Contributing to open source on github may also help. Just cloning other projects is not impressive to potential customers, but small (perhaps learning) projects of your own offer some verification of your ability.
While it might be possible to start a small business around a web service, it seems to me like it is safer to continually study and improve your skill sets and learn the skill of figuring out what customers need and do that for them.

I started my freelancing career with XSLT (XML transformations) and got a Google Summer of Code stipend 2011 and a job offer right after that. Riding this train since 2011. Although I'm doing XSLT very seldom nowadays it got me my foot in the doorstep, guessing with a common programming language and not going niche I would have never made it (thinking that Asian and Russian programmers are much better in broad known languages than me).

Don't confuse high demand with oversaturation, or low demand with "niche".
One of the biggest problem OP has is that in his area probably not a lot of people have done anything like what he is trying to achieve. And people from around the world might not be able to give good advice on his particular situation.

Back in my freelancing days, everyone was doing php3 web development. I did, too, and it worked out extremely well for me.
A very popular market might be saturated, which is a downside. But it might also mean that customers already know that they want/need exactly this, which makes finding projects extremely easy.
If you want to have the best possible salary, go for an obscure niche where you can be the best in the world.
If you just want an OK salary with not too much work, go for the most popular project categories.

Back in the php3 days, there were not tens of thousands of global PHP3 devs competing on Fiver & Upwork.

For full-time work, there's the specialist-generalist tradeoff. Specialists tend to make more money, but it's harder to find a job, and the skills might have a shorter shelf life.

I think having a niche or single product focus is great advice!
Imagine if OP:
1) Picked a product/tech
2) Did a deep dive into it for 3 months - setups and teardowns, reading, learning everything in the docs, and experimenting
3) Started writing blog posts about it now - It's never to early to create content! This would help the OP learn and eventually (a long time from now) become a lead generator.
4) Started advertising as a specialist in XYZ
There are lots of opportunities to become an expert in something. People that really get themselves out there create courses and learning communities for their specialty. It would require some work to find the right niche.

> I'm a dev with almost no experience
> Started coding 3.5 years ago and probably have enough under my belt to try multiple projects over this duration
This isn't enough information to go on, 3.5 years of programming could mean you've built your own game engine and a CMS from scratch in an attempt to do some project of yours, or it could mean you've been watching random programming courses sporadicly in hopes of landing a higher paying job eventually. (What third world country has median income of 1500$/month anyway ?)
Going off on what this sounds (because you didn't provide the info above) it seems like you aren't even close to an independent developer/freelancer but you're starting the discussion by determining your expected income.
IMO start with anything where you see you have potential to progress at any price point - if you actually have technical skills it shouldn't take you long to reach the level that matches them and if you don't it will give you time to learn.

> What third world country has median income of 1500$/month anyway?
Many of them: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/median-income-by...

According to your list, even if you take the household income, 1500/month is 18000/year - which of those countries above 18000 would you describe as third world ?

Median income lifestyle in first world country does not equate to median lifestyle in say India or Brazil.
For example, In India, fresh out of college students earn ~$6k/yr in TCS and similar companies. They make ends meet by pinching pennies. At the same time the median household income is ~$3.6k, that's what a household of a hardworking physical labourer would make and the conditions they live in aren't pretty.
I don't think it's outlandish at all for someone from a similar country to target $1k/mo. Heck, it may not even be enough if he has a family he wants to give a comfortable life.

OP signaled $1.5K though as well. 50% higher than $1K. Same difference or bigger than your examples in difference alone.

Might be wrong, but believe the point was not that $1500 is unbelievable, but per the data you linked to - that the “median household income worldwide is $9733“; that and the OP posted $1500 is above and beyond there needs; worth highlighting that is household income, not individual income.
There’s a massive difference $811 a month and $1500 month; $811 is $9733 divided by 12, though really should be the divid by at least 2, since by definition household has at least 2 members.

> since by definition household has at least 2 members.
You can have single person household, and single income - but yeah - my point is 1000$-1500$ for someone who claims to live in a "third world country" and have no experience sounds like you have expectations on what you should make because you've seen others charge that - in reality with no experience and formal training you should consider yourself lucky to get any opportunity to learn/validate your skills because more often than not (from my experience at least) during the first 6 months to a year it will probably take more resources off productive people to get you to be productive than you will be able contribute

Don't bother with domestic freelancing. Chances are you will be worked to death and struggle to even get paid. Software engineers are rarely taken seriously in developing economies. Focus on overseas freelancing.
Start small and gradually increase your rate. You probably won't get big projects or a nice pay rate in the beginning. It's fine, in the long term things will work out. You will build a reputation over time.
Impress people with the quality of your work. Even if you are working on a small issue for a low amount, go the extra mile. Write stellar code and work long hours to deliver it quickly. Your effort will pay off, as clients will recommend you to others.
Communicate. I can't stress this enough. A big problem in outsourcing is that it's hard to find engineers who are good communicators. Never disappear, update your clients often, don't be afraid to show up in calls, write detailed answers. This makes a huge difference.
In your free time, study. Practice. Become a better engineer. Don't limit yourself to technologies you are comfortable with. Learn something new every day.
When applying for a freelance gig, take everything I've said above into account. Write a detailed proposal that makes it clear you understand the problem at hand and are more than qualified to solve it. If possible, attach a code sample that demonstrates how you'd tackle the problem. Don't forget to mention you are available for a chat whenever and respond quickly if you get an answer.

Do companies employ overseas freelancer? If the company doesnt have a dependency in that country isnt this from a legal and tax point of view a nightmare?

Sure. It's definitely more complicated than keeping things local but I wouldn't say it's a nightmare of complexity. It's worth it, otherwise people wouldn't do it.

One can help with that by creating a single-person company and just issuing regular invoices for services. An accountant to manage the local taxes is usually not very expensive.

I know that in some 3rd world countries this requires either huge bribes for setting up the company, and/or good connection since it touches on foreign trade (or both)

Don't ask for $1.5k/mo. No one will think of you as valuable if that's what you ask for. People who do pay you that much will treat you like shit and are not the kind of people you want to work with.
The problem is you're referring to yourself as a newbie. I don't know where you're from, but generally in America that would be seen as lack of confidence. Don't be humble. You can learn on the job. Working from home you can easily work 12 hour days if things take you longer than an experinced developer.
Look for companies you'd like to work with. If you're fine with startups which can be generally more approchable I'd look on AngelList. Email the founder or CTO. Talk to them about their problems. Try to be genuinely helpful and understanding. If they have job openings talk about how you can help them. Put everything you did on your CV. Upload your projects on GitHub.
You can absolutely do this, but first you need to change your mindset.

I mean that would be true in the US, but OP explicitly said he's not in the US. It really depends on where he is; 1.5k/month could be considered a very good wage where he is.

> 1.5k/month could be considered a very good wage where he is.
Agreed. 1.5k/month is almost upper middle class in my country.

> It really depends on where he is; 1.5k/month could be considered a very good wage where he is.
But if you're competing with the US market, no reason not to aim for 15k/month or even 150k/month while you're at it.
Then you can take some of your earnings and invest it in your local economy. Help friends start local companies, etc.

I think what the others are getting at is it's more like the US market is competing now with cheaper labor markets.
But I understand what you're saying.

That's the wrong way to go about it. You want to be pricing based on supply and demand, not based on your costs.
OP stated he wanted to work remotely, hence he's competing in the global (remote work) market. Many US and other companies hire in this market and often pay US-level (but generally not Silicon Valley-level) salaries. A lot of digital nomad types have those jobs.
Judging by OP's good grasp of English and the fact that he reads Hacker News, I'd say that alone makes him more qualified for those jobs than the bulk of developers from his country. I'd wager many of them don't even compete in that market to begin with.

I concur. Maybe OP prices themselves at $50/hour. That means only 20 hours of work in a month is needed. Lots of people will pay $50/hour. Maybe op has trouble finding full time work at this level starting out. But sure they could find 1/2 weeks work over the course of the month.

You say you don't want to use Fiverr because "fiverr is a race to bottom". But your goal is to make $1,500/month. If you work just 25 hours/week, that translates to $15/hour. If $1.5k is truly your goal, then Fiverr is the perfect platform for you.
Platforms like Fiverr and upwork get a lot of hate from the HN crowd, precisely because their expectations are to make $50-100+ per hour. And that's much much harder to do on Fiverr because you're competing against people like you who are charging $15/hour. Their frustration is your opportunity.
Once you've grown your skills and have more financial stability, you can start branching out into other career models. But as a newbie with low salary expectations, don't be afraid to do unglamorous grunt work. It will give you experience, build up your reputation, grow your skills, and most importantly, pay rent.

Yesssss you can definitely make 1.5k/month with Fiverr and upwork. It might be a grind right now but it's possible! You can get in with companies pretty quick too if you're just a nice person that works hard and communicates.

I started my career 10 years ago doing exactly this (also from a 3rd world country). Within 3 months I reached 1.5k/mo while finishing my engineering degree. It wasn't that hard (not sure about now) since all you had to do is demonstrating that you're capable of completing the project in your bid. I did this by describing what kind of stack that I'll use, potential problems that will likely arise and how to address it, or even try to steer the project owner to use stack I'm more capable of by describing its benefits compared to their chosen stack (if they requires the project to be written with a specific language/framework).
I imagine those freelancing sites is 10x more saturated now than 10 years ago, but perhaps it's still possible to reach 1.5k/mo in a few months. Like other people said, it's probably best to pick your niche to narrow down potential projects and reducing competition. I was mostly bidding on python projects back then (not as many python programmers back then and a gazillion of php programmers).
After I got my degree, I emailed one of my past client that I'm now available for full time work and he connect me to someone that was looking for full time developer and the rest is history.

Your best bet is going to be freelancing/software dev contracting. There are many platforms other than Upwork and Fiverr. If you're on LinkedIn, post it to your network that you're looking for some consulting work. Talk about what you can build - focus on outcomes (how you can help clients deliver stuff). Join Slack communities focused around your skills. Find any community you can join and keep an eye out for work.
Even in a "third world country" (fwiw I don't like that term), you can easily get $25-40/h doing freelancing for US/Europe based clients. At $30/h, you only need to freelance 50h a month to make $1.5K. It is very doable.
My personal 2c is ignore all the other advice you're getting in this thread (some of it is outrageously impractical and divorced from reality) and focus on finding freelance work.
NOTE: I'm talking from experience (though I'm in the US). Heck, I'll send some work your way if you're good at your stack. Send me an email (in my bio).

what freelance platforms do you recommend?

Toptal and Gigster come to mind first. But I keep seeing ads on FB for more and more of these "remote developer" platforms.

As someone who has been hiring a lot of freelance engineers for web dev projects, here are my tips assuming you'd like to check that path and assuming you are still not very experienced:
1. Only take projects you're confident you could ace. Customers would often not tolerate work that isn't accurate, not built according to best practices and is not delivered on time.
2. NEVER fail your client. Assuming the clients is honest and not someone looking to abuse you, if you've committed to a project you must complete it on time and deliver something great. If you can't make it one time, let the client know ASAP. If you can't get the right quality, let the client know ASAP. The client may ask to cancel the deal and get the money back but your reputation will not suffer as much as if you'd waste any more of their time by being late or delivering low quality deliverable.
3. Never submit your work without THOROUGHLY TESTING IT. I see way too many junior engineers saying "I'm done, check it out" only to find out whatever they build easily breaks the moment we start playing with it. CHECK YOUR SHIT before you deliver it or else your client will lose trust in you.
Even if your first few projects turn out to be not that great, if you'll learn from your mistakes and push through, you should be able to maintain clients who will be working with you for the long-term.
The amounts of money you're looking for are a non-issue for many companies.

If you are a good dev, with a good work ethic and some hustle this won't be that hard.
Although the "almost no experience" and "Started coding 3.5 years ago" aren't very congruent - you should really clarify that.
Here are two options for you:
1. partner with someone and develop a SaaS product. There are thousands of "business" people with no tech experience who have ideas and are looking for a technical partner. But spend a lot of time doing due diligence and make sure they really have done the market research, have customers lined up, and really know the space well. From my personal experience, this usually doesn't happen - they have an idea, get excited about it and want to find someone to work for free and build it on speculation. So be really careful here. BUT if you find the right person, this could be an amazing opportunity for you.
2. As others have said, work on sites like Upwork, and start building a portfolio. At $6.25 / hour (your $1k month goal) this is pretty low risk for the customer. Start with small projects you know you can knock out quickly - get the positive reviews and feedback, and raise your rates accordingly.
I'd be willing to help you with either #1 or #2 - get in touch if you are interested.

If you are open to hiring a new devs I'd really appreciate it. I have more than 4 years of work experience but no freelance. I can do PHP with frameworks like Laravel, React or iOS native development and I do Flutter coding in my free time currently.

Since you mention having finances to manage for some time, I can share that in my personal experience, when I lost my job amid a regional financial crisis, I focused my efforts on an open source project (something I built, I didn't join an existing one, though at first I did have former coworkers hack on it with me). I did it to stay busy (I found back then that it's important to stay busy and maintain a routine when you're out of work) and improve my skills, but as a side-effect, it got me a contractor offer from a remote company that found my project useful (it was a set of ha scripts for mysql, this was 2002, before there were proper ha tools for this database) and "hired" me using the project as resume.
I'm not saying it's a sure path to getting income, but at the worst case, you'll be left with something to show and some programming experience too.

Open source is one thing that has popped up multiple times in this thread and regretfully something I have always ignored. Seeing that I have some time, I'll start putting conscious effort into it.

I'm probably biased, but you can build a Shopify app and have a very, very high chance at earning $1k or $1.5k per month within 12 months.
Here's a list of ideas that I researched last year, if it helps.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hnpcl1VAlPC9MuFvvsl2...
If you do decide to go this path, I've written a guide from my experience that might help you get things off the ground.
https://www.preetamnath.com/blog/shopify-micro-saas-growth
Whichever path you choose, all the very best!

Looks interesting. Thanks for sharing. I will take a look though I know nothing about Shopify and only familiar with WordPress.

Learn to write well. You can make 1k-1.5k/month starting next month if you can author good blog posts for businesses. Writing content, like coding, is something where the time investment cannot be "hacked." For a 1200 word blog post someone has to sit at the computer and actually write the 1200 words. That takes time. In many cases there is no content writer on staff and someone has to do the work.
I'd say 90% of the posts you read by a company CEO, CTO, or COO are in fact written by someone else and at least half the time in those cases they were written by someone that doesn't even work there. My first professional writing gig was for a German industrial paint company entering the US market. I earned $50 for a 600 word post and wrote them 3 posts per day. Related: I nearly failed chemistry in high school and know nothing about paint.
Until about a year ago I had been blogging for others for close to a decade. 4 or 5 years ago I surmised that I probably had someone in the neighborhood of 4 million words out there on the internet, mostly applying to subjects I have no training in. I just like to write and people will pay for that. I've easily made $400-$1000/month writing posts for businesses as I have a beer in the evening and my wife makes dinner.
Businesses of all types will pay between $500 and $1000 for a well written, well researched blog post between 800 and 2000 words. Can you create a technical whitepaper or even an eBook/lead magnet with citations and some science in it? That STARTS at $2000.
That means companies (like mine) that have those opps are more than happy to farm them out to someone else for a few hundred bucks. You can easily command a dime per word if you are reliable and write with quality. In fact, I don't have $1k of budget for you/anyone right now but I'd be glad to pay a dime a word starting Monday for someone to start pumping out all the posts for my business that I've been meaning to write but - wait for it -simply cannot find the time to prioritize the work.
THe content creation/professional blogging space is still full of opportunity and based on the short post you have here it looks like your English is just fine.
"So where do I find the work?" Craigslist - tons of opps, tons of competition Fiverr Blogmutt and similar Content co-op sites Cold approach - send me an email I'll send you the exact instructions for doing this.
Good luck.

Interested to know who is paying you $1k for a blog post...

I'm not telling you specifically who, obviously, but we have 3 clients that order a post from us about once a month for at least $1,000. The posts typically are:
- 2000 to 2500 words - FAST (48 hour) turnaround - ready to be published without more than a simple read through - voice consistent with other posts that we may not have written for them - well cited or referenced
The clients are - b2b environment selling into the enterprise - companies that generate b/w 10M and 100M in business - tech companies that have a disproportionally small digital marketing team thus the need to outsource.
Example, in early March we wrote a series of 3 blogs posts about security challenges for transforming your organization to WFH. $2500 for a total of ~6000 words, ordered Monday morning and delivered Wednesday night.

I can't believe it. Literally.

Ok. I dont really have anything to gain by lying.

You are just herding goats amirite?
jk ;)

your website looks like a joke and your "company" sounds awful

2-2.5K for a blog post sounds excessive in length, specially for b2b companies that sounds like they post often.
I have quite a few blog posts and 1200-1600 is the sweet spot that I get pretty much 100% readership. Anything longer than that gets bookmarked but never read.

I'm glad that works for you. Long form posts (2k+) are most often deep product breakdown/review or how-to guides. My experience has been that such pieces perform very well across a variety of important metrics when the quality is high.

As someone who has been thinking about doing some ghost writing for b2b/enterprises/startups as a nice side-income but never got to actuallly do it.
This is a great footprint for me to try and crack something to submit (monday) ideally.
I already applied to a great SaaS which I see an open call to write blogposts for in their newsletter. The CEO asked which topics I would like to write about and I submited 2-3 rough ideas, and he thought they were OK and asked for a draft.
I never followed through.
I don't have any blog although I think I could do it.
Would you mind emailing you for some more specific advice or editorial peer review in the moonshot case I finally get to write some shit?
Thanks again for your great (free) advice

Go ahead. And if you have a tech bent I can probably put you to work as well.

$1000 is definitely higher than many, but there are a lot of people who publicly offer to pay $500. I maintain a list of places that do on github [0]
[0] https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-writing/blob/master/...

Nice. This HN thread is a goldmine of info for me. Appreciate all these sharing of resources.

> I'd say 90% of the posts you read by a company CEO, CTO, or COO are in fact written by someone else and at least half the time in those cases they were written by someone that doesn't even work there.
I'd love to see some kind of evidence to support this claim.

It's called Ghost Writing.
If it's 90% or more or less, I have no idea, but it's quite common. From blog articles to books.

I’m familiar with ghost writing, but its mere existence does not support the claim that 90% of C-suite blog posts are ghost written.

I was ghost writing blogs for almost a decade. Almost everything I wrote was published under c suite names. 90% is my random guess. If the actual exact number is important to you then discount the 90%. I hsvent actually done a study.

I’d also like to know how to make money with writing if you wouldn’t mind going into the details

Someone emailed me a couple hours ago off this thread and I'll share here what I replied with. I've removed client names because, well, go get your own clients.
-- Yessir, happy to share. Here are some pieces we have written in the last couple of years that commanded at least $500 per. I will trust your HN'honor to try not to poach or anything, and it wouldn't work anyway.
(redacted)
Many people (including many who post on HN) think "That doesn't seem so special. I could do that." But that misses the point. As I mentioned in the post it takes TIME to write something of quality that people want to read. The internet is full of bad blog posts so companies are looking for quality writing that has a point of view. If you imagine that a proper blog post would take approx 4 hours to research, draft, edit, review then the company/customer has to decide whether to allocate a $60k/year full time employee to writing it (which would be approx $120 of salary) or they can farm it out and put that employee on something with more measurable ROI like PPC management.
Organizations know they need blog posts and those that (1) have a good revenue footprint and (2) sell to the enterprise view blogs differently: it isn't always about getting a new lead and SEO. It's also about VALIDATING a decision a prospect is already thinking of making when they come to the site. The piece for (redacted) above wasn't about getting new leads or SEO juice or shares. It was specifically written to help them close a deal with a large TV studio that wanted to make sure their web partner was led by honest enthusiasts and not some anonymous ownership group. We turned it around in 2 days so they could get it in front of the prospective client before a decision on the RFP was made. We wrote that post while they were in a competitive situation against a much larger firm (Leo Burnett), a firm that has amazing work didn't know how to display the same "human" personality. (Our client) won the 6 figure deal. The money they paid us for the post was customer acquisition cost no different than having taken the prospect to a fancy dinner.
If you want a roadmap: Find companies b/w 10 and 50M in revenue Find those that are publishing blog posts irregularly or not at all. Irregular means they are doing it themselves without much structure. Not at all means they aren't doing it at all. If they are posting on the same day each week or every other week then someone has beaten you to the punch; move on. Reach out with a HIGHLY customized email message and offer to write one post at no charge. This is your "offer they can't refuse." The post is their's to use however they like even if they don't pay you. Ask, however, that if they do like it that they spend 15 minutes on a call so you can hear their ideas if they had unlimited blogging capacity and then share how you might be the person to fill that need.
From there we usually get people into a blog services contract of $1,000/month for a post b/w 700 and 1000 words 4x a month. If they want us to do the content map, post more, come up with the post ideas, fast turnaround, etc. then the price goes up. We have a number of $2,500/month contracts that include us doing the calendar along with the subjects/strategy, 4x blog posts, and 1x longform (eBook or whitepaper). I farm the work out for approx 40% of what we charge the client.
It's not a very difficult sell. Good luck.

It'd be hard to say without more information. Third world country is a wide and shifting definition, and it's the most important aspect of your question. Couple of general points:
1. A large number of countries have agencies that will aggregate freelancers and take on large jobs. I'm not suggesting large players in the size of TCS or SAP, but smaller shops that hire out devs. It's a good place to start to get contacts into companies you'd like to work at, then move to a direct position there. Most countries make anti-poaching clauses practically unenforceable, especially if the candidate is the one approaching the company.
2. This is higher risk higher reward, but building micro-B2C/SaaS for a different market then launching on sites like Product hunt have the opportunity to bring in revenue. This is only if you're cut out for it.
Can't say much more without details, but I wish you luck in your search!

I'm a doctor from a third word country and we make around ~$1.2k per month.
Imagine training to become a doctor and being a doctor with no family life and making ~1.2k per month?
If I can make around 2-3k per month I would quit being a doctor and do that job any day.
And someone from a third world country I can totally relate and understand your situation. The politics and corruption has rotten the country to the core.
If you would like to connect I'm open for taking. Hit me up if you are interested on taking and maybe brainstorming something.
Good luck

This isn't related to OP questions but moreso to your situation. I work in a hospital and I was talking to an occupational health safety advisor (probably makes CAD $80k/yr). He told me he was an ED physician in his home country of Colombia for 25 years. He can't practice here in Canada without going through full training again. He would make $300k/yr or more if he was able to practice. I asked him what was different about Colombia and Canada in EDs, he said basically we have better access to imaging (CT, MRI etc). It's really crazy to me that we make it so difficult for overseas physicians to practice here.

Nurses too. But it's a bit more of a nuanced problem. The nursing exam in the U.S. is called the NCLEX. American nursing school grads pass this test at a rate of 90%. International candidates pass at a rate of 36%. Are the international nurses that bad? No, they are not acclimated to the cultural milieu that is unwritten in every question (including English vocabulary of course).

That's one of those typical US healthcare problems you think you're so great for. For example in Europe, medical professionals are free to seek work in any member country [0]. Although definitely not perfect due to "EU membership", it's still pretty valuable (and logical, common sense, etc) when we're talking about healthcare providers. Also note, that while a lot or most of European nurses will of course speak English, only 2 of the member countries are English natives, yet that's still doesn't seem to be that much of an issue. The entire US healthcare system is just basically a capitalistic shitshow which everybody in the planet knows except for most of you guys apparently.
[0] http://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/partners/observatory/pub...

Sorry but please: Colombia, not Columbia. (And to the comment, yes I've seen this kind of situation in Canada).

Sorry, used to writing British Columbia. Will edit.

Not just USA, even it's difficult to practice as a doctor in UK and Australia.
I also don't understand the difference between two doctors coming from two countries. The underlying principles are the same and the science behind it is the same.
We also read the UK textbooks at universities. I feel it just sucks to be a doctor. I would not recommend anyone to take this route.
Back in the day before I got to know these things I used to tell my mom who is a lawyer that it would be difficult to be a lawyer in another country because the laws are different.
But I guess it's just same for doctors insanely difficult even though most of the things are the same

As a doctor in a third-world country, do you have any needs that could be solved by a simple web app? I'd be happy to build it if it could be of use to you and you can sell it to local medical practices.

This is an idea that I think of everyday but I can't find an answer because of these reasons
Most doctors have a very poor IT knowledge. Most of them know only to use Facebook
Most patients are elderly people, or people with extrame poverty. They either don't have the knowledge facilities or the money to pay for such a services.
Most of the work in hospital are still done by painful paper work. But making hospitals computerize has failed.

I work in a hospital and I can say that COVID has pushed the transition to telemedicine like nothing else could. Many clinics were forced to see their patients over telemedicine and are realizing it worked. Prior to COVID physicians would have never agreed to it, but COVID forced this expeirement. The thing that needs to catch up is the fee guidelines that allow physicians to charge for telemedicine visits. It often isn't outlined properly so physicians are hesitant to transition when they fear an audit will result in a big headache.

Pre COIVID I knew a lot of physicians who would have loved to provide telemedicine. The problem was insurance wouldn’t pay for it (in the US). Now I the state where I live is it temporarily mandated by the governor that insurance must pay for it. Hopefully this becomes permanent.

> Most of the work in hospital are still done by painful paper work.
Sounds like there is something simple I could build.
> But making hospitals computerize has failed.
Can you figure out why?

> More of a opinion, but overseas freelancing opportunities aren't gonna hire a newbie
Everyone on upwork is new at some point. You do a few jobs, do the, well, get reviews for reliability, then you can seek better stuff.
$1000 a month at $10/hr = 100 hours, which is a bit less than 25 hours a week.
Your long run rate would trend much higher, I’m just considering the very initial rate when you’re building a reputation and a client base. I’m sure you can get at least $10 an hour with your skillset, even if only doing random upwork jobs.
If you can get $20/hr, then the hours needed cut by half. Others have more programming specific advice, but wanted to lay out some of the economics of upwork. And I did hire newbies when I hired from there.

This is what I'll do, I've personally tried some of these (not the onlyfans account :P) and despite people will tell that it won't work, it will, somehow.
* Create info websites and put banners/affiliation there. Target a specific niche where you have some knowledge, try to write at leats 15/20 articles for 2k words per article, optimize a bit for SEO and taget the eu/usa market, there are plenty of guides out there. After some months if you're lucky you can make 100/200€ per website, with not much effort. * Sell stuff online. Is your country famous for some specific thing? Are you able to create templates, plugins, etc? Sell them online using gumroad or something similar. Create a landing page and include gumroad, that's it. Avoid marketplaces, they're overcrowded * Try to write for some tech blogs, they pay peanuts, but it's ok if you can't find anything else. * Do you have the guts to open an onlyfans porn account? That can be an emergency solution. * Scrape websites and sell interesting data. Like I don't know, a list of all the shops of a specific category in the state of Illinois for 5$, always on your website using stripe, gumroad, etc...
Many small activities can at the end of the month ammass a decent amount of money.

I would apply to something like Toptal. When we were first built our team for my startup, we used Toptal contractors for quite a while. They were solid, and to my understanding, made good money. Toptal takes a significant cut of course. The bar is you have to pass a qualification test, which given your 3.5 years of experience, should be enough to get up and running.

> The bar is you have to pass a qualification test, which given your 3.5 years of experience, should be enough to get up and running.
It's a 5 step test, you might retake one or two steps depending how much they like you and how you failed. I had a problem with my tooling doing a live coding test, could take it again within a month. Others have been told to be sure to apply again in a year. Some haven't been invited back. Speaking English at a pretty good level (not accent free per sé but you should be able to get a complex technical point across) is required.
Another problem is that most people don't use basic algorithms too much in their daily jobs, for example because collections are too small to feel the difference or because you kind of "feel" what is the optimal way to do things but you can't just whip out an optimal pathfinding algorithm under pressure. This requires some training.

+1 on Toptal. I consult (development work) for a client via them. And their rates are much better than perhaps any where else in the freelancing world.
But their process is a bit difficult, as another sibling comment has described. Knowledge of algorithms is required. And the second stage of being able to clear a programming test, is generally described as a significant barrier. It is advisable to practice algorithm problems before applying.

Here's my experience trying to find a job on Toptal from Poland: they are good if you're OK with earning peanuts - then the rate charged to the client is reasonable. I suspect that they tried to double my rate. Can't tell any specifics because that'd break their contract.

I don’t know which country you’re in but your written English makes you sound very fluent.
That aspect alone probably puts you ahead of other devs globally (and heck even in the US).
Communication is the biggest thing IMO for overseas devs. Ukraine is a pretty good example (lots of very talented devs who can speak English pretty fluently).
I’ve worked in the past with devs from Ukraine and Russia.

Since you have about a year worth of exploration, you could look at https://www.indiehackers.com/products
You can filter out SaaS products, and explore other business models and what kind of revenue to expect by browsing the products and interviews.
I hope this helps.

Wow, that list looks pretty amazing. I had no idea these super targetted products can be this profitable.

Here's a trick (that I haven't tried personally): say you're looking for 3 (paid) internships, say you don't care about money, you only want them to improve your resume. Ask if they want to be one of the three companies on your resume. Say you will need $1,500/month just for food/rent, otherwise you work for free. The good thing is you can get an income immediately, and internship income isn't considered a "salary", so in case you do a great job and they want to hire you, you can start a negotiation without the low $1500/month working against you.
The reason this can work is that many companies (including all the ones I worked at) are happy to pay for a small number of interns over the summer.

$1500/month is a lot in 3rd world countries. Senior engineers in my country get paid somewhere between $800 - $1500 (maybe even less due to weakening of currency).

If you have design or product mindset, then the idea of spending a few weeks to launch products make sense.
One good reference is the "stair step" approach. You can make something that a few people will pay $50-$100/month for. Maybe like a theme or a designed landing page. Then you can ramp up to make something that does $100-$250/month. Once you have those two, then aim for something that brings in $300-$600 month.
If the 1000-1500 range seems daunting, then aim for an intentionally low, but consistent amount, then repeat.
Link: https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-...

Do you think there are more people around you in your situation?
If there are, there might be strength in numbers. You could organise to deliver a signifficantly larger project than any of you could get done individually. You do not need to hire anyone - use the principles of a cooperative and get like minded people that share the profits in an equitable way.
Along the same lines there are companies that may be looking to expand to capture the avilable workforce in your geographical area but lack the apropriate contacts to get started. Your written communication skillks seem to be above average which I consider quite important for such an engagement. If this sounds interesting, do leave some contact details.

Open a Developer account on Gitcoin and start contributing to open bounties. [1]
The track record you establish by completing jobs is more than compensated by the payments. I suggest Gitcoin rather than Github as you are directly compensated. Contributing to Open Source projects is useful and you can certainly point to your Github portfolio. I think that your near term goals will be easier to achieve with Gitcoin.
[1]: https://gitcoin.co/explorer?network=mainnet&idx_status=open&...

This is great advice. I made $20k+ on gitcoin, averaging ~$100 an hour working just a couple of hours a day.
Once you have done a couple of bounties for a company, you will have started establishing a relationship with them, and they will come to you directly to avoid Gitcoin's fees.

If you know Python, your background is perfect for a role with my company Hummingbot (https://github.com/coinalpha/hummingbot), an open source project for crypto algorithmic trading.
We have devs from Nigeria, Malaysia and Phillippines on our core team, and we work with extended devs all over the world.
Even if it's not a fit, I can try to help you find gigs. Because most crypto companies are remote-first and maintain open source codebases, we tend to work better with remote devs in developing countries.

> I'm a dev with almost no experience
Experience, as in experience that a person who hires you can read from your CV, is the key for the developer's career. However, $1-1.5/month is a junior developer salary (and I don't live in a first world country either), and one year is more than enough to build a CV and/or github profile that shows that you know what you're doing. I was just recently hiring junior developers (and probably will again in the near future), and if I would see someone with relevant tech stack (sorry, I think that for a junior, matching the tech matters - although I believe that a senior can easily switch and learn), experience with different aspects of that stack (not implementing the same feature 10 times on very similar projects, but doing something different each time), projects complete and even some code on github (alhtough I work in the industry where this is much less common), he would jump to the top of my list. There's plenty of advice on how to write CV: focus on what you've done (as opposed to what you've been doing), drop keywords (but convey your level of expertise truthfully), it's all common knowledge, but it works.
And regarding remote work - now it's the best time for remote it's ever been, and there's plenty of companies from first-world countries that hire from anywhere in the world, with montly salaries for seniors reaching up to $6-10k a month. It may not be easy to reach that level, but it's certainly doable.

1. Try to pick a product in a large market. 2. Look at a few existing products and identify a couple of things that you can do better than the incumbents. 3. See if you can solve those 2-3 problems better than others. 4. Speak to potential users and find 10 people who would be willing to use and pay for your product. I can’t emphasize this enough. 5. Give yourself a timeline on how long do you want to persist with an idea. 6. Rinse and repeat. 7. Stay at it and keep iterating. 8. Good luck!

Most of these projects are waaaaaaay to slow to reach profitability. You want product market fit ASAP. I also don't think it should be a programming project. Code is a tool, like anything else, and if you have no experience, it's tough to compete with experienced toolmakers. Instead, leverage some domain specific knowledge to be competitive.
Does your country have a robust eBay market? I've found plenty of "beer money" success selling specific things there. If you know more about something than almost anyone else, you can monetize that via eBay easily and with excellent reach.
For example, there's plenty of sellers in Russia/Eastern Europe selling vintage soviet machining/radiation equipment. In SE Asia, a million mom and pop shops moving ICs. In Japan, high quality tooling. Plenty of people all over just hawking the results of a university auction. I even buy from a guy in the US who only sells refractory ceramics. You can find incredible niche stores on eBay who are doing very well.
Where the coding comes in is automating everything. For example, code to automatically print labels for my packages. A local database to manage quantities. A (rudimentary!) pricing algorithm to maximize volume or profit; the possibilities are endless. These projects are easy to justify, and the immediate improvement is clear.

This is my anecdote, I hope it serves you well.
I'm a computer engineer with a respectable bachelor's degree from Turkey. Google has enough material to see what kind of 3rd world country Turkey is.
I found myself in a similar situation 2 years ago. I had 5 years of experience at that time. Due to my father's decreasing health condition, remote had become by only option. I don't know if it was luck or simply how the system works but in my case Upwork saved my situation 1 month after I signed up. I created a modest profile and clicked a bunch of gigs I found interesting. I did a bunch of Skype calls to present myself as approachable as I can and even took some disappointing gigs just to get used to freelancing (it was my first) without causing harm to my reputation. Somewhere along the second month I spent in the platform, one employer from another country approached to me. Unlike my other gigs, this employer valued trust more and asked me if I can join them part-time for a month, to be able to evaluate my performance without taking too much risk. I was promised the one time payment even for failure. Luckily I didn't fail. Now I am a full time remote employee and have a competitive salary even for European standards.
TLDR: Try upwork.com, maybe it will work.

This is exactly how we hired most of our devs at Hummingbot. We used to hire expensive Silicon Valley engineers before realizing that the folks we found on Upwork were just as good , if not better.

OP, please send me a message by adding me on discord at metalforever#4052 . I have some work and want to learn about your skills for a possible arrangement. Thanks.

> 3rd world country
That might be your advantage. You know the language, companies and culture.
I'd look into cloning something that international companies overlook or poorly optimize for.
It can be really boring stuff: can you build the best site in the following niches?
Classifieds, auction, product search engine, travel location aggregator, real estate search engine, used car website, etc.
Do you have beaches? Focus on tourism.
If done right, over time you can have your $x000 and many more.

I have an idea that I've wanted to build since about 18 months to scratch my own itch (and I know of many users that could benefit from this as well).
I have asked and this is at month something that can be built in about a month.
If you want to do a joint venture, I'll be the first paying customer and take care of finding paying customers for the tool.

1 - Create an online portfolio on LinkedIn. Don't worry about what's on it, just make it. Keep it updated.
2 - Log hours programming whatever it is you like programming to build your resume and skills. Since you need money and you're remote, your resume is what will land you an interview. Your skill important because that'll land you an offer. The number of hours you log will matter most and that will depend on how much you like what you're doing. You want to have the "oops I worked too much again" problem, not the "oops I forgot to work again" problem
Finding a job: Find a remote engineering job. You may find luck in crypto, check out https://cryptocurrencyjobs.co/engineering/
DM me on twitter, @code_faster if you have more questions.

> More of a opinion, but overseas freelancing opportunities aren't gonna hire a newbie and fiverr is a race to bottom.
Why? have you tried? I had a company for some time and we hired remote developers who have just finished their careers. I am sure more startups will be willing to do the same. It is a matter or knowing where to look at. Try angel.co, or the monthly thread here for jobs. These jobs might not last for all your life but they will give you the initial experience you need to be freelance.
Freelance sites could be a good option too. You will have to offer a lower rate than others to get a job, but as I said, you need something to start, them things get easier (or not).
Anyway, best way to find a job is to be able to show what you are able to do. So you must need some open source projects the people who potentially will hire you can see how good you are.

From an economics point of view - We cannot say whether we are in a recession or a depression or none of that. Depression is supposed to be much longer. Probably we are in a recession and won't get into a depression unless some major geopolitical conflict occurs
It is good that you have 1 year of backup. Others have already given good business or technical ideas, my comments below are more philosophical
You should not target 1-1.5k. It may be enough today, may be better than nothing. But not okay, even for a 3rd world country. To begin with - you should target 2x of your job income at least. Once you have a figure in place, find out what you like to do (and that pays). It will be easier for you to filter opportunities as they come by. Believe me, opportunities come in truckloads and almost simultaneously. Everyone has just 24 hours and without a filter you will not be able to grab the right opportunity.
If you lose the job, you could get into panic driven fire-fighting mode. With a job today, your fear of losing it might drive you into a half-hearted effort to do something. In the safety of your job, you can plan for your progression to become independent. Tech skills are just one small part of the progression. Read books (or watch videos or listen to podcasts) about entrepreneurship, sales and/or people. Learn about finance and good financial mindset - it helps in the long run too. Take a notepad or use boards like Trello and keep writing the ideas that come to you, what you want to do, how will you achieve it, what problem it solves for you and others. Then prioritize and do the practical stuff one step at a time. That list will never come to an end. Other than a house mortgage, stay away from debt and even the house mortgage should be low or reduced.
Consulting for someone or some company is a good way to make yourself financially independent/safe sooner. But unless you enjoy it, do not stay with that too long. It consumes you and it is a different mindset. I've seen people (including myself) not able to leave consulting for a long time.

Start a business. Even if it fails it will help you migrate towards a not pure software engineering role which, as you are now seeing, is highly cyclical.
It is 100% okay if the business fails. I cannot stress this enough. Starting and running even a failed business combined with your technical ability will separate you from almost all other candidates if you need to re-enter the job market.
You sound like you are in a lower wage country so I would recommend a marketing or sales tool. That is typically a growth industry during slowdowns as sales people search for new tools to turn their numbers around. That makes it easier to sell to people in higher wage countries without having a physical presence that is sometimes important in typical b2b sales.

So a couple of thoughts...
- Don't write off working for domestic SMB's just because their sales are in a downturn. At least 50% of my earnings over the past decade was building software & analytics tools for companies that were in outright financial distress. The pain of the downturn will prompt people to change their organization and process in ways they never imagined. As a developer, you can make an excellent living as an enabler of that change.
(In fact, I get a premium due to my experience in this space)
- Overseas freelancing is a meat market on the provider side; that being said, most of your competition sucks. (speaking as someone who spends five figures a year on offshore talent). Lots of exaggerated resumes, lousy rush jobs, and general lack of professional service. There is a high risk you're going to have to fix the work later. This is particularly true for clients with an established business and something to lose if the project goes sour. Avoid "aspiring CEO's" and other cheap d-bags lurking on the platform. Raise your prices and you'll be surprised to find decent clients who are willing to pay for value.
Rate also isn't everything. Consider % of time billable and % of time chasing clients or payment. One big advantage to places like Upwork (if you can land the right clients) is you don't need to screw around with the even larger pile of BS involved in working with small businesses directly. (Like um, tire-kickers and people that slow pay invoices)
- I wouldn't write as an overseas freelancer. I would consider publishing and affiliate marketing. Your content and code is just as good as that published by a high cost country and you have a cost advantage. It's not all junk either - take a look at SAAS affiliate marketing... it's a fairly natural place to go if you've got real world IT experience and doesn't involve mortgaging your soul to push someone's fake pills or dating scam... https://highestpayinggigs.com/affiliate-marketing/saas/

- Pick an idea that people are already paying for.
- Talk to the users on a community or cold tweet or email them asking about the difficulties.
- Start solving the problems and onboard them as users
- Pitch other users with the same problem
- Charge them upfront, don't give it away for free

In case you are interested in open source stuff, check out these pages, especially the internships, which are a good way to build contacts with open source companies, especially if you pick the right projects (like the Linux kernel).
https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

Judging from your post you speak/write excellent english. Maybe you can capitalize that. Start an outsourcing shop for international customers or something like that.

Speaking as a former developer (~5 years) + current business owner (~10 years):
"Race to the bottom" freelancing for a dev with no experience is as intended -- the priority is to 1) develop a portfolio of experience to get better cred 2) filter/find long term partners who treat you right. This is a grind and an investment to get out of the race to the bottom.
$1-$1.5/mo is straightforward as long as you keep grinding + filtering for good partners.

I would happily pay you 1k a month for 40 hours a week of work. Would you be open to that? My email address is in my profile if you want to explore this further.

Is the offer specific to OP? I'm kinda in similar predicament, would definitely open for this.

Most devs lack actual proof of the ability to deliver when under their own supervision. I would choose a tech that is high in demand. Javascript, Golang, Kubernetes. Use the learning process to develop a project. Deliver it to open source with all the bells and whistles. Know how to pitch the project and speak to its architectural decisions.
Eng managers love this proof of delivery. It will help in getting remote positions as well.

Combine two interests or abilities. Try combining writing (which you seem to be good at) with computer skills or security with web application experience. You'll be able to charge more if you carve out a niche for yourself.
Fiverr is actually fine if you can do that. It's only a race to the bottom in saturated segments with no differentiation. You might be able to apply to be a Fiverr "Pro" and charge more.

I think your best bet is to find someone
- who thinks (s)he can generate $3k/mo (essentially 2x of your target),
- who has reasonable proof that this is plausible and
- who cannot build it (her/him)self.
It is also great to have company, to keep you on track, motivate each other when you need it (and you will), and help you sell.. Don't take this as a freelancer gig, make sure you are cofounders/partners in this
Best of luck for whatever life throws at you! Cheers

If you’re going to write a SaaS project (most of HN success stories) then consider what market you’re targeting. I found this article useful:
http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to-build...

Eh just get a job with an outsourcing company that sends people to client locations. They will send you overseas eventually. Then switch to a company located there before your residency permit runs out. You will no longer have a third world salary. I don't know whether this is possible in a year but I've seen it many times.

1. Do you live by yourself? If so, moving back to your parents will help a lot (if you have a good relationship with them).
2. Pick the skill you are most comfortable with and focus on that when freelancing. The more efficient you are the quicker you can finish the tasks.
Combining 1 & 2 will buy you some time to get a better full time job for the future.

I might be totally wrong but I think making online courses might give you some passive income and learning opportunity at the same time. Of course it requires you to focus on one small/niche subject and becoming expert at it. Maybe someone with experience in making courses could chime in and tell if it's doable.

weel, you problably is in a similar situation like me, live in a country where the local currency is falling like flys in relation to the dollar, so you can try remote jobs.
Don't sell yourself short. You problably cheaper than local works, and there's always jobs that a noobie can do (dull jobs most of the time, I know, but they put food on the table). You clearly speak english well, so this helps a lot.
Here are some sites that may help you bud. https://www.workingnomads.co/jobs
https://weworkremotely.com/
https://remoteok.io/
https://angel.co/remote

What languages and technologies do you have experience with? I agree with the other posts telling you to checkout IndieHackers and build something. In the meantime, there are probably some contract gigs you could pick up to extend the runway.
Email me if you are looking for projects.

I've hired through UpWork.com

People are usually exploited on freelancing sites like UpWork to work for considerably less money than the market value of their work, so I wouldn't recommend that, unless they're in a desperate situation.

People tend to start off that way. That's the pain of getting noticed. If you create an established profile it can be lucrative. But people who think they will join and get their 'worth' rate straight away are dreaming.
Also try to keep your account a little anonymous. I know of guys in developing countries that have criminals target them if they stand out as good earners.

OP is in a desperate situation. They already said they have modest needs and are looking to get a foot in the door.

> Considering the COVID situation, In the worst case scenario I'll be without a job for a while. I have finances to manage for (probably) a year and a month or two.
> I'm not looking for job offers out of sympathy. This is just considering the worst case scenario, and I want to have something to fall back to if it turns out to be the case.
They are very, very far from being in a desperate situation, and they have not said that they are looking to get a foot in the door.

I see two options for you:
-Try to emigrate to a country with a strong tech sector and get a day job there.
-Build a web service that people love and will pay money for, because it does something very useful for them.
Everything else probably isn't going to result in you making money.

Out of curiosity, can you build a service and collect payments from US customers while not being a US resident?

Yes.
Not affiliated in any way, but Stripe offers a service called Atlas that will help you with the paperwork so you can begin processing payments. Setup fee is a one-time payment of $500 but be sure to read the fine print as there are other yearly costs you need to take care of.
https://stripe.com/atlas

In addition to the reply below, I imagine there are some other less costly online services or cheeky ways to send money through PayPal, Amazon GiftCards, Western Union, Bitcoin, some other strange way that one can think of with credit cards or bank transfers.
If a service is really that useful, and the person behind it is already demonstrating to me that they're trustworthy, I will bend over backwards to jump through hoops to pay them.
Otherwise I wouldnt be buying in the first place :)

My company (https://packetstream.io) is hiring technical account managers.
Send an email to ronald@domain

It's hard to give advice without knowing what kind of experience you have. I'll go with all the signals I can get. I grew up in Uganda and Kenya but now live in the US so I have a bit more context. I also have a few businesses making more than what you're looking to make so this might help too.
Temporary Solution:: Your English is good so I'm guessing you're from a former British colony. If you're above average as a developer, look into sites like toptal for some consulting opportunities. They're fully remote so that shouldn't be a big problem. Also, don't necessarily ignore domestic consulting. Just pick your clients more carefully. Reject opportunities that are clearly WAY below market. Have a secondary reason for accepting a gig e.g. learning more about the inner workings of a business/industry or building rapport with the business owner.
More Permanent Solution:: I'd strongly suggest going into the B2B SaaS space. The more money the companies make, the better. It may be a developing country but there's still real money out there. I have a friend making more than $400K a year in a SaaS business with <5 few employees (I'll keep details vague to protect his identity). Reach out to business owners (I know this is hard but you really have to believe in yourself to make this work). Spend time with them and discover REAL problems that they have and are willing to pay. I guarantee you'll come out with some really nice ideas doing this. Don't necessarily take the first idea you discover. Verify that other business owners in the same industry have a similar problem. An area I'd suggest looking at is the agricultural/horticultural sector. These folks export goods in the billions of dollars and there are definitely some things you could work with them to improve. The harder the better (few choose hard problems and churn is low once things start working). At times, you'll discover they're already paying for some software but the licenses are like $10K a month and they only need it for a single thing. Work with them to create something new with exactly what they need for a steep discount. Trust me, these opportunities exist. I'd also suggest the insurance, banking and healthcare fields. There's little competition there. Logistics (trucks, freight) is also something you can look into. The better you are as an engineer, the easier developing solutions will be. Nothing should be beneath you. e.g. Don't necessarily look for AI/ML problems. Use the right tool for the problem, however simple. Also, listen to your customers.
Sometimes, people have real problems but they just can't find someone they can trust enough to execute them. Trust takes time to build but once it's developed, many more opportunities open up. You want to be invited to meetings where finances are discussed. Seeing the finances will show you exactly what they pay for and this is invaluable.
Hope this helps. All the best and may God bless you in this journey!

Try getting a job in react or python(Django?) or nodejs. There are huge demand for these and these are the easiest to learn.

With 20+ years of experience, I certainly wouldn't call React "easy". While core React is pretty intuitive and minimal, once you factor in redux/flux architecture, various client libraries and the general rigors of client-side web development you are looking at considerable time investment.

Well, what kind of experience do you have?

I have only worked for a web-dev agency (they clamied some services apart from web, but I have't seen them work on anything else). In unrefined words, it can be said to be an outsourcing hub.

Okay, but what technologies and languages have you worked with, and what have you built with them?

@noddly, what stack are you comfortable working with? Do you have an upwork account?

Great question! And I think that where you are right now is as good a starting point as any. With COVID and lockdowns and economic recession going on, I think more and more people are going to ask themselves how they can bridge the gap on their own for the next 6-18 months.
I'm saying "good starting point" because this is where you are right now. Start from there. Start where you are. Don't think "I should've" because it never helps.
3.5 years of coding experience is terrific! I wouldn't call that "almost no experience". Even if you wouldn't count all 3.5 years since starting. In my experience, for gaining experience, a good mindset and a little bit of a head start is what you need to tackle new projects. After 10 years, I still feel like (and am) a beginner every day.
I recommend you revisit your assertions about consulting, SMB, etc. I'm sure things are tough right now, and the market is getting smaller, but it's going to pick up at some point too. Consulting as a freelancer for you could mean a few extra months of runway. The upside you can get by experimenting with freelancing far outweigh the negatives. This is even more true for online freelancing with platforms like Upwork.
Invest time into building a network online. When you're supported by a network of peers, you'll get more opportunities. It's also fun, you learn a ton, and a network is generally an asset that doesn't go away quickly if you keep putting energy in it. For me, networking starts with putting stuff out there: writing, helping others, building projects. IMHO, networking doesn't merely include chatting on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., but contributing in thoughtful forums and communities definitely helps. The best way to start here is to start building projects. I've always met people through their works and their projects.
How can you make $1k a month? With the above (freelance + networking) I think you can already get there, if you get opportunities to build projects for people. It's also smart to start thinking in terms of assets. Freelancing is a trap in the sense that time == money, and if you stop working, you stop making money. Can you build something online that makes money? A SaaS, an app, an email newsletter, a website about something you like, teaching/mentoring people, a service – anything.
(Before you start, get a good book/resource on launching a business. It helps avoid so many mistakes and reinvented wheels. A few hands-on ones come to mind, but see what works for you: $100 startup, traction, AppSumo $1k course, "This is marketing" by Seth Godin.)
I'm mentioning SaaS last, because it takes time and luck to make that happen quickly (or at all). You want to bootstrap yourself first, extend your runway, work on time-for-money projects, and then spend 1/3 or 2/3 of your time on building a SaaS or app.
The last bit of advice I wanted to give is that it all starts with people. Freelancing, networking, building a project – it's all people. Find your people first, and then build something that helps them. Instead of the other way around, is finding a product first, and then retrofitting it for people.
Good luck!
(My credentials: I've been a freelance app developer since 2009, I now make a living teaching iOS development online.)

Hey, thanks a lot for your advise. The ongoing pandamic was the reason I asked this, when you see more people being laid-off than being hired, the feeling of uncertainity of future gets the better of you. I got some serious advise here which is difficult to get on most platforms (It's worth the socorn I'll get for asking the same damn moneymaking question yet again)

I would hire a junior dev with 1.5 k salary per year.

Do you have any java jobs?

The parent wrote: “I would hire a junior dev with 1.5 k salary per year.”
Better to confirm that they actually intend to pay that much per month and not per year ...

Yes, you are right. I meant to write per month.

No, sorry. MVC DotNet Core and frontend

Can you put down your email on your profile?

I can’t really speak to your question, but Good luck! Hope you find something that meets your needs. It’s out there, waiting for you.

I think open source projects are a good avenue of fulfilling income if you live in a third world country.

What is your stack?

Commenting to save

You need a niche.

these constant posts of how to make money are getting ridiculous. i feel for people and what not, but really at this juncture you can just do a search and go through all the answers to the previous times this has been asked.

No. The answers which are effective are ever-changing because the markets (plural) are ever changing.
This question could be asked again MONTHLY and new answers would still arise, because situations will have changed in one or more verticals in one or more markets.

As I mentioned above to someone, again I apologise for asking the n-th iteration of the same question. The situation in this pandemic is so unpredictable that I wanted to get advise fit for the situation. If not myself, it would help many others who're in the same boat.

It seems like this is a big list of things you aren't willing to try, but you still want someone else to come up with a $10,000 idea for you.
What you're asking for is an easy way out. There isn't one.
If you've got over a year of financial runway, I'd say you could feel pretty happy about that. I'm sure you'll figure out something in that time.

I'm sorry if I'm giving that impression. It hasn't been long since I've come into this situation. As someone who haven't had much exposure into the working of the world, I was just seeking opinion from others on what can be done.

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