Ask HN: How do you make money on the side in tech? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you make money on the side in tech?

24 pointspaxys48 comments

Technical skills are no doubt in very high demand right now. If an experienced engineer can make over $500K/yr plus benefits working 40 hours a week at a large company, there should be an opportunity to spend a few extra hours on a side gig to increase that number by a few percent.

From what I can see, however, there is no straightforward process for this. Online freelancing platforms are a crapshoot. It is impossible to monetize a random open-source library or other similar project. Starting your own consultancy takes a lot of initial effort and capital. Entrepreneurship is even riskier and more time consuming.

For someone in my position who is not looking to quit my job, start a billion dollar company or change the world, just convert some of my spare time into spending money, what is the best solution at present? Has anyone else run into this problem and found something that works?

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> If an experienced engineer can make over $500K/yr plus benefits working 40 hours a week at a large company, there should be an opportunity to spend a few extra hours on a side gig to increase that number by a few percent.

If a $500k is still not enough for someone's annual salary, then maybe they should be seeking out something more important than a side gig.

I think the idea is to diversify revenue and not be dependent on that income source long term.

If you're working for a FAANG company, you're already a desirable candidate for a wide variety of places. Plus, half a million dollars per year is way more than sufficient to comfortably live off of for many years.

$500K is a fairly high bar.

Maybe try bootlegging, gambling, or creative real estate deals?

Why? I don't follow this reasoning at all. There's no reason that because someone makes a lot of money, there should be an easy path to making more. What am I missing?

The only thing that comes to mind is contracting/moonlighting. This lets you work in the domain in which you are already an expert. To do this, just follow these simple steps:

   * examine your employment contract and ensure you can legally do this
   * carve out time on your nights and weekends
   * reach out to former employers and colleagues and say "do you need any extra hands? I'm looking to moonlight"
   * manage expectations carefully
   * deliver
   * wash, rinse, repeat

In this scenario, you are simply taking on a second, part time job. That's why it is so easy to get into.

Everything else I know of (consulting, writing a book, blogging + selling ads, starting a company) isn't an extension of that, so takes a lot more effort.

Now, should you? That's a question of the value of your free time. That I can't comment on, except to say the older I get, the more I value my free time rather than money.

Consulting / freelancing seems like it would be the best fit for what you're describing. As you pointed out that involves work to setup. You can pay someone to set it up for you. Typically they take 50%-60% of the the total amount. You can find ways of getting a larger portion of the cut but that involves more work (at least up front).

To find these jobs open up LinkedIn and start responding to recruiters. Say something like "thanks but no thanks I'm happy in my current role. I have actually been interested in doing some freelancing in the X space. Probably about Y hours a week part time not during business hours."

Some of the recruiters won't know what to do with that but a suprising number will, remember that big cut they get?

Alright now one last thing here. Another option. Instead of consulting and working extra hours, consider studying a topic that you enjoy and other people hate. It also needs to be in high demand and pay well. Then go double your salary or whatever and not worry about working extra hours or filling out billable hour spreadsheets and so on.

Exchanging more time for money when you’re already making over 500k at 40 hours a week seems inefficient.

I would be learning how to invest (in fact, I do with far less than 500k salary) in my spare time if I really need to maximize income.

Maybe your living expenses match (or exceed) your income though, so you don’t have much capital after expenses.

Upvote for this. Most people shouldn't invest because the ROI for self-improvement and getting a better job is much higher. But at some level, 7% or so returns becomes much better.

Agree. I would quit after a less than a decade at that income. Unless I really like what I do... or if F U money changes my mentality to not care.

Damn. It's like everyone works at faang and we all just accept that 500k is a normal salary. This is insane.

Insanely....awesome! When I was a kid I wanted to be a hacker because I wanted to be able to make computers do stuff. Nobody said anything about wheelbarrows full of cash.

lol I was being sarcastic with a touch of jealousy. I do not work at FAANG and do not make 500k.

Part of me want to upvote for the childhood, as well childish, camaraderie. The other part of me wants to downvote because %%%% those lies and false promises.

$500k is an outlier but I stand by my wheelbarrows full of cash comment generally. Tech pays well, compared to a lot of careers certainly.

If you're in the US there is a pretty clear path to get into FAANG. It's just painful.

Google and others produce entire youtube channels full of instructions on how to study for and pass their interviews.

If you spend 3 hours a night reading books that get recommended on HN (stuff like designing data intensive applications), Practicing on Leetcode, and watching interview prep videos many people will eventually be able to get to a point where they can get a job at a SV tech company. Once you have one of the big companies on your resume it's pretty easy to move around between them to find one that you like and really dig in. Starting comp is not going to be $500k but it's going to be pretty stout, these numbers are transparent on levels.fyi.

From here you just keep up the 3 hours a night of studying. Work a little over time here or there maybe, thats honestly not even that necessary. You don't have to be a jerk or play any weird power games. Just work hard and make good stuff. Plenty of people work really hard to get to FAANG and then do a deep exhale and go "that shit was exhausting!!! I think I'll rest". Nothing wrong with that either, but if you keep working at the same pace you'll get promoted.

There are some other things too along the way to Staff. People skills. Understanding organizations and their many dysfunctions. Learning to drive big projects. These are learnable skills and you get to learn from some of the most talented people on earth.

This may sound like a lot but consider something like...going to night school to get a bachelors degree or something. I suspect that would actually be more than 3 hours a night of work. And much more boring work on top of it.

Do that for 7-10 years. Now you're a Staff Engineer making $500k. If you want you can keep doing it after that and things get even more crazy.

Most people stop along the way and say "this giant pile of money is actually quite enough thank you" or slow down and take promotions as they come rather than studying like a maniac. Or they decide to wander off and try something other than FAANG.

Most of these steps come down to persistence and managing your own psychology. Studying when you don't want to, applying to a company in the bay area again after being rejected 40 or 50 times, Working on the same Leetcode problem for the 4th night in a row.

I don't even especially recommend any of this by the way. It's just one way. But it is a way.

> Google and others produce entire youtube channels full of instructions on how to study for and pass their interviews.

You've already dismissed all the people who won't be able to get an interview in the first place.

Honestly, the suggestions about how to get into FAANG pretty much assumes one does not have a family.

The part about working hard and getting promoted is typical management BS.

Maybe you have been lucky. But many of us like myself have gotten the shaft when it comes to these sort of things.

BTW, if using banded hundies, you wouldn't come close to a wheelbarrow full ($110k median is 11 $10k bands)

It is a normal salary (maybe just multiplied by a factor of 10...)

I’m steadily cancelling all my side projects because no matter how I spin it, nothing comes close to the profitability of contracting full time.

How much do you factor in the risk of not having work (contract expired/cut, etc) in your rates compared to a standard full time job? AFAIK a consultancy company usually have at least 30% overhead on top of the hourly rates they pay to the dev/engineer. Not to mention insurance, retirement savings, etc.

I charge double the fully loaded cost of the average dev salary in Sweden and focus on insurance and pension companies. I’m always booked solid at least a year in advance.

My side projects bring in exactly $0.

I do have a side business as a beekeeper... that brings in maybe $1k per year if lucky.

Where do you sell your honey?

(I'm a curious homesteader)

Mostly word of mouth and local Facebook groups. I only have 5 production hives, so my volume is low.

$500K/yr plus Seems like a total joke. Just do something that gives you energy and makes other people happy. The reward will be higher. Be creative.

Eh that's just Staff Engineer at a FAANG. Hard, but perfectly doable.

https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

Showing that someone can do it doesn’t say much. Those roles are very competitive and a tiny tiny proportion of all the software jobs out there.

I'm your average loser. Is it perfectly doable for me? I don't think so. I might as well be an astronaut...

Whenever I read these kind of salaries I feel like I’m doing something fundamentally wrong.

30yo, European based with lousy 60k/year. With the rising real estate prices I probably won’t even be able to afford a house in my lifetime. (Except maybe with a working SO - but even then until I’m too old for work)

I’d say if it’s it just about earning more money maybe work overtime for a little salary boost. Hard to beat that $/h.

Leetcode and get a job at a tier 1 tech company.

If you want it enough to put in the time, it is possible.

> Leetcode

> get a job at a tier 1 tech company.

The absolute state of the tech industry. The bubble WILL burst, and most idiot devs WILL be out of job.

Ya totally all of these "idiot" devs with the patience and drive to grind Leetcode and that now have the skills accumulated from working at a FAANG will be jobless. Lol.

When the bubble bursts, no amount of "grinding" Leetcode will guarantee a job. The number of well-paying jobs will be a fraction of what they are now.

If you’re going to do a side thing, make it about learning and helping someone with fewer resources.

I used to help a local outdoors club with some PHP and LAMP stack dev for pittance an hour, but it was fun, I didn’t use any of this tech in my day job, and I felt I was helping something I really cared about. In the end too it broadened my dev problem solving skills.

Yes, there is a gig ... you work charitibly for a non-profit.

Or better, support a grassroots movement. $500k/years is plenty.

I found a niche on eBay, I sell a few specific items and use eBay as a funnel for my own store. Sure, I have to make a few trips to the post office a week, but it's a steady $1k per month or so. If I knew anything about online marketing I could increase my volume, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Ideally I'd like to buy some rental real-estate, I'm just not too into the risk profile of that kind of thing for now.

My only advice here is to be careful of the brand / market you go for - DTC is great, however handling customer support is a huge drain.

How did you go about finding your niche? I always loved selling stuff on Craigslist/eBay in my youth, sounds like a relaxing paid hobby.

Freelancing, but they should approach you first. Don't use platforms.

Alternatively, non-billion dollar projects are relatively untapped. There's a rich seam of million dollar ideas that VCs won't fund but are too deep to do in a weekend and too niche for corporations and agencies to do in their spare time. People have made good money off recipe apps and news apps, or some form of API that does things like live movement detection. You'll probably have to solve consumer problems though.

"Technical skills are no doubt in very high demand right now. If an experienced engineer can make over $500K/yr plus benefits working 40 hours a week at a large company, there should be an opportunity to spend a few extra hours on a side gig to increase that number by a few percent."

First off, I think that that's extremely rare at that level with those hours.

Second, why would one want to work for a couple extra percent? If the comp is second to some passion, then sure.

The straightforward process for turning free time into money as an engineer who doesn't want to worry about sales/marketing/customer management (i.e. a substantial amount of the work involved in consulting) is "go do technical interviews for an interview platform". Karat and interviewing.io are the two I'm most familiar with but I'm sure there are others. They won't match your "hourly rate" if you're bringing in 500k/yr at the day job; they might be competitive in the 150-200k/yr range. I personally find interviewing to be a pretty demanding type of work since you need to be more or less "100% on" the entire time while doing something pretty repetitive, but ymmv.

Edit: I haven't personally done this; I'm speaking from the position of someone who conducts a fair number of interviews at the day job and wouldn't relish the thought of doing more after clocking out. My spare capacity does in fact go to side projects.

My experience so far is that any side project that I've worked on seriously for 18 months has brought something in.

Full time or a few hours per week for 18 months?

"Side project" means a few hours a week.

I've had some pay off quicker than that, but the model for that is 20 hours a week for 4 weeks.

The "pay off" tends to be that someone realizes they just saw something they never saw before and they are so blown away an opportunity materializes.

Some examples:

* I got busted for anti-spam activities when I was in grad school, had to do "community service", decided to combine that with a tropical vacation, ended up developing one of the very first XML applications, wrote a book chapter about it, then took a trip to Sao Paulo to create a chat application aimed at Brazil.

* I built an "AI" that collected a million photographs that were almost perfectly tagged, made a web site based on it, and started getting better work

* I challenged myself to print something on my inkjet printer every day to keep it from drying out; along the way I got systematic about it, added support for QR codes, NFC, web publishing, etc. Made modifications to signage in my building and so far haven't gotten any complaints. Learned how to change the way people perceive things that already exist in the environment. This project encountered a "crisis" every month or so that caused big changes (printing the back first instead of the front caused me to not be afraid of using a lot of ink; that turned out to be important when I discovered that covering 30% of the wall with something 80% reflective has an uncomfortable effect on radiative transfer in a bright room.)

That last project will probably translate to more artistic endeavors, seducing people, and doing some kind of exhibition or performance even though I still don't know what that will be.

Your life sounds much more interesting than mine. I'm a loser and my side projects make nothing.

I dunno. My experience with my printing project is that people are underwhelmed when I try to explain it to them. (Doesn't everybody print with an inkjet printer? Doesn't everybody print QR codes?) If I listened to what people said about it I would have quit a long time ago.

When I show people the results it's completely different: I show the cards to a 50-something woman and she swoons like a 10-year old girl. I could be envious of people who know how to draw and to paint, but this project has led me to not take no for an answer and not to "not do" something because I don't know how to do it.

One key to side project success is to look at what people aren't doing as opposed to what they are doing. I am a bit envious of this one:

https://gregdavill.com/blog/d20

It's not really that much harder than the other things people light up with LEDs but the icosahedral geometry is unique.

Whenever there is explosive and widespread technological progress (say the World Wide Web) the right question to ask is "What took it so long?" (futurists in 1970 predicted something like the web would arrive in 1980 and in the form of Compuserve, Videotex, it did, but few people noticed.)

One long-term project I have is to do a sketch comedy performance with a video-game character projected in a mirror (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost); personally I think video-game characters are "overdeveloped"; I don't need to design or code one, I can get it "out of the box" and only need to code up the behavior. For whatever reason, these haven't escaped video games. That project is a personal moonshot for me because it involves the difficult problem of being funny, never mind reverse engineering a once-patented technology a German company used to deploy film mirrors. I was planning to do it in two years at first but my current schedule is five.

There are many things like that where all the pieces are ready but nobody has put them together. That's how you make a side project that's interesting, not "learn a new programming language".

Spend some serious time to become an expert is a niche high-demand technical skill... produce really high quality content about it (might take time) and watch companies seek after you for consulting / advisory gigs. Charge insane amount for your time.

If you still need "spending money" with a salary of approx $10k/week, you either have a really really terrible designer watch habit, or a gambling one.

Seriously, did you post this just to brag about how much you make to everyone? It seems almost ludicrous that this could be a serious comment....

I invest. I share more about it here. https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/p/invest-like-a-vc-in...

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