Ask HN: People in a job, what would interest you to pick up paid p/t work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: People in a job, what would interest you to pick up paid p/t work?

5 pointsv1l5 comments

If you're full-time employed in a job, what would prompt/compel/interest you to pick up a few hours a week of paid work with another company? Eg say you're a devops engineer and a startup needed 10h/week of help in something you can do well.

Interesting project? $$s? Would it have to find you? Seeing what's out there for your next job? Would you try to look for it?

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I'm not quite who you are asking about, but I'm a programmer who already does part-time work (only). I think the only issue about it, is that it is difficult to find clients (fortunately once I find them, I tend to keep them). Most people who need a developer, are not accustomed to the idea of having one support them in some way part-time. In some cases I've gotten a client who was looking for a full-time dev, and eventually gave up and agreed to hire me part-time out of desperation. But most potential employers are not familiar with the idea of hiring a dev part-time, and because it strikes them as weird, they shy away from it.

A solution to that I see is a marketplace focused on such work (you could say Upwork is that but it's a race to the bottom, so there needs to be better filters).

https://www.moonlightwork.com/ used to be in that space, they got acquired recently. On HN users ask regularly how to make extra money and everybody is unhappy with upwork. A new marketplace is probably well received. Just when the marketplaces grow they tend to add full-time jobs and companies try to cut out the middleman (they have the contact info of good developers after a while). Not sure how one can tackle the "race to the bottom", company like to pay as little as possible.

I'd do it to make connections, but I would need to make some small amount of money. For 10hrs/wk I'd expect $1k/wk if it is something I specialize in.

Money.

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