Best place for small remote gigs? | Hacker News Reader

Best place for small remote gigs?

19 pointsxucian25 comments

I'm doing solo dev, building and shipping several products, trying markets etc. I have some passive income here and there, but looking to up it a bit. I'll also visit SF for a while late June, so I can meet up to do in-person vibe check, discuss stuff and build my network

just wondering how are you guys earning on the side, I'm willing to go on the lower end of pay as I'm looking for fully remote async contract (b2b), low-intensity work (or at least not full 40h weeks). have 13y of exp as a generalist swe, started as a gamedev then expanded into devops, ai/ml, trading

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What do you think of as “the lower end of pay”?

Fully remote, fully async, low intensity work is a global market, right? I’d be careful about taking the lower end of global pay.

Exactly, lower end of global pay is on fiverr and the competiton is people from low Income countries.

Its not a good thing to aim for

true, I clarified this aspect here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44212176

HN, but where you are contacted (for instance, monthly Seeking Freelancer post), not the other way around. Pretty much every source where the kind of jobs you're talking about are posted are a race to the bottom.

tx for input, I wasn't aware of the "Seeking Freelancer" post. as for the race to the bottom, idk, I just know that not all clients look for the cheapest work

You're right, they don't, but when a job post is public, it's an absolute flood of bids and submissions, and can be overwhelming to sort through to find the quality. That's why the best clients are the ones who solicit freelancers and don't make those listings public.

agreed

I feel this. The market for remote gigs can feel like a race to the bottom if you're just looking on standard platforms.

My experience from running a subscription-based design agency taught me one thing: the best, highest-paying "gigs" rarely come from applying. They come from "showing your work."

Instead of spending time searching for low-intensity work, maybe spend that time writing one high-quality article about a complex problem you solved in A/ML, or building a tiny open-source tool for a DevOps pain point you have.

When you put value out into the world first, the right kind of "gigs" (which are really partnerships) tend to find you. It's a slower but much more rewarding path. Good luck with the search and your time in SF!

| They come from "showing your work."

true, that's been my experience so far, I rarely engage in interviews that are walled by coding challenges before they even talk to me. heck, I didn't even receive a code challenge for my last 2 jobs, which were well-paid.

| maybe spend that time writing one high-quality article

this makes a lot of sense, I have plenty to talk about. will seriously consider it, might even do it on X

thanks for the tips :)

Why don’t you have an email address in your profile?

You are exactly the kind of person I would be interested in collaborating with / partnering / mentoring / hiring.

Charles@turnsys.com

Any real conversation won’t happen in public :)

Good advice in this thread. Show your work.

good point, that makes sense

I doubt there is a singular answer other than to hussle. Try Upwork; Reddit; who's hiring; jobs sites with part time roles or "fractional" as they call it; exemployers and excolleagues; blogging; linked in; etc.

Isn't it "hustle"? But since it's a hassle to hustle it kinda makes sense too.

Half hustle half hassle yes!

yep, pretty much doing this rn, not too intensely as I'm focusing more on actual work. what I haven't insisted enough or at all at: blogging and exemployers/excolleagues, perhaps I can also write a few valuable linkedin posts (I hate hashtags but can make an exception)

I guess I could've phrased it better: by lower end of pay I mean a smaller hourly rate compared to my previous, more intense jobs, not that I want to compete with people writing bad code

Competing on price is a disadvantageous business strategy.

Good clients want to pay enough to get good results…they want to pay you to do it right. Good clients have budgets to cover this and a low price is a red flag.

Bad clients don’t care if you make money and are attracted by low rates.

If you have a low rate you won’t be paid well and will be dealing with bad clients.

And on top of all that, no client wants to hear that you don’t want to work hard…and to the degree your question is intended as an indirect way of marketing your services, it is a footgun.

a hundred percent. just a poor choice of words on my end. I'm generally asking higher pays, but I can literally take 1k a month if all I have to do is check some PRs 2 hours per week. pretty much what I was pointing at, even though it's an extreme example.

I've had my fair share of cheap a* clients in my early days with upwork (which I never figured out, my bigger clients came from outside), it's easy to spot one.

about hard work, I just wanted to set a boundary for the weekly hours I can contribute, and the intensity part is actually secondary (I think I should've left that out). but you touch on an important point, some things you just don't want to hear -- we are all adults, I get paid and I deliver, we all know that most likely everyone will get what they ask for, just that explicitly excluding "hard work" might raise unnecessary questions. useful info, thanks

Existing clients.

There is no easy button for good part time work.

Because why wouldn’t a business prefer someone who does what they need as a primary commitment?

From your client’s perspective, your schedule is their risk. So trust matters and a more committed contractor looks lower risk than a “hobbyist” who might abandon contracting for regular employment.

If you want clients you need extreme luck or the hard work of sales. Good luck.

| There is no easy button for good part time work found that out early in my career. still didn't find decent work like this. one of my last jobs had a full-time schedule, but they hinted at the lower volume of work, where most of the time I just had to be available, not code/think for 8h straight, with just occasional spikes and overtime. and it turned out well.

you are right, I guess I'm looking to hit too many birds at once, I'll have to do some trimming. the birds: found my own startup, co-found someone else's startup, non-fulltime work for a company. I'm still exploring the right weights for each of them

bali

if you know something I don't, I'd like to know it too. unless this is ironic

Think he means traveling to Bali and networking with western contractors working remotely there charging western rates while enjoying low cost of living.

I see, traveling to Bali is mostly orthogonal to securing contracts. but sure, indirectly you meet others and they might need your help or their clients might need your help. though I'm not looking for money, but for a way to not care about bills while building the future

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