Ask HN: How/Where can I find a part-time gig so I can work more on my startup?

Part time programming work in Silicon Valley is hard to come by even when the economy is good. I'm not sure why exactly, but people here treat employment as an all or nothing proposition. I found it much easier to do random short-term and part-time contracts in Boston.

However, there are some niches where companies are more likely to hire part-time contractors: systems administration, "creatives" (i.e. flash) and recently, iPhone programmers. Thus, if you can stomach doing systems-y Rails stuff, I would could check in with the Rails hosting places. EngineYard & Heroku come to mind. I know people in both crews and they seem like they might be amenable to a part time thing if you're good. Also, Twitter contacted me about a systems position last week and the guy on the phone hinted that they may also be looking for full or part time Rails contractors.

Good luck!

Part-time programming work is reputedly rare, though no one could tell me why.

Nonetheless, I fell into a part-time programming job once (they contacted me), and I found it tended to take over my thoughts - as programming tends to.

Does it have to be a programming part-time job? It might work better for you to have a non-intellectual "day job", perhaps a physical one, or a social one, or just a really brain-dead one. e.g. A housemate had the job of changing tapes of a mainframe overnight (or something like that).

University job boards are a great way to find part-time work (though usually only for students).

I'd like to second this thought -- on each of the occasions that my thoughts turned to "hey, I can just do a little bit of paid development work part-time while I work on my own stuff!", that "part-time" gig somehow managed to take over my entire day/week. And so all that extra time I had imagined I would be spending productively working on my own stuff mysteriously evaporated, because my paid work was taking up all of my headspace.

"Brain-dead" work, on the other hand, tends to make me _more_ productive when I sit down to design or develop something. So there's probably a continuum effect here.

My recommendation to the original poster is to find the _easiest_ and most menial job that still meets the requirements of your visa, whatever that may be.

a) Talk to your friends.

b) Great involved with an open source project, which will give others experience working with you so they can recommend you into a position

c) http://jobs.37signals.com/

d) Call Ruby/Rails development companies w/ good code & tests ready to show

e) I don't know if this is ethical or even legal, but you could find a partner and ask them to pay you minimum wage to solidify your part-time requirement

f) Get creative. Come on man, you're a Ruby guy!

Open source will just cut into the already minuscule amount of time I have working a day job and on the startup nights and weekends.

I'm going to look more into RoR dev companies, hosting companies, CL, and a few other job boards.

helping with some open source stuff doesn't take as much time as you'd think.

http://jobs.rubynow.com has lots of partime development work if you know ruby. There are also lots of fulltime gigs.

I only know dice.com where PT jobs sometimes show up.

What are job boards that cater towards part-time gigs? Also, if someone on HN knows of a startup or are looking to hire themselves, I'd be happy to send you my resume.

I hate to suggest this, but I've had friends who've had a lot of luck with coughLinked Incough put you email address somewhere easy to read so potential leads do have to jump through any hoops when trying to contact you.

Sorry to hijack the discussion. But I was wondering, why do you need a part-time job to stay legal? Doesn't EAD allow you to work just on your startup and still be in legal presence?

AFAIK, no, I don't think you can work for yourself.

I might be wrong, but I believe you can. Im talking about EAD obtained through a pending GC process. I guess, the caveat is you need to pay yourself some salary and your role in startup has to be similar to the one you applied with. Even with EAD obtained thru F-1, I have heard lot of people working on thier startup without working anywhere else.

Im sure you must have looked already, but might be worth checking on the rules. And also post them here :)

Huh, that's interesting (and new to me). I think the caveat might be a thorn -- if that is true, and if you have to pay yourself a salary similar to or in the same pay scale as the position, then I'm out of luck :)

I'll look around and see what I can dig up on this.

Nothing a little bit of good old fashion American financial wizardry can't solve.

Take a $60k cash advance out from a credit card (or other source). Next, invest $60k into your start up. Finally, pay yourself $60k, and use that to pay off the credit card.

You forgot a step: Lose about 20% in credit card fees, employment taxes, and income taxes.

Still might be worth it, though.

American financial wizardry is all about forgetting steps.

If that works, then your startup must be building a perpetual motion machine?

I've done this process of quitting a job while on EAD (pending GC) recently. You need a) a letter from a full time job which pays at least as much as your GC application. b) transfer the GC application to yourself/your lawyer.

Yes, financial wizardry can get the job done but when push comes to shove, you will end up paying employer taxes yourself.

I suppose my situation is very similar to yours. I know that one can be in legal status while working part-time on an H-1B visa. I thought I read somewhere that the same applies to an EAD, since on an EAD you're okay even if you're laid off.

Can you incorporate and then hire yourself?

They post a lot of jobs on craigslist, but be aware that employment posts in silicon valley is down 55% from last year

Doesn't necessarily mean there are 55% fewer job openings. Could mean that jobs are getting filled before they make it to Craigslist.

I think this is the article I was thinking of... http://career-resources.dice.com/it-job-market/2008-2009/sil... ... the bottom line is the market favors employers much more now than last year

how about being a freelancer, will that violate the visa requirement for part time job?

if you're talking about bay area, i'd start with craigslist.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=part+time+jobs+in+san+diego&l=1