Comment by benjamincburns | Hacker News Reader

Comment by benjamincburns | Hacker News Reader

I'm 27. I've crossed the 6-figure barrier twice.

1: Consulting on the side.

Find a company that has you working an actual 40 hours per week (government contractors are good for this), which doesn't bar you from doing some side work (bonus points if they have a culture which supports this). Then, find a client or two. You won't have to charge much in order to cross the six figure barrier.

2: Work outside of the software industry

Within a year of when I started consulting, I was recruited by a shrinkwrap products company to work in their intelligent products division. Because I was already consulting successfully, and because I didn't really feel like I wanted the job, I threw out some high numbers during salary negotiation. In the end I wound up with a compensation package North of six figures in an area with very low cost of living.

General advice:

Quit focusing on what solutions you'd need to learn in order to get to the next level. Instead focus on what problems pay the most. Never, ever market yourself in terms of the tools you use. Market yourself in terms of the problems you solve.

Edit:

One other thing - definitely do learn more. Always. The more you learn, the more problems you'll be able to solve. Just make sure that you're letting the problems focus your learning and career development, not trends in solutions.

Edit 2:

Did I really write "done crossed the six-figure barrier" up there? "Well shewt!"

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it! It seems like a lot of people are suggesting consulting. Do you know of any good resources on how to start consulting? I live in an area with a population around 200k and there really aren't any large business interested in hiring people to do web dev work. Also, businesses here severely undervalue developers so the chance is finding a decent paying gig is quite low. Is it possible to do remote consulting or something along those lines?

Remote consulting exists, but it's harder to find work that way -- infinitely so if you have no reputation.

The only advice I can really offer on how to get started is to network. Talk to people about their problems at work and take genuine interest, even when they're not a potential client. Where possible, help people out in meaningful ways and show (don't tell) them that you're smart and that their problems are important to you. You'll probably end up doing some free work this way, but you'll make friends who trust you and that's far, far more valuable. As long as you're clear that you're looking for consulting work, it'll find you eventually. Just don't belabor the point.

One trick of mine is to focus on selling the minimum amount of complexity. Figure out exactly the value that the customer is looking for - often times they don't know what it is. There's a saying that a person in a hardware store looking for a quarter inch drill doesn't need a quarter inch drill, they need a quarter inch hole. But more importantly almost nobody needs a quarter inch hole -- maybe they need a new shelf. If they need a new shelf, maybe they just have too much stuff. No matter what it is, get to the bottom of their problem and sell them the simplest solution with the maximum value, even if it doesn't make you any money today.

Also consider trying to tackle some stickier problems in well-known open source projects. PostgreSQL is a favorite example of mine for this as they make it very easy to contribute. Why hire someone who "knows" PostgreSQL when you can hire someone who helps write PostgreSQL?

>>Quit focusing on what solutions you'd need to learn in order to get to the next level. Instead focus on what problems pay the most. Never, ever market yourself in terms of the tools you use. Market yourself in terms of the problems you solve.

This sounds great, but will it work in the current job market? If I have large experience say in Rails and want to join a company working on interesting problems, but they use Django. What are my chances to sell myself to them?

Thanks for asking this - it raises a point that I forgot to make.

You're not going to do as well at a company which hires based on the solution as one which hires based on the problem. Ideally you want to be in a position where you're being held accountable by people for which the specific technical details of the solution are mostly out of their scope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com