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+1 for subcontracting for a larger consulting agency. Almost always, the stressful parts of a project revolve around the client relationship and overhead(time which is generally unbilled), and not around the actual work. If you go it alone you own all that. If you subcontract on a signed project you can skip this. On top of that you'll be part of a larger group all striving to get the job done for the client. This is great for two reasons. First, someone else will handle parts of the project you aren't skilled in. Second, if unforeseen circumstances arise that require you to leave the project, you won't leave the client high and dry.

If you can be a regular subcontractor for a larger agency, that IMO is generally the ideal situation.

The price war on Elance is real, but sticking to project based pricing and being in a not too competitive field may help. I made a simple dataviz of the top elance skills in the programming field: http://www.datamaplab.com/posts/the-top-itprogramming-skills... It is impressive to see how competitive some skills are with hundreds of freelancers for a listed skill per corresponding open jobs.

How exactly do you 'network' at these events. Do you just introduce yourself and sort of talk, have a business card that you give, or how's it go?

Just wondering from someone who's never been to any type of event, so I've never had to really do any networking

Instead of "networking" just try to make friends. It's basically the same thing.

Think of it as onboarding a user. How do you present yourself? How do you stand out and how do you help certain businesses? Have an online experience that the business card acts as a "key" to. I personally like to make personalized business cards and then customize the experience, eg:

http://qbix.com/nicestuff

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "right kind of events"?

Not the parent, but I'd recommend subject/language meetups, conferences, etc. mailing lists, and other things in that vein. Basically, wherever people that are highly accomplished and talented in the area that you [want to] work in hang out together and discuss new ideas. Then try to be a regular and constructive participant to the extent that you can.

User group meetings, startup weekend, hack-a-thons, give camps etc. Things focused on technology and technology solutions, not events that attract sales people or people looking to hop jobs.

I go to 8-15 hackathons/year. But maybe it is Atlanta's ecosystem or my lack of telling people about what I do, but I am have yet to get a lot of client work out of winning these types of events. I think winning def helps my portfolio, but I haven't seen much in cultivating relationships.

Do you have any advice on how to leverage these experiences more?

Dont win, (or don't compete); just contribute. Be an asset.

Remember, most people in jobs will be threatened by a strong and assertive leader - they want someone they can control and extract value from, not someone who might take their job. Understand and embrace that fear and position yourself to handle it.

Keith, 150$/hr sounds great. I wonder where these rates are common? I've started on oDesk and doing pretty good in oDesk's standards I think, but it's still only third of your rate.

It took me several years, when I was part time (my first two years) I think I was billing about 40. When I jumped to full time I went to 75 and over a year or two slid it up to 85. I got a call about 10 years ago for a weekend gig doing some perf tuning on a web app and they offered me 150/hr, asked if that was sufficient (It was a large company, they were used to big firm rates). I just about died trying to contain my glee and not be to emphatic with the yes I gave them.

From that point I started negotiations out around 125 or more depending on the client. The whole thing gave me confidence that people would pay more for my skills. Funny, I probably only made 4K that weekend all told, but in a sense I made hundreds of thousands because it taught me to charge more. Only a couple times since then has someone dismissed the idea of hiring me because of rates.

Honest truth: I have been in this range for too long, I worried back when the economy tanked in 2008 that I would have to cut rates but it never really happened. Time to start raising them so new engagements I am now quoting a higher rate.

Quick question: I've been on my own for a couple of years now at a lower rate but I landed a six month contract and managed to save about $20,000. Unfortunately I spent that on living expenses over the next year after it ended because I am not so good at the business end (leads, billing etc).

So my question is (actually two) how do you stay consistently busy and up to date on hours? Also have you managed to save (or are there lean periods) and if so, would you consider hiring out/subcontracting? I've considered becoming a client on oDesk/eLance and taking more of a team lead role. I guess that's three questions.

I have been lucky, in 15 years I have been without work for probably a grand total of less than 6 months and the longest period was probably only 3 weeks. Often times it is not a complete lack of work but more a situation where one project ends today but my next one does not start until the week after next. Usually not enough time to squeeze in something else so I fiddle around learning stuff and take time off.

I dont think there is a secret recipe for staying busy other than the very basic truths. Meet and make friends with other people in your space and be a good person. Be on time, work hard, be honest and fair, respect people. Even if you fail people will give you lots of latitude if they personally like you.

I sub out work on occasion and have tried things at a few different levels. I have hired people off ELance and ODesk (which almost never works out); hired people I was introduced to and hired people off of CraigsList. In all of that certain truths remain, people who cost more money usually do that because they are better. Mostly at this point I hire other people like myself that have been at this for a long time and bill about what I do. I worry less about their work. In fact where possible I just bring them into a deal and let them work directly with my client. That way I am not in the middle of anything, I dont deal with money etc. Since I am not really trying to be a big firm making money off of people, skimming 15-20% off the top is just not worth the risks that come with it. Everyone is happier this way. I sometimes get asked if I worry that the person I bring in may steal my business and while the thought does cross my mind it is not the right thing to worry about. If that happens then I have to question what I was doing wrong that the client felt better using the other person more than me.

Thanks for answering. Sounds like you are working solo. Have you ever considered building a company? I guess that you had, now I wonder why you didn't go that route? I'm aware of the obvious things, like being a family man and running a company is a trade off. But still I'm interested to hear your considerations.

At one point, just before I jumped full solo I ran the dev shop of a web design firm. I had 13 guys working for me. I was not happy.

I am a creator at heart, I get joy out of making things. When you try to grow a company you are trading technology problems and challenges for a different set of problems that revolve around financing, sales, HR issues, people management etc and somewhere in all of that, the part I love - writing code and solving hard problems, gets lost.

There is also this period of change you have to go through monetarily. Right now I make really good money doing something I enjoy. To bring on others I end up for some time making less money for the hope that in the future I make more money. Truth be told, it may take quite some time to get back to my current income in this model and during that period there is risk. All things considered I am too happy to try and change it.

That said, I am considering different avenues. Consulting ebbs and flows, there are good projects and bad projects and the fact I can't make something I truly love, something I think is masterful, is weighing on me. Right now I am doing some work in commercial real estate and what I am building makes my client happy but it does not realize my vision for it. The truth is it never will because my vision is my own unique manifestation of what I believe it could and should be - and that vision does not align with my clients business goals (or their budget!).

Finding the right startup to build, something I am deeply passionate about, something I felt I was put on this earth to do is my next big career step. The problem is I have lots of ideas that may even make for good businesses but that spark of passion has not yet been there on any of those ideas.

I was weighting myself on these same thoughts for a while now. There could be another option - you could maybe start a part time opensource project/s.

If your in any need of an extra Microsoft Stack developer, please reach out. cheetahtec attt gmail.com 10+ years of experience here with .NET and Mobile.

As a junior developer I'm really interested in this answer.

If you convert salaries to hourly rates, the greater portion of us (outside SF/NY) make between $35-$70/hour.

How did you get to such exorbitant rates? Is your work very uncommon, or require an extremely refined skill set? Or is just "I charge whatever I want because I know they'll pay it"?

Just wanted to chip in that $150 is not exorbitant, because of your latter reason: people can and do pay it all the time.

$150 an hour can be quite reasonable, given the right situation. For starters, if a regular employee makes $50 an hour, they are really costing the company more like $100 an hour when you add in benefits, taxes, insurance, and other perk costs. So $150 for a subject matter expert on short notice is not a stretch at all.

But more importantly, do a cost/benefits analysis. Let's say there's an important project coming up, and you lack the internal expertise. Let's say it could be done in 3 months by an expert you know. Now, 3 months of $150/hr is $72k, which seems like a lot, but if your alternatives are 1) spending 6 weeks trying to hire an expert and hoping they agree to a low salary, 2) spending a month training internal people to do it, and then having them do a novice job at it, or 3) missing a crucial business opportunity that could easily run in the millions... you get the idea.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, learn enough tech to get the job done, learn the business realities of your industry, and then charge what you are worth to the company.

What would you classify as the right kinds of events, and what as networking events?

Lots of networking events are focused on sales or marketing, they attract lots of people looking for work or looking to switch jobs. Often times they are not advertised as 'networking events' specifically, but if the primary point of being there is to meet other people then it is a networking event. Even if there is some guest speaker or something, you will be able to tell why everyone is there.

User group meetings are the flip side of that, while some people are there to meet others, most come to learn something and their motives pivots around that point.

People who are looking for jobs or work, are rarely you ally in finding more work for yourself.

Odesk and elance are very competitive market places from developers in Asia, Eastern Europe. These are good if you are looking for developers to outsource work to. It was mentioned in a recent Reddit AMA See http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2shhgj/iama_25_year_ol...

I'm trying to figure out a way to be fair to the person in the AMA which is consistent with my own sense of entitlement. Damn.