

Ask HN: Self taught/no degree freelancer.. What salary can I get? - fe-throwaway

Based on my skillset, what salary can I get?<p>I&#x27;ve been freelancing&#x2F;consulting&#x2F;contracting for about 5 years and I&#x27;m looking into getting a full time frontend dev position.<p>I have no degree and everywhere I&#x27;ve worked I was the only developer. I feel like I&#x27;ve worked with alot of different things but my portfolio looks like shit since most of the businesses I worked with don&#x27;t exit anymore or they moved on with different developers. All my personal projects are still major works in progress.<p>I think explaining my backstory in depth would clear up alot of things but I&#x27;ll try to keep it brief since I probably wouldn&#x27;t have time to explain everything in an actual interview.<p>Languages I&#x27;ve worked with
PHP: 2009-2013
Javascript: 2011-Current
Ruby: 2014-Current<p>JS Frameworks
Ember: Late 2014-Current
React: 2015-Current<p>Ruby Frameworks
Rails&#x2F;rails-api
Sinatra<p>Databases:
MySQL, Postgres, Redis<p>Random Sysadmin stuff:
Haven&#x27;t touched any of this since 2011(paas&#x27;s ftw) so if someone asks me a question about it, I probably wont remember.
nginx, Apache, Varnish<p>Stuff I&#x27;m currently learning or used recently but I&#x27;m still a noob:
Elixir(phoenix framework), Go, and about to check out Clojure.. I really want to get more in depth with functional programming<p>Design:
Photoshop: 2007-Current
Illustrator: 2009-Current
Sketch: 2014-Current<p>PPC&#x2F;Ads
Managed a 20k ad spend for a client from 2011-2014. I only do PPC for one of my own businesses now that has a 2k per month ad spend with a 800% return on ad spend.
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davismwfl
So salary wise you should be able to pull a competitive salary. The fact that
many of the companies are out of business isn't an issue, when asked describe
what you have developed and be able to back up the technical details to prove
you know your stuff. Other than that, there isn't anything you have to prove
as far as the companies go. I don't have a tech degree and it has never gotten
in my way, in fact I even removed my degree from my resume back when I was
applying for jobs. Even now in consulting when they ask for Founder/key staff
details, we leave off my education unless the company is in the health care
industry which is where my education is.

Some companies do like to see a GitHub profile, if you have anything great,
but if not, it is what it is. The answer I find acceptable to that when I talk
to a developer is something along the lines of "the code I worked on was for
people in the business of making money and they weren't open sourcing anything
so I can't publish it". I have gotten variations of this answer and as long as
it lines up with the resume (e.g. I don't see an open source company etc) then
it is plausible enough, and I don't expect people to write code 24/7 so the
fact they put it all into their employment and didn't write extra stuff and
publish it in GitHub is fine by me, long as they are competent.

As for your side business, if you are spending 2k/month in ads and getting
800% return, then you are pulling in revenue of around 16k a month. If as you
said in one of your follow up comments your margins are great then you would
be pulling down probably at least $6k/month in net income. If all that is
true, and you just don't have a passion for the business (which happens) then
sell it, let someone else grow it and you get a job. Selling that business
could net you a nice little sum of money, you won't get rich, but it is one
hell of a start on a nice savings or retirement account.

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luxpir
Sounds like you could command a relatively decent salary, if you can prove
your claims via portfolio or testing, but that would also depend on your
location, presumably. Where are you based? SV, London, Nowhereville have
massive differences in average salary levels.

What I'm really interested in though is how your PPC campaign manages an 800%
return. Ideally you'd tell me in detail about the business but of course
understand you can't. Some general info might be nice though?

~~~
fe-throwaway
I'm located in Los Angeles but I'm open to moving anywhere.

Yeah wouldn't be too smart for me to out all the details on here but it's a
niche ecommerce store for a type of product that has gotten extremely popular
over the past year or two.

IMO there's several reasons to why I'm getting 800%.

I believe conversion rate optimization will only get you so far. Focusing on
developing the product(getting better prices, reducing freight costs, figuring
out different angles to sell/market the product) is where you'll see the best
results IMO.

My prices are way lower than the competition.. Sometimes up to 40% cheaper. I
can't divulge too much here but I move more volume than a majority of my
competition so I can either get better prices from the manufacturer or just
settle for lower margins.

My competition is all mom & pop shops.. None of these shops have the luxury of
having development work done without any costs so all these sites are poorly
made. They're all pretty much stuck using 2008 technology and with no
design/branding work done.

I'm always optimizing the mobile experience. I probably push a commit up at
least once a week for this alone. Mobile accounts for 75% of my total revenue.

I think the big thing here is I just got in at the right time. I started this
store right before these types of products started blowing up. So when it did
start getting really popular, I already had the infrastructure in place.

I think this luck mixed in with the domain knowledge I've gained from working
with PPC over the years is how I'm hitting that number.

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sharemywin
Found this on monster

Ruby on Rails Developer Los Angeles, CAFull-Time $80,000 - $110,000 Job
Details

If you are a Full Stack Developer with experience, please read on! (Located in
Los Angeles, CA)

We are building one of the largest communities that the world has ever seen.
We are a venture-backed, fast growing and having fun. Top Reasons to Work with
Us Competitive Pay ($80- 110K) Significant Equity PTO Paid Benefits

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ramtatatam
Possibly not within the topic of your question but why would you want to do
permament job if you sound quite successful with your own business? All
successful people I know got so high because they were owning businesses
rather than working for somebody else...

~~~
fe-throwaway
I have absolutely no interest in the product. I really just saw it as a
opportunity to make money. The business is pretty automated at this point and
I'm happy with where it's at. I think I've hit a point where I can't grow this
any further without my life revolving around it, which I do not want to do at
all.

I really enjoy development and want to experience being in a very development
focused environment. Sometimes I'm working on the business and all I'm
thinking about is how much I want to just code lol.

