

Ask HN: What to do as a programmer about to go homeless - brandonhsiao

I&#x27;m a full stack freelance web developer with several projects all heavily delayed. Meanwhile I&#x27;m living overseas in a country where I don&#x27;t know anyone (Vancouver, British Columbia), have $60 USD left in my bank account, and only have rent paid for another 2 days (at a hostel). Food here is pretty expensive and runs about $15&#x2F;day even if you really try to save, especially if you don&#x27;t have a permanent place for groceries.<p>It seems to me my best bet of making money is exchanging programming services for money as usual. How do I make this kind of trade last-minute?<p>Resume is in profile if that helps give advice. Also, this is a special case, but I have no one to borrow money from.
======
patio11
Your immediate resolution is to either borrow money, to solicit donations, or
to delay payment on your expenses.

Your longer-term resolution, which I hope to share both with you and people
whose present position resembles your position back in February (so that their
position in October does not resemble your position as of this moment), is to
improve the management of your business or, if you are unable or unwilling to
do so, to secure gainful employment as a computer programmer, and trade the
upside for predictable paychecks every 2 weeks until such time as you have
financial/social/etc resources to survive natural variation in cash flow.

You're a freelancer. Variability in payment schedules is something which your
business needs to be able to deal with.

You manage a business, and you should comport yourself as such, rather than as
e.g. a college student who occasionally works for spending money. This
implies, among other things, radically raising your rates, securing
appropriate credit to smooth out your cash flow cycles, securing appropriate
savings to smooth out your cash flow cycles, securing social and professional
relationships such that you have them available in leaner times, and locating
the business somewhere conducive to success at it. I express no opinion on
whether Vancouver is that place, but if you've got no support network there
and are at the margins of Canadian society, I would suggest rectifying that.

You should work on your pipeline such that you've always got some engagements
which are in the pitch stage, some which are in the execution stage, and some
which are in the "get the final invoice paid up" stage.

You need to increase your billable efficiency to more than the number you
think is required for meeting your monthly expenses, because if you shoot for
poverty level incomes, you will be poor when the business performs at plan and
destitute when it does not. Your minimum viable number is not $600 a month. It
is closer to $3,000 billed a month. This is the absolute "pack it in if you
cannot hit it" minimum number -- a successful freelancing business should be
billing _much_ more in the current environment.

I assert, without fear of contradiction, that you do not charge nearly enough
for your services. You need to charge more, substantially more. You probably
get bad clients and bad projects from something like oDesk. Do not get bad
clients and bad projects which pay you no money. Instead, network actively and
get better projects from better clients at the prevailing wages for
professional work.

P.S. The best clients will _not_ respond well to hearing about you being a
hair's breadth from financial disaster, because this does not happen to
professionals. It suggests a lack of professional competence and will,
therefore, impair your ability to land engagements doing professional work. In
keeping with the "comport one's business like a professional" strategy, you
will want to avoid sounding like you _need_ to get paid ASAP.

~~~
jcmurrayii
10,000 times this.

I do freelance work, and THIS advice is the advice that has helped me the
most.

Be, act, and appear a consummate professional at every front. Quality of
clients, size of projects, it all depends on acting the correct part.

Might drop the term freelancer as well, although thats a little more
controversial. It has appeared to me lately, that freelancer has begun to give
the impression of cheap roll-of-the-dice...where as something like
'consultant' tends to be more in line with stable, experienced, professional,
and yes, more expensive.

~~~
tormeh
This. Be a consultant. Bill by the hour.

~~~
ivanhoe
No, even better bill by the day or even weeks if projects are big enough. It's
silly mind trick but seems to work fairly well with clients, everything is
more relaxed because they don't feel like having to pay for every minute of
your work, it's much easier to negotiate the good price that way (at least for
me, since I'm from southeast Europe, my rates are probably on a cheaper side
here)

------
Mandatum
Start by removing any negative connotations from your CV/bio:
[http://brandonhsiao.com/](http://brandonhsiao.com/)

Things like "I will not work with Windows hosting" and "Honestly, strictly
speaking, any semi-competent hacker is capable of using any documented
framework" make us associate you with someone who is stubborn and over-
confident. The latter may be just, but I doubt it given your situation.

I apologize if my words are harsh, but as it goes; beggars can't be choosers.

~~~
brandonhsiao
Thanks for the heads up. If you hadn't told me I would never have even thought
of it that way.

~~~
illuminate
ALWAYS get a competent/savvy friend to review your resume/CV. (Also, dating
profiles.)

But seriously, you need someone to be brutally honest with you about these
things and employers will NEVER tell you what you need to know.

------
eric_bullington
Quick money? Well, Vancouver is Bitcoin capital of Canada. And Bitcoin
payments are immediate.

Also, there should be plenty of places to buy food there using Bitcoin. Here's
a list of just some of them:

[http://www.bitcoiniacs.com/merchants/](http://www.bitcoiniacs.com/merchants/)

So to earn money, go check out:
[https://coinality.com/](https://coinality.com/) and
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Jobs4bitcoins](http://www.reddit.com/r/Jobs4bitcoins)

They both post programming jobs. And Bitcoin payments are immediate. Just
watch out for scammers -- Bitcoin unfortunately attracts more than its fair
share.

If you post a Bitcoin address, I'll get you started with enough Bitcoins to
buy some cheese fries here:

[http://bestie.ca/](http://bestie.ca/)

Edit: By the way, the quickest secure way to get a Bitcoin address is probably
to sign up via blockchain.info and use 2-factor authentication and a long (20
char+) password. Just don't end up storing $10,000 on a blockchain wallet.

In the long run, you're best off learning to securely manage your Bitcoins
yourself using bitcoin-qt or another desktop client:

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet)

~~~
brandonhsiao
Wow, that is awesome. Wait, that actually sounds like a solution to my biggest
problem right now.

~~~
Theodores
This is not it. To all intents and purposes bitcoins are a fictional currency
with no relevance to the real world of getting food on the table. Do not
pursue some displacement activity based on selling tulip bulbs!!!

~~~
eric_bullington
No one is suggesting that he _sell_ them. I'm suggesting he _earn_ them, from
anyone around the globe, and then use them to pay for food at one of the many
restaurants and/or groceries in Vancouver that accepts Bitcoin.

------
mamcx
I don't know how are things in Canada. But when the bad times come, here in
Colombia we sell Empanadas!
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empanada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empanada))
(A proverb say: What is the thing that sell most? A empanada!)

I need to self-fund my own startup, and I have not access to angel investors.
So I start selling BBQ related things in the streets. I do this only in the
weekends, in the night, right now. In a strike of luck, I get some very good
freelance work just after the 1 week, but I still doing because a)I like it
b)It could pay the rent! c)Reduce the stress!

This is a tactic that (here) work well. Sell food is fairly easy if you are
smart about it. Requiere very low capital, not much talent, and some kind of
foods bring more than 50-70% in earnings, after all the costs. Things like
sell fruits (salad fruits) juices, tacos, empanadas, pizza, maicitos, mangos
with salt, etc. This suckers are EASY and profit well!

The only catch? Location. This is the hard thing.

Other things to try:

\- Fix computers \- Teach about computers \- Provide IT services to local
stores \- Exploit any talent you have and look if is possible to monetize in
the very short term. \- Become a "Cafe internet" \- Become a "Play videogames
here"

Both also are similar to "Sell empanadas" emergency business popular here. I
don't know if is possible in Canada. Start a home business have zero real
problems with the law if is low-level in my country so is easy to have a
escape plan.

~~~
ceejayoz
In Canada I'd imagine you need a permit and/or access to a commercial kitchen
for selling homemade food. I know you do here in upstate New York.

~~~
mamcx
Don't exist street sellers? I know in USA is normal the hotdogs sellers and
people that sell in special cars.

P.D: Another very easy tactic: If you are close to a location where people do
sports, sell fruits, water and similars become possible. I know a women that
only work 2 days each week for like 4h/day and made 3x-4x the AVG. salary of a
developer here.

------
webnrrd2k
This might not be appropriate advice for your current situation, but if you
think you might face homelessness again, you might think about getting a van
at some point. It will give you the minimum necessary to get through tough
times. You'll still need to make enough for gas and some food, but you can
live in a van for much less than rent. That, and a gym membership and you can
get showers and work out. If you have a decent laptop then you can work in
almost any coffee shop for maybe five dollars a day.

I'm not saying it a great option, but that it might be the best of a set of
bad options.

Also, you might think about posting to Craigslist or similar, explain your
situation and ask for some work. It certainly won't hurt.

------
junto
First thing I would suggest is to edit your podt and let people know which
city you are in. HNers that are local to you might be able to give you a sofa
for a few nights or ask you to pop by their office for a chat or informal
interview. You could be in my city, but since it isn't immediately obvious I'm
not going to then bother to contact you via your HN profile to ask.

~~~
webmaven
From [http://brandonhsiao.com/](http://brandonhsiao.com/), it looks like he's
in Vancouver.

[EDIT: Ah, The OP has updated his post]

------
danielschonfeld
Couchsurfing.com for the immediate housing problem, maybe even make a friend
you can lean on for the first week and try to get them back with a nice dinner
once you got some cash flowing again.

If cost of living/food is a sustained problem, try to save up and fly to a
place where that won't be your noose around your neck. Perhaps southeast asia
once you've saved a bit. Again couchsurfing for a softer landing there as
well.

If you freelance, I see no reason why you need to stay in a place that costs a
lot to live in. Move elsewhere.

~~~
brandonhsiao
It doesn't cost that much actually; once I find a permanent place and buy
groceries etc. I can live off maybe $600-$700/month. The issue is really just
that I need money last-minute.

~~~
jcmurrayii
Recently vacationed and stopped in Vancouver, plus have family that are
Canadian. BC in general, and Vancouver in specific is expensive compared to
places in the eastern part of Canada. It's primarily, as I understand it, a
touristy area, which drives up cost in most cases. I wasn't there long, but it
did seem a bit pricy from my admittedly limited perspective. Of course, that
also depends on where you are from/what you are used to!

------
rwallace
Exchanging programming services for money is a great idea in the long term,
but it typically takes on the order of months until the first chunk of money
arrives, which means it's far too late for that alone to help you right now.
What you need right now is an emergency bail out.

You say you're in a foreign country, and you don't have any family back home
who could help with the price of an airline ticket? In that case I would
suggest going to your country's embassy and explaining your situation.

~~~
GuiA
_> You say you're in a foreign country, and you don't have any family back
home who could help with the price of an airline ticket? In that case I would
suggest going to your country's embassy and explaining your situation._

Embassies aren't "get out of jail free" cards. Sure, it's better than nothing
- but they get tourists without a return ticket home so often that there are
strict policies on these sort of things. Even if they do help you, it might
end up in you getting your passport revoked for a significant chunk of time,
etc.

~~~
eli
I'm not an expert, but I don't think the US gov't _ever_ just gifts you a
ticket home. They could probably help you receive a wire transfer from friends
or family, but it's very unlikely they would buy you a ticket.

~~~
napoleond
You could ride a bike from Vancouver to the US. If OP is a US citizen, and
getting back to the US is a valuable undertaking, there are several ways to
get it done for <$60.

------
steven2012
I don't understand by what you mean by "overseas". Are you not legally allowed
to work in Canada? Why are you listing your money in USD? Sounds like you made
a couple of bad decisions and you need to find yourself a full time job.

If you really have no money you should probably use your credit cards until
you find a permanent job. Or ask your friends or family to loan you money
while you are getting yourself back on your feet.

------
jcmurrayii
Rough situation.

I am not sure you will be able to find anything in the programming area on
such short notice that will pay out that quickly.

However, this might be a case where you look outside of that, and take more
pedestrian approaches to get you the cash needed to ride out the rough patch.

Day labor, its not programming, and it doesn't pay much, but it could be
enough to put food in the belly, and a roof over the head. I know in the US
there are all kinds of day labor companies, and construction will occasionally
hire for unskilled on a job site, and pay cash.

Recruiters/Staffing/Temp: Find someone that has a client base of people that
need software staff augmentation immediately. I am not sure it would solve the
problem in 2-3 days, but you might get very lucky.

Original response was dead on though. Hard to say what can be done without
knowing where in the world you are.

~~~
x1798DE
Depending on the attitude of the city you are in, your personality and what
kind of creative skills you have, you could also potentially make some "hold-
over" money quickly by busking (street performance). I personally am really
not a big fan of busking, but I've thought about what I would do if I suddenly
needed some cash in pocket very quickly and the quickest (legal) way I can
imagine getting cash in hand with no initial investment is day labor, street
performance or panhandling. Seems like a long shot, but if you're a super good
guitar player or something and Vancouver doesn't have strict laws about street
performance, you might be able to make enough to keep you fed and housed until
a freelance job pays out.

------
musuko
I have been in that situation and I don't know the reason you ended up there,
you can get many options of housing with friends and work online but I would
like to send you some money for food so while you figure it out you always
have a hot meal.

------
confiscate
Have you considered applying for employment insurance?

"Employment Insurance (EI) provides temporary financial assistance to
unemployed Canadians who have lost their job through no fault of their own,
while they look for work or upgrade their skills."

Government assistance should be a safety net that is intended exactly for
temporary situations like this, right? It's definitely not optimal, but
perhaps it would be one avenue to follow up given the situation?

------
henrylau
Have you considered applying for employment insurance?

"Employment Insurance (EI) provides temporary financial assistance to
unemployed Canadians who have lost their job through no fault of their own,
while they look for work or upgrade their skills."

Government assistance should be a safety net that is intended exactly for
temporary situations like this, right? It's definitely not optimal, but
perhaps it would be one avenue to follow up given the situation?

~~~
unreal37
You have to pay into Employment Insurance for a few months first, before you
can collect it. Freelancers and other self-employed people don't qualify.
Also, the safety net is generally only for citizens of a country who pay
income taxes, not visitors as this person appears to be ("overseas").

------
moggh
Life is full of ups and downs. If I were you, I'd make three radical shifts:
i) Find a shit job for now. ii) Get the heck out of dodge - Vancouver is an
insanely expensive city and if you've reached the end of your money-line,
impose on a friend or some family else where. Hitch thee. iii) Find a perm
development role until you can get back on your feet; this will be hard unless
you can pull off (i).

------
logn
Do you have any credit left? Can you take a cash advance from your credit
card? Use that for rent. Then use the rest of your credit to buy peanut
butter.

You said you have several projects all heavily delayed. Can you approach those
clients and offer them a discount if they provide a down payment?

Also reply to Craigslist ads looking for temporary labor (e.g., moving boxes
or doing outdoor work).

------
Mz
If you are about to be homeless and have $60 to your name, you need to focus
for now on short term survival. You need to find a way to raise the cash
(preferably without borrowing) and make sure you can eat, as a minimum.

Look into couch surfing or staying with friends/family for the short term if
that is possible.

Look for a way to get quick cash legally. In the U.S., collecting recyclables
is a common way for people on the street to do that. A quick google does not
indicate you can do that in Canada. You might consider pawning something,
accepting donations, finding some kind of short term work that pays cash.

While drawing on those resources, then try to get more long term solutions in
place. You cannot crisis manage your way to a more middle class life. You have
to make real plans and do a lot of problem solving.

I hope that some of the advice here on how to market yourself as a serious
professional is useful to you in the long run but I will say that it makes
some really big assumptions which may be completely off the mark. First, in
order to charge $100/hour for anything at all, the quality of your work needs
to be worth that much. Your work may not be that good. So you may need to find
out how to improve the quality of your work. Second, simply relabeling
yourself as a "consultant" instead of a "freelancer" may not be some kind of
magic bullet to get you better clients.

Some of the advice here is a good long term thing to shoot for but, really, if
you are on the verge of homelessness, the odds are high that you have bigger
problems than what label you are using for your business model. So you may
have some serious work ahead of you in terms of figuring out exactly what went
wrong and how to fix it.

Also, asking for help here on HN in this manner may be doing you more harm
than good. The people you want to hire you for your programming skills may
well be reading this forum and may well basically blacklist you because of
this post.

I am sorry you are in this situation. (I have been homeless for 2.5 years, so
I am not looking down on you.)

Best of luck.

~~~
napoleond
While 'patio11's post is (as usual) a valuable contribution, yours is far more
useful in this particular case.

To the OP, having come close to your situation before, my advice is to focus
on finding a day job. If visas are an issue, look for remote work or cash work
(or, I suppose, a long-term "freelance" gig--for example ad agencies in Canada
frequently employ programmers to do work in-house as contractors), but focus
on finding anything that will let you wake up every day without worrying about
how you'll pay rent or buy food. Freelancing/consulting is great, but there
are a number of factors which make it a _lot_ more difficult to dig yourself
out of a hole that way, especially if you don't have a track record of
consistently filling your time with valuable client engagements. You can
always re-visit that path once you have savings in the bank.

EDIT: This is a subject that's fresh in my heart and mind, having transitioned
from (some of) the starry-eyed delusions of youth to (some of) the miserable
realities of adulthood more recently than many here. Guys like 'patio11 mean
very well, and they are giving actionable advice which I've made work for
myself many times over, but they are taking a few things for granted which
they maybe shouldn't, and de-emphasizing the importance of a few things which
programmers have a tendency to over-emphasize:

1\. You cannot charge $100/hour if you can't demonstrate any previous success
at all. It's true that programmers over-emphasize the importance of this most
of the time, but you do need _something_.

2\. You cannot charge $100/hour if you're not able to act like a professional.
This includes communicating professionally, dressing professionally, etc.
Again, programmers over-estimate the importance of this, but there is a basic
requirement (which is probably on par with most North American white collar
work).

3\. You will never be able to bill 100% of your work time and it's probably
not realistic to even get 60% in your first year of solo operation. (That, by
the way, is part of why $100/hour is on the low end of what you should be
charging.)

4\. You will almost never get paid on time, and it's not unusual (a few times
a year) to face expenditures which represent more than a week's work (tax
season, etc), so you should have _at least_ a month's worth of cash float
available.

5\. Regardless of your overall market value and the value you're able to
create for any business, there are many parts of North America where
businesses will not justify spending more than $100/hour on your work. Your
options (as a freelancer/consultant) are basically moving or trying to work
remotely (see 6).

6\. You're not going to get a "freelance job" at $100/hour working remotely
unless you're $INSERT_INTERNET_FAMOUS_NAME. You _might_ get a _consulting
engagement_ , but only if you've met the client in person previously, or
you've been referred by someone, or you have some very serious Fu. (I am
probably overstating the difficulty here, but not by much.)

7\. It's near impossible to pull off #'s 1 through 6 if you don't have food to
eat this week. (I'm speaking from experience, although in reality I have a
wider support net than most people. This list is doubly true for those without
a support net.)

In other words, 'patio11 and 'tptacek and the other good people giving
wonderful consulting advice are right 100% of the time, but they're making
reasonable assumptions about functional professional adults with a few
connections and a bit of money in the bank (again, they're optimizing their
advice for people who have the resources but lack the confidence). If you're
not there yet, get a job for a while--it has its own set of challenges anyway.
(And when you do, check out [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-
negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/) for
some excellent advice about salary negotiation.)

~~~
patio11
$100 an hour is the just-hung-out-your-shingle rate for web developers in e.g.
Chicago. It doesn't require a fancy suit, Internet fame, or having written a
book on Rails. It is just the market rate for being able to do work in a
mostly unsupervised fashion.

~~~
napoleond
I apologize, my previous comment must have been quite poorly written for you
to have misunderstood it to the extent that is apparent. I didn't intend to
make any assertions about writing books or wearing suits, and I certainly do
not object to $100/hour rates (having charged more than that in markets much
smaller than Chicago). The crux of my point was that freelancing isn't the
optimal way for most people to pick themselves up from nothing.

It's not helpful to suggest that a person just needs to go check out the local
$INSERT_PROGRAMMING_LANGUAGE_HERE developer meetup and ask people to hire them
for freelance work--that sort of environment is _not_ the norm in most of
North America.

Of course freelancing is a perfectly viable option for lots of people, and I
will generally agree with your party lines (ie. businesses typically value
developer skills on a completely different axis than programmers do, and
programmers typically underestimate their ability to provide that value) but
offering it up as a panacea to someone who's on the verge of homelessness
seems... a bit strong.

------
kgc
Get a food services job temporarily. Also, buy groceries and cook your own
food. Even microwave meals only cost about $1 each.

------
yazaddaruvala
I would also maybe try
[https://www.bountysource.com](https://www.bountysource.com)

------
criveros
Get a credit card. They accept credit cards at hostels.

------
Theodores
Are you sure you cannot speak to mummy and daddy plus any other relatives,
e.g. siblings? They may be the only people that can immediately arrange for
you to have money for outgoings, as hard as it may be to pick up the phone to
ask for help, they might just be worried about you and more than willing to
help in any way possible. Of course you could be an orphan, disowned or with
parents living on less than a dollar a day in the Global South, but I find it
hard to believe you have no friends or family to help you.

If you are going to speak to them, one thing you can do to make things easier
is to get the ball rolling with work. If you get your CV out today then you
should be hearing from recruitment agencies tomorrow. If someone is going to
put you forward for a telephone interview then that might be enough to
persuade family that you are worth investing in.

Assuming that someone in the family can help you out you can pay them back
with direct debit over six months or so, plus you will owe favours in return.
This does mean doing a day job, i.e. getting out the door very early and
getting back late with no life to yourself except the weekend.

You can also look for local work with rubbish pay doing things most people
don't want to do. Pretend you are a student and that the job is perfect for
you, in that way they will overlook any intellectual aspect of your character.
The benefits of a local unskilled job are many: you can take on a challenge
and 'win' (factory production lines are ridiculously fast to the uninitiated),
physical hard labour does get you fit up to a point where you are just
permanently run down, the travel can be easy and inexpensive saving you 1-2
hours per day, the camaraderie can be better than any office, you can get paid
weekly, you can get paid for overtime, uniform/overalls are provided and
although the experience may be utterly intolerable there will be retrospective
enjoyment. Just pretend that you are going 'undercover' much like George
Orwell in 'Down and Out in London and Paris' and all will be survivable.

If in an inane factory job read the trade press and look for vacancies that
can combine the low--skilled in-depth knowledge of the job with programming.
For instance, if you end up working in a bar then keep your eyes peeled for
vacancies with the company that supply the POS software. If they want people
to be support staff then they are willing to hire users (that know the
software already and understand the pressures of their customers). A support
role - picking up the phone and logging calls will lead to a second line role
by which time you will have gained people skills and become a customer service
focused person. That is worth more on your CV than any programming TLA's or
half-baked open-source project contributions. It may not be rocket surgery and
it might be hard work, but all I am saying is that a dead-end job really need
not be dead end at all if you are prepared to be slightly enterprising about
it.

It may take six months to a year of having to work at rubbish jobs before you
can climb out of the hole into something nearer your true calling but that is
not so long in the bigger scheme of things. As mentioned you will learn things
along the way that they just don't teach in university.

Expecting to exchange programming services for money shows a slight lack of
grasp of reality, in truth it is exchanging your labour or your time for $$$.

