

Ask HN: Where to look for side work? - bartonfink

My wife and I are expecting in May, and for those of you who haven't checked recently, babies are  expensive. While we aren't in dire straits - my day job will get my family where we want to be in 18 months without any fuss - I've been looking around for a part-time development job. I'm looking for something I can do on nights and weekends (say, 20 hours a week) to bring in some extra cash with a minimum of hassle. I have neither the time nor the inclination to build my own product, but I have no scruples about helping someone else build theirs as long as they pay me and respect what I'm looking for.<p>I found something on Craigslist about a month ago that I thought would work, but I did my job a little too well and the business owner said he wanted to bring me on full-time or not at all. This wasn't a great option, as I really love my day job and can't afford to give up the benefits it offers for the salary he was prepared to offer.<p>Anyone have any ideas how to find this sort of work and make it stick? Anywhere besides Craigslist that would be worth my time looking?
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tshtf
Your best bet may be with contacts in your existing social circle, or
associates of associates. You may have luck working for strangers on
Craigslist, but I suspect if you ask around (discreetly perhaps), you'll have
better luck working for someone with some social connection to you.

~~~
jeffmould
Meant to point that out as well, but definitely within your own social circle
or even your family social circle.

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byoung2
I did some work with Creative Circle (www.creativecircle.com) a few years
back. They are a staffing agency for programmers, designers, etc. They usually
have freelance, contract, or other short term jobs. Those were some of the
most interesting jobs I did as a freelancer. One job was for Brash
entertainment, and they needed 3 versions of an email template design in 24
hours to promote the release of Jumper: the Videogame. I pulled an all-nighter
and paid that month's rent. If I didn't have a full-time job and a business, I
would be doing freelance gigs with Creative Circle.

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jeffmould
First thing I would do is create a portfolio of any work you have done.

You can try Freelancer.com, odesk, and other sites like that. Also keep tabs
on Craigslist. There are many times quick jobs come up on there. One option
with Craigslist is to check big cities, and not necessarily ones around you
either. Many times there are listings there for freelance, remote workers for
short-term projects.

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japanesejay
What kind of development do you do?

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bartonfink
My day job is with a defense contractor doing service integration for a
surveillance system. This is cool, and highly stable (good for the kid), but
probably not amenable as experience for part-time work. The night job I was
doing for a while was for a company in Denver (my home) on an iPhone app they
were writing as a prototype demonstration for their database sharding product
dbShards. This was much cooler, but as I said above, not really an option
going forward.

Paid work has been primarily in Java, with a fair bit of AJAX development for
interfaces. Most work in my M.S. was in C++, but this hasn't gotten much
traction from employers. I've done a handful of scripts and under-the-radar
one-offs in Python, but nothing anyone would call an application. I try to
believe in the idea that a competent developer should be able to learn any
tool necessary, but an M.S. doesn't demonstrate learning ability or technical
skill to most H.R. departments the way 10 years experience with HP printers
does.

~~~
percept
As suggested above, you'll need something to show prospective clients. This
can be challenging when most of your work isn't publicly available, which
necessitates building some portfolio pieces for show-and-tell.

For UI-capable developers this would be Web apps/sites, for systems-oriented
programmers this could be libraries or utilities.

Also, can you use the business owner you mentioned as a reference (worst he
can do is say "no")?

