
Ask HN: Becoming an [international] freelance consultant - kffcc
Hi,<p>currently, I work part time as a contract programmer, travel the world, have personal projects on the side.<p>I am able to bring value in management processes, development processes, maintainability, software quality, QA, architecture and implementation.<p>Keeping my current freedom would be great though.<p>I am registered at computer futures Germany and France. They mostly have on-site jobs, full-time (that makes me doubt the travelling and remote possibilities.)<p>1)	How to get hired&#x2F; find awesome jobs? What are other job recruitment agencies which I should sign up for 
        (especially international and remote wise)?
2)	Do I need to stop travelling or is that possible to do fully remote? What is your experience? 
3)	Can I bring value by being on-site internationally? I am sceptical because jobs in France require spoken 
        French, and jobs in Germany require spoken German (computer futures experience).<p>A few similar questions like &quot;become an freelance consultant&quot; are on hackernews and have some nice resources. I like to differentiate this question by asking for recruitment agencies or other ways of getting hired and I like to understand if being internationally available is a value or not. Nevertheless don&#x27;t hesitate to link to other Ask HN posts.<p>My experience: 
Java (Spring, Hibernate, …), Angular 2 , Agile Management, Distributed Systems (Master Degree), Microservices, Container (Docker), CI&#x2F;CD (Jenkins), Software Quality (SonarQube), AWS, GCE, Azure<p>Thank you so much for helping me kick-starting this.<p>P.S. All books and other resource recommendations are highly welcome.
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CyberFonic
My apologies in advance, I can't answer your question directly, but your post
gave me pause and I might not be the only such person with these reactions.

I agree with @contingencies, Java is the only technology you mention. Many
recruiters will probably not read past that if that isn't what they are
looking for. There is nothing wrong with it, but it does lock you into being a
"contract programmer" vs a "freelance consultant".

Are you making the transition from contract programmer to freelance
consultant? If so, then you need to reposition your personal branding /
marketing.

In order to deliver value as a consultant you will need a lot of person-to-
person interaction. So, as you point out, you need to be able to communicate
fluently with the stakeholders and the many people who are working on any
given project.

Whilst emails, chat and phone calls are very useful, a lot of essential and
(IMHO) critical communications takes place in person. That is basically why
teleconferencing hasn't supplanted business travel. So whilst you can continue
to travel, you will probably need to be located with the client for at least
part of the time. In many organisations working "remote" causes concerns to
management. Travelling from project to project is another matter.

In my experience, the best consultant opportunities arise when working for a
major international consulting firm. Once you have established a solid track
record in that environment it is possible to go freelance. Employers, like
recruiters and agencies, look at your track record for proof that you can
successfully complete the given assignment. As a freelance consultant you are
expected to hit the deck running.

Then there is that massive stumbling block ... being freelance means that you
have to market and sell yourself. Having gotten an assignment you need to
track your hours, bill and collect. It is for these reasons that I have found
working for a consulting firm is less stressful. When you choose your field
and company well, travel becomes a given rather than an option.

~~~
kffcc
Thank you very much for your feedback and your advice.

Thank you, it is very good advice to position myself in an industry rather
than technology.

Is there a way to find a good consulting firm or compare some?

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BjoernKW
My slightly aged but in my opinion still relevant general advice is this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12744624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12744624)
, in addition to this more elaborate blog post referred to in that comment:
[https://bjoernkw.com/2013/04/28/starting-a-software-
consulti...](https://bjoernkw.com/2013/04/28/starting-a-software-consulting-
business/)

I also can't emphasise enough that you're in the business of solving problems,
not in the business of creating software:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15761354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15761354)

Focus on particular industries or categories of business problems rather than
specific technologies.

~~~
zerr
Can you comment on how creating a personal website affected your freelancing?
Does it help significantly with receiving the leads?

~~~
BjoernKW
It most definitely helps with being seen as a professional and as a business
rather than an anonymous set of TLAs. I refer potential clients to the
testimonials on my website and to blog posts relevant to the clients'
problems.

The testimonials establish trust that I can deliver on my promise and indeed
have done so for other clients in the past.

The blog posts give potential clients an idea of my expertise and perhaps can
already help them with a problem they're having (like choosing a testing
approach for their software, for example). Probably the most important aspect
I learned about sales conversations is that those shouldn't be actually about
selling but about trying to understand where the client is coming from, what
his or her problems are and about trying to provide possible solutions right
from the very start. The resources I provide on my website help me a lot with
this.

In terms of getting new leads it's not like my website gets a whole lot of
organic traffic from search engines. That does happen from time to time but by
itself it wouldn't be enough for having a sustainable business.

What routinely happens though is that potential clients google my name and
find my website as the first search result. Again, this helps with
establishing a professional relationship and informing the client about what I
can bring to the table.

I write regular blog posts (one per week at least) on subjects relevant or
related to my business and post excerpts and teasers on social media and
business networks like LinkedIn and XING. This helps a lot with getting new
leads from my extended network (again, networking is key).

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contingencies
My advice: Remove Java from your resume, or at least bury it at the end.

Rationale: Generally only relevant to Android development and bigco. Your
major clients in consulting will be SME.

~~~
kffcc
I see, that is great advice. Thank you!

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FearNotDaniel
I'm really not sure what you're asking. Could you possibly clarify? You are
already working as a contract programmer, which is a freelance of sorts, and
already travelling the world. Are you saying that you travel on your personal
time, i.e. when you're not working, but that you would now prefer to travel
further afield (more than France and Germany) specifically to work on
projects? Or are you saying that you are already travelling for programming
work (France and Germany being examples of this), but that you now wish to
transition into a more management-consulting focused role instead of
programming, i.e. more involved in the business process and strategy end of
things and less on the technical side?

~~~
kffcc
Thank you for your questions, those are really good.

" travel on your personal time, i.e. when you're not working"

Currently I am a software developer working 100% remote. So I travel for
personal reasons or professionally (rarely) when I need to go on-site to a
customer (of the company which employs me) to fix something or develop a
solution. I really enjoy being location independent and would like to it that
way. The comments about Germany and France coming from the job opportunities
which I see online or at recruitment agencies, they are 95% on-site in towns
or in different parts of Paris. That is not the type of travelling I am
looking forward to. That's were the idea of an international freelancer comes
from: I assume most well payed jobs need people on-site and mobility comes
with a premium. So why not going to awesome destinations?

"when you're not working, but that you would now prefer to travel further
afield (more than France and Germany) specifically to work on projects?"

Exactly I like to travel more than just France and Germany. I enjoy
mobility/travelling on an international scale. But what I see from the most
job positions is that they need people in Paris or in different towns in
Germany. I like to avoid that.

"now wish to transition into a more management-consulting focused role instead
of programming, i.e. more involved in the business process and strategy end of
things and less on the technical side?"

Ideally I like to stay in technology as much as possible. But I like to avoid
being a freelancer on Upwork and compete with low paid people from all over
the world and getting Upwork type of jobs. I also enjoy a lot working with
clients, doing their requirement analysis and getting solutions done rather
than writing code.

So I am looking to increase my salary by doing what I enjoy and what I am good
at. And I feel like I am hiding behind my computer just looking for
"programming jobs". The point is I wish to keep my independent lifestyle and
deliver the most value which I can possibly deliver.

Does that make sense?

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JSeymourATL
> What are other job recruitment agencies which I should sign up for
> (especially international and remote wise)?

Toptal has an interesting platform > [http://toptal.com/](http://toptal.com/)

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itake
What I did was work for a company and then transition the job remote after 11
months.

I kept my "california" salary and actually earned a lot more money than when I
was sitting in an office.

Best of luck!

~~~
kffcc
Thank you for sharing you experience.

Did you transition to remote work or did you try to move into the consultant
direction?

~~~
itake
I told my boss, while I enjoyed working for the company, I was unhappy living
in San Francisco and I needed a change of scenery. I had a ticket to visit
Vietnam (in 2 weeks) and I wouldn't come back to the office again.

Because he was happy with my services and I was a crucial part of the
engineering team, he let me work remotely full-time w2 while I traveled around
the world.

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astawiarski
I've been sitting at both sides of the table via TopTal. First I went through
their interview process, which I didn't like and the experience afterwards
wasn't great. More recently I helped to hire people via Toptal to work on a
project I consulted for, and that was good. Really great developers, and what
I can see they have a lot of flexibility.

However, have you considered remote work instead? There is more companies open
to that setting and you can also have a good time flexibility. I work for game
studio in Dublin - we offer fully remote setup, "unlimited" holidays and
flexible working hours. Your skillset matches exactly what we need. But even
if you aren't interested in making games for a living (python & java fullstack
development) there is tons companies like us. I know because we have to
compete with them for the best talent.

~~~
ole_gooner
Hey, Is there any link to where I can apply?

~~~
zerr
Here: [https://www.digitgaming.com/careers/job-
listings/](https://www.digitgaming.com/careers/job-listings/)

