
Ask HN: Laid off. Now what? - throwawaybp
I was laid off from my job a couple of weeks ago. I was with the company for a bit more than 6 months and I thought I was doing my job well (wasn&#x27;t coding much, was into middle management). It came as a surprise to me and my teammates too. Now, I want to go back to freelancing and work on some SaaS ideas on the side.<p>Problem is, It now seems impossible to find a project. I tried contacting some older clients but they don&#x27;t have any work at the moment (or in near future). I posted in Seeking Work&#x2F;Freelancer thread as well without any success. Tried various remote job portals and slack channels. No success there either. Had 1 enquiry and I lowered my hourly rates to less than half (from $100&#x2F;hr to $40&#x2F;hr) and still I couldn&#x27;t get the project. I&#x27;ve got 12 years of experience writing code and I think what I asked was quite fair. Now I&#x27;m getting desperate for work and I&#x27;ve no clue what should I do next.<p>Going full-time is an option but I had a shoulder injury recently and I&#x27;m trying to minimize commuting as much as possible. Also, I feel I work better as a contractor and it keeps me happy.
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clark-kent
I would recommend using recruiters to find work for you, recruiters have a
nice rooster of Employers that they can match you with.

Even better than using a recruiter use a site like Hired.com and vettery.com.
These sites are great for matching you with interesting employers.

The best thing about the above options is that it gives you access to a lot
employers, much more than you can find by searching on your own.

Note: these recruiters and sites can help you find freelance/contract work as
well as regular employment.

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mrdependable
I tend to get a lot of people asking me to do work for them through side
projects I have. For example, if you made some sort of Salesforce integration
that people started using, you would probably start getting quite a few
requests for you to do customizations, or build a custom app, etc.

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DoreenMichele
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18829691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18829691)

I'm on mobile, short of sleep, yadda. My comment in that discussion links to a
useful list of freelance platforms.

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throwawaybp
For people who want to know my skill sets:

Php, Laravel, VueJS, NodeJe, React. Language isn't a barrier. I've worked on
Python/Django, RoR, etc. as well.

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opendomain
What are your skills? Languages? Any information for people to hire you would
be helpful.

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throwawaybp
Added

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foober23
Just speculating here... the US government shutdown could be having an effect
on contract work. Even your lay off 2 weeks ago could be related. Timing seems
to line up with the shutdown. Tons of contract work is from government
spending.

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throwawaybp
I'm not from the US.

