
Ask HN: How do I earn money? - throaway65789
Pardon the stupid question. So I&#x27;m a freshman in college, been programming since age 11. Worked with C and C++, Common Lisp, PHP, frontend stuff, Lua, etc. Had awards at competitive programming competitions, national&#x2F;international, contests, stuff. So money is <i>extremely</i> tight, my country&#x27;s economy is abysmally bad, yadda yadda. What are my options even? Software companies here don&#x27;t seem to offer internships outside of summer. I work on and off doing frontend dev with a small company but I&#x27;m sick of the micromanagement and inefficiency there and the projects are sparse. I just can&#x27;t believe I&#x27;m not good&#x2F;experienced enough to earn even a junior dev&#x27;s salary. Any suggestions welcome.
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husseiny
There is a high demand for engineers right now so with a little bit of
patience and hard work you will find your way I am sure. Here are a few things
you can try:

1- Start by creating a web presence for yourself, a simple bio website that
explains who you are and what you do a long with links to some of your work.

2- Create a GitHub (or Codepen) account and open source any reusable code,
plugin, etc. Just make sure you actually own the work and are allowed to do
this.

3- Create a profile on UpWork and find freelance work there.

4- Pick a side and a language and start specializing a bit. It's great to be
well rounded and have lots of skills but it is a much easier sell to say I am
a front end engineer and love building UIs, I am experienced in CSS, JS,
Angular, etc. versus I do C, C++, front-end stuff etc. You can mention that
you are comfortable on any side (front or back) but it is better to say which
is your stronger skill.

Good luck!

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egor83
Remote jobs - Upwork (formerly oDesk, with Elance joining it shortly).

If you have some portfolio, you can try monthly "Who's hiring/Who wants to be
hired/Seeking freelancer" threads here on HN, the next would be in just a few
days:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

You've got pretty impressive range of skills, and at least PHP/frontend are
very remote-friendly, with enough demand on the resources I added above.

Since you're familiar with C++ and competitive programming, you might also try
things like TopCoder/CodeEval; it's more about competition, but the corporate
sponsors are watching competitors and might hire the best.

My email is in my profile, feel free to get in touch if you have more
questions. Best of luck!

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Albright
The first step is to wad up your self-doubt and chunk it in the nearest
incinerator. If you've been tinkering with code for eight years and have won
competitions, odds are pretty certain you can do good enough work to justify a
junior dev's salary.

Anyway, the topic of actually finding work is broad, but this might help you
get in the right direction; pick some things you'd like to work with, and look
for specific job boards for them. For example, I'm pretty proficient with the
Drupal framework/CMS, so I'll usually watch the official Drupal jobs board
when I'm on the lookout for a new gig. There's also LinkedIn; you should at
the least have a profile there, even if you aren't actively searching for jobs
there. It also helps to have a personal site and do a little SEO on it so that
it comes up if someone searches for "Lua developers in [your city]."

That's a basic answer, but it might be enough to get your foot in the door at
a few places.

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vdaniuk
>Had awards at competitive programming competitions, national/international,
contests, stuff.

Try codementor.io, your credentials will most probably help you to find some
gigs and you'll be paid on the hourly basis. Also you can try toptal.com and
gun.io.

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alain94040
So you want to get gigs from people looking for devs who know certain
technologies? Put yourself in the shoes of the people who will hire you. How
do they go about finding good technical people? I'd start with forums that are
specialized into whatever technologies/stacks you are great at. If that
doesn't work out, you can try generalist sites for coders.

In general, the way to overcome lack of experience on your first gig is to win
on price. But as soon as you have one official project under your belt, your
marketing should be that you make you customers successful. Don't drop prices
anymore (on the contrary, raise them).

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asimjalis
Publish the code you have written on GitHub to build a portfolio. Then see if
you can get a remote job at some company. In the beginning you want to take
whatever you can get. Once you get the hang of it you can start being picky.

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atmosx
Out of curiosity, have you tried anything yet? What about posting on "Who
wants to be hired" or sending emails to job descriptions you find interesting
in "Who's hiring" monthly thread?

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redeleven
How much money do you want to earn? If you want $20-$40k then you can make
that pretty easily freelance, even in your first year, a lot more with
experience and contacts. If you want $100-$250k then you're probably going to
need experience at the right places, a bit of luck, and a visa for US/UK/Aus
etc, or your own product/company.

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asimjalis
Another option is to apply at Galvanize.com or other accelerated 3-month
engineering programs. This will give you the credentials you need quickly.

I know Galvanize has some funded scholarships. I am sure other bootcamp-style
programs will also have this.

(Full disclosure: I work at Galvanize.)

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petervandijck
Charge for your work.

Good luck!

