

Ask HN: How do i pay my bills? - bluedog

Hey, I&#x27;m a silent follower of the hacker news community.<p>I have been working in tech space since 4-5 years and have significantly developed my skills as a techie.<p>I started two startups in my college but failed.<p>After that worked with a startup offering me good salary, while at job i started working on an idea and build a prototype around it. When i market-tested the prototype it seemed like a good idea to be profitable. So in excitement i left my well paying job. Only to realize that i never made a single $ from it in next 3-4 months and realized that i need to spend few thousand dollars to make it properly execute (from prototype to full product).<p>I then came up with an interesting problem to be solved by hardware&#x2F;machine which i&#x27;m designing, prototyping since last 2 months.<p>But i realized that there is no money left in my bank to pay my bills (rent, electricity, internet, hardware purchases) and i can&#x27;t ask my parents simply because they themselves are going through financial crunch. I have some full-time job offers but i want to focus on my hardware research for at-least next 6 months.<p>What i&#x27;m looking is for: I need to find ways to make ~$1000 a month to be able to meet my costs.<p>As a developer i&#x27;m very good in following:<p>- Python, Golang, JavaScript
- REST APIs
- Designing&#x2F;Building MVPs
- Testing Products (as user and even writing test frameworks)
- Advising people to choose best tech-stack according to their needs.<p>And I&#x27;ve in-build capability to pick-up&#x2F;learn things&#x2F;concepts quickly.<p>But i&#x27;m not able to find a way to make money using my skills without doing a full-time job.<p>Is it possible that i spend working 1 week (remotely) for someone and make around ~$1000 and then stay focused to my work OR may be spend some hours every week (let&#x27;s say 1 or 2 day) through-out month doing client&#x27;s work.<p>How do i start? What are the options? Can i earn ~$1000 a month working for limited no. of hours?<p>Please advice or help.
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jpgvm
I am working approximately 4 hours a day, earning around $1500 a week. Which
is much more than you are looking for (about 4x more...) but is only about 2.5
days a week total time invested. So it's definitely possible to achieve
$250-300/wk if that is all your expenses are.

However, I already worked full time for this company for 18 months remotely
before I negotiated this arrangement. So YMMV but I think if you can afford to
put things on hold for 3ish months and prove your worth you can probably get
something similar which would provide you with time to do what you want.

I find alot of companies (startups especially) are happy to cater to these
arrangements if you are sufficiently skilled.

~~~
quaffapint
I assume you live some place with a high cost of living (like San Fran)?
Making $1500/week for 4 hours a day (heck, even 8 hours a day) is very high
for non-San Fran like areas.

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kohanz
4 hrs * 5 days per week = 20 hrs. $1500 / 20 hrs = $75 per hour. It's a decent
rate, but it's hardly something you need to be in SF to find (where you more
often hear of contractors charging $100+).

I currently have a similar arrangement, where I work about 20 hours a week as
a contractor (although that is not a quota, but more of a choice) at nearly
the same rate. I live in a mid-sized Canadian city (comparable to a smaller
American city) with relatively low cost of living (to the big cities).

~~~
jpgvm
Precisely.

I could make more/hr but my current arrangement affords me more job security.

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deviousanon
Not to be a jackass, but how much sleep are you getting? 6hours+?

I've had many great ideas be kept on the back burner for years, while I worked
to pay bills. I kept two day jobs to pay rent and eat, barely. I worked on the
computer at night.

When I was in college I worked a day job, and I went to fullsail. Yeah.. The
24/7 school. Class on sunday at 4am.

In my first job I worked side contracts and consulted. I shared my knowledge.
I also explored the new technologies and learned more. Don't ever stop your
education.

Nothing ever turned fruitful, except my failures. Every failure I learned
something from and moved on. I was fired from that first job on Christmas day
because I wasn't working and my boss overwrote a production file before she
got my changes. Thought I didn't do the work. You're lucky. You have GIT.

I worked from myself and taught myself project management and the skills to
run my own business. I also started a family and added more bills. You have to
play the waiting game and most importantly you have to try. Do not expect
things to be easy. Do not assume people are on your side. Do not be afraid to
lose sleep and work all night to prove your worth.

~~~
bluedog
thanks... you're words are a boost to me.

~~~
staunch
Although you should be willing to work very hard it's actually a mistake to
skimp on sleep. Proper sleep is probably the biggest element in consistent
productivity.

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osmala
I've seen that working part time is enormous reduction in efficiency of
personal projects and commute and task switch takes equal amount of time
anyway, and for some its almost equal of not doing the other project at all.
So one recommendation is try to get a 1-3 month full time project, with good
enough salary to save your living expenses for entire year since humans always
underestimate the time it takes to finish their project, and you are a human
too.

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sp332
This doesn't directly answer your question, but there is a post here every
month that asks "Who is hiring" and another, "Who wants to be hired". Browsing
those might give you a better idea of what people are actively looking to give
you money for :)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

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MalcolmDiggs
In all seriousness, drive for Lyft / Uber. I've met a number of people doing
this recently, and it really seems like the perfect side gig. The main reason
is that it fits around your schedule (no matter what your schedule is).

But yeah, you could always pick up some contracts instead. But sometimes
having a little diversity/variety in your income stream is nice.

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danso
You really ought to consider doing a full-time job, or consistent free-lance,
for long enough so that you can earn a reliable stream of part-time jobs in
order to fund your main passion. Your software skills, as you've described
them, are in high demand...but freelance/part-time requires additional effort
to keep the pipeline of paying-jobs consistent.

Having not much experience in hardware, I'm just going to assume the stories
are true, that hardware has generally a longer, more troubled slog toward
viability than software. In that case, it seems very optimistic for you to
think that you'd only need a few thousand dollars, and a few months, to
execute properly. It may take much longer, and unless your idea has a short
shelf-life, wouldn't it be more efficient to get the personal income issue
settled so that you're more prepared for a longer development time for your
hardware product?

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randomflavor
where are you located? how can i contact you?

~~~
bluedog
withmypc [at] gmail

