
Ask HN: How do you make money as a Computer Science student? - devilmoon
A bit of background on my situation so you might give me more personalised advice: I graduated in  2017 with a Bachelor in CS and already had a job by that time. What seemed like a decent opportunity to kick-start my career quickly turned into what I believe would&#x27;ve been a dead end job which I would&#x27;ve dreaded every day of my life, so I decided to quit last summer and enroll into a Masters in Data Science.
Being used to a monthly salary and not having to ask my parents for money I feared this moment as I knew I would have had to deal back on my QoL quite a bit, but on top of that me and my family have had a string of misfortunes and now money is quite thight (nothing like going bankrupt, but still requires careful management of our finances).
All this combined, I find myself starting a new study cycle which will last at minimum two years and almost no money; hence I&#x27;m wondering: how does a student in CompSci make money while studying?<p>Apart from the obvious part time jobs (retail, fast foods etc.) - which I would like to avoid as I fear they would sap my time and strength without letting me grow as a computer scientist - I&#x27;ve looked into freelance gigs, consulting work and remote companies; unluckily for me, most if not all the opportunities I&#x27;ve come across require a full-time commitment, something I don&#x27;t have the luxury of giving unless I decide to take way more than 2 years to graduate, and freelancing in particular seems to focus on webdev&#x2F;mobile, areas which are not my strong suit and I don&#x27;t even like that much.<p>What would you recommend in this situation? Swallow the pill and learn stacks that sell through freelancing? Find something completely unrelated to CompSci that allows me to work part-time? Start emailing every company offering CS jobs in the area and asking if they&#x27;re willing to take on a part-timer?<p>Thanks in advance for your advice!
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PaulHoule
Often there are ways to make money around an academic environment.

For instance I got paid part-time to do research as an undergraduate at New
Mexico Tech. I know at Cornell this is this service called "TakeNote" which
pays graduate students to take notes for undergraduate classes. I am sure
there are other things at other unis. Note that people around Unis have a
large need for services involving (natural) languages that are not their
native language so if you know language L you may be helpful in many ways to
people who don't know L.

One of the best "unskilled" jobs you can get is doing high-intensity cleaning
projects at somebody's house. This is not being a regular maid but rather
busting ass for four hours to do the cleaning that a homeowner would take
twelve hours to do so that they see upwards of $25 an hour in value if not
more.

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devilmoon
Universities in my country only offer what are called "collaboration
bursaries", which is 120hrs of unskilled work paid 10€/h. I already plan on
applying, but as you can imagine it is nothing more than a stopgap. I've
thought about posting on the schools bulletin board that I'm willing to help
people with their PCs and whatnot, or maybe even do tutoring in CS, but it
seems like a long shot for someone to actually call you.

As for languages I think that's most likely a no-go, my university is
trilingual and most student are required extensive knowledge of the languages
to graduate (for which the university itself offers many many MANY courses)

