Freelance programming?

[nmccrina]

I am desperately trying to find some sort of job so I can move out of my parents house. :P How feasible is this freelance thing? The site I was looking at was http://www.gofreelance.com/ Does anybody here know anything about it? It looks good, but I don't want to just give a random person/organization my credit card number. ;)

Basically, I'm wondering if this angle is worth pursuing, or if I should just try to get a traditional internship somewhere.

[c0mput3r_n3rD]

I don't know about that site, but I've had a few professors in college that did freelance programming and did pretty well with it. There are a lot of small business' that need small programs written and they're obviously not going to spend millions on some big corporate package.

[dwhitney67]

Join the one of the services of the US military. Then pursue a degree in computer science or computer studies.

[LumbeeNDN]

...first off, don't give anyone your cc number...if anyone asks for that, then they are not lagit. Check out odesk.com They are reputable. What is your programming background? Do you have a degree? You need a plan. If you are not interested, or don't have the money to get a degree, check out your local tech/comm. college and see what they offer. Its tough to get a job with no experience...or get experience with no job. A good way to go is open source programming. Find an open source project out there, get on their IRC and start asking questions, and where you can help. Also check out Stanford and MIT's open courseware classes...free vids and homework online...no credit, but same classes the rocket scientists take. No more barriers to knowledge!!! Good luck...

[Sinkingships7]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=645229

That thread is very relevant to your interests. He's been writing a journal-style thread on his adventures being a freelance programmer. You can learn a lot from him.

[oldefoxx]

I've developed programming skills all through my long career. I began with the training that I got from the Navy, but kept up with it, relearning as the emphasis on what to know changed. I only held one job, for a year, where programming was the main thing.

Mostly, programming was just another means to an end, helping me get other things done as required. Always having to work on programs can be very wearing on your mind. I've heard that a typical programmer might only have three major projects in them. Secondary programming can be more like a hobby, and interest stays high for longer.

Freelance? Now that can be tough. What's your qualifications? Someone wants to know before they hire you. What have you done to date? What proof do you have that you can do what you claim? How can you be sure you can do it in the time allocated (which is usually way shorter than it will actually take)? And while programming means having to get something like 98% of the code in place before you really have anything to show, how are you going to appease an increasingly impatient customer?

You good at face to face confrontations, where you can calm their fears for another week or so? Of course if you land a deal, deliver on it, then you might be stuck with doing the documentation, training, late night calls for assistance, and years of continued support, nothing of which was priced for in advanced. And what happens if you are currently working another critical delivery job when a long term customer calls with a major problem? Who comes first?

Often it isn't about programming, but finding out enough about the subject to know what code to write in the first place. You might need an expert to help on that. But an expert doesn't need a program to make it all happen for him or her. And once on track, which language or set of programming tools is best suited? You expert enough in your area to be able to answer that? How can you estimate a job if you don't yet know which tools to use in delivering it?

Think of freelancing like consulting, but now you have to deliver the goods yourself. And chances are, you can only work on one freelance task at a time. Is that going to last, and will that pay all the bills? Don't forget, you have to sell yourself, and two selling points is how fast you can deliver and how little you charge. Freelancing is really for those that come to love programming and need to do something to make it pay off.

I could not freelance, but I loved programming, and liked to use it as part of my regular job. I often advise others to consider programming as a secondary skill, and keep looking for their primary occupation in other areas.

What programming language? Sometimes makes a difference. Pick a main stream one, and face some demand but lots of competition. Pick an offbeat language, and that closes some doors, but other times it is programmer's choice anyway. What OS? Windows for most. but if everybody went this route, who would do it for Linux, Unix, or the Mac? How do you distinguish yourself?

A couple of offbeat languages worth considering: PowerBASIC, very good, not too expensive, but only for Windows. A rising language, HotBasic, for both Windows and Linux, and promise of Mac OS eventually, among the cheapest, different, developing, odd in many ways, but I like it, so worth mentioning. Many urge some flavor of C or C++, but so challenging in nature that I really can't call any of those a first choice.

Schools lean to mass demand, meaning eventual team approach to programming within corporations. What you might need to learn may have to be self taught, which is often the best way anyway. But you have to set goals and push yourself to get there, as nobody else much cares.

There are tons of other languages and dialects to choose from, and so many acronyms used in the programming sector that even if you pursued the scope of programming your whole career, about 80% of those acronyms that appear as part of some job description you will never even have heard of, much less have acquired, making you unqualified yet again.

[phrostbyte]

I am not sure why you need to give someone your credit card number in order to freelance.

[lisati]

I am not sure why you need to give someone your credit card number in order to freelance.

Ditto. Signing up for a service like "PayPal (http://paypal.com)" makes better sense than giving out CC details. And whatever you do, don't give out the security number(s) from the back of your card to people who are meant to be paying you (very suspicious!) - if the details get into the wrong hands, there's a recipe for trouble. The same can be said for your PIN.

[nmccrina]

Join the one of the services of the US military. Then pursue a degree in computer science or computer studies.

Lol, that's pretty much exactly what I've done. I joined the Army National Guard, then after basic training I transferred to a local university as a CS major (I had been Applied Math).

Thanks for all the replies! There is a lot of food for thought. I was especially humbled by SuperMike's thread. I feel like I'm a capable programmer, but I don't have any experience and I lack a lot of the non-programming skills SuperMike was talking about. I don't really have an aggressive marketing side to me! :) I could always find an open source project to help with, which is ethically what I'd prefer doing although eventually I need to get money from somewhere. :)

Oh, and I did not give my cc info to anybody! (Potential) Disaster averted.

[lavinog]

My rule of thumb is: If a website doesn't have a phone number in the contact us section, it is not legit.

For sites that do have a phone number, make sure you call it. You might find it is just a voice mailbox that cannot take any messages because it is full.

[oldefoxx]

Lol, that's pretty much exactly what I've done. I joined the Army National Guard, then after basic training I transferred to a local university as a CS major (I had been Applied Math).

Thanks for all the replies! There is a lot of food for thought. I was especially humbled by SuperMike's thread. I feel like I'm a capable programmer, but I don't have any experience and I lack a lot of the non-programming skills SuperMike was talking about. I don't really have an aggressive marketing side to me! :) I could always find an open source project to help with, which is ethically what I'd prefer doing although eventually I need to get money from somewhere. :)

Oh, and I did not give my cc info to anybody! (Potential) Disaster averted.

Better off starting than I might have expected. I did four years in the Marines, followed by a year of college, then almost a year of going through a number of management training courses, which were essentially con jobs to milk the strongest salesmenship qualities out of you. The straight jobs I got were low level, and efforts to make better use of my time and skills by improving the way the job was done usually got me pushed out the door by those who did not appreciate this.

Best choice, take the fact that the military offers the best technical training in the world, and plenty of jobs to back it, and go back in. My brother had dropped out of college midway through, and was lined up to be drafted, but I got him into all the recruiters and found an outstanding program that he could sign up for and be guaranteed if he joined the Navy for four years. He did. They stuck to the contract. Nine months later he was graduating from his last school to report for his first duty assignmnet. I was still bouncing job to job at that point, with no future in front of me, and wanting to get married. Putting it together, I went to the Navy recruiter and got the same guarantees, and off to the Navy and technical training I went. After my 32nd week of training in Electronics, they rolled the 48-week school back to 29 weeks, meaning immediate duty assignment unless I would extend two more years for at least 60 weeks of total technical training. I did. I got 72 weeks, this time in computer science, which I was allowed to select for myself. Never regretted it. Marine + reserve + Navy time all counted towards pay and retirement, meaning I finally retired after 22.5 years while only serving 20 years active. And I had a very productive civilian career for about another 20 years, based on the training and experience I got from my Navy time.

Given a choice, would I do anything different? Depends. I'd take a closer look at the Coast Guard on a second go around, because I've come to really respect the scope of their duties and their peacetime obligations. I think I would have like to have been part of all that, not that my own service was altogether that bad. Maybe risky at times, but isn't that what it is about? Just make sure the risks are worthwhile.

[c0mput3r_n3rD]

Lol, that's pretty much exactly what I've done. I joined the Army National Guard, then after basic training I transferred to a local university as a CS major (I had been Applied Math).

Thanks for all the replies! There is a lot of food for thought. I was especially humbled by SuperMike's thread. I feel like I'm a capable programmer, but I don't have any experience and I lack a lot of the non-programming skills SuperMike was talking about. I don't really have an aggressive marketing side to me! :) I could always find an open source project to help with, which is ethically what I'd prefer doing although eventually I need to get money from somewhere. :)

Oh, and I did not give my cc info to anybody! (Potential) Disaster averted.


I know it's off topic but Where did you do your basic training? Fort Jackson SC F 1/61 here :)

[nmccrina]

I know it's off topic but Where did you do your basic training? Fort Jackson SC F 1/61 here :)

Fort Sill, OK F 1/40

AIT was in the same place. Field Artillery FTW! :D

[c0mput3r_n3rD]

Fort Sill, OK F 1/40

AIT was in the same place. Field Artillery FTW! :D

Very nice! What's that 13B if I remember correctly? I was 88M Moto transport. I'm thinking about re-enlisting only if 11B is available to me though, the infantry cords are very nice eye candy on those class "a"s and class "b"s :)

[oldefoxx]

You Army jocks talk all you want. May I add though, that the Navy and Coast Guard uniforms are sparing on neckties and tight collars until you get up in the echelons. Also to note, I am a legitimate plank owner for the first ship I reported to, joining it even before it was commissioned. I served on two ships, one an aircraft carrier, and the rest of my career was either in technical schools or at shore duty assignments. So varied and yet of benefit, to me and to the uniform I wore. Civilian life was not hard to adjust to, but corporate structure and company politics was hard to accept after the professionalism that goes with the military establishment.

In the corporate world, I learned to distinguish the real workers from those that sat on committees and recited blurbs and used acronyms like they really knew what the letters stood for. We just hoped the committee hoppers would not screw up things so bad that the real doers would lose the ability to get the job done. Organizations tend to think along lines of formal structure, but doers ride the hidden lines of communications that develop inside every organization.

Perhaps 70 percent of an organization on the outside serves no real purpose, but unfortunately, when the layoffs come, the doers are tagged first because they are not politically connected, not being part of what is largely a social gathering. It was typical to see a crowd of so-called co-workers break for a two or three hour lunch, and who really cared? It just got them out of the way for the rest of us. The part I did not care for is that in order to get the job done, you often had to mask your involvement from eyes around you. That's because getting management approval was just about impossible, because the job scope probably crossed organizational lines, meaning involving other managers as well. Managers mostly compete or ignore each other, each comfortable in his or her little hive, and wanting to keep it that way.

If you are in a good part of the military, then there might be a bit of that going on, but there the real workers outnumber and outweigh the bit players who play politics. You might see a midrange NCO going off on Fridays to play golf with some of the senior department members, but it is rare in my experience.

I had a favorite true story for years about one 2nd Class Petty Officer that use to do that, and he got good evaluations, but was a total incompetent when it came to fixing the gear. We had a line printer,
which was a big brute of a printer, that would occasionally fail to work. Somebodo found by chance that a tap on the card shelf with a rubber mallet would get it going again, so we all used the technique, as it left time for other more serious work.

One day this 2nd Class PO came back to the maintenance shop and got the rubber mallet, so we knew where he was going and what he was doing. But he came back within a half hour to get the large steel sledge hammer, and the shop manager put a stop to the whole thing right then and there. So some of us went out and spent a couple of hours finding just exactly was wrong in that line printer and fixing it for good. I think that PO2 would have beat that line printer to pieces before he would ever admit that he was in over his head.

That was a real unusual situation. Some of those Navy Chiefs and Officers were not Navy bred and trained, but brought in at their elevated grade and ranks because the Navy was trying to step up to its new Computer Science involvement as quickly as possible. They were not true military, and it really showed through.

The military is not about fun and games, but making your life count for something real. You not only can tell the difference, you can feel the difference. I had worked in a lightning department in a department store for awhile, a place where I had to stoop over to move around because the overhead lights and fans dangled down so low. I suddenly realized I could move on into my older age with a permanent stoop for no better reason than staying with a job like that, and for what, a weekly paycheck? I moved on from there rather quickly after that new awareness came on me. i might have a price to pay physically and/or mentally, but I wanted real cause and purpose to be the reason if it happened to me,

A lot of young people can't dig this at all. To them it is all about fun and games. Maybe because of the attention given them, maybe by the lack of real demands on them, whatever. So many whose lives I see as being hollow and only focused on the next... whatever. High maybe? Beer blast? Chance to hit the high spots or make the beach scene? Earnest hope to be the next American Idol winner? How about just winning the lottery and never having to work or worry again? Like who really cares, and who is going to really to take note and remember if any of that happens. The only thing you might be remembered for is getting incredably lucky, then how you blew it by just blowing or frittering your good fortune away.

Programming is an art. You can apply math to it, that helps. You can apply it to science, and that helps. Maybe you find a whole new vocation to buid around it or to apply it to. Great. Then it might be classified as a science or methodology as well. But being an art, it can go beyond where it has gone before. That can be real good, if there is some of the creator in you that needs expression. But the question is, what is it to you? If just a means of getting out of the house, I think you could be in for a rude awakening. Programming ties you down, much more than you might realize, and shapes your world. To be a good programmer you really have to be motivated and have something inside to bring out.

[nmccrina]

Very nice! What's that 13B if I remember correctly? I was 88M Moto transport. I'm thinking about re-enlisting only if 11B is available to me though, the infantry cords are very nice eye candy on those class "a"s and class "b"s :)

Yes, 13B are the gun crew. I'm a 13D, Fire Direction and Control.

I wanted to be 11B, but then once training started I was like, no, the less ruck marching I have to do, the better! ;) So I was happy with what I was.

[nmccrina]

<epic post>



I'm actually thinking of transferring to the Navy once my current enlistment is up. But that's a ways off so nothing is really certain.

I agree about the difference between civilian and military work environments. My NCO's are better leaders than any civilian boss could be (I think ;) ). They all have this 'X' factor, it's kind of like this attitude that they have everything under control no matter what. It's not arrogance, but sort of a calm self-assuredness that is infectious. I've never met a civilian that had this same 'NCO' quality, unless they're former military or something.

[c0mput3r_n3rD]

Yes, 13B are the gun crew. I'm a 13D, Fire Direction and Control.

I wanted to be 11B, but then once training started I was like, no, the less ruck marching I have to do, the better! ;) So I was happy with what I was.

Haha oh man talk about ruck marches; on our final march in BCT our commander got us lost! and we ended up marching about 20 miles in that soft South Carolina sand (full combat uniform minimum 30lb ruck)! It ended up being from like 10p.m. to about 5a.m., wake up at 0900 lol. At least I was able to have my favorite no.16 MRE (chicken enchilada) for breakfast! I Couldn't lift my arms for about 24 hr.s. :D Good times right?

[oldefoxx]

I'm actually thinking of transferring to the Navy once my current enlistment is up. But that's a ways off so nothing is really certain.

I agree about the difference between civilian and military work environments. My NCO's are better leaders than any civilian boss could be (I think ;) ). They all have this 'X' factor, it's kind of like this attitude that they have everything under control no matter what. It's not arrogance, but sort of a calm self-assuredness that is infectious. I've never met a civilian that had this same 'NCO' quality, unless they're former military or something.

I wanted the best in technical training. I wanted it clearly spelled out in my enlistment contract what I was to get. Only the Navy, at that time, would go to that extent. They asked you to pretest in a number of areas, like mathematics, spacial relations, color perception, range of hearing, and ability to reason logically from a range of given facts, then based on your scores, you could prequalify for any number of job and training guarantees, and that is what I did, The Navy really delivered. Back at that time, the Coast Guard was not so deep into advanced technology, and long term assignments in places like Guam were a real possibility. Go back in the Marines, and be but back in my old job category Join the Army and probably end up in the infantry. Maybe skill training with the Air Force, but they were noted for a black box approach to equipment, meaning you fed the right power and signals in, and if you got the wrong results, you pulled the box and sent it back for higher echelon service and repair. Every ship in the Navy is self supporting, meaning a highly trained crew and life in a big box, much of it like a major factory where everybody has to fit in somehow. The Navy struck me as giving me the best odds, I still think so, though that was many years ago.

It may not be apparent, but the military and civil service are among the only career choices that still offer you a retirement option. Fact is, a typical military can retire after 20 years at half base pay, which is about twice the retirement I get from the only other job I was with long enough to retire from. When I left that civilian job, I found it would cost me over $700 a month to convert over my medical insurance as well, and that was just for me. There was my wife to consider as well.

But being a military retiree, I could qualify both me and my wife under Tricare for less than $200 a year. We did that, and when we reached the right ages, we went under Tricare for Life and Medicare, and those really cover just about everything. There was even one point in our earlier marriage when I was still in uniform where her oldest son from a prior marriage needed serious medical help, and we got him covered as a dependent until after he underwent a skull operation, which covered him medically as well. You don't think about it much when young, but live long enough, health care becomes a major concern and sometimes a huge expense. For those that cannot serve the full 20 years for health reasons, you have the VA and likely a percentage of your pay for life. And people generally respect your service, which is nice.

I worked five years with the first employer after my service time, and got laid off when business fell off. There were job offers from other parts of the same company, but they cut those off to make sure they got the payroll reduction they were going for. I got a decent separation, but nothing beyond that. My wife worked as a bookeeper with another company for about as long, but she at least gets something for it now. It works out to less than $3 a month, so they just send her a check once a year.

You want to plan your future, I mean you had better plan it. The chances of it happening otherwise just aren't there.

[oldefoxx]

One of the most important lessons of my life came while in service and aboard ship. There was one of the brief wars between Israel and Egypt, made longer by who started it and took advantage first. I was running the maintenance crew in the Intelligence Center, and the Intelligence Officer suddenly told me he wanted my guys to train as backups for the Photographer Mates he had under them. I could not see any reason or advantage for him to do that to us, so I forwarded the matter the CWO that I worked for. Next I heard, the Operations Officer, who was senior, refused his request. For one thing, it was unheard of to train into other ratings and cross organizational lines like that. For another, he should have gone through the chain of command. So it did not happen.

Come the Israeli-Egyptian war, we were deludged by classified messages and film being processed from aircraft flyovers. The Photographer Mates were barred from the Intelligence Center. Turns out that someone in Washington had decided they only needed Confidential clearances, even though it was their job to analyze the film being taken. My guys and the three officers working the center were the only ones with Top Secret clearances.

That meant the two junior officers had to work around the clock, sometimes in shifts, to try and do everything that needed to be done. My guys could not help at all, because I had turned down the request for some cross training. I could not do anything then, but I went to the Intelligence Officer and apologized, and asked if their were anything we could do to help going forward. He turned me down, determined to get Washington to honor his need to have his own men with adequate clearances in the future. You got any idea how that made me feel? I mean I did what I thought I was suppose to do, and look how it turned out. I wasn't going to do that again.

So what could I do? Nothing then, but I got promoted and eventually became a division chief. My work groups were spread over five computer centers and systems. Several times I had to get a watch supervisor let me swap one guy scheduled to go on watch with another, out of a different shift, because I needed that one guy to keep working on equipment. One day in port, the one man who could work the computerized telephone system was off duty when his system crashed. I realized that I could begin cross graining in my own division, so my rule became that you came there pretrained in one system, so work it for three months to get a feel for it. Then you were rotated out to another system for three months, and you had better learn it, because you were not going back to any previous system until you had covered them all,

I had anger in the ranks for the first three months, but then they began seeing the payoffs. They got their liberty, they got their sleep, no more swapouts. The advancement exams always had questions on some system or another, and now they knew more of the answers, so scored better. One of the groups apparently had not been taught well by the supervisor, because when his men moved to another group, they learned things they should have been taught to start with.

I had no authorizations to change things about this way, but I did it because of the needs of the service. I was never criticized for it (except maybe by the men effected), and I think the reasons for my moves finally came through. But that also shows the problems with having a bunch of bureaucrats making up rules and regulations for others to live and work by. On the outside, this really describes my feelings and opinion about Human Resources, which hurts everyone one way of another, but at least makes us look compliant on paper.

How did I apply this principle after my service time? I went into a career in the service sector, to help others do the best they could at their jobs. I did not learn their jobs, but I learned enough from watching and asking questions to see if there might be an easier or better way to get things done.

They often had several PCs set up to do different tasks. I did backups from time to time. Going further, I reconfigured the PCs so that any PC could be used for any of the jobs at hand, That was not only another layer of backup, but it meant that people could work with whatever was closest at hand, or have several people doing the same thing at once. And where possible, I used my experience in programming to make things better and easier to do.

I also accepted the added responsibility of not just being a systems engineer, but working as a systems analyst on the side. I solved a major system monitoring issue that had gond unresolved for about five years, by working out a different method in about two weeks, and we had it fully implemented in about four months. The slowdown was that those that had decided on the original approach had to first be shown why that would not work, and then how and why my new approach would.

Most of the time I had to keep re-explaining it to my manager, who was just not that good in the technical area. He finally got it though.

Now the customer had an experienced traffic engineer who had to approve it, and while he got the idea fast enough, he was afraid that the results would not align with what he could observe for himself. But when we got it in place, my approach was right on the money with what he was seeing for himself. He was most impressed, and only complaints were that we had not done it sooner and that we did not carry it further (a limitation that my manager imposed on me, just to get it off his desk).

My other accomplishments as a systems analyst was to ensure that all our systems were Y2K compliant, a legally binding obligation (that cost my VP $250k to replace one that wasn't, meaning I was now on the chopping block), my efforts to ensure that we got a fully qualified se nior systems analyst in when a position came open, then I wrote PC programs for that analyst that he and I used to fill in so many of the blanks that even headquarters knew of us and used our reports as a basis for their work.

It is impossible to calculate how many millions of dollars in recovered lost revenue, resolved customer problems, tracked service abuse issue, and failing service delivery matters we handled together in some two years. A guess would be in the neighborhood of $200 million, but even that could be conservative. Didn't save us from being let go though, because management was on a bent to cut overhanded service to the customer and even old scores. We could feel it coming because our manager kept trying to curtail our involvement under pressure from the V.P., the division negotiated a really bad contract what was going to leave the corporation strapped for years, and because it was known that I was sole support for three monitoring systems related to customer service, they decided to close those centers as they got rid of me, and that worked in their minds, because they benefitted the customer and would anger and frustrate my old manager, now a director of implementing this unwanted contract, which would serve everyone what was deserved. The customer especially for some reason.

Look, I am not bragging about anything here. I'm just relating what can and has happened. I did my best. To some, it was either not enough or done wrongly or at the wrong time and place. My corporation talked about Empowerment like it was a religion we should all practice, but you try to do your best and it outdoes someone else, they are going to get rid of you. If you are really into your job, you get skipped over come promotions because they need you right there, but you never get credit or remembered for pay increases or bonuses either. That is what it is in the corporate world.

I worked out what sucessful Empowerment really is. It's going the extra mile alright, but having a mentor above to watch your back side. Thing is, we hear the private to general stories, but they somehow forget to mention who was acting as mentor in that case. I do know of one exception, which is Eisenhower. His mentor was Marshall, who did not wait for him to get there on his own but pushed him right to the front. But there was a war on, you know? Besides, Marshall had a mentor to cover his back side as well.

[Frak]

I'd say consider joining the Navy and training to be a Spook. You could go freelance after duty, and with your clearances, you're a very willing candidate. The military is always looking for willing brains.

[oldefoxx]

A better or more targeted goal might be getting into the medical profession. I don't mean as doctor or nurse, which you might think of as callings, but how about becoming a lab tech or medical equipment operator? The medical field is growing and exists everywhere, and doctors need the best that can be had, which means plenty of room for people who can maintain or work the equipment. Much of that equipment is programmable or requires detailed procedures be followed, meaning that training comes with the job and just makes you more valuable.

[ibuclaw]

I think this thread has run its course and drifted off it's original topic.


Closing.