Pick an open source project that is in a language that is respectable and commit to contributing to it for three or four months. Full time. Try to make sure that your written English is clear and professional in things like PRs.

Try to keep your code as clean and as well tested and linted as possible. Once the core team gets to know you a bit you'll be able to reach out for introductions to people hiring for remote jobs that you just wouldn't have had access to before.

I've seen people make $500k a year doing this. Just make sure that you choose wisely on the language and project. If you want to do frontend then it's probably going to be a project in TypeScript or JavaScript, but if you want to do backend then there are a lot of projects in tougher languages like Rust. Python isn't a bad choice either, even though it is easy to learn. Google has a Python style guide that is pretty good so look it up.

If I knew you were good at Python and you were asking for $1.5k a month I would hire you and laugh all the way to the bank. Set your aim hirer than what you need to survive.

People who can make $500k/year through connections they make contributing to open source projects could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly.

It is way more common to see brilliant developers make $0 from open source projects.

This vastly overestimates the efficiency of FAANG hiring channels.

[0] https://twitter.com/brianacton/status/3109544383

Is Google in the business of building open source package managers?

If not, why should his experience there mean he should have gotten the job?

(in a meek voice) ...do they use MacPorts?

Apt -- that means it's a Debian based distro right? Interesting that it's not Fedora

What if among x00 ppl actually talented enough to work there, maybe faang only needs to hire x ppl

That's no problem for faang but could be for those who applied

Noddly should gain the respect of an open source maintainer. These maintainers receive lots of requests for job openings and contract positions. Most of it is just recruiter spam, but some of it is real and the maintainer would be happy to forward them on to someone they respect, along with a recommendation.

It's that recommendation that's worth its weight in gold.

I got more out of having a decent looking LinkedIn account.

For where I work now, our code challenge includes putting the solution on github/gitlab mostly to ensure they at least know git, but as a secondary to their gh profile, which leads to their dev and contributions.

It's not a hard requirement to me. I've known a lot of people in banking and secdef development that cannot participate in open-source, so there are definitely all types.

The point is not that OP is going to make $500k a year. The point is to be smart about the language and project that you pick and to be reliable, professional, and open to learning quickly and delivering. He's asking for such a paltry amount that even if he only gets an $80k offer it's still leagues better than what he's asking for.

Or he could grind it out on Upwork and land a $30k offer after finally hitting a client that likes him and has long term work.

Feels like your example is very specific and would not generalize to the average programmer.

- Multiple Rails contributors, one that turned core. Those folks are making well north of $200k a year.

- Ember contributors or contributors to projects around ember-data or similar. Multiple people making north of $200k a year.

- A guy that dove into contributing to Postgres. He wouldn't even share how much his offer was because it was so insane.

The point is that if you actually put in the work to projects and you network and learn from seasoned developers it's going to be far, far better for your career than grinding out little Fiver or Upwork contracts.

Put another way: Your pay is related to your skills, your professionalism, and your network. Working on the right OS project exposes you to people that are really good at software. Sure you can do the same working for money at the right company, but this guy isn't in that position. So, in my opinion, his best bet is to skill up and network and contribute. Even if he's applying to remote work positions absent a network, a string of commits to Numpy or Rust is going to look a hell of a lot better than "freelancer that did rinky dink work for marketing guys" or "I built a todo list app to show off my skills" and I don't really see why this is so controversial. I'd like to see a counterpoint, honestly. Someone here that worked on a real OS project for a prolonged period of time that has trouble finding work at a reasonable salary.

I'm in the low, low $100k range. Maybe it's because I'm introverted and don't really network? Maybe it's location: Ohio, now Orlando? Maybe I just don't push myself - imposter syndrome is very real. Maybe I just like the job security and steady paycheck over really reaching for the stars?

I know money isn't everything, I'd love to contribute and be known in the community, but not sure I have the chops.

Curious if anyone else is in this boat?

Also in Florida and in the low $100k range. Always a bit surprised to hear these stories on HN and elsewhere of developers making $150-200k+ salaries, and wonder how I can get to that level.

Imposter syndrome is very real for me too, especially in my current role where my coworkers all seem much smarter and more technological-savvy than me.

Would also like to contribute to open source projects, but not really sure where I'd start and whether I am good enough.

100k in orlando is like 220k in sf so you're probably doing alright.

new grads are getting jobs at FAANGs out of college starting at 150-200k+ tc these days.

granted these are mostly in higher col areas - sf, seattle, nyc.

you just need to get a new job if you want to make more money, it's that simple.

in 2015 i had my first job as a junior engineer at a startup at 60k. over 3 years i worked my way up to a tech lead and 100k. not bad but i could've made more faster had i just switched companies sooner.

i finally started interviewing and got up to a 150k offer at another startup of the same size, same area - my current company valued me at 100k and this new company 150k.

a year later this startup was acquired and i negotiated my way into a 200k+ offer at the acquiring company - mostly because the bigger company was bigger and just paid more in general than my small startup company.

making more money isn't that closely tied to your job skills actually. it's tied to your interviewing skills and desire to get a job at a FAANG or similarly large tech company that pays high comps.

i'm not saying it's the easiest thing - the FAANG interviews are fairly hard and require quite a bit of prep. But if you really want it I'm sure you could do it - it's more about dedication, preparation and time than anything else.

But some percentage of it needs to be standing out. There are a lot of developers in cube farms working with stacks that look exactly like your resume. The javascript stuff is very quickly becoming devalued as boot camps crank out front end devs by the hundred.

Maybe becoming (or just advertising yourself) as a leading specialist in one or two of those technologies, or becoming an expert in an emerging technology would do it.

Am also an introvert, and it does reduce the possibilities, in my opinion. Still struggling with that. But trying to meet technical people who can hire or refer you is pretty useful (and try to maintain relationships like that when you leave a job).

Location is a problem. If you move to a place like BA or NY, you can probably double your salary right off, even if your skill level is rather low. This is very hard, though, if you have a family or your local social connections are important.

I doubt you're an imposter. Most of the people I met at my high-paying jobs were no more skilled than those I meet in the hinterlands. (And the brilliant ones are often insufferable.)

Rich companies are rich, so they can pay more. That's about it. There's a lot more competition for high-paying spots, but generally the people hiring are doing it pretty randomly. Having a resume that looks good and being able to talk a good game are more important than actual skill.

You probably have better quality of life in Ohio with your salary than many much higher paid people in the Bay Area. A starter home near Google costs around 2 million.

I recommend working remote.

One of the easier ways to make that first leap is to attach your name to something marketable. I did a few contributor articles for PacketPushers back when they first opened up to letting pretty much anyone write articles. Then I added something like "Contributor at PacketPushers" to my LinkedIn and published a few of the articles on my LinkedIn feed. I ended up getting hired by LinkedIn as an SRE out of it.

I also think you have to find a way to differentiate yourself by having some kind of a personal style or mantra. You aren't just out there to prove you're good enough for a job, you're out there to prove that you're a better candidate than the other people they might hire.

For me, on the SRE side, I lean heavily on the people side of things (which I find is often neglected). Which is not to say that I ignore the tech side, I can hold my own against other senior SREs. But I use that focus on people to try to edge myself out against the other candidates who are equally technically skilled. SRE doesn't do anything a developer couldn't do given sufficient time and motivation. Why don't developers do it themselves? Because it's hard (read: out of their SME), and because it takes time. That's a UX problem to me, so I frame that as something I would fix by making it quick and easy for my developers. A system that increases your availability to 99% that is quick and easy to set up is almost always more valuable than a system that increases it to 99.9% or 99.99% but takes 6 meetings and a book to use effectively.

So find your style or flair. I don't know what that would be for developers, I've never done a pure developer job. If I were going to pick something off the top of my head, I would pick abstractions. Everybody does abstractions, but if you can be the person that can frame a hard problem in a simple abstraction, that's a ton of bonus points. I would talk about the time I can save other people by building a simple abstraction that can be reused over and over again.

Or you could go people oriented like I did. Maybe you can frame yourself as the person that's really good at getting key stakeholders and your PM in a room and translating what the stakeholders want done into actionable work units for your PM. Sure, it's often a thing managers do, but managers love people who can free up some of their schedule.

I've been interviewing people for jobs that pay in the 200k+ range for about 6 years. You have to have something that sets you apart. I've interviewed a lot of people that basically said "Yep, I can solve that problem". Cool, you get to go in the queue with the 7 other people that could solve that problem, and we'll probably decide who wins later on based on who we think we would like most as a person on our team (i.e who's not going to be a wet blanket at lunch). On the other hand, some people stand out. I interviewed a guy who was really particular about writing unit tests and documentation, and really enjoyed doing that stuff. That guy went to the front of the line, because those are two things most people are bad at. I would've given him a really good rating even if he was technically less able than other people.

Once you find your flair, market yourself. Tailor your LinkedIn to your flair. Publish some dumb fluff pieces on LinkedIn about why your specific flair is important to a company. It's not really to inform other people, those fluff pieces exist to cement your position as "that guy/gal".

If I were going to make a wild guess, I think you can do it. I've worked with plenty of people that were making 200-400k that didn't write their own RDBMS at 13. They were just normal go to school, get a job, then get an offer from FAANG kind of people. I've even worked with a couple people in that range that I think we could have replaced with an intern without problems.

I don't think I've done anything spectacular tech-wise, mostly CRUD apps, fairly run of the mill architecture and CLIs designed to make things easier or faster for devs. My LinkedIn and email still rings off the hook just from marketing myself as something more unique than another SRE that does SRE things.

> I don't really see why this is so controversial.

This is you strawmanning. "Commits to Numpy or Rust are going to look better than a todo list" never was the controversial part, that is not controversial. "Be world class and people will want to hire you" isn't controversial, even.

The controversial part is "win the lottery - anyone can do it if they just try". Picking an appropriate project is a gamble. Becoming friendly with the core developers is a gamble. Picking the right issues to work on that people might notice you is a gamble. Being good enough that they actually do, is a gamble. That it translates into a job offer, is a gamble. That some people can do it isn't surprising, that everyone can and should prioritise that, is controversial.

That you should give away months of full-time equivalent work to profit-making companies, in the hope that it results in a job paying high above national average household income in first world countries, instead of spending that time elsewhere, is a huge gamble.

I really doubt there are many long-time FOSS contributors who want (as their top-level goal) to be paid to do FOSS, but still haven’t managed it after months/years of trying.

Most people who do FOSS don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it. Just like most people who play a sport don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it. For most people, it’s either a hobby, or a byproduct of the efforts they go to in their day job (i.e. fixes to their company’s private fork of a FOSS project, that can then sometimes be upstreamed.)

It depends how you define "doing" FOSS. Yes, certainly there are many people who casually fool around with FOSS with no expectation of payment. And even a fair number of people who have some sort of spare time FOSS hobby.

But most of the big FOSS projects (especially server infrastructure/platforms) depend heavily on developers and others getting paid to work on them full-time.

Also keep in mind that many critical FOSS projects aren't big. Many are one-man shows. HN has a habit of frequently "finding out for the first time"—to much amazement and distress each time—that some project everybody's using is just kept alive by one person in their spare time.

Absolutely. That's why the Core Infrastructure Initiative was created a few years ago for example. While I haven't made an exhaustive study, my sense is that the situation is at least better today than it was a few years ago, especially with respect to security issues. Though always more work to do to support developers working on critical infrastructure of course.

Yes, there is a long tail on projects like the Linux kernel. But a lot of that long tail doesn't individually do a lot of work. And, according to the seemingly latest Kernel development report that I have: "Well over 85 percent of all kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work."

But yeah, it's hard to get paid. I was lucky enough to have a company pay me to contribute to an OSS project, but they didn't hire me for that purpose, I had to hustle for it and was blessed with a great manager who supported the idea.

What would be good OS projects related to C++/Python that can generate the figures you're mentioning? Asking for myself here.

It's a reliable strategy to get noticed and make a good impression. How much money you manage to make from that opportunity obviously depends on many more factors.

We complain about job interviews taking an entire day yet have no problem telling this person to dump 750 hours into something with the hope of "getting noticed."

If I was 19 today - and wanted to code for the most $$$ possible. I wouldn't be in college. I'd be building up skills + know people. Know people even tougher I'd argue for technical people who are often introverts.

It is throwaway for most people. 'Most' being >75%. Just my guesstimate.

Well there is another way to look at it if you wish, if you want to bolster your self-esteem and confidence by having a college/university degree, then do it. My observation is that most people who do not have a degree suffer a life long I-do-not-have-a-degree self esteem syndrome, despite being just as capable as everyone else.

Specifically, donating that time to a project which a company uses to make money.

> It's a reliable strategy to get noticed and make a good impression.

If its so reliable, there should be many repeated examples of it happening. So far, all we have is a single case.

I don't think they were saying that most people who contribute to open source projects make half a million dollars a year as a direct result.

Honestly most of those companies don't look at their resumes. Back when I was in college I submitted my resume to one of those companies no less than about 10 times.

And then suddenly out of the blue some PM at that company reached out to me saying they came across my website and saw a couple cool projects and asked if I would be interested in sending them a resume. (Yes, I did, and I got the offer, but ended up later declining it since I wanted to do a PhD.)

But that shows that clearly the previous 10 times my resume went nowhere.

In most tech companies any employee reasonably high up on the ladder can more or less whisk you into the interview process if they know you or your work and it's strong. Whether or not you get the job depends on the interview, but you'll at least almost surely get the interview. Multiple merged PRs on an open source project by that company is a near 100% ticket to the interview. Don't underestimate the power of knowing people, even if you are an amazing coder.

And dissapear into a black hole. Even contacting FAANG recruiters directly (after they asked for it on LinkedIn) leads to zero response.

I have no idea how these companies are hiring.

Let me say what what not to do.

Context: 10 year developer in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. Mostly Ruby on Rails (6 years), now Python (1 year).

I've dedicated my entire career for the companies and projects I worked for.

So I didn't built a profile, or strong connections.

The only thing right I got is financial reserves. So I quit from a interim CTO position (previous I was a Tech Leader), with 18 people below me, due to BURNOUT.

The only thing I got dedicating full time to one basket at time is:

1. financial reserves, that here in my country is enough for some months of food and shelter, but is less than that value you said in US Dollars. 2. Extreme BURNOUT. I'm 80% recovered after two months.

Right now I'm doing some online courses in DataCamp and Real Python. It's easy to stay focused.

Tried to start working contributing on FOSS and Tech Blogs, building some reputation, but I got worse some weeks ago, got back to these algorithmic online courses.

$ 1.5k / month for me is food and shelter right now.

Companies here demanding Spark certifications are offering this for late full and initial senior positions (I'm trying to go to Data Engineering field, because I love data).

Even big companies here are more picky than this, by not returning calls, emails, etc. 3 people from a big co. here called me, having multiple positions open right now, but no response (remember I have no perceivable reputation or connections, except a CompSci degree in a reputable Uni here).

So if you are a junior, let me say it: Build profile and reputation. Seek for good people to follow and be heard. Don't put everything in one company or project. I'm trying this right now.

Big COs. in developing countries are picky anyways. You'll need to spend a lot of energy to receive US$ 3k/month tops (it's the 80th percentile).

Try different. 10 years later you'll be much better than me.

So, consider pairing your data expertise with a business function. Really, anything from Marketing to Finance will open you up to a swarm of opportunities.

For the first one is imperative (If I want a career in a company) that I move to Sao Paulo, and I have no desire to do that. Rio is already full of mega city problems, but I manage to have some good life here.

In Sao Paulo you need to make more concessions in quality of life to land on the nicest jobs.

Remote working is something that I really desire, because I like nature, doing crafts with wood, you know, some place to get energies back. But I have a intense fear for risking my family safety by doing that.

For the second one the payment is really low. ed techs here pay 30% less and have hard time to get some traction.

I'm trying to make some demos for both industries right now, that I hope will spark some more confidence inside me.

Thanks again!

Do you mean financial safety or personal safety?

I live in Argentina working remotely for over 10 years now. I moved from a medium city (1.5 M people) to nowhere in the mountains, and can't be happier. Right now kids are playing on the street, I'm working outdoors... will never go back to a city.

I heard that Rio/SP aren't that safe.

BTW, I'm also learning Python for Data. Finished the Data Analyst w/ Python on DataCamp.

Personal safety is debatable. The city is dangerous, so as any other big city here (>1.5M). I grew up on a very poor neighborhood in south brazil, half way to BA :D, you learn how to manage "dangerous" people and places to avoid.

It's a short term loss if you got robbed or something. I've been there multiple times (ironically not in Rio), I carry a cheap mobile phone and money for transportation only.

The long term loss is not having a chance to make a decent emergency fund, a retirement fund, or a somewhat successful business.

People working for companies here and doing that three things I said are living with their relatives to make it cheap.

Including in Rio where workers for Big COs are living with 2 to 4 unrelated people near Barra da Tijuca or far away (2hrs) with their relatives.

But hey! They have snacks and videogames on their offices, forgetting about everything else on the long term.

Fuck dude, are you me?

I got my biggest clients (all over the world) from there, then got into Google SoC, contributed to Drupal Google GData plugin. Made lots of money (through consulting)*, lost all in bootstrapping, rest is history.

This is by far the best way to get recognized at those companies that are hiring. I will admit it's a long sell, but it has fairly predictable results if you're steady with your contributions.

As a former college drop-out that made it into the industry this is the route I would have taken were I joining the workforce today when I was younger. Great way to learn on something real and get your foot in the door.

Note too this is possible for designers as well. There are lots of design libs floating around and contributions to those repos is so rare it's very easy to get stand out.

https://medium.com/@shinya_55783/how-i-joined-gitlab-and-wen...

I heard from my friends that because of pandemic, Gitlab is focusing on outbound recruiting. So I don't know whether the way still works or not in Gitlab.

But I concur that contributing to opensource is one of the best way to get a high-paying job.

I recommend these opensource projects: React, Vue, Angular, Typescript (because everyone is crazy about JS). If you don't fancy JS, pick Rust, Go, Deno (Deno is written in Rust), Python, Kubernetes, Flutter.

So companies should be willing to pay a fair wage to good developers. I say should - obviously this is capitalism and if they can get it done for a penny then why not - but if developers refuse a bad deal it will create pressure for them to do so.

If I’m selling enterprise software in New York and someone from New York who happens to be residing in Mexico at the moment is working for me, I’m selling $10k/y licenses and paying him 20k/y something seems off.

OTOH if he moves to San Fransisco, Kensington in London, Monaco or Hong Kong I say ah ok here’s $200k. He’s doing the same stuff!

Doesn’t make sense to me. Instead say well he is worth $100k to us, he then chooses to live wherever in the world makes sense and is affordable.

For a remote first company that’s make sense.

I too think things get weird, when a low living costs country person moves to a high cost place (or the other way around) and that now s/he makes more money (or less), although the same work.

> if developers refuse a bad deal it will ...

The thing is, I think, that it's a good deal to them

(Otherwise the company just raises the salary until it is)

To me, this is both confusing and makes sense at the same time depending on from which "angle" I start thinking

She got the job on merit. That's the important thing here.

Can you name a single example project on Github where you think a Python programmer with 2-3 years experience could contribute?

2 reasons IMHO: 1. It is a powerful albeit mostly imaginary image/story. A sort of American dream incarnated in SW. Everything is out there, open and within reach so anyone can do it and make it big. 2. A lot of the HN crowd are actually committers to high profile projects (this is the most popular hacker community after all) so they tend to judge by their own story or stories from their circle. I suspect though that the average dev is quite away from this paradigm.

Having tried a few times to just build kubernetes (by now I honestly believe that you need a server farm to do just that) I have to agree with the point you're making. The sheer magnitude and the speed that this behemoth is growing just makes me loose any incentive after a while. Not to mention that you have to actually antagonize with a lot of other noobs to get to these "good-first-issue" PR first. (Diclosure: I'm quite familiar with kube and an experienced dev).

And then there is the other thing. I'm afraid somewhere along the way we missed the point. OS is (was) about doing what you want with no strings attached. Something inside me is twitching in the thought that it has become a (difficult) way to get a nice job and that it is mostly controlled by big Co (which you are effectively begging to throw its eyes over you and your contributions). Dunno if I want to be part in this grind. I prefer doing my own stuff (and GPL them like the good old days).

My 0010 cents.

Probably the best bet there is to target several projects, and then move towards the ones that seem to appreciate your work.

I'd love to find one too! :) And better yet, a project backed by a company that is hiring remote open source devs.

That even crazy in California onsite level and you've seen that in remote?

I liked the part about positioning in your comment, it does matter a lot.

Instead people told me to do personal projects.

Sure they are impressive, but I can't get an interview.

It is like recommending to be an elite athlete.

$500k seems outlandish, not that some aren't making that, but who pays that...

Maybe 1 in every 1,000 dev jobs can even approach $500k.

One way to avoid exploitation like this is to try to develop a number of offers simultaneously. Go in with the plan of getting a couple of offers early, and then let them twist in the wind while you develop better ones. Having an offer is good leverage for getting a better offer from another place without seeming "greedy". (Be courteous and humble, of course, or at least fake it.)

Also, the FAANGs seem to recruit endlessly, even when they're not really hiring. Good place for practice interviews, even if you don't care to work there. My offer from one got me a lot more money elsewhere.

If your goal is to get a job just look at trends in job boards (probably very skewed towards web/mobile/data science), figure out which area you like/excel in and hone in on that. Keep iterating on your resume, upping your skill set, and learning from interview failures. Remember: selling yourself and your skill set is more important than actual ability. That is something you can really only hone with practice and repeated interviews.

To give an alternative way:

Find a successfull expensive software product in a country that isn't in the same language as yours.

Ask to translate it and if you can sell the product in your country. Acting as a middleman.

Start selling, get the commission.

In my experience, I've seen this work more than the one i'm replying too. And I think it's unknown in big countries, eg. The US

Great for the survivors, bad for 99.99% that did not make it. I’d be curious to know how many people tried that got nothing for their effort.

As I mentioned in another similar post awhile back[0] I did an in person version of this and have seen it first hand from those who were online.

I've worked with a bunch of people at this point who primarily were connected by a shared language or project and relationships that developed online.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21167473

That seems outlandish. Edge case-ey.

Outside of maybe quants, what type of developers are pulling that kind of income?

So, the subset of developers who make this much money basically amounts to "The senior engineers, at top tech companies, such as google/FB/ect"

Which.... is less unlikely than you'd think, if you are talking about the democraphic of users who read hacker news.

500k is still definitely up there, but making even something like 250k, at any of these top tech companies, as a mid level engineer, is completely standard. I'd expect anyone who has 5 years of experience, at these types of companies to be making at least this amount.

So, within that context, the people who are making twice that, would be maybe the team leads, or possible even a bit higher ranking than that.

Any example of this or good project to pick?

I chose Rails 14 years ago and have been riding that train ever since.

If I were choosing a new space and starting out, I’d contribute to Kubernetes. Lots of need in that space and I’m sure you could demand top dollar once you have a few merged PRs under your belt.

It can be hard to find an opening to contribute in a decent OSS project that one can keep up with, especially as a beginner, with many others clamoring to do the same.

I don't know about Kubernetes, but lots of large and well-managed projects have issues labelled as "good first issue" to help you know where to start.

Might I suggest people stop giving advice if they haven't actually done it themselves? Just spewing what you think should work, or what you think you've seen people do could be super harmful to this person's career. Let's hear some first hand stories of what worked, not second/third/imaginary hard stories of what people think should work having never been in this situation.

Survivorship bias and “after the fact rationalization“ are both way too common in those discussions.

That's good! Someone smart and driven will inhale every reply and pull out common tidbits for experimentation.

week 1, 2 maybe 3: search for popular android applications that have low ratings that you can implement, sort them whichever way you prefer, do some wireframes and plan your first project. Do not spend less than 3 weeks. Do not spend more.

Week 4: This is the most important week. Figure out the tech you will be using. Make lots of demos projects, fail a bunch of times, set up libraries, APIs, accounts, integrations, link them to your project, whatever you need to get this to work. You have to know what you are doing before starting the project.

month 2, 3: implement a very simple frontend and a backend for that project. Cut corners on features, but make sure it doesn't crash. Test, test, test. Plan ahead. When a feature is done, do not look back. Do not spend less than 2 months. Do not spend more. Monetize, that's why we are here. Free to download, but put 1-2 features inside the app that can be purchased via google play. Make them $10 each.

month 3 week 1, 2: Automate deployment on server side, deploy on google play, send to friends, go on reddit, HN, itch.io, spread the word. Your goal is to get at least 20 customers a month. So one person a day. Assuming you did something that has a conversion rate of 1/100 (worst case), you need 2,000 people to see it every day. Google play will do most of the work for you.

Start the next project. Hopefully the first project will start getting traction.

Repeat this 3-4 times. Let your previous project's ratings and money motivate you. Things will accumulate over time.

Things don't work? No problem. Now you have four apps on the market to show to your next employer and a bunch of new experience.

The worst case is making something terrible that no one wants, despite all that effort. And it is definitely possible. (Don't let that hold you back though, anyone reading this! Failure is the best way to learn, because it sucks so much.)

i think that OP should also continue applying constantly for remote jobs in US while he's doing the aforementioned. if he spends 13 months writing android apps that go nowhere (which is an extremely high probability of that happening), he'll basically be no better off monetarily than before.

A. Things break. Especially MVPs. You can't just park it and move to the next project.

B. Nothing just grows on its own. It takes constant work to market and promote your app. It can be the most amazing thing ever and still get no traffic because you failed promoting it.

1) Build an affiliate site. Some of the older posts on /r/juststart [0] are helpful.

2) Organize information and sell it. See the stuff made by Pieter Levels [1] or BuiltWith [2]. I just put together LotsofOpps [3] (which is just bunch of information on online/offline ways to make money). There is lots of info out there that will be interesting to someone if you can find the right angle.

3) Unbundle Craigslist [4]. Craigslist is terrible for some things. I'm working on BuiltRigs [5].

4) Unbundle Zapier [6]. A great example is BannerBear [7].

None of these things are particularly easy. Marketing is the hard part, but it's most important to actually build something and release it quickly.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/juststart/

[1] https://twitter.com/levelsio

[2] https://builtwith.com/

[3] https://www.lotsofopps.com/

[4] https://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/345941486/the-spawn-of-c...

[5] https://www.builtrigs.com/

[6] https://kamerontanseli.ghost.io/first-it-was-craiglist-next-...

[7] https://bannerbear.com/

[1]https://bannerbear.com/open

Kidding aside - yes, I get it. SAAS products take a while and are hard. According to BareMetrics, after a year most companies are making $3333 in MRR [0].

But if you're living in a 3rd world country that's usually plenty of cash if you've got decent margins. The spirit of including BannerBear was more like "think about the things people do in Zapier and put together that product". Also, I just like the BannerBear story.

[0] https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-fast-saas-companies-hit-arr...

fyi: gives me a 404 (404 - page not found)

1) People hate on Freelancer sites, but get on them and and build a profile. If you are good it will show in time. Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising.

2) Don't lie about what you can do. Always do a good job. I've tried a bunch of people from poorer countries and those seem to be the 2 main issues. Dont have a mentality of cutting corners.

3) Build stuff hired or not. I watch guys blossom from jr to mid/snr after work and work. You learn by doing. If your not working, work anyway. Pick a business, and build something that would be good for them. Contact them and see if you can sell it cheap. But keep building and getting better. This is a long term game. You might pick up a 1 decent client a year, but 5 years from now you will be flooded type deal.

Good luck - I think many of have the fear of what might be if this economy truly tanks.

Payment is all relative. Someone with an idea for a new social network might think of $10,000 as a lot of money, even if they want an entire app with lots of features built from scratch, which could be a months' long job. They will vastly underestimate how expensive this will be, particularly if they don't have technical backgrounds.

Meanwhile, an established business might pay $1000 for something that takes a few hours and think nothing of it, because they are thinking in terms of value to the company, not "I don't want to blow through my personal savings".

I hired freelancers at my last job. When going through candidates, I didn't look for the lowest bidder. I looked for someone who charged a reasonable amount who looked like they knew what they were doing. For example, one guy we hired charged us $400 for something that probably took him two or three hours. Considering that he was working out of Russia, this is probably a pretty good wage. Some of the bids were for $50-100, but from my company's perspective, $400 was nothing anyway, so I looked for someone with great reviews and who seemed like they knew what they were doing. I think we found the guy on Upwork, but we ended up hiring him directly to do a bunch more work after that.

I think that if you are targeting well-paying work, look for things that appeal to businesses. Businesses use Excel, so work on your skills in integrating Excel with your favorite programming language. Lots of businesses want web scraping, so learn that. Businesses might have old code written in language X. If you find the right opportunity there, it could be a long term partnership that can be fairly lucrative.

Be careful admitting this. I believe going off-platform like this is against their ToS, and technically they could sue you for it.

+1, this is how anyone sane chooses vendors. Paying bottom dollar is a good way to end up costing the company just as much in hassle and in-house resources dealing with that hassle.

This is terrible advice.

Don't work for free, all you're doing is allowing other people to take advantage of you... which, they will.

There's plenty of other great advice in this topic; this: "work hard and do a good job, for free and it'll be great experience / advertising / whatever the f" is total BS.

I agree that freelancer sites have some problematic aspects, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the idea that you need to start small and build a reputation/profile. This applies to any bootstrapped business, not just when working via freelancer sites.

Unless you're suggesting that there's a meaningful difference in doing 40 hours of work for 5 bucks and working for free?

Edit: conceptually, it's nore like an unpaid internship. I know someone who got a highly paid job by first doing it for free for 3 months to prove his skills, as he was lacking formal certifications

Edit2: I honestly don't get why this is being downvoted. It's neither unfriendly nor offensive and it is relevant to the discussion, even if you might not like this aspect of reality.

People should get paid for work they do. If a task is worth $0 to a company, then they can do without it.

The whole "you're getting paid in valuable training/experience/exposure" thing is bunk, IMO.

And I know dozens of people who got burned by being talked into working for "exposure".

To me, that is a very different level of commitment by the company than working for "exposure" for someone who has no intention of hiring you.

The first thing I do when I write a game or software is send out advance copies for free.

Another situation is if you have experience but no portfolio. So you have two options - look forever for a project that will hire you without portfolio (usually this takes a long time, seen this many times), or you can complete few small projects for really small pay quickly and then you will be able to find a good-paying project way faster.

I lasted 1 year at that first company. My next job, a small but awesome agency, took me -someone with an arts degree, 1 year frontend dev experience- as a junior full-stack developer and gave me the chance and challenges to develop myself further. Now, a few years later, I earn a relatively good salary as a JS consultant at another company.

Being taking advantage of (financially) can have the effect of developing a thicker skin. You won't let it happen again after that. That's growth in my opinion.

It doesn't take the fact away that you can earn just enough to survive while building up professional development experience, which you can add to your CV. It's tough, but it can be done! Grab any chance to gain professional experience.

Also, try to stay creative! I know, it is super hard when you're broke / low on funds, there is no freedom in your head to think about anything else then surviving day to day or month to month.

The comment above about contributing to open-source is really good. There are lots of projects that would love more contributors. Also it's a nice way to expand your network.

And please, create a stunning personal website. Do some research into graphic design and try to create a professional but creative portfolio site. Next to your Github account, this is your business card.

I would like to add one thing, which is to regularly compare your skill level and your pricing to others on the platform.

You'll start at $10 an hour to get good ratings. Then you prove your skill set at $50 an hour. Then after 1-2 months of working in the same niche, you might have the experience and working speed to go up to $100 an hour. Once you reliably get bookings at that price, you're ready to hunt for projects outside of upwork.

These can lead to opportunities to maintain older software, or work on very specific projects. I did well updating and maintaining ancient Microsoft Access databases for small and medium size businesses who relied on them for day to day operations.

I'm currently utilizing several contractors who specialize in single products, and know them like the back of their hand (Lucine/ElasticSearch for actual full text search, not just elk stack)

There are TONS of "Full Stack" developers out there, so trying to work in that environment until you have a solid client base is, like you said, a race to the bottom.

On the local SMB side, I never told clients I was a Software Developer. I was a problem solver who could use technology when appropriate. Ask some local companies or SMB employees what the most painful part of their day happens to be. Maybe its something you can solve with some out of the box open source, a repurposed desktop as an SMB Server, or a little software development project. These things turn into recurring revenue as you save the companies money and time.

Being a domain-expert (even an armchair-level one) goes a really long ways.

Niche markets are less efficient. There aren't as many jobs, and when an employer needs you, they /really/ need you; if you go into narrow enough niches, there can be zero competitors qualified for the same position. That gives a lot of leverage. The flip side is there might be zero job openings for months. On the whole, I think that's an advantage, but it can go both ways.

A very popular market might be saturated, which is a downside. But it might also mean that customers already know that they want/need exactly this, which makes finding projects extremely easy.

If you want to have the best possible salary, go for an obscure niche where you can be the best in the world.

If you just want an OK salary with not too much work, go for the most popular project categories.

One of the biggest problem OP has is that in his area probably not a lot of people have done anything like what he is trying to achieve. And people from around the world might not be able to give good advice on his particular situation.

Imagine if OP:

1) Picked a product/tech

2) Did a deep dive into it for 3 months - setups and teardowns, reading, learning everything in the docs, and experimenting

3) Started writing blog posts about it now - It's never to early to create content! This would help the OP learn and eventually (a long time from now) become a lead generator.

4) Started advertising as a specialist in XYZ

There are lots of opportunities to become an expert in something. People that really get themselves out there create courses and learning communities for their specialty. It would require some work to find the right niche.

Contributing to open source on github may also help. Just cloning other projects is not impressive to potential customers, but small (perhaps learning) projects of your own offer some verification of your ability.

While it might be possible to start a small business around a web service, it seems to me like it is safer to continually study and improve your skill sets and learn the skill of figuring out what customers need and do that for them.

However, it might be difficult to get a good lead on that.

> Started coding 3.5 years ago and probably have enough under my belt to try multiple projects over this duration

This isn't enough information to go on, 3.5 years of programming could mean you've built your own game engine and a CMS from scratch in an attempt to do some project of yours, or it could mean you've been watching random programming courses sporadicly in hopes of landing a higher paying job eventually. (What third world country has median income of 1500$/month anyway ?)

Going off on what this sounds (because you didn't provide the info above) it seems like you aren't even close to an independent developer/freelancer but you're starting the discussion by determining your expected income.

IMO start with anything where you see you have potential to progress at any price point - if you actually have technical skills it shouldn't take you long to reach the level that matches them and if you don't it will give you time to learn.

Many of them: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/median-income-by...

There’s a massive difference $811 a month and $1500 month; $811 is $9733 divided by 12, though really should be the divid by at least 2, since by definition household has at least 2 members.

For example, In India, fresh out of college students earn ~$6k/yr in TCS and similar companies. They make ends meet by pinching pennies. At the same time the median household income is ~$3.6k, that's what a household of a hardworking physical labourer would make and the conditions they live in aren't pretty.

I don't think it's outlandish at all for someone from a similar country to target $1k/mo. Heck, it may not even be enough if he has a family he wants to give a comfortable life.

Start small and gradually increase your rate. You probably won't get big projects or a nice pay rate in the beginning. It's fine, in the long term things will work out. You will build a reputation over time.

Impress people with the quality of your work. Even if you are working on a small issue for a low amount, go the extra mile. Write stellar code and work long hours to deliver it quickly. Your effort will pay off, as clients will recommend you to others.

Communicate. I can't stress this enough. A big problem in outsourcing is that it's hard to find engineers who are good communicators. Never disappear, update your clients often, don't be afraid to show up in calls, write detailed answers. This makes a huge difference.

In your free time, study. Practice. Become a better engineer. Don't limit yourself to technologies you are comfortable with. Learn something new every day.

When applying for a freelance gig, take everything I've said above into account. Write a detailed proposal that makes it clear you understand the problem at hand and are more than qualified to solve it. If possible, attach a code sample that demonstrates how you'd tackle the problem. Don't forget to mention you are available for a chat whenever and respond quickly if you get an answer.

The problem is you're referring to yourself as a newbie. I don't know where you're from, but generally in America that would be seen as lack of confidence. Don't be humble. You can learn on the job. Working from home you can easily work 12 hour days if things take you longer than an experinced developer.

Look for companies you'd like to work with. If you're fine with startups which can be generally more approchable I'd look on AngelList. Email the founder or CTO. Talk to them about their problems. Try to be genuinely helpful and understanding. If they have job openings talk about how you can help them. Put everything you did on your CV. Upload your projects on GitHub.

You can absolutely do this, but first you need to change your mindset.

OP stated he wanted to work remotely, hence he's competing in the global (remote work) market. Many US and other companies hire in this market and often pay US-level (but generally not Silicon Valley-level) salaries. A lot of digital nomad types have those jobs.

Judging by OP's good grasp of English and the fact that he reads Hacker News, I'd say that alone makes him more qualified for those jobs than the bulk of developers from his country. I'd wager many of them don't even compete in that market to begin with.

Agreed. 1.5k/month is almost upper middle class in my country.

But I understand what you're saying.

Platforms like Fiverr and upwork get a lot of hate from the HN crowd, precisely because their expectations are to make $50-100+ per hour. And that's much much harder to do on Fiverr because you're competing against people like you who are charging $15/hour. Their frustration is your opportunity.

Once you've grown your skills and have more financial stability, you can start branching out into other career models. But as a newbie with low salary expectations, don't be afraid to do unglamorous grunt work. It will give you experience, build up your reputation, grow your skills, and most importantly, pay rent.

I imagine those freelancing sites is 10x more saturated now than 10 years ago, but perhaps it's still possible to reach 1.5k/mo in a few months. Like other people said, it's probably best to pick your niche to narrow down potential projects and reducing competition. I was mostly bidding on python projects back then (not as many python programmers back then and a gazillion of php programmers).

After I got my degree, I emailed one of my past client that I'm now available for full time work and he connect me to someone that was looking for full time developer and the rest is history.

Even in a "third world country" (fwiw I don't like that term), you can easily get $25-40/h doing freelancing for US/Europe based clients. At $30/h, you only need to freelance 50h a month to make $1.5K. It is very doable.

My personal 2c is ignore all the other advice you're getting in this thread (some of it is outrageously impractical and divorced from reality) and focus on finding freelance work.

NOTE: I'm talking from experience (though I'm in the US). Heck, I'll send some work your way if you're good at your stack. Send me an email (in my bio).

1. Only take projects you're confident you could ace. Customers would often not tolerate work that isn't accurate, not built according to best practices and is not delivered on time.

2. NEVER fail your client. Assuming the clients is honest and not someone looking to abuse you, if you've committed to a project you must complete it on time and deliver something great. If you can't make it one time, let the client know ASAP. If you can't get the right quality, let the client know ASAP. The client may ask to cancel the deal and get the money back but your reputation will not suffer as much as if you'd waste any more of their time by being late or delivering low quality deliverable.

3. Never submit your work without THOROUGHLY TESTING IT. I see way too many junior engineers saying "I'm done, check it out" only to find out whatever they build easily breaks the moment we start playing with it. CHECK YOUR SHIT before you deliver it or else your client will lose trust in you.

Even if your first few projects turn out to be not that great, if you'll learn from your mistakes and push through, you should be able to maintain clients who will be working with you for the long-term.

The amounts of money you're looking for are a non-issue for many companies.

Although the "almost no experience" and "Started coding 3.5 years ago" aren't very congruent - you should really clarify that.

Here are two options for you:

1. partner with someone and develop a SaaS product. There are thousands of "business" people with no tech experience who have ideas and are looking for a technical partner. But spend a lot of time doing due diligence and make sure they really have done the market research, have customers lined up, and really know the space well. From my personal experience, this usually doesn't happen - they have an idea, get excited about it and want to find someone to work for free and build it on speculation. So be really careful here. BUT if you find the right person, this could be an amazing opportunity for you.

2. As others have said, work on sites like Upwork, and start building a portfolio. At $6.25 / hour (your $1k month goal) this is pretty low risk for the customer. Start with small projects you know you can knock out quickly - get the positive reviews and feedback, and raise your rates accordingly.

I'd be willing to help you with either #1 or #2 - get in touch if you are interested.

I'm not saying it's a sure path to getting income, but at the worst case, you'll be left with something to show and some programming experience too.

Here's a list of ideas that I researched last year, if it helps.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hnpcl1VAlPC9MuFvvsl2...

If you do decide to go this path, I've written a guide from my experience that might help you get things off the ground.

https://www.preetamnath.com/blog/shopify-micro-saas-growth

Whichever path you choose, all the very best!

I'd say 90% of the posts you read by a company CEO, CTO, or COO are in fact written by someone else and at least half the time in those cases they were written by someone that doesn't even work there. My first professional writing gig was for a German industrial paint company entering the US market. I earned $50 for a 600 word post and wrote them 3 posts per day. Related: I nearly failed chemistry in high school and know nothing about paint.

Until about a year ago I had been blogging for others for close to a decade. 4 or 5 years ago I surmised that I probably had someone in the neighborhood of 4 million words out there on the internet, mostly applying to subjects I have no training in. I just like to write and people will pay for that. I've easily made $400-$1000/month writing posts for businesses as I have a beer in the evening and my wife makes dinner.

Businesses of all types will pay between $500 and $1000 for a well written, well researched blog post between 800 and 2000 words. Can you create a technical whitepaper or even an eBook/lead magnet with citations and some science in it? That STARTS at $2000.

That means companies (like mine) that have those opps are more than happy to farm them out to someone else for a few hundred bucks. You can easily command a dime per word if you are reliable and write with quality. In fact, I don't have $1k of budget for you/anyone right now but I'd be glad to pay a dime a word starting Monday for someone to start pumping out all the posts for my business that I've been meaning to write but - wait for it -simply cannot find the time to prioritize the work.

THe content creation/professional blogging space is still full of opportunity and based on the short post you have here it looks like your English is just fine.

"So where do I find the work?" Craigslist - tons of opps, tons of competition Fiverr Blogmutt and similar Content co-op sites Cold approach - send me an email I'll send you the exact instructions for doing this.

Good luck.

I'd love to see some kind of evidence to support this claim.

If it's 90% or more or less, I have no idea, but it's quite common. From blog articles to books.

-- Yessir, happy to share. Here are some pieces we have written in the last couple of years that commanded at least $500 per. I will trust your HN'honor to try not to poach or anything, and it wouldn't work anyway.

(redacted)

Many people (including many who post on HN) think "That doesn't seem so special. I could do that." But that misses the point. As I mentioned in the post it takes TIME to write something of quality that people want to read. The internet is full of bad blog posts so companies are looking for quality writing that has a point of view. If you imagine that a proper blog post would take approx 4 hours to research, draft, edit, review then the company/customer has to decide whether to allocate a $60k/year full time employee to writing it (which would be approx $120 of salary) or they can farm it out and put that employee on something with more measurable ROI like PPC management.

Organizations know they need blog posts and those that (1) have a good revenue footprint and (2) sell to the enterprise view blogs differently: it isn't always about getting a new lead and SEO. It's also about VALIDATING a decision a prospect is already thinking of making when they come to the site. The piece for (redacted) above wasn't about getting new leads or SEO juice or shares. It was specifically written to help them close a deal with a large TV studio that wanted to make sure their web partner was led by honest enthusiasts and not some anonymous ownership group. We turned it around in 2 days so they could get it in front of the prospective client before a decision on the RFP was made. We wrote that post while they were in a competitive situation against a much larger firm (Leo Burnett), a firm that has amazing work didn't know how to display the same "human" personality. (Our client) won the 6 figure deal. The money they paid us for the post was customer acquisition cost no different than having taken the prospect to a fancy dinner.

If you want a roadmap: Find companies b/w 10 and 50M in revenue Find those that are publishing blog posts irregularly or not at all. Irregular means they are doing it themselves without much structure. Not at all means they aren't doing it at all. If they are posting on the same day each week or every other week then someone has beaten you to the punch; move on. Reach out with a HIGHLY customized email message and offer to write one post at no charge. This is your "offer they can't refuse." The post is their's to use however they like even if they don't pay you. Ask, however, that if they do like it that they spend 15 minutes on a call so you can hear their ideas if they had unlimited blogging capacity and then share how you might be the person to fill that need.

From there we usually get people into a blog services contract of $1,000/month for a post b/w 700 and 1000 words 4x a month. If they want us to do the content map, post more, come up with the post ideas, fast turnaround, etc. then the price goes up. We have a number of $2,500/month contracts that include us doing the calendar along with the subjects/strategy, 4x blog posts, and 1x longform (eBook or whitepaper). I farm the work out for approx 40% of what we charge the client.

It's not a very difficult sell. Good luck.

- 2000 to 2500 words - FAST (48 hour) turnaround - ready to be published without more than a simple read through - voice consistent with other posts that we may not have written for them - well cited or referenced

The clients are - b2b environment selling into the enterprise - companies that generate b/w 10M and 100M in business - tech companies that have a disproportionally small digital marketing team thus the need to outsource.

Example, in early March we wrote a series of 3 blogs posts about security challenges for transforming your organization to WFH. $2500 for a total of ~6000 words, ordered Monday morning and delivered Wednesday night.

This is a great footprint for me to try and crack something to submit (monday) ideally.

I already applied to a great SaaS which I see an open call to write blogposts for in their newsletter. The CEO asked which topics I would like to write about and I submited 2-3 rough ideas, and he thought they were OK and asked for a draft.

I never followed through.

I don't have any blog although I think I could do it.

Would you mind emailing you for some more specific advice or editorial peer review in the moonshot case I finally get to write some shit?

Thanks again for your great (free) advice

I have quite a few blog posts and 1200-1600 is the sweet spot that I get pretty much 100% readership. Anything longer than that gets bookmarked but never read.

jk ;)

[0] https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-writing/blob/master/...

1. A large number of countries have agencies that will aggregate freelancers and take on large jobs. I'm not suggesting large players in the size of TCS or SAP, but smaller shops that hire out devs. It's a good place to start to get contacts into companies you'd like to work at, then move to a direct position there. Most countries make anti-poaching clauses practically unenforceable, especially if the candidate is the one approaching the company.

2. This is higher risk higher reward, but building micro-B2C/SaaS for a different market then launching on sites like Product hunt have the opportunity to bring in revenue. This is only if you're cut out for it.

Can't say much more without details, but I wish you luck in your search!

Imagine training to become a doctor and being a doctor with no family life and making ~1.2k per month?

If I can make around 2-3k per month I would quit being a doctor and do that job any day.

And someone from a third world country I can totally relate and understand your situation. The politics and corruption has rotten the country to the core.

If you would like to connect I'm open for taking. Hit me up if you are interested on taking and maybe brainstorming something.

Good luck

[0] http://www.euro.who.int/en/about-us/partners/observatory/pub...

I also don't understand the difference between two doctors coming from two countries. The underlying principles are the same and the science behind it is the same.

We also read the UK textbooks at universities. I feel it just sucks to be a doctor. I would not recommend anyone to take this route.

Back in the day before I got to know these things I used to tell my mom who is a lawyer that it would be difficult to be a lawyer in another country because the laws are different.

But I guess it's just same for doctors insanely difficult even though most of the things are the same

Most doctors have a very poor IT knowledge. Most of them know only to use Facebook

Most patients are elderly people, or people with extrame poverty. They either don't have the knowledge facilities or the money to pay for such a services.

Most of the work in hospital are still done by painful paper work. But making hospitals computerize has failed.

Sounds like there is something simple I could build.

> But making hospitals computerize has failed.

Can you figure out why?