[sambrand]

I find it interesting that the author doesn't mention anything about the product as priority during his job search. No mention of tech stack, product-market-fit, growth potential, or being convinced that a product is filling a genuine need. These are the things that I would prioritize when considering a job search. The author mentions as a priority responsiveness of the recruiter. Also:

- How nice are the employees? - What’s the vibe in the office? Noisy? Quiet? - Do employees look happy? - How’s the food? - and so on and so on…

Is this typical?

[wayn3]

The author was a consultant before.

Its usually our job to deal with the circumstances and to actively change them. We are not "good employees". We call bullshit and we get to call bullshit.

We are not hired to help our bosses achieve things, we are hired to save their asses. We are hired because someone goofed up. We are hired because something went wrong and its our job to patch it up.

We come in with the expectation of getting things back on track. We are meant to blend in with the "regular employees" but we never will, because we are free agents. We can walk away from this job and we WILL walk away if what had been promised does not happen. We will walk away unscathed because we have other gigs in the pipeline anyway.

We do not conform. We come in with a plan, which we communicate in pretty clear terms - with the expectation that the person who hires us will, to some extent, play by our rules. Because that's what they brought us in for.

That's the mindset. In some way, we are mercenaries. What remains is whether the people and amenities are nice.

At my current gig, I'm fixing telecommunications software - highly concurrent stuff. Etching out another 20% of performance is actually important here. Today I've had an email about working for someone who wants to set up a new crypto currency and from someone who needs to port their badly engineered python code to awesome pretty shiny new Elixir code. They all know my rate and its certainly not cheap, but I'm going to reject most of them anyway. The average gig is 9 months but there won't be a week during which I don't have some kind of request in my inbox. And its all done remote. Most of my clients haven't even seen my face.

Whether they've got product market fit is simply irrelevant. I pick the jobs that are intellectually challenging, because that's what I want to work on. Their business logic is irrelevant to me. Their stack is irrelevant to me. If their stack sucks, I'll tell them to switch technologies or I won't be available anyway.

Sometimes I entertain the idea of working for some startup. Getting involved. But the reality is: 40 hour salary with a 60 hour expectation - no interesting work (we need to get this frontend thing fixed so heres your react native good luck not dying of boredom) - cramped office space; and I don't mean "crappy" office space, I mean cramped. Where you can't have a thought without someone being an idiot right next to you for no particular reason, etc. It just doesn't make any sense to be an employee in 2016.

[haldean]

This is the path I've just started to take; I'm currently on my first 6mo contract and it's great so far. This post really captures all of my reasons for contracting beautifully, thank you!

A question, if you don't mind my asking: I'm a little hesitant to start filling the pipeline before close to the end of my current gig. Do you find people are planning months out, or do you have to wait until a few weeks before you're free to start engaging with potential new clients?

[wayn3]

If you know for sure when your gig ends, you take every "meeting" (emails, calls, however you acquire "leads"), discuss what they're looking for and let them know when you'll be available.

Right now. Just be up front. You're no longer an employee, you are running a business. You no longer have bosses, you have customers. Let them know your terms.

Since this is your first one, you should be aware that the companies you work with will want to play this gambit with you where they make it seem like they want to extend your contract and then never actually do it right up until the point where you depend on it. And then they try to gouge you. You need to have options and they need to know that if they want to continue working with you, they have to pay market rate - and market rate is going up the longer they wait.

You engage with clients all the time. Doesn't matter whether you can'T sell any time right now. You are a business. Engage with your customers.

[haldean]

Thanks for the advice, and thanks again for that great post. I'll get on it.

[cookiecaper]

Do you use a consulting platform like Upwork? Where do you source your clients?

I ran a consultancy for five years and it was fine, but it was always difficult to trudge up new clients and keep the pipeline active and primed while I was trying to juggle the responsibilities of my ongoing gigs. A client converted me to an employee a few years ago but I've been thinking about getting back out there.

[wayn3]

Upwork is cancer for this. Caters towards less skilled labor, like manual data entry. Nothing I'd work with.

Toptal is great but you have to hustle them as well. If you decide to get on toptal, make it your first priority to make sure the recruiters know that how awesome you are.

Gigster I believe would be great but they're not responding and from past interactions it looks like they're way understaffed to handle all their applications so can't comment on that.

I don't get how its difficult tbh. I do very marginal outbound but have people contacting me all the time. I don't even have a linkedin profile because its too much of a hassle to set up.

Maybe I ended up on some kind of list. I don't know. The people I've worked with so far know that I deliver and I guess I'm living off referrals.

I don't actively network, though. I just talk to a select bunch of people on the internet.

[cookiecaper]

I agree that Upwork is a tough market. I've had friends who've made careers off it, though. You just have to be willing to get in and engage at the bottom before you can climb your way up to legitimate rates. Once you do that, Upwork directs people to your inbox all the time, and you can switch clients at the drop of a hat because every day you get several new solicitations within your price range that show up in your inbox.

I've had bad experiences with Toptal at multiple levels. I don't trust them and I don't think they're worthwhile. I absolutely don't believe they're providing the top 1% of workers, which is what they claim. They use Codility for screening which is an automatic fail imo.

Never heard of Gigster.

As for a network that spontaneously produces new leads, I agree that it's just dependent on the niche and how well-connected your previous clients are. I did get a fair number of clients this way, but the timing didn't always coincide with my schedule. It wasn't a constant stream of new requests every week.

I was mostly focused on local clients, which may also have had something to do with it. It sounds like you're mostly online. Before you got a constant stream of referrals, how did you find your clients? Replying to solicitations on classified or job postings? People coming to you for some pre-existing domain expertise, perhaps exhibited through a blog, social media participation, or an open-source project you've contributed to? Finding people on mailing lists and bug trackers and propositioning them? Just curious how you broke in to this.

The most appealing thing about Upwork is the constant stream of automatically-selected clients. It feels less bad than Toptal to me because there's less direct interference from corporate middlemen ("recruiters") -- I know Toptal provides a rate floor and that 99% of Upwork's clientele is looking to pay wages that are literally illegal in the United States, but Upwork has so much traffic, they can always supply you with someone in your rate bracket (up to like $120/hr, which admittedly is not very high). Don't have to worry about the stars aligning. That kind of thing is comfortable and well worth a reasonable fee (Upwork's fees are unreasonable, but that's neither here nor there for this discussion).

[wayn3]

> I agree that Upwork is a tough market. I've had friends who've made careers off it, though. You just have to be willing to get in and engage at the bottom before you can climb your way up to legitimate rates. Once you do that, Upwork directs people to your inbox all the time, and you can switch clients at the drop of a hat because every day you get several new solicitations within your price range that show up in your inbox.

Yes. They've got dealflow, but upwork is complete whack with their stupid screenshot producing antitrust policy and its boring web dev work. I don't work on user interfaces. I sometimes use upwork to outsource user interfaces that need to be built though. When it can be cheap.

> I've had bad experiences with Toptal at multiple levels. I don't trust them and I don't think they're worthwhile. I absolutely don't believe they're providing the top 1% of workers, which is what they claim. They use Codility for screening which is an automatic fail imo.

Toptal has pretty good dealflow. Not going to comment on any other part of their platform. Never had any issues with recruiters negatively affecting my experience.

> Never heard of Gigster.

Not a big loss tbh.

> I was mostly focused on local clients, which may also have had something to do with it. It sounds like you're mostly online. Before you got a constant stream of referrals, how did you find your clients? Replying to solicitations on classified or job postings? People coming to you for some pre-existing domain expertise, perhaps exhibited through a blog, social media participation, or an open-source project you've contributed to? Finding people on mailing lists and bug trackers and propositioning them? Just curious how you broke in to this.

None of the above. I work at the intersection of applied math/physics/SE and am immersed in a couple industries that are interesting to me/I have friends in. The software that I write always generates alpha (finds money making opportunities) - so the questions I get are less of the "can he do TDD? does he know react? can he write async?" and more of the "I have this business problem, can you help me 10x ROI?" variety.

When I turned 18 I got into playing poker online. I was good at that. Soon I wrote my own analytics software to generate more of an edge at the tables. Then I wrote a bot to play the game for me.

I've written a bitcoin arbitrage service when the markets were really volatile back in '12 or '13? And sold that to some loaded guy.

Then I wrote a couple crawlers for sites that people claim are un-crawl-able like linkedin. And I ran an ill-fated startup that I got suckered into.

I basically have wealthy friends/contacts in 3 industries who know whom to talk about when they have optimization problems.

Maybe its wrong to assume that I'm a software engineer. I certainly wouldn't call me that. Math is my game, software is a tool.

> The most appealing thing about Upwork is the constant stream of automatically-selected clients. It feels less bad than Toptal to me because there's less direct interference from corporate middlemen ("recruiters")

To be honest, I could see how toptal can suck for people who offer basic web dev services, but I'm simply not part of that crowd. I have good relationships with half a dozen of those recruiters and they send the interesting jobs my way.

You certainly need to work them. You need to work everyone you expect to generate revenue for you. But once you've done that, they behave.

> 99% of Upwork's clientele is looking to pay wages that are literally illegal in the United States, but Upwork has so much traffic, they can always supply you with someone in your rate bracket (up to like $120/hr, which admittedly is not very high). Don't have to worry about the stars aligning. That kind of thing is comfortable and well worth a reasonable fee (Upwork's fees are unreasonable, but that's neither here nor there for this discussion).

You just have to hustle. If you want to hustle on upwork, hustle on upwork. I'm sure they take less fees than toptal does. To me, it doesn't make sense to get involved with upwork. If it does to you, you should probably work with them.

A couple months ago I observed the deals they had for a while and it didn't produce a single one that I would care to even apply to.

[scsilver]

What did you do that lead you into your kind of position. You are hitting every thing I want out of a career and as I take a corporate job in the city to validate my self taught skills, I'd like to be able to do what I can to work back out to being a contractor. I assume networking, excelling amongst your peers, and constant learning. Am I missing anything?

[wayn3]

I've played poker professionally, studied physics and mathematics, ran my own startup, etc.

My resume is the opposite of a career.

If you've got skills, just put yourself out there. Getting a contract is a whole lot easier than getting a job. Which doesn't make any sense, but its what it is.

Sites like toptal and gigster can help getting the ball rolling. Gigster will probably not accept you because they pattern match against keywords or whatever. I don't know. Didn't accept me either. Not a big loss in my opinion. They just mostly do web apps anyway.

Toptal makes you solve a bunch of challenges so if you've got the skills you'll get in.

[mooreds]

Definitely brush up on your algorithm skills before you apply with Toptal. I come from a non computer science background and flailed on the tests.

But it did seem like a nice way to get lead gen.

Also would suggest blogging and github projects, especially if you know a niche technology that you want to go deep in.

[wayn3]

Github certainly works. If you go that route, make sure you build things that can be deployed in reasonable time. Include your server configuration etc.

A good github project that is meant for showing off your skills includes instructions on how to get it started.

For example, if you do something javascript, bundle a minimal server that I can execute on my computer. React.js is doing this pretty well, for example.

[mooreds]

Thanks for the interesting, provocative post. I would say that the only reason to be an employee is if you want employee benefits. I am not talking about health care and 401k, though those are nice.

No, the main benefit of being an employee is:

* A higher level of commitment from both sides

This has the following ramifications:

* You will learn a domain more thoroughly. If you are hopping between projects very year or nine months, you will get good at picking up domain knowledge, but understanding a domain deeply happens after a few years.

* You will have more opportunity for a leadership role (people hire consultants to kick butt and take names, but rarely to manage larger teams or projects).

* Team camaraderie. You can make great connections as a consultant, but, as you say, there's always the awareness you are a hired gun. Employees on a tram pulling together to build something awesome? The bonding is strong.

* Stock options might be worth something, if you are very very lucky.

* You can gain experience in something new to you, and get paid to do so. This is especially important for less experienced folks. Consultants are paid for the knowledge they bring to bear, and while you may be paid to learn something new, especially later in an engagement when they trust you and just need some tasks taken care of, most of the time you will be paid to work within your specialty, and have to gain new specialties on your own dime.

If these employee benefits aren't of interest, consult away.

This article might be of interest as well: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/is-it-time-for-you-to-earn-o...

[wayn3]

Mostly true.

* Team camaraderie. You can make great connections as a consultant, but, as you say, there's always the awareness you are a hired gun. Employees on a tram pulling together to build something awesome? The bonding is strong.

People usually are more open with me than with others because there's less of a reason for me to tap into politics or to play games. I'm there to do a job. Whether Jeff tries to pass off my work as his own is irrelevant to me. I'm not working towards a promotion. My loyalty lies with the guy who writes the checks. Not "the company".

Lasting friendships happen and people trust me. They can rely on the fact that I'm not there to take anything away from them.

So maybe a bit of a misinterpretation on your end. People sometimes get a bit envious about the lifestyle, but they're not "afraid" of consultants.

* Stock options might be worth something, if you are very very lucky.

I can negotiate stock, but that's not the point. This is mostly a matter of variance. Do you want to go all-in or do you take the bigger annualized returns in favor of the jackpot? I earn more as a consulting than I would as an employee. That's my hedge. If I want to go for broke, I'll start my own thing. Depending on some whack entrepreneur who may explode any day is not something I'm interested in really.

* You can gain experience in something new to you, and get paid to do so. This is especially important for less experienced folks. Consultants are paid for the knowledge they bring to bear, and while you may be paid to learn something new, especially later in an engagement when they trust you and just need some tasks taken care of, most of the time you will be paid to work within your specialty, and have to gain new specialties on your own dime.

That's the one thing I disagree most about. I generally do not take jobs where I have to do something I've already done. I want to do new things. I guess people hire me because I'm smart, which has already been proven. And they trust me to figure out how to do the things they want done. So maybe in that way you are right. But I don't take boring assignments.

But the most important part is this:

* A higher level of commitment from both sides

I don't like committing to some company. Its annoying. I commit to other things. Like my loved ones. Companies buy chunks of my time to get a desired output. I don't get emotional over them. You pay me to do X. You get X. You decide you rather want Y? Renegotiate, pay me to do Y. You get Y. You pay me for 40 hours, you get 40 hours. You decide that its funny to call me on a sunday afternoon, you get charged the sunday afternoon rate. You yell at me? You're not my boss. You get angry, get a life. I appreciate a certain professionalism in professional relationships.

"Employers" want people to be on call. At no extra cost. You want me to be on-call, you pay the on-call rate. Suddenly you don't want me to be on-call anymore. Good for you. Neither do I want to be on-call. But you've got these employees, if you want them to be on-call, they have to be on-call or you fire them. That's not something I want to be part of.

To each their own. There are lots of great employers in the world, but being an employee sounds not good to me. Maybe its because I don't really "love" software. I'm merely good at it. But when I'm done at work I like to do other things.

[kellysutton]

Author here. I didn't mention those things because they were a baseline during my search. Product-market fit, growth potential, and solving a genuine problem are table stakes for me.

The bulleted list was everything to worry about after those foundational goals are met.

I've got an unpublished blog post of 100+ questions to ask before joining a company, and the points you brought up are definitely in there.

[FT_intern]

What's interesting is that the satisfaction of those factors are evaluated in a binary way. From my experience and the experience of people I've spoken with, utility increases as those factors increase even after the factors reach a baseline requirement.

[sushid]

Hey, Kelly. Enjoyed the article but it seems like someone edited over your Google Doc. Do you think you could restore it to the original version?

[kellysutton]

Hi sushid,

What I posted is a sanitized copy of the doc with dummy information. Out of respect for the companies, I won't be posting my copy of it.

[sambrand]

Gotcha! I figured that might be the case. I'd be very happy to hear more about those table stakes. 100 stakes is a lot tho =)

[rdoherty]

I would love to read those questions, any chance you could publish them somewhere?