[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.