[jrumbut]

If you need the work to survive I guess take it but a good lesson to learn fast is that if someone says something belittling/disrespectful to you like that then just politely move on.

Plenty of fish in the sea, plenty of clients who are a pleasure to work with and want to build a long term partnership with their freelancers.

Likewise, if you aren't desperate for cash today try making a plugin for a marketplace somewhere, or some library or product you can be an expert in. Also consider whether companies might want a part time intern during the year or other opportunities. I think freelancing works better after you've been on a successful team and can replicate that success on your own. It's a lot of moving parts if you're just beginning to learn your trade.

[iudqnolq]

Thank you for all your advice. You've given me a lot to think about.

I absolutely don't need the work to survive. I'm aiming to get around 200 hours of contract work over the course of a semester with good references to be more competitive for jobs and internships this summer.

Also, I didn't even bother applying to the jobs that had those quotes I mentioned. I doubted very much they'd leave a positive review, and with only one review a negative review would make it much harder to get the next job. Those quotes came from the proposals they posted for freelancers to apply to be interviewed for, not private communications.

I'm going to college in a small town in Connecticut, where I can't get a programming job, and I don't think many places would take on a remote intern. In the summer I'll be staying with family in the Bay Area, so options will be better.

Your advice to build a plug-in sounds like a great idea. I think I might try to specialize in Shopify, get a feel for what people want, and then generalize what I'm building for people (of course being transparent that I would retain ownership of code).

I totally agree with you that it doesn't make sense to jump into a career in freelancing. It does look like a nice option once I get more experience, thought.

[jrumbut]

Best of luck and it's really great you're even thinking of these things now.

And while there may not be so many remote internships out there, tossing a resume at a remote-friendly company and seeing what happens can't be any harder than upwork :)

[iudqnolq]

I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the motivation :)

[hermitdev]

> Also consider whether companies might want a part time intern during the year or other opportunities.

Personally, I was lucky in this regard. I landed myself an internship summer after my sophomore year in college doing web/db work on an intranet site at a Fortune 500 back in 2001. Paid decently, started at around $15/hr. When I left 3 years later, was making around $20/hr. Worked fulltime during summers, but was able to keep working through the school year. I was also able to largely work remotely during the school year, so I was able to put in 20-30 hours per week while only going into the office once a week.

The internship was a great experience. I was working for the DBA team, so I got a lot of hands on experience and knowledge working with them on several RDBMS's including DB2 (mainframe), UDB (Unix/Windows) and SQL Server. Things that I had no course to take in college at the time.

The internship also set me up well for getting my first fulltime job. The hiring manager was stunned at the uears of professional experience I had straight out of college and the level of self learning I showed (worked ar first in ASP/VBScript and Javascript, then ASP.Net/C# in the 1.0/1.1 days - all self taught). They had me take Brainbench exams for C++ (which is what they were looking for) and C#. I was abysmal at the C++ exam at the time, something like 65th percentile, but scored above 95th in C# at the time. The manager took a risk and hired me, expecting that Id be able to grow into the position. This at a firm known for hiring only from top Ivy League schools and culling the bottom 10% every year. Lasted a bit over 9 years there, before I decided to move on.

[iudqnolq]

That sounds very impressive. I definitely hope to find an opportunity like that, but I want to be realistic about my chances.