[chundicus]

I've been curious about the freelance route, but unsure what this really looks like in practice or if it's even possible for me to get into it.

1) How did you get started? Is it feasible for more junior engineers to get into it or not so much?

2) How do you find work consistently enough to make a living? What does the work often look like?

[cyberpunk]

Not the OP but if you're interested in my take -- I've been freelance ops/devops in/around europe for around 10 years;

I would say it's not so feasable as a junior unless you really can hit the ground running which only comes with experience, at least in ops. Most clients expect me to be productive within about a week of landing if not less, otherwise they would have found a permie. They also expect senior freelance people in such a space to be making or helping to make a lot of decisions for them, which is hard to do until you've made enough mistakes to learn what not to do, instead of just knowing the latest doo-daa or other.

Finding work isn't hard, you register with a few agencies (e.g hays, linuxrecruit, etc etc and then they farm your CV out to their clients, and then you interview and start working.. I've never spent more than a week looking for a new contract)

As for the amount of work -- endless, at least in devops...

Currently I am working as a senior devops/sre for a startup, k8s, cloudy stuff, big springboot stack (50 or so services across 10 instances, etc) -- I do the same work as the full time staff, mgt treats me as slightly more senior/more votes than those because I am really, but you have to walk a bit of a political line sometimes.

Any questions feel free :}

[kblev]

How much can you earn as senior devops freelancer in Europe?

Have you considered relocating to the US?

I'm a devops contractor in the UK and looking at options to maximize income.

[cyberpunk]

Around 100euro/hour - depending on the city.

Nah, quality of life wouldn't be there for me, personally.

London is still probably highest rates for devops in the EU, Munich/Frankfurt/Amterdam/Paris aren't far behind but the work is more boring, Berlin rates are less but everything is quite cheap..

[hckr_news]

I have a few questions. Are you a digital nomad? If you do tend to move around often, how does income tax affect you? How do you manage the stress or anxiety (if any) of perhaps you could say instability of your role not being permanent? What ways do you manage the client to step back a bit if they ask you to put in more hours than you’d like?

[cyberpunk]

More of a contractor, I tend to have full time (8-10 hours/day) work with usually 6month+ duration.

I'm not a digital nomad, have a house and a child :}

No anxiety really, just keep some money set aside and after some years you sort of know if you'll be able to easily find a job or not.

In the absolute worst case, if I couldn't get another contract, I could always go perm, but I've not had to make such a decision yet.

[badpun]

Are you a freelancer or a contractor? I.e. are your engagements on the order of weeks or months/years?

[davedx]

> 1) How did you get started? Is it feasible for more junior engineers to get into it or not so much?

I got started with a combination of crappy freelance websites (I found some small assignments on elance etc), reddit/r/freelance, and had some small jobs for friends and previous employees. After that I found a great gig on Hacker News's "Seeking Freelancer" forum. Then I moved into longer term onsite contracts, hourly rates are a bit less flexible but you have more security and a more stable turnover.

2) How do you find work consistently enough to make a living? What does the work often look like?

As I said -- longer term contracts give you stability here. Other freelancers go for more lucrative short-term projects. There's lots of combinations. My first project was like 3 weeks, and I've been at my current assignment for almost 3 years now.