[compiskey]

Freelancer here; this time of year there is always a slowdown. Holiday vacation absences make scheduling all the right people to interview harder.

I set aside extra the rest of the year to smooth over the drop off in responses late-Oct/Jan period. By February I usually get swarmed with asks to tackle projects and can pick ones that are actually interesting.

Then it happens again in summer as people with enough money to not work take another 2-3 months off.

[oceanplexian]

I can second this, after doing this many years the recruiters start to swarm your phone and inbox starting in January.

[bartimus]

I can third this. Usually companies are busy making plans for the new year. Then somewhere near February is where they start looking for the people who can make it happen.

[_qzu4]

So January will be quiet as well?

[bartimus]

Big companies usually operate on a yearly / quarterly cycle when budgeting things (bookkeeping cycle). If they need someone in January you're probably hired in December. January is the new start of the year. If they decide to take on new people it takes a few weeks before all the meetings are done and those positions become available on the market. Then summer is usually a bit more quiet as well.

[granshaw]

Curious what do you specialize in? Sounds like your engagements are usually like 3mos max?

[compiskey]

3-6. But I try to line up the next one in the last 3, or right away if it’s a 3 month gig.

Lately I’ve been “specialized” in cloud ops mentorship. Lots of businesses still run monoliths, have no CICD or secops. I don’t automatically nudge them to break the monolith up; some are well organized and documented and work for the biz. Mostly I help them establish a smoother “idea to deployment” pipeline.

Though after 4 years it’s become pretty repetitive. I’ve been tinkering with the Linux kernel internals again, thinking about looking for lower level gigs.

[granshaw]

Thanks for sharing, and super interesting!

I’ve done an about 1 year stint contracting, all with a single client pretty much staff aug web dev, then went back to fulltime.

I’d love to find engagements where you’re not tied to their 9-5 hours, have to attend their daily stand ups etc. I think the only opportunities like that on a standard full stack engineer skill set is building MVPs for new startups, or companies with no in house dev team