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by satvikpendem 1283 days ago
All my jobs have been from recruiters on LinkedIn. I keep it open and get at least 10 messages a day talking about this or that position. I guess people don't optimize their profile like LinkedIn tells you to, after you do that, it's very easy to get inbound leads.
1 comments
gregjor 1283 days ago
Are you getting freelance work on LinkedIn, or job leads from recruiters? When I had a LinkedIn profile I got lots of contact from recruiters (both internal and external). Since I'm not looking for f/t jobs I just replied "Thanks but not interested."

I'm sure LinkedIn has value for some people, probably even some freelancers. It never did for me, I always found referrals and word-of-mouth work better.

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satvikpendem 1283 days ago
Both, if I wanted freelance work I asked them, usually they say no, but sometimes they say yes. It's much easier if you're talking to the founders of a startup, rather than a recruiter, since the former are much more flexible.

I'm not sure how people find freelance work for big companies like Google though, unless they go through an agency that has prior connections.

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gregjor 1283 days ago
Agencies like the one that represents me (10X Management) place people at Google, Facebook, etc. Another route is knowing someone inside the big company -- I know freelancers who got gigs at FAANG (or whatever it is now) companies through contacts.

That's not a good match for me because I prefer smaller companies with well-defined discrete business problems and shorter timelines, and because I usually live overseas and travel a lot -- full-time remote in other words, and not available for daily stand-ups or lots of meetings.

I generally don't work for startups. I have, but they too often lack the focus to get good requirements from, need a lot of interpersonal interaction with the team, and want to pay in equity. Great gigs sometimes but not for me. For me the best customers are small/medium businesses not in the tech industry, profitable and established, who can't attract/hire/keep software/system admin talent. For every job opening at a startup you can find 100 small companies who can't get anyone.

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