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by hopeless
4286 days ago
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I'm very similar: same age, skills, background. Off the top of my head: 1) You've got to stop calling yourself a "freelance developer". Start using "consultant" (and then read lots about what that means and behave accordingly). You are not a hammer. 2) You seem jealous of younger project managers. Are they paid better? Have they more prestige? More control? More influence? What specifically bothers you? And then… 3) Stop just coding. It's a great skill to have but you and me can be coded under the table by a 22yo who costs less, drinks more Red Bull, has more energy and fewer commitments/distractions. 4) We can keep learning new technical things but there's far more value in learning how to apply our existing skills to specific domains. Get closer to the "business". Learning more about marketing. Understand sales. Use your coding skills in those areas and you can side-step comparison to younger developers and the typical software project hierarchy. |
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ad 2) you're right... maybe it's because I used to be a PM and I still perceive this position as more prestigious
ad 3 and 4 and generally) you are right that I have non-technical knowledge and I can apply it with success, but the two main problems here for me are is that
a) finding projects as a 'software developer' or 'software engineer' is much easier (although finding new leads is the hardest part for me at all)
b) I cannot market myself both as a 'just a developer' and 'top notch consultant' at the same time, and because of a) I have to keep the 'developer' profile
basically finding new leads is the worst part for me. I could be a 'consultant' and manage or cover myself most of such a project areas, but finding such consultanty gigs is tricky for me.
anyone has an advice on finding such projects? frankly 99% of mine come from referrals and sometimes I found some accidentally on Twitter. cold emails, responding to job offers etc never works for me.
how about you, @hopeless, what is it you're doing right now and how does it work for you?