I dislike going through interviews and all the rituals that involve working for a company full time.
I don't like to stick to one project for a long time, which is visible on my resume, and recruiters don't like that.
I've been thinking of a way to work around these traits, and what I have come up with is - work part time, on B2B, with invoices instead of employment contracts. I'm hoping that with B2B it will be easier to find work, fast. It should be more flexible to employers.
But where do I find people to do work for?
Edit: I'm a full stack developer, mainly focused on Go and React.
When you're freelancing you're essentially interviewing for your job every single minute you're in front of or have an active project with the client. Soft skills and doing work that has nothing to do with engineering is even more of a requirement.
Now soft skills are different and 2 of us are good at those and one of us is really bad; so we hire out based on the client, wishes and need for soft skills and a lot of communication overhead or not. And I agree that needs to be a match, however I cannot see how that requires 6-8 gruelling interviews spread over weeks instead of 15 minutes and a portfolio (which is how we get hired).
So yeah, I think OP would do better in a small collective of freelancers or even small consultancy company; I find it much easier to get into anywhere that way than the employee route.
BINGO.
I'm good at the job and good at normal interviews. I more-or-less enjoy both, even. I like talking to clients, and I'm good at it. I can sell myself. And I can do the work.
Specifically software developer interviews practically make me hyperventilate and break out in hives. Fuck that. A pop quiz over a huge potential space, probably over something I will never in my life actually use on the job, to be solved live while people watch and judge me? Oh my god, no. No. Why the shit that's considered acceptable in a world where we're so touchy-feely that projects are supposed to have Codes of Conduct is beyond me. It's straight-up abuse.
In my experience, it is now about knowing how to do these things but when to reach for them when solving a problem.
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But rather that set of weird, contrived rituals (which pretend to measure soft and other skills, but basically don't really measure anything other than the candidate's ability to game up answers to questions they looked up on the internet) -- not to mention the frequently appalling lack of decency, common courtesy (and common sense) has come to stand to in for the interview process these days.
There is one significant difference. In this perpetual interview, you have access to the internet and can find factual answers from there.
The problem solving part is what makes someone a good engineer/scientist. Not knowing particular algorithms, or knowing formulas (in case of DL jobs).
Interviews focus on the wrong things.
I am okay with the perpetual interview as long as I don't have to rote memorize a bunch of stuff like some poor middle-schoolers in 1970s communist country.
I threw away many recruiters who even mentioned technical interviews. I am doing more than okay financially and career-wise, btw.
This might change in the future just as a step to do something I want to do. I will hate all the interview, HR initiation, onboarding, etc. forever.
In interviews for full-time employment, this has rarely been the case.
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Yes, I would pay a recruiter to keep around so that I do not have to spend time sending resumes and searching job boards whenever a contract dries up.
Right now I am looking for work. If you're a recruiter (or another engineer for that matter) interested in such an arrangement, email is in my profile.
HOWEVER, and it's a big "however" -- I don't truly enjoy it. I don't mean that I don't like building a relationship with clients, putting thought into my communication, etc. In some way I do enjoy those facets of it a lot. But, I'm an introvert by nature and when managing clients, acquiring clients, etc... It feels like I'm putting on a persona that's not truly myself and it's very draining emotionally and intellectually which ends up actually impacting the quality of my work over time.
I would love to be able to find a "talent manager" who can do the job of "talking to the customer and bringing the specs to the engineers."/officespace I think to most people this sounds exactly like just "having a job." And people will ask what's the difference from simply having a manager?
I think this perspective is also why there's not a solid existing industry that fits the needs here.
As well, I don't know if this is necessarily true but having someone with at least some basic level of software knowledge I think is a huge plus to being a talent manager as you or I would think of them. That helps to ensure that the quality of working coming in meets at least some base level. The problem of course is that anyone with the right knowledge will either be a developer themselves or in some other role already. To make this work they might need to be able to manage multiple talents.. but then it runs the risk of turning into an agency of sorts, right?
And I don't off the top of my head know exactly what the qualitative differences are here between an agency managing multiple contractors and a "talent manager" but I think there are some and would love to hear thoughts on what those would be. I think it's all centered around how the relationship actually works. As you say you want to hire/pay a percentage and I would as well. That keeps the talent manager working for the engineer(s) versus the other way around.
I don't get why freelance software engineering can't be the same. I would pay a recruiter handsomely to do that exact service. I mean, we're not actors, but this is a rich sector, there's a ton of demand, it's a worldwide market, so where the heck are they?
I want to act^H^H^Hwrite code for a living, not getting real good at job hunting.
We were a lot less likely to be able to talk a company into doing that for a typical full stack dev.
That being said you will probably have to talk to a lot of recruiters to find someone who has the right relationships to do this. Like 2 out of the 80 recruiters at the company I worked for would have gotten you to me. The rest would have pressured you to interview for a full time role. That is just at one recruiting agency.
[0] https://10xmanagement.com/
It’s a weird prerequisite, but without it there generally isn’t enough context to do meaningful work sans a lot of hand holding.
Do you perhaps publish (or could publish) some statistics on earnings and the like?
Also, how often the jobs are available for non-USA candidates?
Find companies for whom you are a total catch of a full time hire, and negotiate a part time contract.
I was on a 20h/wk max retainer for one co, and another I could flexibly bill anywhere from 15-40h max depending on load. They both asked me to come full time before and after working a few months. But I held the advantage. I also worked for slightly less pay than ideal, but the lifestyle was the point for me.
That's my big takeaway from freelancing. The power relationship is different. You want to be in a position where they really need you.
In my experience as a python/full stack freelancer, you're best off starting with a full time and then reducing your hours per week after getting familiar with the project. I've done this several times, either because the project went in to more of a maintenance phase, or at my request (normally to spend more time on a side project).
I think you have to have enough experience that you (and the employer) are comfortable skipping the interview gauntlet. After all, if you're contract if you're not doing good work they can just stop. One thing that is helpful is to suggest working on a small, limited project for like 2-4 weeks, and they can decide if they want to continue working with you or not. (of course, you have to do a good job on the project).
It's a little weird, there are times when I'm scrambling for work and it seems like there's nothing out there, and other times when I'm turning away work, but if you can deal with the unpredictability it can be good.
Because they were well-respected in the WP community, there wasn’t much interviewing needed other than discussing the specifics of the project.
I found them via the plugin GitHub.