Anybody got any work for me?
It's early Monday morning and I am looking out of my window at a light covering of hail on the street outside. Something tells me the summer is finally over. The Great British "rainy season" is upon us.
Since I left London in April I've been continually asked what my plans were (not least of all by my dad), to which I've always replied that I plan on enjoying the summer and then making a serious attempt at "going it alone". Well, I've had a brilliant time over the past few months but it's starting to sink in that I now need to knuckle down to some work.
By "going it alone" I mean that I want to work for myself. I want to work primarily from home, with maybe the odd client visit from time to time. I want to call myself a consultant. I've got the infrastructure in place. All I need now are the clients. That's where I'm hoping this site comes in. You all know me and by now you should all know what I can (and can't) do. All I need now is for some of you to pass some work my way.
I'm no stranger to remote working. For the past two years I've had a few clients scattered all over the world who rely on me for various tasks - some small, some big. I don't really mind what I do, be it two months spent developing a whole site or a day's work programming some JavaScript. Flexibility is my middle name. Even if you want me to come and spend a week "on site", wherever that may be in the world, I am open to ideas. What I really want to try and avoid is a) commuting to the same place every week and b) a permanent office job. Am I kidding myself?
Would love to hear from any of you. You know my email address right? Even if you have no opportunities to pass on but you work in a similar way and have some advice, drop me a line. In the mean time a couple of friends and our bikes are heading for the North Yorkshire Moors to squeeze the last few drops of summer out.
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Not an offer of work (sorry), but a recommendation. Contact the Small Business Gateway for information and training on all things you'll need to start worrying about - tax, insurance, cashflow, marketing, etc, etc. They run free courses (I went on one which ran on three consecutive Fridays) which gave a good grounding in the contractor lifestyle.
Look at {Link} It's a government run thing, not a money spinning private company. They also offer IT grants (or they did a year ago!)
Jake,
I have two suggestions.
First, if you have not already decided you might want to take a look at Quickbooks for your bookkeeping. As a true consultant, you will need to wear many hates. I found that for income and expense tracking Quickbooks was very easy to implement for my corporation. If you need help understanding the accounting aspect just ask, that was my former life before switching to programming.
Second, think about creating your own Notes/Domino application that you can sell. I too am tired of working for other firms/people and took the time to find a niche industry and decided to create a Domino application that can fill a need and hopefully make me a good living.
I've found in my independant consultancy work that it's best to have someone other than yourself do the project management. I normally have my wife (who was a project manager and sales person prior to being a mommy) do my PM work and keep me in line. She also works the numbers with the clients etc. While you're an independant consultant, having someone do your "booking" that you don't have to pay (let's hope she doesn't read that) not only takes one of those "hats" off of your head but also gives the potential customer a more professional feel when dealing with you.
There's 1 cent, as I expect a few more things will come into my head throughout the day....
-Chris
I wish we had something to offer you. It'd be an honour working with you!
IMHO
If you are going to sell consulting services then they need to be high value. Do you think PHP/MYSQL are in that space in relation to corporates? Personally I dont think so.
Many corporates are currently migrating away from Domino and onto WS. Personally this is where I see the work as being. You have the Domino skills. Maybe your focus should be on WS. It is corporates that have the high value work-big projects over long periods.
In my experience Big Corporates use big consultancies or Individual Contractors rather than independant Consultants for this type of work - but just my experience.
So to start off as a successfull independant the smaller/medium companies are better targets with a LAMP and Domino mix - as they cannot afford WebSphere and the add ons.
Best of luck to you, Jake. I've been doing it since May, and I'm going to continue as long as it will let me!
That said, Steve is correct, at least from what I've seen in the US. The smaller/medium companies are all using Lotus Notes, and heavily underutilizing. The best thing you could ever do is offer to create a small database to help them get straightened out, and then throw in a few "goodies" in the database. Once they see "it can do THAT?!" then they'll want the mother lode database that connects all the calendars and does time tracking, and, oh, it has to connect with their Oracle database, did they mention? ;-)
I did this for a few years and came to the realization a year ago that it is VERY difficult to find long term contracts in Domino these days. It really wasn't worth the effort I was spending based on the current rates for Domino developers today. I think it could be done, but would require a person who has a boatload of contacts and a willingness to do 1-2 month gigs at $35/hr, part-time. eeewwwwhhhhhh.....
I do think that you are one of the more gifted developers I'm familiar with, so if there is work to be had, you should be a good choice! I really think you should take your technical skills and penchant for picking this stuff up and learn Websphere or .NET and continue this site as a technical "how-to" in one of those arenas. I have recently learned WS and have found my marketability has gone up substantially.
Anyway, good luck!
Jake,
You're a capacitor. You're full of stored potential energy. While being independent certainly has its rewards, what I think you would be best served by is having someone take some of the managment activity off your shoulders - you, in effect, are a talent that needs an agent, a battery that needs to be plugged into a system.
Myself, I work for a local-market firm, when I'm not doing other things, that contracts me out. They worry about taxes, book keeping, finding work for me and handling the customer business relationship, and I worry about showing up for work. That's not to say I would always have to show up at the office, but - depsite your aversion to it, it is a great way to ensure a longer contract. (this one was supposed to be 8 weeks, going on 20 months now) Folks that feel they have you on staff are more likely to find work for you than those who have to remember you exist. A face to face relationship is powerful, in that regard. I'm sure, though, a good contracting firm can find you 'work from home' work... usually it's fewer and farther between though.
I think, for Jake Howlett to work from home successfully, he'd have to, as noted above, learn a few things first like book keeping and tax code and marketing etc. Your strengths are in your ability to inovate with technologies and put together a polished final product. Dividing your focus would deminish your ability to focus on your true joy. Get an agent / representation firm.
Letsee - with current conversion rate, my 2 cents are worth about 1.4 p. :-)
Jerry
Jake,
If you can find the work, I'm sure you can have some fun. AS you might remember, I've been working from home now for over 5 years, and I've always loved it. Prior to that was about 5 years in an office, and the politics sucks you dry. I started as a developer working from home and its by far the most productive environment. i'm very lucky with my work and don't have to go out hunting for customers, at least not at the moment, but I know that time will come. These days I can spend huge amounts of time tinkering, and your PHP stuff has just got me off on one! haha! I've got no proof for this, but if you want the life you dream of, you might need to look at developing simple apps for small businesses. Domino Express has just opened up a market there, and that would probably give you an outlet for PHP as well. I've played with websites for people, but I think a real money source would be in intranets that help with the daily grind, and maybe feed a public website as an off shoot. Small businesses could justify that sort of approach. Others have said it here, but I don't think that corporates are going to be very interested in a lone contractor that doesn't go to the office everyday, most just don't think that way.
I agree that corporates would only be interested in contractors, taken on through agencies, that attend the office each day. That is the model they are used to.
Corporates do have money to spend on IT though. These are the companies that have previously invested large amounts of cash builing Domino infrastructure. These are the guys that are currently planning to migrate large amounts of applications to WS. This seems like a great opportunity to me. Whether its working day to day as a contractor on site or thinking about building tools to assist the migration process I think its got to be a money spinner.
Personally, I think its harder to get smaller companies to spend money on IT. They find it harder to justify. Everyone is looking to cut IT spend. The company I work for currently has some work offshored to Vietnam. Frankly, the future signs for this way of life do not look great.
I believe Websphere is the most popular Web Server platform at the moment. If you are going to spend time retraining in something then I reckon it has to be good bet. Personally I need to pay the bills and cannot afford to "spend huge amounts of time tinkering, ".
Yes, I would like to work at home servicing my own clients. If thats not <easily> achievable then just being in work is good enough for me right now.
Take it away guys...
A big thanks to you all. Some interesting thoughts going on in my head now and a lot to take in all at once...
Jake,
Not sure if you remember me, I'm a former Domino consultant that has successfully (in my opinion) made the transition in the world of WebSphere. Send me an email with your rate & resume and we'll have a look.
Maybe you should think about different forms of making a living, other than being a software consultant for a client.
What about building an internet company?
You'd work for yourself, from your home and have a short vacation from time to time: nice picture, isn't it? I like it so much!!
I think it's a dream, to have my net ideas made real, but I believe the web is still a good place to make one's living.
"Build it and they will come"
Jake: I still see WS (and Java) as the essential skills to acquire this year, but I am willing to be proved wrong by JobServe's statistics today which give some comfort to all opinions:
PHP = 90 hits
Domino = 115 (not many more than PHP!)
WebSphere = 280
And there *are* commercial contracts looking as if they were written with your name in mind, Jake:
"PHP Developer required with good SQL (MySQL preferred), HTML and ....Work can possibly be carried out remotely"
{Link}
Thanks Martin. I hadn't really searched JobServe for PHP until now. Interesting results. Obviously they mainly development roles. This makes it look to me like there are an awful lot more PHP dev roles than in Domino. This because if you search for Domino you get alsorts returned. Dev roles as well as admin roles and some where they merely mention Domino as a "nice to have".
As well as the number of hits on jobserve a rate comparison should also be considered. Not much use thinking PHP is a great skill to have if the rate p/h is £15 while WS might be £40.
Also the problem with Jobserve is how many of those positions really exist and are not just a figment of an agents mind.
i am ready to work with you pls gv me the details how