HACKER Q&A
📣 corytheboyd

Breaking into solo software development work


As the title suggests, I’m curious what steps people have taken to get from “I want to work for myself” to actually doing it.

I have read many blog posts explaining the difference between consultant and contract work, even more about “I manage this alone and it’s great” posts, but I am curious to just hear directly “I started doing X, which eventually got me to where I could live off of my solo work”

Just thinking about it with what I know, the hardest part of getting started feels like it’s going to be both finding work (preferably a large enough pool of it to not have to settle for terrible jobs) but also building a reputation (a chicken and egg problem, plus needed to not have to settle for the aforementioned terrible jobs). Networking feels like a huge part of this as well, as people know people with jobs, so widening that network makes complete sense, but curious to hear how heavily you all weight it as well.

Another detail that may matter is I don’t want to limit work to the tech sector. While that’s where I have worked for all of my career as a software developer, it isn’t really where I need to stay. Hell I think breaking out of this industry would do wonders for my mental health lol.

I don’t need people to tell me “you don’t want to do this” as that isn’t what I am asking.

  👤 gregjor Accepted Answer ✓
I worked in regular f/t programming jobs for a couple of decades, both in the software/tech sector and in other domains. That experience gave me more than technical skills. It gave me business domain knowledge, the ability to work with people and understand priorities, and a fairly good network of former colleagues and managers. Then I started freelance contracting for a former employer. I got more work through friends and contacts. I have freelanced solo for over a decade now.

I have some articles on my web site typicalprogrammer.com you might find useful. I’ve also commented here quite a bit about freelancing.

You run into terrible people and terrible jobs just like you occasionally encounter people you don’t like or things you don’t want to do in any aspect of your life. To some degree you can frame the situation and set your expectations. For example I have friends who only want to work on sexy projects with language X, so while they aren’t suffering from legacy PHP work they aren’t finding any work. I don’t care much about languages or tools. My satisfaction comes from solving business problems and cultivating long-term trust relationships with my customers.

You will find a lot more work outside of the tech sector than in the tech sector. Some of it won’t seem all that interesting, technically, but it can prove satisfying and lucrative.