July 16, 2013 at 09:52Goodbye office. Asia and freelance, my sweet and sour sauce
Hello!
In this article I want to tell you about my path from office to freelance: motivation, the emergence of ideas, goals, milestones and experience.
You need to start with the main thing. I am a hedonist. No really! In a good sense of the word: the scenario of “chopping up with anasha” and getting dull is not very interesting for me. I just think that everything in life should be cool and interesting. And if not, make it so.
I began to write this text in a Thai night bus, following from Phuket to Bangkok. One of the ribs of the count Moscow-Bangkok-Ho Chi Minh-Muine-Pattaya-Phuket-Phangan-Samui-Bangkok-Bali-Moscow, stretched in time for 5 months.
One important point: I didn’t run, I didn’t fall, I didn’t start the tractor.
Just once I realized that the joy of life can now be scooped up with a larger spoon, and the era of the office can be replaced by high-level freelance.
What is high level freelance? This is when you work for the normal 20-30 bucks per hour; Do not communicate with customers-gopnik; do not throw, do not wait for kidalov; you work with full return less than 40 hours a week (who works in the office for real 8 hours and does not burn out after six months?); you will make contributions to open-source projects as needed and start your own ... because you want to do it!
I wanted to have an interesting thing in life, not to depend on Russia and the tsar, to travel, to earn money normally, to be able to start something of my own if desired.
It seems that there was no chance not to become a programmer :)
After a trip to the states ( WAT ) in the summer of 2007, and starting work, I began to realize that when skill and experience appeared, I would have to pull myself out of comfort and move on.
A couple of years ago I began to look at options for working in the states, I realized that with those skills I am not ready for this. The proof was the failure of the Google intern interview (although they don’t look at skills there, they are more likely chasing careercup.com tasks ).
In this regard, I postponed thoughts about the "golden billion" for some time.
At a good moment, in the spring of 2012, I came across the blog pumainthailand.com , the work of the opium habrayuzer . His story about odesk.com added the missing cell to the puzzle - it became clear that the winter of 2012-2013 would be more interesting than the past.
After looking at the situation with the Russian-speaking exchanges, I realized that they were of no interest to me: dumping, greedy customers, strange approaches to transactions, scammers, carpet bombing of all orders with template sentences ...
Maybe I'm wrong, but so far the whole essence of the Russian-speaking exchanges expresses for me the phrase I
saw in one of the orders: I will take off the Old info after a profitable offer, which is difficult to refuse ..
It's wonderful!
Then I did not know about the existenceelance.com , so the focus was on odesk.com : I got a Payoneer card , tied it to Paypal. Preparing a profile on the exchange took time. Not with a snap, in about two weeks I prepared a profile and calmed down for a while.
Autumn came, I began to think about a trip to Asia. It turned out to fly away only at the end of December. After a month of rehabilitation and travel, I settled in the windy (kite, windsurf) Vietnamese village of Mui Ne, I decided to seriously engage in task number one: access to full self-sufficiency through freelance.
After immersing myself in a job search on odesk.com, interesting details emerged :
Rating - here the situation is completely similar to ebay.com - after a few negative reviews, people will simply stop dealing with you.
Job search - the fact is that on the exchanges the speed of response to work plays no less role than the ability to fulfill an order. This problem is especially acute for small orders with a fixed payment (and there will be no others at the first stage, since there is no rating).
A temporary solution was found - a simple service odkeeper.com in combination with mail filters allowed you to receive 10-20 interesting letters per day.
Later, after a couple of months, I returned to this idea and created my own service of instant job notifications, aggregating data from all exchanges: lancemonitor.com. It was strange for me that not all freelancers use similar tools in their work. I am glad that so far several hundred freelancers have improved their approach to finding work with my help.
At odesk.com, each user has a fixed number of opportunities to respond to a job offer per week: about 20 bids. This limitation cultivates a conscious approach to communication with the customer.
I do not analyze other strategies, here is my approach to finding great orders and interesting projects:
One answer to a job offer takes me 10-20 minutes, it immediately shows what level I possess, as well as the degree of my understanding of the customer's needs and involvement in his task.
The dynamics of work was something like this:
Work among palm trees, under the gentle sun and with exotic fruits on a plate ... Everything is true, and everything is bullshit!
It is important to understand that working on freelance is primarily a job. You will need willpower and concentration so as not to return home after three months with empty pockets. It’s not that you don’t want to work abstractly. Today I don’t want to work, but tomorrow I want to. No, it can be much more interesting - you will find such people, a company, an approach to life, communication and relationships that the real pleasure of life will be constantly demolished from the workplace. Happiness is an interesting test, you have to prioritize and be flexible.
Backside on a chair, and preferably in a chair at a normal table, convenient, comfortable, non-hot workplace, normal lighting, stable Internet ... You’ll have to look for it all! Daily office pleasures are usually not enough, you begin to appreciate them. Especially the internet. A 3G modem that works well is already a success.
By the way, travel and work are almost completely incompatible. You can work seriously with the hourly rate if you move once a month or two, but not more often. In addition to the obvious difficulties of the working environment, there are non-obvious things such as the need to look around. It’s just hard to come and sit exactly on the spot without having a break in a couple of days around the district.
Communication. Lack of communication greatly affects the mood and motivation. Being a rather easy and sociable person, I still had to revise, improve, facilitate the approach to new people.
Want to become a tanned biryuk? There is nothing simpler, and I saw this: The
mise-en-scene: Bali, the ocean, waves.
Groundhog Day: Surfing in the early morning, udalenka 8 hours for Russia (i.e. communication in Russian), surfing in the evening, dinner, surf the Internet.
And so for several months in a row ... Thank you, I'd rather work in the office than that.
When people ask me how I spent time in paradise Asia, I laugh.
This is not your two-week vacation, this is your life. With all the fears, self-reproaches and fate, cockroaches and chips, dreams and realities. Just in the new scenery. A little less emphasis on the material, a little more questions for yourself.
How did you live in paradise Asia in the winter?
How did you live in paradise Russia in the spring?
How did you live in paradise Ukraine in the summer?
In this article I want to tell you about my path from office to freelance: motivation, the emergence of ideas, goals, milestones and experience.
You need to start with the main thing. I am a hedonist. No really! In a good sense of the word: the scenario of “chopping up with anasha” and getting dull is not very interesting for me. I just think that everything in life should be cool and interesting. And if not, make it so.
I began to write this text in a Thai night bus, following from Phuket to Bangkok. One of the ribs of the count Moscow-Bangkok-Ho Chi Minh-Muine-Pattaya-Phuket-Phangan-Samui-Bangkok-Bali-Moscow, stretched in time for 5 months.
One important point: I didn’t run, I didn’t fall, I didn’t start the tractor.
Just once I realized that the joy of life can now be scooped up with a larger spoon, and the era of the office can be replaced by high-level freelance.
What is high level freelance? This is when you work for the normal 20-30 bucks per hour; Do not communicate with customers-gopnik; do not throw, do not wait for kidalov; you work with full return less than 40 hours a week (who works in the office for real 8 hours and does not burn out after six months?); you will make contributions to open-source projects as needed and start your own ... because you want to do it!
Background
- 5.5 years in server-side Java and web technologies, of which 2 years in integration on IBM ESB
- Moscow, office work
- 27 years old, single
Motivation
I wanted to have an interesting thing in life, not to depend on Russia and the tsar, to travel, to earn money normally, to be able to start something of my own if desired.
It seems that there was no chance not to become a programmer :)
Idea
After a trip to the states ( WAT ) in the summer of 2007, and starting work, I began to realize that when skill and experience appeared, I would have to pull myself out of comfort and move on.
goal
A couple of years ago I began to look at options for working in the states, I realized that with those skills I am not ready for this. The proof was the failure of the Google intern interview (although they don’t look at skills there, they are more likely chasing careercup.com tasks ).
In this regard, I postponed thoughts about the "golden billion" for some time.
Exchanges
At a good moment, in the spring of 2012, I came across the blog pumainthailand.com , the work of the opium habrayuzer . His story about odesk.com added the missing cell to the puzzle - it became clear that the winter of 2012-2013 would be more interesting than the past.
After looking at the situation with the Russian-speaking exchanges, I realized that they were of no interest to me: dumping, greedy customers, strange approaches to transactions, scammers, carpet bombing of all orders with template sentences ...
Maybe I'm wrong, but so far the whole essence of the Russian-speaking exchanges expresses for me the phrase I
saw in one of the orders: I will take off the Old info after a profitable offer, which is difficult to refuse ..
It's wonderful!
Then I did not know about the existenceelance.com , so the focus was on odesk.com : I got a Payoneer card , tied it to Paypal. Preparing a profile on the exchange took time. Not with a snap, in about two weeks I prepared a profile and calmed down for a while.
Start
Autumn came, I began to think about a trip to Asia. It turned out to fly away only at the end of December. After a month of rehabilitation and travel, I settled in the windy (kite, windsurf) Vietnamese village of Mui Ne, I decided to seriously engage in task number one: access to full self-sufficiency through freelance.
After immersing myself in a job search on odesk.com, interesting details emerged :
- Rating. He must be high always.
- There is not much work for the javista, especially if you are not developing for android.
- Job search in an unpopular specialty is a non-trivial task.
Rating - here the situation is completely similar to ebay.com - after a few negative reviews, people will simply stop dealing with you.
Job search - the fact is that on the exchanges the speed of response to work plays no less role than the ability to fulfill an order. This problem is especially acute for small orders with a fixed payment (and there will be no others at the first stage, since there is no rating).
A temporary solution was found - a simple service odkeeper.com in combination with mail filters allowed you to receive 10-20 interesting letters per day.
Later, after a couple of months, I returned to this idea and created my own service of instant job notifications, aggregating data from all exchanges: lancemonitor.com. It was strange for me that not all freelancers use similar tools in their work. I am glad that so far several hundred freelancers have improved their approach to finding work with my help.
Work
At odesk.com, each user has a fixed number of opportunities to respond to a job offer per week: about 20 bids. This limitation cultivates a conscious approach to communication with the customer.
I do not analyze other strategies, here is my approach to finding great orders and interesting projects:
- I always delve into the customer’s problem, ask additional questions.
- I propose an approach to solving the problem, indicate the difficult places, list the stack of technologies that will be used.
- I undertake interesting projects for me
- I don’t count a penny, don’t get nervous after failures and don’t rush for a new job. A lot of work, I'm alone.
- Each file and misunderstanding with the customer is a way to ask yourself questions, how you could beat the situation, how you could get out of it win-win (the presence of the rating factor ennobles!).
- I work honestly. I do not have fake profiles, left cards, I do not direct my thoughts in search of a dirty trick and ways to cut corners.
One answer to a job offer takes me 10-20 minutes, it immediately shows what level I possess, as well as the degree of my understanding of the customer's needs and involvement in his task.
The dynamics of work was something like this:
- 10 small orders from 50 to 500 dollars, fixed price (payment by the exchange is not guaranteed), easy dumping to attract attention. I came to the sad option of self-sufficiency: about $ 1000 per month, I worked relatively hard.
- The first hourly project, $ 15 per hour, test task optimization of a small subsystem.
- The second hourly project, $ 20 per hour, worked for 2 months, quit.
- The third hourly project, $ 25 per hour, I continue to work with the first customer, now as senior / architect.
Experience
Work among palm trees, under the gentle sun and with exotic fruits on a plate ... Everything is true, and everything is bullshit!
It is important to understand that working on freelance is primarily a job. You will need willpower and concentration so as not to return home after three months with empty pockets. It’s not that you don’t want to work abstractly. Today I don’t want to work, but tomorrow I want to. No, it can be much more interesting - you will find such people, a company, an approach to life, communication and relationships that the real pleasure of life will be constantly demolished from the workplace. Happiness is an interesting test, you have to prioritize and be flexible.
Backside on a chair, and preferably in a chair at a normal table, convenient, comfortable, non-hot workplace, normal lighting, stable Internet ... You’ll have to look for it all! Daily office pleasures are usually not enough, you begin to appreciate them. Especially the internet. A 3G modem that works well is already a success.
By the way, travel and work are almost completely incompatible. You can work seriously with the hourly rate if you move once a month or two, but not more often. In addition to the obvious difficulties of the working environment, there are non-obvious things such as the need to look around. It’s just hard to come and sit exactly on the spot without having a break in a couple of days around the district.
Communication. Lack of communication greatly affects the mood and motivation. Being a rather easy and sociable person, I still had to revise, improve, facilitate the approach to new people.
Want to become a tanned biryuk? There is nothing simpler, and I saw this: The
mise-en-scene: Bali, the ocean, waves.
Groundhog Day: Surfing in the early morning, udalenka 8 hours for Russia (i.e. communication in Russian), surfing in the evening, dinner, surf the Internet.
And so for several months in a row ... Thank you, I'd rather work in the office than that.
Summary
When people ask me how I spent time in paradise Asia, I laugh.
This is not your two-week vacation, this is your life. With all the fears, self-reproaches and fate, cockroaches and chips, dreams and realities. Just in the new scenery. A little less emphasis on the material, a little more questions for yourself.
How did you live in paradise Asia in the winter?
How did you live in paradise Russia in the spring?
How did you live in paradise Ukraine in the summer?