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Comment by forloop | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I'm learning to code in Python, and once I do will probably work for $3 per hour doing remote work via a freelancing site. At the moment I'm going through Flask— which shouldn't take more than a couple of days to grok at a basic level. I made a CRUD site a few years ago, so it's not like I'm starting for zero.

Anyway, working for below minimum wage is economically rational. Once I have more experience I'll command more money, or create products for myself.

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Don't go that way. Seriously. It's better to offer your services for free to local non-profits than work for peanuts. The main thing is that clients who pay the lowest also treat you the worst. You'll meet a lot of unreasonable demands and overally crappy people while working those very low wage projects.

Go to your local non-profits and offer them your services for free. Be clear that you're just learning and that's why you'd make them a web page or an intranet app for free. You'll get to learn, some feedback, more or less honest customers and karma points. Once you got experience and portfolio, you can go after the better paying projects (~$10/h or so) that are run by sane people who will treat you well.

Source: Started freelancing back in high school, almost 10 years in business.

I learned web programming by building an e-commerce site from scratch in Perl the late 90s. When all was said and done, my partner and I split $2k, which brought my hourly rate to $1-$2/hour. But for 10 years I made $55-$75/hour maintaining that thing - which I hadn't really foreseen I just wanted to learn web programming. The point is it can be worthwhile.

I think we're talking about different things. Did you do freelancing on Elance/Odesk/etc?

I agree that doing a useful real world project for learning is great. If you get paid for it, it's even better. But cheapass clients on those websites are usually a different kind. People want to have a {popular thing} clone or {popular thing} meets {another popular thing} and don't really understand neither what they want from the freelancer nor what they want as the final delivery. Of course, there're good but cheap projects on those marketplaces as well. But as a beginner, it's way too use to stumble upon let's say... not very pleasant clients. Thus if money is not the issue, I'd recommend going the non-profit way instead. They at least know what they want and usually appreciate your work.

Thanks for the input.

I was looking at jobs for Flask/Django devs yesterday. The compensation is quite impressive.

Assuming the job market is similar in a couple of years, I should be fine. And even if it doesn't, I'm interested in creating my own products.

Edit: Grammar.

If they pay by the hour, then I don't care if they want me implement odd requests.

I need some money. Not much. $3 per hour is more than enough—since I have another source of passive income.

I've done a little web design freelancing in the past, so know what to expect. The worst part about freelancing is feature creep, IMO. Which isn't an issue, if I get paid per hour.

I've thought it through. I'm in the UK and could get a minimum wage job with way higher pay. But that wouldn't be coding or making products.

That's cool if you know what to expect. Per-hour is not the answer to all problems though. I had clients who were very picky about the hours logged.

Make sure to check Freelancers' thread on HN on the 1st of the month.

> I had clients who were very picky about the hours logged.

I code 7 days a week, so even if that happens I'll still clock a decent number of hours. That would be a bit of a deal breaker, though.

> Make sure to check Freelancers' thread on HN on the 1st of the month.

Thanks for the tip!

Surely you are trolling? $3 or pounds per hour in the UK? If you have enough brains to learn coding or a web technology, you have enough brains not to do that. I think I've been trolled.

> $3 or pounds per hour in the UK?

USD.

> If you have enough brains to learn coding or a web technology, you have enough brains not to do that.

I'd rather do that than a non-coding job for more money. In the long run, I think I'll be better off.

Hey man...this is crazy to me that you would do dev work for $3 per hour. If you put your contact info in your profile I'll send you a month's salary at that rate if you promise to spend that month leveling up properly instead of doing annoying / one-off / generally shitty work for poorly-paying clients. Trust me, the people who are only willing to pay $3/hour are not who you want to be working for. Once you're good you should be able to find a job paying at least 10x that, so you'll be able to pay me back with a day or two of work.

You are one generous person!

I'd rather do the work. I intend to code in my free time, so can level up regardless.

Thanks a ton for the offer, anyway!

If you are serious about the offer - I would take it. I could explain it in detail via email as to why, but it really boils down to motivation and having somebody who supports you. Currently I'm learning Rails, and I'm having no luck landing a job, since there are so few opportunities in my city. Your help would mean a lot to me, because I'm pressured by just about everybody around me to find any job, just anything really. It stresses me out - I want to finish my projects and start applying to companies again. All I need is one month, and yet I don't have it. You could give me one month! I'll promise doing at least one meaningful commit a day, and I'll even start a blog and everything. If you were kidding then nevermind, I just had to try, since that is probably better than working for people who pay $3/h.

I was serious, but unfortunately a fresh account triggers too many warning flags for me. Good luck in your studies.

I think this is a problem with the industry as a whole. You're generally not very valuable as a new, junior, or in-training developer, so to go from no knowledge to a place where you can learn and earn is tough. However, this creates a squeeze for proficient senior developers. The industry creates a bottleneck for early-career developers that restricts the supply of mature developers, which affords these developers very high market value.

It's not surprising to me that there are ads like this or sites where people can and do willingly work for $3/hour (and not just because their cost of living is lower), while at the same time the higher end of the market starts at nearly 6 figures fully loaded. The market wants senior developers, but doesn't want to invest in junior dev to get there.

If there wasn't a bottleneck, then senior devs wouldn't get paid as much. The bottleneck is similar to an economic moat[0]. Economic moats and durability are attractive.

[0] http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/120912/what-is-an-econo...

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