fakeElonMusk

I could have done a SEP but AFAIK the only difference is supposed to be less expenses vs. a 401k, but my 401k plan admin has very low fees. Also not sure if the SEP allows for a pre-tax benefit for the employee.

Similar to a few other comments, I use Intuit payroll (Gusto might be better in terms of UI and support) and pay myself as an employee through S-Corp. Every US freelance should structure things this way IMO, so that you can take advantage of 401k contribution and company match. You can match up to 50k roughly and that match is a business expense, so you get the money plus a deduction. As you said, this is reaping the benefits of regular employment, with the additional benefit of being able to crank up the company match in years where you make more (or can pay yourself less).

In terms of cash management, I do quarterly transfers to Vanguard which is the 401k admin. Then 1-2 times per year I pay myself a close approximation of my final S-Corp distribution (plus regular monthly payroll).

I have used or looked into past and existing services that attempted some or all of these features. Every client project is different and a client typically already has their own preferred stack for communication, onboarding and payments. As a freelancer, I already use services like Gusto and Harvest and don't want to consolidate into a single platform (they do what they do very well).

So the only thing you can really offer that freelancers would pay for is really good leads. IMO that will be very hard to package as a SaaS service. Look at LinkedIn Pro Finder - it takes a "client" 2 minutes to fill out a project request and about the same for a freelancer to respond. Most people are just messing around, very few are serious or have a real budget or project.

I know people who pay individuals (also freelancers) to find leads and generate business. You could do that but how do you scale it? If you charge a monthly fee then how long will people stay signed up without any leads? If you charge a percentage based on a project, how do you verify the cost of the project? What if it's hourly for an indeterminate period?

As far as how much we make it varies from small projects in the 20-30k range to over 100k for bigger projects.

I have the same problem. I'm lucky enough that my network of former colleagues and existing clients has provided steady work. One example - a high level person at a startup I still work with, left for another position. I made sure to stay in touch with him, if only by connecting on LinkedIn. He gave me some project work when he started his new role. There is a lot of turnover in tech (assuming that's what you are doing) so staying in touch is essential.

Search out colleagues who you have worked with, even if you didn't work directly for them. If they know you they should be in your network. I have gotten referrals from colleagues I worked with 8-10 years ago, because I stay in touch and periodically say hi or comment on their posts. You can do all of this from your couch.

I'm a LinkedIn pro, which I don't think has any additional value other than being able to cold message people. Look for companies hiring for your niche segment and then see if you have any 2nd degree connections. If not use one of your 15 InMail credits. Try to connect and let them know that you are available in case they ever need freelancers/contractors. Most of the time this will yield nothing but it's worth trying if you have nothing else to do.

I've always wondered about this as well. Seems like the iOS blogs / podcasts are more well known or are somehow surfaced more prominently. Same w iOS conferences - there just seems to be more of them. For example there was a Kotlin conference in Amsterdam a few weeks ago and I had no clue about it.

I occasionally check the Android developer blog and yt channel - https://www.youtube.com/androiddevelopers https://android-developers.googleblog.com/. Have not checked out Fragmented but will do so.

I subscribe to https://talk.objc.io/. Highly recommend it.

Former Bay Area tech worker here, also working remotely now from Central Europe. IMO if you are already making SF money and working remotely, you have it made. Keep saving 10k and enjoy a more relaxed life. Your kids can learn English from youtube, duoLingo and Khan. Maybe your city has an American School or something equivalent.

You have to decide if career climbing is what you really want, because along with that comes long hours, stress, likely a lot of business travel and other headaches. Personally I don't have a hard time keeping up w new tech and to fix the working alone thing I work at a co-work space. I get as much social interaction as I want.

If you really want them to be in a native English environment then move to the US but not the Bay Area. cost-of-living arbitrage! You can literally live anywhere since you are already remote. The US is full of beautiful areas, just take your pick.

Re: ageism, it will be the worst in the Bay Area. Other places are more open to workers with experience.

You can get work from gigster or upwork but you will not make the rate you should be making. They have access to the clients - find your own clients and charge hourly or weekly, 2-3x per hour what you made as an employee. As everyone else has said, use your network. That's the best way to get good work.

this is a brilliant concept, seems really useful for anyone prepping for a technical interview.

Location: Prague

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Swift, Java, Android, iOS, Obj-C, Python, Django, Flask, SDK development, some MEAN / React js, Spring MVC, Hibernate, no sql, MySQL, postgresql

Résumé/CV: www.mutable.co

Email: anthony@mutable.co

Freelance software engineer working on iOS, Android, Java and some Python / React JS. I've built apps, SDKs and APIs for startups and established companies in IoT, Alternative Energy and Consumer Internet.

Developer and co-creator of the glitch camera app Defqt. http://www.defqt.com/

We left the Bay Area two years ago and went to Prague. I miss Philz and Blue Bottle but we are pretty happy here. Similar scene as Berlin - not quite as nice but cheap with lots of green space everywhere. If your wife has an EU passport you should be fine anywhere in Europe. I'm freelancing for clients in the Bay Area and east coast (software eng) so I'm lucky to have best of both worlds.

I would imagine you have a good network of people in tech so you could probably transition to freelance work and live anywhere. Email me if you want to discuss. Co-work spaces here are anywhere from $100 - $500/mo. Internet is so blazing fast it's ridiculous - 300mbs on ethernet in our apartment. What we had in SF was pathetic.

Condo prices in central Prague are about $4,500usd/m2 - so 500k usd will get you a nice 2 bedroom in a really nice neighborhood. For the same money you can move 20 minutes by train outside the center and get a small house with a yard.

If you are leaning towards Europe the best tech scenes IMO are in Berlin, Amsterdam and Barcelona. Barcelona has really been picking up in the last few years and is probably the cheapest.

I have been donating to Doctors Without Borders for many years. Also local humane society and food bank. I pay monthly for NYTimes, Medium, Netflix, HBO and additional cloud storage.

Hi - I had a similar idea (for a different industry) but was concerned about spam and how to verify if the jobs are even real. Are you checking each submission manually? Looks good, nice job!

There are lots of online resources for learning Android - Pluralsight, Udemy, Treehouse and going through the Android dev basics site

https://developer.android.com/training/basics/firstapp/

Not sure what you mean by "clean". APIs and Frameworks are always evolving. You have to keep up to date and understand the main problem sets that are part of the platform (loading Bitmaps efficiently, activity lifecycle, etc.). And no Fragments are not being discontinued. You are probably referring to the guidelines to use the support Fragment library instead of the older Fragment classes.

I build mobile apps for a living and if you want long term stability and performance, my advice would be to go native with Java/Kotlin. If you ever want to build for iOS it's not that hard to pick up Swift/XCode - the platforms become more and more similar as they evolve.

There are plenty of people using RN and maybe Flutter too but all the mobile devs I know who work for clients and / or ship their own apps use Java / Swift.

Feel free to comment if you have more questions.

Enjoy!

I have an iOS glitch camera app making around $500/mo most months https://itunes.apple.com/app/defqt/id817026377 - app is featured in some China photography lists and Apple recently requested promo assets for a feature, although they have not featured it yet. The only marketing is on IG, just posting images from the app and from other Defqt users. Been in the app store since 2014. My main income is as a freelance iOS and Android app developer. It's really a niche app so unless we get featured by Apple it will stay small. Ranking in the app store is a nightmare and outside of spending your way into rankings, you are left with the coveted Gold Standard of getting Editor's Pick from the Cupertino gang.