Anybody wants to order programming work ?

What can you do?

The "gig economy" is knocking on the doors of s.e.d. So now the conversations go - - - - - - - - - "Hey I'm a programmer for hire"

"What can you do?"

[Silence - "programmer" was deemed enough] or "Just tell me what YOU want done & I 'll let you know if I'm interested"

- - - - - - - - I get the impression, having seen many new faces come & go in the IT divisions, that since projects are broken down into several very short term tasks (sprints), it supports these "new ways of business." They are hired as contractors, no benefits, no protections, etc. They know or will quickly learn whatever language or system thrown at them ( but only very little ramp-up time is probably tolerated).

I worked contract/consultant, whatever you want to call it, in the '80s. You never discussed your hourly rates with the permanent employees. What they wouldn't factor in was the lack of benefits, long term security, and so forth. When you're self employed you pay the half of the SS tax the employer pays for direct, your insurance and other expenses, plus laying aside money for the slack period.

Programming is a bit different than other disciplines. I know jack about the chemistry of pH electrodes, tantalum capacitor production, the physics of semiconductor sputtering systems, and so forth, but given the outline of the transform from the inputs to the desired output I can make it happen and do it in most common programming languages.

Good technical writers are similar. They know how to produce a coherent document without necessarily knowing anything at all about the field prior to starting.

It does make the initial interview challenging. Your selling point is you know absolutely nothing about the client's current problem but you have a track record of being a damn fast learner.

All that said, it does help if you throw out a little bait other than 'I'm a programmer'. That's ultimately why I went back to being a direct employee. I really suck at fishing for work and don't enjoy it at all.

***** Kristjan Robam ******** Telephone: (372) 5 3 9 0 0 6 6 0 ***

What can you do?

This guy has been hanging out on comp.lang.php, posting code snippets for things no one seems to care about. He doesn't come across as very mature.

Jeroen Belleman .

Not a place I frequent. php should have stayed Personal Home Page and died an early death. Like Perl it can get the job done in a quick and dirty fashion but tends to degenerate into an unmaintainable can of worms.