Freelance Programming/Upwork discussion thread

[Asudem]

Greetings all,

The time has finally come. I am leaving my current office lackey job and am going freelance for a while while I attend school to pick up where I left off 10 years ago.

I would like to know who here freelances and if they have any tips.

I want to create my own work virtual machine, a separate machine I can use and can be monitor by my employer so they don't see all my icons, my weeb music playing in the background and such.

I also want to know something. Back in the day, you couldn't create commercial apps with the "Express" editions of Visual Studio. I only have Visual Studio Community. Do I need to upgrade my license to work for people?

[Ath]

Do I need to upgrade my license to work for people?

Googling for the VS Community edition license terms found me this: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/dn877550.aspx
In chapter 1 the use rights are clearly written down, you'll just have to apply that to your exact situation, to determine if you can use that edition.

[app103]

On upwork, it can be tricky to find decent employers that pay well and won't try to burn you, on one-off projects. Make sure you check their history and avoid ones that have no history of paying. Also, it's far better to land a contract with an hourly rate, than a flat rate one. When you check their history and reviews, check to see what they have paid people in the past, to avoid the "bargain hunters" that are looking to outsource at 3rd world rates.

If you really want to have a good source of steady income, long term, look for employers that want to send you work on an on-going basis, 6 months or longer, and pay an hourly rate. You can take a bunch of small contracts that are about 10 hrs or less per week to fill your time & pockets. If you lose one of these small contracts, it won't be such a punch in the wallet, while you look for a replacement.

Just don't grab a bunch of contracts at once, though. Sometimes they become more work than you initially anticipated, which is actually a good thing. If you wait a bit between accepting contracts, to see how their workload will be, it will keep you from biting off more than you can chew.

Make sure you fill out your profile, in full, listing all of your experience and skills, using the appropriate keywords that employers may search for. Add new skill keywords as you acquire them. Show some sort of portfolio with screenshots and other project info. Take any relevant tests on Upwork for your skillset, and make sure to take any and all tests related to written English skills. That alone will put you far ahead of others with similar programming skills. Experienced Upwork employers that have had to deal with contractors that lack English skills are more willing to pay more, just to have someone that they can easily communicate with. Any test in which you can score in the top 20% or higher will put you at the head of the pack.

And don't forget to list and link to any relevant experience acquired here on the forum, via coding snacks and NANY, if you have any. That's points in your favor, too.

Most of all, make sure you respond to any and all direct interview invitations within 24 hours, even if you are not interested in the job they are offering. How fast you respond to accept or decline interviews can work for or against you, with those that respond quickly getting more invites. Also, actively seek out work through their listings, rather than relying solely on your profile and direct invites to find work.

Good luck! I got a 6 month trial for a job, that lead to the best job ever, through oDesk/Upwork.

[Asudem]

Today was my first freelane job. I got it through Thumbtack, and I was so excited I won the bid. $20 to fix an error on someone's computer, slick deal right?

I had never seen such hidden rootkits before in my life, and fixing them remotely? What a royal pain. I spent six hours on the job and it's still not finished, as the original error is still present, which was what our terms for me getting paid were: to eliminate the initial error.

It's Windows Vista  and the error itself is one of the strangest things I've encountered in all my years as an IT guy. Basically the ability to "Open" files through their native programs fails. Windows Media Player -> File -> Open: The dialog shows but there are no folders or files, nothing in the dropdown, and unable to type in the file selection textbox. It's the same deal with Adobe Reader and any of the MS office products. The strangest thing is that if you try to open a recently opened file from a link on the dropdown menus, bypassing the file dialog, it results in an instant werfault.exe error.

I'm going to have to investigate this further and fix it so I can get my.... *sigh* $20.

[Stoic Joker]

I'm going to have to investigate this further and fix it so I can get my.... *sigh* $20.

Ouch man, that hurts.

I hate to ask ... But have you tried running sfc /scannow by chance?

I did a quick search and ran across this: http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/save-as-dialog-empty-grayed-out/ The dialog view reset scripts look promising.

[Asudem]

I'm going to have to investigate this further and fix it so I can get my.... *sigh* $20.

Ouch man, that hurts.

I hate to ask ... But have you tried running sfc /scannow by chance?

I did a quick search and ran across this: http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/save-as-dialog-empty-grayed-out/ The dialog view reset scripts look promising.

Always the go-to, sfc /scannow is one of the key essentials I run when something goes awry with Windows. In fact, it was one of the first things I wanted to run, but the rootkits were blocking it. So after the rootkit removal, did the scan and errors were "successfully" corrected, but the error remained.

And thank you for that link, the dialog box looks similar to what my client was getting but not exactly. This will be worth trying though, thanks!

[Asudem]

I don't normally reply to my own posts, but I thought this was worth a bump. Our second work session was about to start, and I text him letting him know I will be available at the scheduled time. He tells me the day after I worked on his computer his wife downloaded a bunch of viruses on the computer and it no longer functions. Why he failed to tell me this sooner, I do not know. What a tragedy.

[Target]

I don't normally reply to my own posts, but I thought this was worth a bump. Our second work session was about to start, and I text him letting him know I will be available at the scheduled time. He tells me the day after I worked on his computer his wife downloaded a bunch of viruses on the computer and it no longer functions. Why he failed to tell me this sooner, I do not know. What a tragedy.

so, the fix is to get rid of his wife (and collect $20...)

[Asudem]

so, the fix is to get rid of his wife (and collect $20...)

[wraith808]

so, the fix is to get rid of his wife (and collect $20...)

He might even give you a tip...!

[Asudem]

He might even give you a tip...!

No, but he did leave this textless, 1-star review to which I replied:

[wraith808]

He might even give you a tip...!

No, but he did leave this textless, 1-star review to which I replied:
[attachment 1 not found]

Unfortunately, most people don't read the replies.  There's a reason that they have an aggregate review scale on most of these places. 

[Asudem]

He might even give you a tip...!

No, but he did leave this textless, 1-star review to which I replied:
[attachthumb=1,msg399124]

Unfortunately, most people don't read the replies.  There's a reason that they have an aggregate review scale on most of these places. 

Meh, a single 1 star review, even verified, doesn't scare me. I just re-poked everyone's computers I've repaired before and requested again that they leave a review as soon as they can.