ldollard

I'm in web development for my full time job. And now also in my consulting. But I now additionally do hosting, server management via VPS cloud software and moving into cloud storage.

Just doing whatever i need to do and learn to make more business.

I would even go so far to say that if someone asks if you can do something, just say yes, google is your friend and 9 times out of 10 you can figure it out, and then that new knowledge will open up more avenues.

username.exe

Interesting.
I take it you work with smaller clients/projects?

kins

Yes - I'm a self-employed web developer and if I only said yes to projects that I already knew how to do then I'd never have any work. That seems to be the nature of web development...

ldollard

Not entirely. I guess I dont just do web development because I also build out restaurant/office/warehouse networks, security and POS systems.

Build physical machines, desktops, render servers, regular servers.

To be honest the only things i dont do is program coding. Never had a head for it.

anotherlimey

Interesting. Thanks.

I've run into a few people using Google unfortunately. It didn't work out.

But then I had another experience with a larger company whose developers couldn't work out why they couldn't capture more funds on a credit card authorization than they had initially authorized.

username.exe

What kind of resources are you using?

Stack? Other forums?
I've been looking for a friendly Enterprise IT help type forum.

ldollard

OSNN is the forum I've used for years. But I hardly use any specific forum I usually just google the error or issue and go from there. Usually it'll just jog something in my head and I'm like "uh that's so obvious idiot" I enjoy insulting myself when working. Keeps me on my toes. Lol

I entirely self taught. But been doing it since I was 14. 36 now. I have a head for self teaching others need to be taught. I also can only learn by doing prob a mental defect. But one I know about. The benefits of it means I just get stuck in.

Steerpike

Agreed. The key thing is, to get started, you need to be flexible and need to work your ass off. Make damn sure that first project is a success and your customer is very happy, and don't necessarily charge for all the hours you put in. I use my judgement when deciding how many hours to bill. I recon that charging $125/hr assumes I know what I'm doing, so if I get work that I'm not very familiar with, I'll gladly sink a bunch of hours into the project to come up to speed, and only bill those hours that I think are appropriate - totally a judgement call.

Also, sometimes opportunities come up that you want to pursue and you know you don't have the skill, so you learn as you go and charge accordingly. 10 years ago I worked (full-time) for a Dev VP in a startup, doing all the infrastructure work (servers, networking, etc). We drifted apart, but 10 years later she remembered me as a hard working/resourceful guy and asked if I would set up the Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment for her new startup. I told her I didn't know anything about it but would learn. She preferred to give me the work based on my general work ethic and resourcefulness rather than give the work to someone who had the specific experience. So I put in dozens of hours of free time just coming up to speed, learning everything I could, and then built out her entire infrastructure on AWS - a skill that is now very valuable to me. I probably made a loss on that first AWS project but it has now become a great source of revenue for me.

If you do good work, and are flexible, it's amazing how people will refer work your way. You just have to be able to get started.

Steerpike

As you google your way around, I find that some sites keep coming up as helpful - stack overflow, spiceworks, etc. I've also found that google is so much better than bing or yahoo for finding answers; every now and then I find myself on someone else's machine where bing or yahoo are the defaults, and I can't find anything! This could of course be a matter of 'training' at this point ... I know how to make google work for me after a long period of trying.

ldollard

I seriously undercharge by a huge margin $50 p/h. But I also work full time elsewhere, so dont feel the need to charge more. Although obviously I should. In saying that though; I usually charge an agreed upon amount per project now than just per hour. I find clients much prefer this, and honestly so do I.

Re the AWS, even if you didn't charge anything, the learning experience and the ability to offer those services to others was payment enough I imagine.


This is totally true. Google is just significantly better. I used stack overflow a lot, I used to use spiceworks more, but it doesn't seem to come up in results much anymore.