Ask HN: How do you find part time work?

Long time freelancer here (decades). I&#x27;ve gotten 99% of my contracts through word-of-mouth. You will get better long-term results than simply grinding through job boards (which you should still do--you never know). You will want to do two things:<p>1) Cultivate your existing network. Just the other day I reconnected with a friend I haven&#x27;t seen in several decades. Guess what? He just so happened to be a software dev, and needed another dev to help him with a project. This is just one of many, many stories I have. Call or email people to see how they&#x27;re doing. Even better, meet up with them for coffee or a meal. This doesn&#x27;t have to be mercenary; you&#x27;re probably already doing those things. But start reaching deeper into your network.<p>2) Build your your network by meeting others in your field and&#x2F;or potential customers <i>in person</i> (e.g. at user groups, meetups, tech talks, etc.). Talk about what you do and love to do. Presumably that involves your skills that you want to get work in.<p>Finally, be consistent and reliable and communicate clearly.<p>As for selling yourself when you&#x27;re more of a generalist, I wouldn&#x27;t worry too much about this yet. The key will be when you&#x27;re presented with a job opportunity that leans in one direction (e.g. 90% dev, 10% management), and you&#x27;ll have to decide how far you&#x27;re willing to bend to fit it. But right now you&#x27;re just getting the word out.

Check out:<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fractionaljobs.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fractionaljobs.io&#x2F;</a><p>- HN - who wants to be hired<p>- Talk to people you have worked with.<p>- Keep your eyes open all times. E.g. I always pop into careers of a HN post, I keep a list of companies I am curious about. I do this even though I am not looking for a job.<p>- Negotiate - ask a FT job if they will do PT or contract.<p>- Find an agency to join as a contractor<p>[edited for clarity]

&gt; Ideally, I would get 10-15&#x2F;hr a week retainers, but project-based work is ok too. The key is that I can keep getting the work with consistency.<p>Work like this is more commonly described as freelance, consulting, or contracting.<p>If a job is advertised as &quot;part-time&quot; they&#x27;re usually expecting you to work every single one of those hours, unlike a retainer where you&#x27;re expected to be available for up to that many hours.<p>It may sound pedantic but it&#x27;s important to understand the difference when searching for roles. If you take a &quot;part-time&quot; job they&#x27;re generally going to want you to be working for every one of those hours, even if you have to find your own work to do. If you treat it like a retainer job where you&#x27;re only expected to be on-call if they need you, you could run into some disappointment.<p>Using the right terms will also help you find roles that more correctly match your expectations.<p>True part-time work is hard to find because most companies would rather hire someone to work 4 x 40 hour weeks on a project instead over the part timer who wants to do it in 8 x 20 hour weeks or 16 x 10 hour weeks.<p>This leaves work that is sporadic and spread out, or companies that have a need but can&#x27;t fit full-time compensation into the budget right now. That&#x27;s a hint for the type of work and companies you&#x27;ll need to seek out. Trying to pitch yourself as a valuable contractor who needs 3-4X longer to finish a project due to your short workweek isn&#x27;t a winning strategy for most jobs.

&gt; How do you sell yourself if you&#x27;re more of a generalist like me?<p>I focus on small firms. They don&#x27;t have the resources or amount of work to hire a full-time (or multiple full-time) person for each role. If you can do many roles well, they don&#x27;t have to source&#x2F;vet a super-part-time person for each role.<p>&gt; leaving me time and flexibility to work on my own project.<p>I think there&#x27;s a bit of give-and-take there. Early on I try to look extra hard for any opportunity to show I can be flexible if they need something, and give them no reason to doubt my ability to deliver. Pretty soon trust is established, and I have all the time and flexibility I need to work on other projects alongside.<p>&gt; The key is that I can keep getting the work with consistency.<p>My experience is my clients often don&#x27;t know beforehand how long-term&#x2F;consistent the work will be. But if I&#x27;m reliable and helpful, it usually turns into a long-term relationship.<p>&gt; How are you finding part-time work?<p>HN seeking freelancer thread (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=whoishiring">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=whoishiring</a>) got me a particularly nice gig, also meetups, and most of all staying in touch with people I&#x27;ve worked with before. For the latter two, I try to focus on quality over quantity. The handful of people who know me well, tend put me in touch with better matching gigs than the large group of superficial contacts.<p>Cold-emailing&#x2F;cold-calling companies that look like they may be a good fit, also worked. Personally I find it a bit draining so I avoid cold-anything if I can.

1. Networking and keeping contacts. Not LinkedIn which I have found to be completely useless and full of lunatics and weirdos. Good old fashioned email and exchanging details when you work with other people. Check in with people occasionally to remind them you still exist. I have to turn work away.<p>2. Mostly bullshitting people then winging it.

If you are asking this question, probably the best answer for you is old fashioned sales&#x2F;marketing.<p>Relatively high paying jobs usually fulfilled via network, which happens the way you described (&quot;land in my lap&quot;).<p>You need to do marketing activities to extend your network, so more work lands in your lap.<p>In person works best if where you live has opportunities for this. Try chamber of commerce if there is one. They usually have lots of events for local business owners where you can meet with many potential customers.<p>Try cold emailing otherwise, it has the best ROI when done right.<p>Bonus points: This skills will be needed to get the project you are working on off the ground too.

A lot of people will say &quot;word of mouth&quot; without defining it.<p>The key is to have regular <i>but not annoying</i> conversations with prospects. Don&#x27;t put them on a mailing list (unless you&#x27;re somehow uniquely interesting and cool, I guess) but send them personalized emails every so once in a while - these can be &quot;oh I thought you&#x27;d find this interesting&quot; (and it has to actually be interesting to them) or just a short hello reminding them that you&#x27;re always looking for work. And I mean SHORT. &quot;Hey just checking in, really enjoyed working with you, please keep me in mind if you&#x27;re looking for help!&quot;<p>I&#x27;ve tried it all, from personal CRMs to complex alerting and the bottom line is that nobody&#x27;s going to do the extra work to get you involved unless they have a no-pressure, friendly connection with you.<p>Most of my high-paying and regular clients we just text message, maybe once every six months or so. Casual, friendly, no pressure is the key.

I&#x27;ve always been craving freelance&#x2F;part-time&#x2F;project-based gigs so that I could live with the dream of building my side projects into a real business. Back in my home country, I built a good network of clients&#x2F;co-workers and it was working relatively well until we relocated to another country and the work visa forced me to become full-time. After a few years, about 2 years ago I was free, so I started from scratch, now in a different country. It didn&#x27;t take me too long to find out the rules are the same everywhere.<p>Now, I&#x27;m marketing myself as a Fractional Head of Engineering for small teams[1]. This is a kind of generalist hands-on role and a good position for small businesses, but it won&#x27;t work for large organizations which usually have better budgets.<p>Regarding finding gigs, as everyone mentioned, networking is the best though it takes huge effort and time IMO. But it&#x27;s 100x more efficient than applying in generic job boards or freelance marketplaces (which are the worst in my experience). However, some specialized boards have worked well for me. Like HN whoishiring posts for freelancers[2]. I actually built a super simple tool[3] to hunt part-time&#x2F;freelance&#x2F;contract jobs from HN. I found one good client using it within two months.<p>BTW, Though it&#x27;s rare, I ended up finding another fractional gig by advertising myself in the same HN whoishiring thread.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amirkarimi.dev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amirkarimi.dev&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;submitted?id=whoishiring">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;submitted?id=whoishiring</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fraction.works&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fraction.works&#x2F;</a>

Just wanted to share that I&#x27;ve found part-time roles hard to get by. It seems companies mostly look for full-time employees.<p>This is unfortunate because it makes harder to keep working on personal projects on the side, because you either have to make them lucrative to let you work on them full-time, or you have to squeeze them during night-time, when you are tired from daily work.

After becoming sick of Upwork and the likes, a bunch of us started the Dutch Freelance Collective - dutchfreelance.org - to find local, freelance projects.<p>This has worked out well till now. I recommend finding local gigs, wherever you may be.

1) It will probably not be &quot;consistent&quot;, so you need to ask for more pay than you require, so you can last through the droughts.<p>2) Your best opportunities are places you&#x27;ve already worked, because they know you and you know at least some of their infrastructure, code base, etc.<p>3) Very small companies are more likely to need a generalist, and be unable to pay for a full-time on-staff person. You will need to let a lot of small companies know what you can do, and spend a lot of hours doing that, which no one will pay you for.

I have found that the most lucrative work is when something needs to be done ASAP!<p>I&#x27;m happy to work 60-80 hours a week to deliver a specific result. Generally over a period of 1-3 months. I charge like a plumber&#x2F;lawyer. So there&#x27;s usually a pause of a month or two between gigs. Averaged out over a year or more it does look like part-time.

I believe in today&#x27;s day and age if you are freelancing and you aren&#x27;t writing and producing content everyday around your POV and skills and offering than you won&#x27;t find work consistently. It&#x27;s a way for others to validate your abilities and get a glimpse into, well, YOU.<p>I had a solo consulting business for 4 years before I started doing this, since I started writing everyday the world has opened up and I have more opportunity than ever. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aletterfor.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aletterfor.com&#x2F;</a> is my substack.

As someone in b2b enterprise software realm - Product Lifecycle Management specifically - I&#x27;m not seeing any avenues for remote gigs. I&#x27;ve over 15 yrs. of exp. including at bigTech in US, and recently left my bigtech full-time job and relocated to India. It feels like barring visa-constraints, it would have been a lot easier to find PLM&#x2F;Eng-Systems gigs while in the US. Any advice for someone in my situation - I&#x27;d love to still live here and not relocated for a job again! Tx!

I feel your pain<p>My cross over is Finance and tech. I get all the time, &#x27;I really need someone like you&#x27; but never a solid commitment.<p>I had to change jobs earlier this year and all these contacts evaporated! I really would like to help a series of companies rather than just one for 5 years at a time.

Never tried but try finding really small companies (&lt;20 employees - the fewer, the better).

The arrangement you are looking for is typically for people who have contributed to an organization for decades, have a lot of organizational knowledge, and are close to retiring.<p>- working part-time primarily solves a problem for you, not the employer.<p>- pay is not a linear function of time. your value drops when you aren’t available during working hours or skipping initiatives, etc.<p>- you are signaling to the organization that you’re not really into their thing and to yourself that you are not willing to take risk on your own thing (Paul G writes about this).<p>I would advocate for working hard full-time to capture your full value, and then take time off to do other things.

I found a couple of small projects on upwork, and also got scammed on upwork, so be careful.<p>I left a job after 12 years, and a couple of years later got re-hired on a part time retainer basis to help fix mistakes that have crept into the product, and to help support current and prospective customers. Nice gig, zero pressure.<p>I agree with others that networking helps land jobs, especially in the borderless internet era where people from all over the world are competing for work. It’s a race to the bottom.

To become a freelancer you first need to be a professional with a lot of work experience. Then you can start doing some freelance on the side and make it grow. It&#x27;s very difficult to start your career as freelance.<p>To find part time job you first need to be able to find a job at all.<p>Basically no matter what, it all begins with getting work experience, probably full time, then after that you can start looking for part time or freelance.

mmh, i see here some new &quot;term&quot;, or new meaning of old term.. that might be useful.. that <i>fractional</i> thing.<p>You know, being a generalist, and helping some company, means you are 5&#x2F;8 of something, 1&#x2F;3 of another, 1&#x2F;7 of yet another, and 3&#x2F;10 of... And These don&#x27;t have to sum up to 1.0, they are in different dimensions.<p>It&#x27;s like wearing-many-hats at same time (i think this was the wording so far), but this way may be better. As you may be at 100% a CTO today but not being the best-specialized-CTO-ever, and 30% tester tomorrow (this time being the best possible tester), and a little bit of architect in the meantime, and code something to try it out, and&#x2F;or fix a dreaded bug, etc..<p>And this fractional essence somehow aligns with my idea from few years ago that software-making as profession is being commoditized. Pick-n-match whatever is on display?. Interesting what will come after that.<p>But i have been staying away from the corporate highways &#x2F; market-squares ... and as marketing&#x2F;sales isn&#x27;t my thing.. even if it is about selling meself. Networking? hmm. not really working. 4 months already.<p>ah anyway. Have fun.

Honestly you’re better off finding a full time remote job at a slower paced company where it’s feasible to work on two things at once.<p>Part time work isn’t consistent and it pays so little it’s hardly worth it.

My company often hires for part time workers. It&#x27;s like multiplexing, there is a market for squeezing out some efficiency.

I&#x27;m a freelancer, which makes things much easier.<p>Usually, people ask me to work for them full time, and then I tell them I only do 30h&#x2F;week max and they&#x27;re usually good with that.

I have never worked in PT jobs, but as a contractor based in Mexico, I usually apply for remote positions on LinkedIn, particularly in SAP Commerce development.

This just rose to the top of HN today :)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fractionaljobs.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fractionaljobs.io&#x2F;</a>

from my experience, because of lucrative part time work, I lost almost all. I regret that I shouldn&#x27;t touched part time work instead, I should&#x27;ve built my own business as my several clients told me to do 5 years ago.

1, previous employer 2, based on my Kamal blog posts and making Kamal Handbook

i found some part-time work on reddit. it&#x27;s hard to work enough at that low amount of time each week so that the output keeps a manager happy.

Honestly, I am open to any Linux-related opportunity that comes my way: that number has been 0 lol

LinkedIn, then word of mouth.

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