I have many years of programming experience in the U.S. under my belt but when it comes to finding freelance work I'm completely in the dark. One of my fears is that unlike being an in-house developer, a freelancer is at risk whenever s/he attempts to find a new gig, of being treated as a low-cost commodity service without any attention paid to years of experience, diversity of knowledge, etc. Sites like odesk put an American programmer in the same ring with his/her lower cost counterparts in other areas of the world, many of whom are more than capable of competing in terms of skills and intelligence. What's a good way to look for freelance work (in NYC) without competing purely on cost?. Are there particular freelance websites that are more oriented towards dometic US projects and talent? I'm wondering whether anyone has used sites like http://www.rentacoder.com or http://www.elance.com/ or http://freelanceswitch.com/
They all seem to expose an American programmer to the problem I'm talking about. Are there any others I haven't heard of that might be more favorable?
1) Escrow based freelance sites are a scam. Rentacoder is an outright scam. Odesk will have a little nice timer on the desk and the project owner will be able to track your progress as 1second precision. Too micromanaged.<p>2) There is nothing inherently precious about an "American Programmer", Yourdon's 15 year old polemic notwithstanding.<p>3) Craigslist. Nice portfolio. Cocktail parties. You will end up doing software, hardware and websites, prepare for that. You will end up moving to the business side of things, asking management types what they need done and you will be writing tens of emails a day in correspondence, meeting people face to face and juicing software requirements out of one off-remarks that people make. You might also end up becoming an integrator or procure hardware and software licenses.<p>Just don't expect to write fancy systems software for a living and brush up on your PHP and system administration. It's a million-hat job.
For me it's been pretty simple- work with people who know your work, or show people your work. If you can establish some basis of trust, you'll be more than a rate. If you want to sell yourself, you have to network. Using those sites as the salesmen...well, let's just say they're the pimps.