Based on your skillset I would start to reach out to smaller businesses using a similar stack asking if they would be interested in a retainer package for all those little tweaks, e.g some custom WP code, shopify tweaks etc.
If you're going to be moving around Europe then having a "full stack" skillset is going to be the most advantageous - 3 month type gigs for devops are going to be much harder to find than MEAN stack roles, especially if you want to visit less startup centric countries/cities.
I agree that short breaks away from the "norm" is good, but this isn't really unique to startups - i'd wager that you could gain the same benefits by just taking a vacation than trying to relocate your startup + staff every X months.
Not sure I can really agree with much in this article, which seems to contradict itself (get more focused by not doing A and B, instead use your spare time for X and Y) and ignores that fact that getting close to your target audience and understanding their pain points isn't really going to happen if your sitting under an umbrella in Senegal.
Why not flip it and offer them your "standard NDA" with more reasonable terms? If they don't want to sign it due to having to incur legal expenses to check its all above board then they can't expect you to have to do the same with their NDA.
Although i'm unsure of the legality, you might want to add hackintosh/OSX86 setups in there as well, matching the right hardware combos is a big part of getting it all setup and the latest configs change often
Just tried to add a project and some of my thoughts
- you might want to mention more clearly that current posting projects is free
- Do you need to ask for address details just to post a project? I can understand when it comes to billing, but it initially put me off just to post a free project.
- You ask for a budget but i'm looking for someone for ongoing work, perhaps make this optional? I had to enter £0 to proceed
- the text boxes aren't resizable (FF mac) so its hard to re-read what you've just entered
Good luck and looking forward to some responses to my listing
due to the way the account was "handed over" to the attacker, it puts Twitter in a difficult position - they don't really want to open the floodgates of having to investigate every single request for intervention due to an alleged account hijack/ transfer made under duress etc.
I'd look to freelance yourself out to London agencies on the proviso that the majority of work is to be done remotely and that you'll be around for kick off meetings etc. Once they trust you you'll be able to switch this to pretty much 100% remote (possibly look to reduce your rate as a sweetener) and then just go to cheap SE asian country of your choice, doing visa runs every X months.
There is a large culture difference between different countries and you may as well spend some time in each to see how they fit before looking for a full time position
as others have said, earning 300-350 per day sounds great, but you need to factor in any "perks" your fulltime job has that contracting can't offer - pension contributions (start making your own) hardware (buy your own machine + software etc), training, paid holidays etc.
You will also find that some contracts are working on fucked projects where contractors are hired as a last resort/scapegoat and the work will be "get this done fast" rather than any quality product being delivered. Not saying it's all like that, but prepared to be jaded if you do this long term
I don't think this is a problem that can be solved via a technical solution to be honest. Personal recommendation can go a some way, but being able to vet developers for a specific role is something only the prospective employer can do.
Someone may be good at bashing out CRUD rails apps day and night and so anyone who uses them for this task is going to highly rate them, but that doesn't mean they're a good fit for your company, especially if you don't actually know what you need them for at the point of hire (especially true for non-technical founders).
Couple that with the fact that there's no motivation for 'better' developers to sign up to these services (as good devs are normally stacked up with work and have an existing network to hook into) and all you're left with is something similar to an odesk clone.
Some of this is awfully bad advice - why is it useful to work directly with multiple designers/developers rather than a single point of contact/project manager? isn't this pushing the project management onto the clients side?
As a developer do I really want the client being able to dominate all my time when I have multiple projects on the go at the same time?
It is with a heavy heart that I let you know that the PHP Fog service will be discontinued in December in favor of AppFog, which is PHP Fog 2.0. I am incredibly sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.
Creating PHP Fog has been an amazing experience for us and it could not have happened without you––thank you for your support. With your help, we’ve built an amazing PaaS for PHP developers. And along the way, we’ve applied what we’ve learned to creating our new product, AppFog.
AppFog is the future of our business, and we very strongly believe it is also the future of PaaS. So, in order to focus our team and efforts on continuing to build a better solution for developers, we will be shutting down the PHP Fog platform this coming January and focusing solely on AppFog.
We have considered this change very, very carefully because we understand that this could present challenges for some of our users. But in the end, we are confident that moving to AppFog will give you additional flexibility, additional languages, additional infrastructures, and the ability to deploy your apps to private cloud infrastructure as well as leverage the strengths of the OpenStack and Cloud Foundry ecosystems.
To help in the migration, we will do be doing everything we can to help this be as easy and painless as possible:
2GB of RAM in our Free Plan
We will be releasing a series of blog posts that walk you through the migration to AppFog.
We will also be publishing documentation of the migration path as well as solutions for some of the edge-case differences between the platforms.
To start with, we have created a migration FAQ that should help you begin the migration process.
I am committed to making AppFog a product that will make you look back at PHP Fog and think, “I’m really happy I switched.”
Full-time freelancer, working remotely (although able to make meetings in London) over 10 years of PHP experience, currently mainly working on Zend apps although have experience in wordpress, silverstripe etc. Previously worked with corporate clients (Lockheed Martin, Fujitsu Siemens, Barclays) as well as media one (one of the sites I was working on was featured on a Google Chrome TV advert). Lots of experience in eLearning.
Can handle frontend (CSS3/HTML5, JS templating etc) and so can quickly put together MVPs/prototypes for clients (currently doing this for a few other startups)
Really nice execution. I think that the core feature that is apparent when using the app (simplicity) is going to be one of the downsides of using it in a team based environment:
1)How do I know if someone on my team has completed a task, if you send out email notifications,I might as well use email.
2)How do I make the lists private to just my team?
3)How do I assign a todo or know who ticked that a todo has been done?
Its these sort of things i'd be looking for, but then you're left with another generic (if nice looking) team based todo list.
Have you thought of approaching someone else at your work if side projects are allowed? Add me to the list of interested but not quite sure what it is, if you're looking for a hand, let me know - contact details in profile - just finished an MVP for a client and about to start another.
Full-time freelancer, working remotely (although able to make meetings in London) over 10 years of PHP experience, currently mainly working on Zend apps although have experience in wordpress, silverstripe etc. Previously worked with corporate clients (Lockheed Martin, Fujitsu Siemens, Barclays) as well as media one (one of the sites I was working on was featured on a Google Chrome TV advert). Lots of experience in eLearning.
Can handle frontend (CSS3/HTML5, JS templating etc) and so can quickly put together MVPs/prototypes for clients (currently doing this for a few other startups)