cshipley

>This isn't MVNO-aaS. Its Antenae-aaS.

I think a lot of people are missing this point. This will not allow someone to become their own carrier. It allows someone to install their own "cell towers" and have devices connect to them without having to use a 3rd party carrier.

Well here, talk to me. I protest the travel ban. I think it is racist. Not middle America, but the president and his strategist.

I think a lot of other people who are for the ban aren't racist, just misinformed. A lot seem to think Muslim immigrant|refugee == terrorist.

One person told me "I'm for the ban because I don't want them to come and kill me and my family in our sleep."

I blame this perception on the people who seek to profit by the general hysteria, not those manipulated by it. I am sad for the victims of it.

I tend to agree. I only had luck when I described it as maintenance and estimated dollar or schedule costs for not addressing the issue. And then it was regarded as a one time fix as opposed to something that needed to be done on a routine basis.

In what way do you mean "freelancer". There are multiple types of freelance jobs.

"Freelance" can mean:

1) Working remotely as a contractor though a 3rd party agency.

2) Working remotely hourly or per gig for yourself.

3) Doing end-to-end project work. Start with designs, code, test, and submit as a package deal.

All have different ways of finding clients. However, they tend to follow a career progression in that same order. My career path did.

I advise you to think about freelancing, not as a developer, but a business owner. Consider the following:

* What sort of business entity are you going to have? All have trade offs, and specific obligations from a pure business perspective. One piece of advice that my accountant gave me: Just because you create an LLC with your state govt doesn't make you an LLC. From a court's perspective you have to act like it. In my state that requires Articles of Organization, an Operation Agreement and at least yearly documented meetings with the stakeholders.

* Learn how to protect yourself legally. This means find a lawyer and get a standard contract. Have an attorney review any contract before you sign it. Figure out a strategy for when someone doesn't pay, and how this strategy may change if they are local or remote. It is much harder to take someone out of state to court. I have turned down gigs because we couldn't come to agreement on contract language. One contract asked me to pay all court fees in the event the software led to any issues for their clients. (It was for a medical device.)

* Think about how you are going to charge. Hourly/by the project. Clients may ask for fixed prices and not-to-exceeds. There are a lot of opinions about this. Make an informed decision about how you are going to approach this.

* How are you going to sell yourself. Most of my work comes through word-of-mouth. Figure out your pitch, and how you differentiate yourself from competition. Reputation counts for a lot. Think about setting networking/sales goals. Expect the engagement process to take a long time, and not all of it to pan out. I've spend many hours trying to engage a new client, only to have them change their mind at the last minute. Account for this in your pricing.

* Expect feast or famine. Sometimes you may be sweating bullets because you don't have enough work and bills are coming due. Sometimes you're sweating bullets because several clients are wanting things all at once. Sometimes you may be working nights and weekends.

* As a small guy, you are the product. It pays to be a high quality product.

I am 49 and have a CS Degree, ~25 years experience. I run my own mobile/web development company out of my home, making more money than I ever have before. I've been in business for about 3 years and each year my revenue increases by 20-30% I am principle architect and coder.

In order to do this, I have had to learn new languages, frameworks and new ways of thinking about things. Some of those "new" things weren't difficult, they just required tweaking old ways of looking at things.

For example, older mobile devices are resource constrained. Having to think about conservation while coding isn't new. I started my career coding on shitty MS Dos system where if you had 640K of memory, it was a high-end machine. The tweaking comes in with the addition of other constrains such as battery life, coalescing radio usage and the fact that the OS can decide to shut down your app and restart it at any time, but the user's expectation is it should be the way the just left it.

Continually learning and reinventing myself is just the way things are now. If you haven't had to deal with that yet, just wait. It will come.

SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote/Portland Oregon

Looking for Xamarin Forms and/or PHP/Laravel developer for occasional load-leveling. We're a small dev firm and sometimes needs help when things get too crazy.

Please reply to curtis [at] saltydogtechnology [dot] com.

Alrighty. I sent an email.