So, I grew up on the US/Mexican border, in a city where saying there's no opportunity is like saying the Titanic suffered a small leak on its maiden voyage. There were two kinds of people in said town: Mexicans trying to find something less shit than juarez and white trash reveling in their own failure. I came from the latter, for whatever that's worth.

I graduated high school when I was almost 16 years old. Parents couldn't really afford to support three kids and pay the rent on the latest in a long line of shit holes we migrated in and out of. If being a serial eviction artist is a thing, my family were savants.

I applied to college and got accepted only to be told by my father that he didn't see the need. Turns out the only reason he'd helped me graduate early was so I could start working and help pay his bills. I said okay, turned around and tossed a bag and my shitty af spare parts computer into the back of the junkyard Vega I generously referred to as a car and moved cross country. Car died on arrival, so I was basically committed.

Pulled shifts at two part times and what kids today call a side hustle to pay for school, couch surfed most of the time. Sleep deprivation was the only constant.

Over the first 4 months I'd tried leveraging some certs and previous experience I'd obtained in high school to get employment, but wasn't having much luck in the bay area. And then I lost my job. The book store having burned down on the same weekend the owner was conveniently looking to buy property in Vegas.

Depression sets in, that wonderful soul crushing variety that comes with what little safety net you had evaporating.

At a certain point, I was basically living out of the campus computer lab, TA friend of mine nice enough to accidentally lock me in on the reg. Got really into online gaming as a means of dealing with my depression. One night, I dropped some code on a UO shard I'd been playing around on. Host was local, saw the code and offered me a job at his firm that paid chump change, but was three times what all my other work did combined and left time for school. Ground there for a few years until I got a position with work study at LBL that conflicted too much for it to remain mutually beneficial. Amicable parting of the ways.

Fucking poverty is what convinced me to code for a living. It's a solid guarantee of never going back to it. And to anyone who preaches the virtues of it and skipping opportunity on grounds of the moral high ground, well, you know.

Best part of working from home? Oh boy, here I go

1. NO COMMUTE !! Fuck public transport. I can just grab my laptop straight to my bed, get comfortable and work in whatever posture I wish to.

2. Relaxation and peace of mind. The local park, library, football ground. I can go anywhere to get work done. All I need is my phone and laptop.

3. Better food - I can cook my own food. Dieting actually works by eating home-made food and not the fried bullshit we eat outside.

4. No office politics - Remote working means you don't have to think about being a circle and getting liked or not. Get your work done and that's it.

5. No "Extra" Activities - We all know HRs are just bored af people making employees have "fun" activities just to push a "culture" agenda on LinkedIn. Umm no thanks.

6. No toxicity - Well, this one is a doozie, you don't get workplace toxicity but you do get home toxicity. People assuming that you stay in ur room all day and do nothing. I'd still take home toxicity though.

7. If there is no work, I don't have to pretend that I am working and hiding my screen from my boss. I can just play video games in that time.

8. Option to start a side-hustle. You have more chances to retain some energy after your shift to start investing/putting time into something that can make you extra cash.

9. Worldwide opportunities - Because of WFH, I work with clients from Netherlands, Estonia, London and Cayman Islands. It never would have happened if I was in an office job.

10. Only work, no extra bullshit - be it smoke breaks, casual tea, conferences, work summits etc. None of that and I don't want it.

11. Your errands get done - Need to go to the dentist at 10 am? You can do that. Need to pick up your kid at 3 pm? You can do that. You need 5 pm time dedicated to go the gym? You can do that.

In conclusion, I absolutely vouch for WFH and would never take WFO for as long as possible.

WFH FTW !!!

So I just had this job interview with a "startup" (side note: who the fuck still calls limping companies "startups" in 2024? That is sooooo 2010s).

There was this tattooed and very pale girl (you just know the vibe), the mandatory Norse bearded tall guy and the balding, "I'm-in-my-fifties-but-I-am-not-a-square, maaan" sleasy-looking white guy in a button up shirt but no suit jacket. The whole stereotypes gang came looking for their missing nerdy Indian.

The sleasy bloke goes on and on on a looong tirade on how they're "a tech innovation academy", how they "move fast and break things" and they "run smoking hot", so that "long nights are to be expected".
So, they usual red-flagging shit.

Then they all went on a "but we're not like all those companies that look exactly like us" word salad about "sustainability and a healthy work life balance", with their "highest value" being "the utmost respect at all times". I'm nodding my head at the meaningless splurge until they fart out the sentence "for example, cussing while talking with colleagues is a fireable offence".

If some hustling enterprise rather prefers a posh working environment, one can adapt to such circumstances. Provided, of course, that said enterprise adheres to the administrative coherence expected from a culturally refined institution. Mostly by compliance, from the leadership, to a rigidly predictable working schedule.

Now, if the bloody curs want coder dogs that work assfucking hours with a shit eating grin, they better swallow our fucking sailor mouths. Fuck, I've done twenty hour shifts getting my ass kicked in dark startup fisting/rush rooms. If unable to yell at any blabbering cocksucker to go stick his fucking opinions up the bitch who crapped him, then I ain't gonna bloody be there.

TL;DR they can either have a "utmost respect" working environment XOR a "fast and hot" daily hustle.

After they crapped out that oxymoron I could barely hold myself to avoid saying "sorry, I do not partake in any of the psychedelics you must be on".
On to the next interviews!

!rant
tl;dr; quit my job last monday. going to grow my side hustle into full time freelancing.
I am so exited.

---
Story time:
I am working full time as a jack of all trades and also have a side business where I coach people on an ERP for doors/fenestration and also write custom software in c#.
I was able to manage both over ~4 years, with customer amount slowly growing (only doing B2B).

Last month I opened an account at a freelancer website just for the lulz and damn after a short amount of time the orders exploded. I had to shut it down again because I cannot manage the amount of work. But did manage to win a fair amount of customers that will keep me busy for the next year or two.

Spoke to my employer and told them about the situation (they know about my side business and it's all mentioned in the contracts). Said that I would need half the amount of hours with my business to reach the same amount of money and that working as an employee makes no sense for me in terms of money. I would however like to work 1 to 2 days in a week for them because working there is fun, even when its financially uninteresting.

they took one week to prepare a position and then invited me to a meeting. "we offer you 32 hours a week. if you want more, you have to make a descision. As a self employed person you have risk and we as an employer do not want to carry that risk for you and we do not want to finance your self employment" (etc.)

Thought I am in the wrong movie. I took that into the weekend and thought a lot about what has been said.

And last monday I invited to a follow up and told them

"sorry, I think I was not clear enough. Working for you is of no interest in terms of money. You do not finance me, it's the other way around. Sadly we do not come to an agreement, as 8 hours less does not fit the need. You said I need to make a descision. I do not want to do this but I'm quitting".

They responded with "Oh that is sad to hear. Is there anything that we can make so you do not leave?"

"Either pay me the same I would make as a self employed or follow my conditions"
Did not get a response on that.

I now have three months to prepare myself for self employment.
Currently working 40h + growing side business + getting the whole german bureaucracy shit together.

Tough time but hell this feels so damn good.

Just wanted to share this :)

Friend and I work on some side hustle. He does most of the content work, I just manage the tech stuff and pay for infrastructure. Domain renewal is upcoming too, so yeah...

He has refused to adopt project management methodologies and task tracking tools multiple times and it's becoming a real problem since I am paying for infrastructure and there are no plans for generating income. There was, but it's vaguely defined and I have no fucking idea what he's working on. I ask, but it's always vague AF.

I have no idea where this thing is going and I barely have time to work on it. Two weeks before I am writing exams, he asks me to urgently help with a project he's behind on due to power outages. I just fucking can't, I have too much other things on my plate right now.

Gonna have to have a sitdown, I can't keep spending money like this and not have a damn roadmap for planning things.

Several years ago, I heard from a friend who was doing assignments for students on the side. Quite a hustle. His story began when he wanted to figure out why can't these students be able to draw their own database tables, relationships, UML, etc. That's what school has to be teaching them and then he was told that they were learning through MS Access. He goes and tell me that even though this is a lame way of teaching database design, its definitely easier to explain through hands-on and less typing mistakes, as according to the lecturer he met. Making the explanation more visually appealing and helpful for understanding.

OK I get it, but somehow that taught them the wrong way of database design from the beginning. I'd prefer getting them to start writing SQL commands from day 1 and play em at some DB VM. Keep em as real as it gets.

Now I have my own students asking for help in their assignment and also asked for tutoring lessons in web development. So I gave them the crash course in HTML, CSS and Javascript. I've asked them if they've used anything of what I taught them in school. They go and tell me that they've been taught web development through Wordpress. Oh WTF!? I havn't talked to their lecturer yet but it better be a really good explanation to teach these youngsters in a flawed and bloated PHP CMS framework for "web development".

People here working your own business or side hustle:

1) How long have you been doing it?

2) What kind of tech stack do you use in your product(s)?

3) Are you happy with your business endeavor or has the grass become greener elsewhere?

4) What is the most important thing you have learned from it that you wish you knew when you began?

I have been a professional Dev for about a year for a cyber security startup. Unfortunately, startup died do to finance mismanagement. My lead Dev said that he wanted to start a co-op contract business and since we all work great together than we should stick around. So we tried to obtain contracts and it is going much slower than imagine. I am going on my second month of no work or contract work. I'm working on my own site to do some freelance work on the side for myself offering ever, marketing and ERP software services. That is the goal for side hustle. However, for the main hustle well I'm stressed now of being home and we'll meetings not turning into money. I actually want to call it quits and do my own thing and look for normal gig. It just feels rough as he has been my mentor and offered me my first software gig. I don't feel like I own anyone anything I'm regards money or time. However, I do feel bad of I take off it will hurt them from being able to handle larger contract if they do get one.

Note: I'm pulling from my savings

Thoughts??

You truly question decision of studying in the current place of employment when you make more money with a side hustle than the salary couple of months in a row

I have severe OCD. What I do and what I make should be perfect. When I went to being a teacher as a side hustle, two days a week, three hours a day, nothing serious, my brain was like "teaching is a noble mission, Janusz Korczak was a teacher, and he dropped that Teacher Banner when he stepped into a nazi gas chamber to not let his students die alone, and now you are the one who caught that banner, and now you are carrying it, and you must not bring the shame to it", then I wasn't sleeping because for every class I SHOULD be READY, everything should be checked and prepared, there should be not a single case of me not knowing the answer for anything students ask, let alone being late

Did you every have nothing to do on a regular basis?

I am really trying to show initiative and find the work but due to company focus shift my position I was hired for 4 months ago has become completely redundant. I am asking my senior dev and other (not even my project) for tasks but more frequently there are days where I finish anything they could come up with in 1-2h. I have found a side hustle I am doing in the meantime, I am learning other dev related things and my personal website gets a new style. What I though would be a dream feels terrible. I feel underappreciated and useless and I start to dread each workday. Sometimes I feel except for my team of 3 they dont even know I exist and earn good money. I am often forgotten on company events, meetings and my projects are being put in the freezer. I also hate the cringe company I am working for but I dont know if its already time to give up.

Did you ever have nothing to do at your job for more than a couple of days?

I think I joined the wrong crowd. After the recent Hackathon, I proposed that the team that I was working with, form a company in which we continue building apps, launch and try to profit. Y'know, the whole build fast and die slow kind of thing. Granted, I proposed it late November and we're all gearing up for the holidays. Now its January and everyone has this mindset of "if we don't meet, we don't get anything done" or "discuss face to face only". Guess they don't like the idea of working remotely.

I think I might just quit this venture after a couple of meetings with them before I lose my mind.

Same sh*t different day. Let me play with my pet project! I know it does not earn me anything, but hey it will make millions in the future once it's done! I am sure! :D

For you freelancers out there, I've been working on trying to make some income with it locally, making single page static sites for some local businesses and restaurants so that I can get a couple hundred for making the site and a little over the cost of hosting each month residually, offering like one free menu change per month, but all redesigns and support being hourly.
I want it to be accessible pricing cause like 5 of my favorite places to eat have defunct sites that I think weren't worth the cost anymore, and I'd love to be able to see up to date menus and hours and I'm certain others would too.
Basically, I'm trying to figure out what hosting would be best for this and if I'm being realistic enough with pricing. I like the idea of surge.sh, but I feel like 12/mo for a custom domain SSL, which is good for SSL, is higher than some of the other alternatives for a lightweight one sing page site.
Any help would be great, Have a great new year guys!

bro look how cool i am haha lol i know java c c# angular react and php lol haha infact bro i created couple compilers haha lol bro vscode bro more like vssucks lol i use Google Docs for coding haha bro what is windows i use Ubuntu lol for that alpha sigma grindset life haha lol just update 1000 packages a week bro i play with the bootloader like messi plays football bro haha bro i can't exit vim bro i basically stay in it haha lol bro i know all about AI haha LLMs haha im taking an inteview, a shit and solving complex neurological simulations at once bro haha i wear dev related tshirts haha lol bro my house is built on Alexa bro haha ALEXA TURN ON THE LIGHTS see how cool it is bro haha i use OAuth everywhere bro to gain access to my toilet seat haha lol my thumbs hurt so bad lol bro cuz I code all day long bro what are weekends bro I never take leaves bro haha have to stay on that sigma side hustle culture right haha look how many stickers i have on my laptop haha im so cool haha lol.

But I am lonely and go online to tell people how cool I am from my mother's basement.

Short term: Become familiar and independent enough to choose my own machine and software to work with. Right now it's "Here's your MBP, we've already installed the stuff that the rest of us use". If I try and switch to something else and I run into a problem, I'm on my own.

Mid term: Like a lot of you it seems, I'd love to have my own setup. Either have my own company or partner with some friends/family. Whatever lets me do the work I want, build the things I want, and gives me a bit more freedom outside of work. Perhaps a little side-hustle to help with finances.

Long term: I'd love to return to my studies. I don't think I'll ever stop coding, it scratches an itch, a need to make something out of nothing, but I'd love to pursue a career in physics.

Hello tech community ,

Quick question. I have been learning web development casually over a couple of years. Now,I'm stepping up my game. Playing with big boy libraries like Vue and React. Diving into JavaScript and functional react.

I can make static websites. Even dynamic ones. I know how to deploy websites from my terminal and I have done an ftp once before ,which was weird. But it was a long time ago. OMG my question is how do you transfer over a project to a client? I made a cool site. Added some JavaScript. Maybe it's pulling in some data. Maybe it's static. What is the best course of action? I really want to start a web design/developer side hustle.

Thanks homies.

Building any open source projects this weekend?

any freelance dev doing java/spring projects out here who can hire me as junior dev? im a systems engineer and dev wanna be and wanna work it as a side hustle.

I have a few ideas I'd really like to spend time working on, but I find myself wanting to do other things after working on software all day!

How do people balance working for career, and working for personal projects?

I have a lot of projects to complete for my clients right now (actually paying really well, I can't complain about that), but I am so bored to do them, because I want to keep working on the game I am developing since last month. Side-projects man...

So I’ve been wanting to build my own web apps for a while now, but I can’t seem to find any info on the legal stuff that goes into that. I know at minimum I’ll need a privacy policy.

Like do I need a lawyer to get everything set up? I’m not talking about creating a startup. Just web apps that people can use, e.g. a casual budget app or content aggregator. Just looking for a side hustle for a little extra cash and some experience.

What about compliance with the tech I use? If I setup a freemium app, am I out of compliance with open source tech I’m using? Anyway sorry for the long post 😅

I'm a dev with a full time job and a family. Any recommendations on the best way to pick up side work in the US that won't completely blow out a work life balance?