Contact info on my resume
I'll leave this edition here, but I have written a new edition.
I'm a software developer and a hard-wired night owl. Working 9am - 5pm is miserable; I won't do it. Most corporate dev jobs are 9 - 5, though. I'd like to solve this riddle--make decent money during my own hours. I need help solving it, though.
I've written about the status of my January, 2017 "batch" of respondents.
Company - Very roughly speaking, I'd like to form a company whose business hours are almost precisely opposite the usual. In a looser but more accurate and immediate sense, I'd like a bunch of green dots (people available on Google Chat / Hangouts, Facebook, whatever) during my peak hours.
Community - Given that this is my web site's version rather than a sort-of-kind-of job description, I could use night owl pen pals / friends even if we never do work together.
If you're a night owl, you can write reasonable well, and you have some interest in tech, we can probably help each other. Those are my core requirements. I don't care if you have zero experience or if you are more experienced than I am.
I define "night owl" and "write reasonably well" more below.
I'm not just looking for techies. I need help with sales and marketing. I at least occasionally need artistic help. With that said, you very likely have to be interested in development or sysadmin or related tech, no matter what else you do.
The reason you probably have to be interested in tech is that I'm tired of doing software projects alone. If you were just doing sales and marketing, that doesn't motivate me to do a yet another project alone. We could add another person to our team for that, but it's hard enough to find one person.
Perhaps the most important notion I need to get across is that I am quite serious and somewhat specific about "night owl." I define my hours below. If you're rarely available during my hours, we're almost certainly not going to get anywhere.
People have assumed to several involved parties' peril that I will make exceptions, or that there are ways to persuade me towards the "light side." You are hereby warned against that. Yes, there will be some times when I need to act during the day, but I consider those cases extremely few and far between. Also, you shouldn't assume what I consider those cases to be. If I were primarly motivated by money, for example, I would not be in this position writing this ad.
Based on my January, 2017 round of respondents, the 7:30 - 10:30 "thing" is proving accurate. One of my respondents gets off work around midnight, and he's been willing to talk at 5am, but I'm usually not ready to initate communication at that point. Also, he doesn't seem to be a fan of type chat. He seems to want to move straight from email to voice, which I am even less likely to do at that hour of the night / early morning.
My initiating hours are later, and I'm trying to adapt to people with later initiating hours.
On one hand, I am not offering a job with a specific wage or number of hours. There are too many variables based on what you want, how much time you have, and how we can work together. On the other hand, I am not asking for you to take very much risk. I want someone who is involved in pricing and all aspects of money—in other words, deciding how much you get paid and how often. I may leave you in charge of pricing and collections, for that matter--you'll pay me. :) On a related point, I've considered implementing a billing policy of "Bill early and often in relatively small increments for relatively small milestones." You get paid when I get paid. I'm reasonably good at bringing in projects. I'd be even better with help.
My somewhat educated guess is that a typical software contracting company charges $150 - $300 / hour. (Of course, it doesn't usually pay its developers that much.) I'm very likely qualified to charge something like that as a company. For a number of reasons, I doubt I'll ever get around to charging that much if I'm on my own. It's worth my while to pay quite a bit of money for help. You can get paid quite a bit, and I still come out way ahead.
On the other hand, we might decide it's worth charging less in exchange for our freedom--such as working during the night. That's generally been my tradeoff, but I could use help with a happy medium.
As another data point: I once paid a salesman a $1,000 sales commission over the course of 4 months for (likely only) 2 - 3 hours of his work. However, he is an example of why someone should be interested in tech and not just a salesperson.
You have to write relatively well, or we'll almost literally never get anywhere. I really dislike talking by voice to people until I've established how they write. I don't care if you use all the SMS-speak in the world. I'm not worried about mistakes or abbreviations. It's the content that matters. In other words, if you're just talking to me, I don't care how sloppy you are as long as I can figure out what you mean.
Similar to above, if you don't or can't type on a real keyboard, that's going to wear on me. We'll probably never get started. For one, you're going to have a lot of trouble developing while typing on a phone. Typing on phones is fine for some cases, but there are a large number of people who just won't use a real keyboard (or don't own one!), and that trend is wearing on me.
If you can't conceive of writing anything more than is convenient on a phone, you fail my writing test.
This is mostly applicable to the CraigsList version(s) of this ad. If your robot writes back selling your services, I'll ignore you. If you say, "Please describe what you're looking for in more detail," that sounds like a robot; I'll ignore you.
A number of times people have responded but I couldn't tell the difference between them and a bot. If I can't tell the difference, you've probably failed my writing test. I understand you don't want to waste words on a first response; I could be a robot, too. It doesn't take many words, just make sure I know you're responding to *my* ad and not every ad with certain keywords.
My immediate and frequent need is with sales. If you want to do the selling, great! Even if not, though, I could use help picking out projects to respond to, as an example.
Once we have a project, you're my apprentice. Assuming we've asked for enough money to pay you, you're my paid apprentice. (As mentioned above, I expect you to be involved in pricing.)
When we don't have paid work, I can think of quite a few ways for you to build your resume. And if you're good at it, I'm a credible reference.
This is probably much easier--so easy that I don't feel like writing it out now. :) It's rare, though, that I get responses from peers, so I'll save that for later.
Some people write precisely that. You sound like a robot; I'm likely to ignore you. The non-robotic answer, though, is that I suspect that the "position" will be open for the foreseeable future (as of early 2017). Even if I find people, I'll likely always need more.
I'm not asking you to leave your current job or do *anything* in particular, for that matter. I can see all sorts of ways of making this work. You have to be able to spend some time during "my" hours while you keep your current job, and then we'll discuss and plan from there.
I've posted subsets of this ad to CraigsList Atlanta computer gigs 11 times from early 2012 - early 2017. I've had enough success that I persist.
Codename "The Tool": I'm just making up a name I'll remember. "Tool" has a derogatory slang meaning, but I do not mean it that way. Anyhow, "The Tool" was a developer, and he was much more comfortable calling people and doing sales. We teamed up to find a project, and the project lasted for 6 months. "Tool" had a day job that whole time. He got a new job about the same time the project ended, and he was planning to move to England, so he had so much going on that he didn't have time to do side work anymore.
Codename "Diff": I paid him a $1,000 sales commission for (likely only) 2 - 3 hours of his work. However, he is an example of why someone should be interested in tech and not just a salesperson.
Codename 3Gen: She responded years ago. We had dinner recently; we keep in touch. We did some work together; the reasons we didn't do more are a long story. For one, she decided to go back to a day job.
GTGSU: She always popped on Google Chat / Hangouts well after my first, 10:30pm cutoff. Thus, we didn't look for many gigs together because it's usually too late for me to be motivated to look at those hours. She worked 9 - 5 and was willing to continue doing so. She didn't have a computer-related degree, but she had enough experience that I thought she had a good chance of finding an entry-level, $50,000 tech job, with potential to rise in the ranks and make double that in a few years.
GTGSU cont.: I spent a decent amount of time helping her with her resume, sending her recruiters' contact information, and otherwise giving her ideas on how to get a "real" job. She either didn't have the time to spend pulling the necessary levers, or she otherwise didn't. She mysteriously broke contact with both me and 3Gen. Thus, I don't know what happened, but I am still convinced she could have "made it" with not too much effort.
EAT: He's named after the illustriously named East African Time. He came on Hangouts at midnight - 2am my time, which was 8 - 10am his time. Again, though, that's too late for me to initiate anything, so vaguely similar to GTGSU. He was epically non-local, though, so I couldn't think of how to help him like I tried to with GTGSU. I type-chatted with him on and off for several weeks, but it was much more social than tech / business.
Others: I've almost gotten off the ground with a number of other people, but those are stories for later or never.
Contact info on my resume
: night owl software engineers, night time software developers / engineers, Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE)
Someone copied my CraigsList ad in October, so there are 2 pages with my first ID. Page ID 2: HXZS2dws