>But if I only want to work 30 hours a week, and I only need to make about $25 an hour to live - so far that seems like a harder situation to find.
My experience is that finding consistent independent work is "easy" up to $50/hr. Beyond that, and I need to go through agencies where they expect me to pretend to want to be full time.
I have manged to leverage that to get a part time gig that paid better; e.g. I got a high paying gig through an agency, proved myself difficult to replace, /then/ suggested they let me go part time on the same hourly rate. Worked okay for a while.
But yeah, my experience is that you can demand $50/hr from random craigslist gigs. There is a /lot/ of remote work available at $25/hr. I remember in the early to mid aughts, I supported myself for a few years this way; I had a primary gig that gave me a retainer that was large enough to cover rent (I think I was charging them $35/hr for retainer hours, and $45/hr for hours above that. I mean, I was in my early to mid 20s, so it wasn't great money, but it wasn't terrible. ) then I would take random gigs over and above that for more money; I had about three regular clients that I didn't have "retainer" agreements with, so there was always enough money.
Hm. I wonder if it's easier as a SysAdmin, because it's very clear that my work is going to be required on an ongoing basis? Some people seem to think that after the project is done, they won't need the developers. But most people understand that you need a sysadmin ongoing.
As a sysadmin, the major problem is if two clients happen to have emergencies at the same time (DDoS, phishing hack, hardware failure, or something else that's hard to mitigate in advance without more money than such a client is prepared to spend).
>As a sysadmin, the major problem is if two clients happen to have emergencies at the same time (DDoS, phishing hack, hardware failure, or something else that's hard to mitigate in advance without more money than such a client is prepared to spend).
You resolve this with your 'retainer' agreements. Client agrees to pay a monthly fee, I agree to a certain level of availability, and to prioritize said client over my other clients and/or my personal stuff.
I've also tried to set a schedule when I was available, then if you wanted me outside of that schedule, you had to agree to pay a incident fee to wake me up. But, I haven't had anyone bite on that idea. I think the retainer thing is more traditional.
Even with a retainer, of course, you can't get real 24x7x365 coverage with one person. that's just not how the physics of the situation work.
And in that case, I only had one client that had a retainer. Without a retainer? Sure, when shit breaks, the client is going to call and whine and cajole and threaten, and sure, I'm going to try to help him or her out, but... any pre-existing agreements I have come first.
The bare truth, though, is "I'll get to you after I clear up this other mess" is "good enough" for most things. Especially for employers who are picking sysadmins up off craigslist for $50/hr.
My experience is that finding consistent independent work is "easy" up to $50/hr. Beyond that, and I need to go through agencies where they expect me to pretend to want to be full time.
I have manged to leverage that to get a part time gig that paid better; e.g. I got a high paying gig through an agency, proved myself difficult to replace, /then/ suggested they let me go part time on the same hourly rate. Worked okay for a while.
But yeah, my experience is that you can demand $50/hr from random craigslist gigs. There is a /lot/ of remote work available at $25/hr. I remember in the early to mid aughts, I supported myself for a few years this way; I had a primary gig that gave me a retainer that was large enough to cover rent (I think I was charging them $35/hr for retainer hours, and $45/hr for hours above that. I mean, I was in my early to mid 20s, so it wasn't great money, but it wasn't terrible. ) then I would take random gigs over and above that for more money; I had about three regular clients that I didn't have "retainer" agreements with, so there was always enough money.
Hm. I wonder if it's easier as a SysAdmin, because it's very clear that my work is going to be required on an ongoing basis? Some people seem to think that after the project is done, they won't need the developers. But most people understand that you need a sysadmin ongoing.