peterbsmith

whew! you're nailing it, good thing you're not taking silly breaks like going on hacker news and posting comments instead of working!

Just putting this here so that the Dropbox employees who inevitably read this can be aware: I've used dropbox for 5+ years, and as a paid user at that. Today I deleted dropbox because of the recent shenanigans and bad press as well as because there is a lot of high quality competition in the synced file storage space that I can turn to.

Thanks guys!

Well...

days.to/until/summer(is Over)

I used this website _all_ summer. Summer is awful. I know thats a controversial stance, but I take it.

days.to/until/summer showed the days until summer ended. It was great!

Simple, to the point, beautiful.

I can say why I would use it, I don't know that I can answer why you might. I would this because I love D3. I also don't have time to write a lot of it. D3 can be expensive for basic charts to the point where you'd be foolish to use it. D3 is great for complex data visualizations where the expense is an investment that will pay you back in higher performance and higher flexibility.

For me, I can use plottable and then make the charts my own with raw D3.

I haven't downloaded the app but, by far, this is the best concept on this thread!

sounds good to me!

This fits with my view of the world

I just don't need ANOTHER place to save stuff.

And Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ev Williams, Marc Benioff, Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Arianna Huffington, etc... get Millions of dollars per day. Within any one of those weeks, there is an hour or two where they're not doing much more labor than a Scott Disick or Nikki Minaj in a club.

Your comment made me inspired to write a letter about this Lee Sedol/Go match and by the end of it, I think I address your point.

[Link](https://medium.com/@peterbsmith/computer-beats-human-at-hard...)

Tell them to double their rate! I'm not joking.

Just start quoting double. It's a negotiation.

I was offered $150/hr to manage a project once and so I accepted. I figured it out along the way and delivered the results.

Since then, I start with an estimate of $150/hr when I'm calculating price. I've had one person balk and say thats crazy. one.

Everyone else has either came back and said that they can't afford that, that they'd like to pay $XXX instead. Or they've said yes to $150/hr.

What happens if you encounter projects you are unable to solve, is it a fake it until you make it sort of thing?

With just about every project I do I don't know exactly how I'll solve it to begin with. Before I start billing I always have a research phase, either a day or a week, but never more than that, to figure out how I'll do it. I don't bill for hours that I study, just hours that I work on their project.

I hope this is helpful, but essentially, I deal fairly with all clients. As long as terms are understood upfront I find everyone is happy.

Typical projects are 4-6 months I'd say.

OP if you're reading this.... this is how it works

Cool! They're the second Tuesday of every month, as it says on the site. And they're at 6PM at CoWorks.

Anyone care to tl;dr this?

Good point.

Some meetups I went to were the exact circle-jerk/humblebragfests you're talking about.

The one I consistently go to (shameless plug [OpenHack Syracuse](http://www.openhacksyr.com) is a monthly meetup for developers to talk about what projects they're working on and to spend time together working on projects, ideas, and sharing info. It's really just an organized hangout/hack session. And it's these types of meetups which are best for getting contract work (because contract work isn't the goal)

Some clients are rich. You could charge by what you feel you're worth, say $50/hr. Or you could charge by what they value the work at - at that might be 4x as much. They might be used to paying $200/hr, and are happy to do it.

That mentality is similar to charge by value.

Hey thats a really good idea! How long does it take to get started with that? Do you find a long lead time from signing up to building a reputation to getting a lot of gigs?

Personal networks.

I came into Syracuse knowing nobody and nothing.

I had never done any app making as of January 2015. I had done some wordpress stuff, but just the basics.

And I had (and have) no CS degree.

I now make a living on contract work. I did it by going to local meetups and introducing myself as a freelance web developer. Nevermind that I hadn't done freelance web development ever. I kept going to meetups for month and still attend a monthly hacker meetup. I participated in hackathons without really knowing how to program.

But all along the way I met people more experienced than I am and picked up two clients along the way. I think one thing that I do differently to most is that I charge a high rate (I always quote $150/hr). I am willing to negotiate lower than that but its a starting point. I have been paid that in the past for less complicated work like hiring developers and being a project manager.

What am I saying? Your questions is what sites to use? Just one: meetup.com

Theyre out of stock :(