Freelance/ remote work

quick question for everyone. Has anyone found work while doing the web development course? I want to freelance eventually and I know I’d have to gain some experience, but how is it during the course? And how many have found jobs with just this course alone?

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You are more likely to find and internship than a job, it is very rare that a company has the resources to pay someone so they can learn. There are a lot more things you need to learn aside from writing the code and making an app work.

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Hi @corerunner25892, I’m planning on starting a career freelancing after the course, so I can definitely let you know how it goes! You might find this article useful: https://blog.stoneriverelearning.com/how-to-make-money-while-you-learn-to-code/

@peachesmotorsports could you be more specific please about what other “things” one would need to learn to start freelancing?

If you’re going to be a freelancer, most likely you’re going to be working by yourself so you need to learn how to do everything required to successfully complete and maintain a project (you don’t want your customer to go away when you’re done).

Project Management
This is greatly underestimated, people in this profession don’t pay enough attention to this. You need to take ambiguous requirements from your customer and turn them into something they want, which most of the time they don’t know or they can’t convey it properly.

  • Wireframes\sketches\designs are a must. The customer says they want something, you code it and say it’s done! The customer sees it and realizes that’s not really what they wanted. You have to do it again. You’re wasting your time, and you’re wasting their time. While you’re at it, your losing money because you gave them a quote based on an estimate, and now it’s going to take longer because you have to redo half the app.
  • Proper effort estimation. You will give them a quote based on your estimated effort to complete a project, if you don’t estimate properly you’re going to lose money and potentially not have a good reference from said customer. The effort needs to consider QA, rework, deployment, etc.
  • The Agile framework is very powerful, but just because you put sticky notes on your wall doesn’t mean your Agile. You need to learn how to use the framework properly to optimize your work and give visibility to your customer.

You also need to review the whole project with the customer: what is their end goal, who is their customer, what is the best platform for the intended purpose? Just because you learned how to do an app with Angular doesn’t mean you can do every single project handed to you with Angular. Some projects require a mobile app, even if it’s an app you need to decide if you need network connectivity or not, analyze device requirements, bandwidth requirements, 2-factor auth, sync with other services, data backup, Android vs iOS, etc. Some projects need Angular, others need Python, others can be done with just Node. If it’s an app you’ll need JAVA, XCODE, maybe ReactJS. If it needs to support Android, iOS AND a website, maybe Vue is the best option.

You need to be flexible with technology. Otherwise, you’re limiting the projects you can take on or you’re potentially making your life very difficult by only using 1 framework.

Environments
You finished the app and the customer approved. Great! Now what? You need to deploy it.

  • Where? Azure, AWS, Heroku, Wordpress, your own server?
  • Are you setting up a Windows server? Linux server? Or do you want to use Kubernetes?
  • Who is going to do that, you?
  • How much does all of that cost to do and maintain month to month, year to year? Did you tell your customer about it?
  • You need to deploy an update, V1.3. Did you properly plan the downtime? Did you test the updates to the db schema so you don’t affect the existing data?
  • You launched the app, it crashed. Who’s going to fix it and when? Can you do that while you’re on vacation in Europe?
  • Your customer’s client found a bug you missed, when do you fix it? Did you include that in your budget? You’re working on another project already, do you have time?

Code Quality

  • Do you have a QA resource? Can’t afford it? Then you need to learn how to properly QA your code.
  • The regression cycle takes to long? You need to add automation to the pipeline. Who’s going to write it?
  • The app started to run very slowly after a few months of being in production, can you analyze the load on the service? Does the server need more CPU? Do you have a memory leak? Do you need to optimize your API calls?

This is not all there is to it, there are other things to consider.

This post is not meant to scare you away, all these things can be learned but it takes time and experience. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen or heard of a course that teaches you any of this. My guess is because most companies do a half-■■■ job and don’t care because they make it work, even when they lose money. I have seen bad practices, and I have seen good practices. Companies or people that have good practices are few and far in between. I am by no means an expert, I’ve have to deal with a lot of bad practices and try to do the best I can in my position.

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Absolutely amazing post! Thank you for sharing such a detailed post . I am sure it has given perspective to many people like me.

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I am working with Alyssa on a Q&A session for questions like this, I suggested we can use freelancing as the first item to discuss. Like I said, those are only a f ew items.

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Just to ask further if suppose we want to enter into freelancing what should be our action plan?

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I can make some notes on this specifically

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We are having a Q&A on freelancing, discussing this in more detail. Sign up here: https://www.codecademy.com/events/codecademy-and-you-freelancing-pablo-chois

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If you missed the first session, you can find a recording here. Session 2 is scheduled for next week.

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Thank you very much for the discourage ! If you say so , the codeacademy is not a right place for beginners like me… I have just started 5 days ago, let me get my money back from the codeacademy.

Why are you discouraged, because the Codecademy course doesn’t teach you every single thing you need to be a freelancer? No course out there does that, if someone actually makes that claim it is most likely a lie. If I were to dedicate 100% of my time to teach someone how to be a successful freelancer it would be very expensive, and it would take a very long time.

Any course, whether it’s here or anywhere else, only teaches you how to do things. If you want to master something you need experience and you only get that by working and using what you learned.

You’re going to have to keep learning for as long as you stay in this field. It never stops. I’ve been doing this for close to 12 years and I’m still taking courses about different things, on Codecademy and other sites. I also learn things on my own.

If you’re looking for an easier way, there isn’t one. The support you get from this community is hard to find, the same goes for the quality of the courses.

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He does have a point. CodeCademy severely lacks focus on the point of WHERE and HOW to find a job after you’ve done their courses. Being condescending to him, is sure not gonna help or encourage him either.

I’m not being condescending, if I was I would straight up call him an idiot which I haven’t done at any point. You don’t know me, so you don’t know how straight I am with people. I have been fired from jobs because I call people out on bad ideas, bad strategies, and bad management policies. It is a bad trait to have in this or any profession.

I am, in fact, being extremely open about the struggles I’ve faced. Problems nobody helped me with. I don’t have all the answers and I’m not always right, if I don’t have a good answer then I have no problem with saying I don’t’ know. The last thing I do is talk out of my ■■■ trying to sound superior to someone else, I’ve never been that person and I’ve quit jobs when said people are the ones calling the shots so I am offended by your comment. I gain absolutely nothing by talking down to people. I’m a big boy though, so I’ll survive.

What I do have is experience with what doesn’t work, and I share tips on how to avoid those problems so people in this community can have an easier time finding success. Being successful in this profession is not easy, everybody needs to understand that.

I don’t work for Codecamy so I don’t have any benefit from posting things here. I don’t know what are all the services or courses they offer, but I do know they have resources where they show people how to find a job and how to prepare for interviews. Why am I so sure? Because I was part of those virtual sessions. Where are all the recordings and how do you access them? I don’t know, ask one of the admins.

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Hi all. Everyone here is working to learn, and it can feel completely overwhelming, so it makes sense that we always want to be as encouraging as possible, @core6567601191.
That said, @peachesmotorsports is a very open book always willing to share, and that’s a valuable trait in any community, so I feel super lucky to have met peaches. :slight_smile:

For more videos on all the peripheral stuff, check out our YouTube channel where we have lots of recordings.

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@peachesmotorsports is absolutely right from what I find. I currently spend about 12 to 15 hours a week learning and that’s just the core knowledge. From my experience going from a Chef to testing and writing code for a medical company remotely has taught me that no site can teach you everything about how to “work” in the field and how to “get a job.” From SQL and Application management programs, to terminology, to communication with GitHub (which can be very confusing if you don’t have experience), to server management specifications, HIPAA compliancy (if that’s what you do) and the expectations to deliver while explaining what you did to people who have no idea what you are talking about.
Most of all, no company or school can teach you patience and how to think on your feet. @peachesmotorsports is absolutely right in Project Management. I believe the only reason I went from Freelancing at the company I am at now to out right hired is because of my Project Management experience from being an Executive Chef in Chicago for 10 years, as they had no Project Management in place before I arrived.
So, from my actual experience in freelancing/remote in regards to getting an actual job that will pay you money for work, taking the advice in this thread should be heavily considered.

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To find the best work, you really need to establish a broader team. If you would rather spend time coding apps and websites and less time dealing directly with the customer or client, then link up with a Product Owner / AM / Business PM type. If neither of you are very good at getting new deals, connect with a sales hunter. Each person in your team can certainly also be a Freelance agent but having a team is helpful.

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