Don't sell yourself short, Vladimir. If you're going to work for free, try contributing to an open source project you find interesting. If you're going to work for a for-profit company, you should be paid :)
This does seem to be a mantra on HN. I can't speak for anyone else, but where I live "junior developer" positions are looking for 3+ years experience, "Preferably" a masters degree in computer science, expert Linux, HTML and JavaScript, and so forth. While globally it is a hacker's job market, those of us who are not currently free to move to where the jobs are (I'm a single parent and don't want to uproot my kid again) sometimes have to try to get our foot in the door in this employer's market by begging for the chance to work even for free.
Not trying to be a Debbie Downer at all, by the way. I moved from the valley to the Midwest (I know, I know...) so I know that there are tons of jobs for people like me (and Vlad, probably). However in my opinion "Don't work for free for a for-profit company!" isn't advice everyone is in a position to follow. I wish I could.
(Disclaimer: I am a junior dev with Django/js experience in both personal and open-source projects, without a degree. So take my whining for what it's worth.)
I am considering open source as good place to learn and to generate some value for people. I do love sinatra framework. I pull source and read diffs every couple days. But they have core team which fixes all bugs in seconds, so I cannot find application there. And my goal is more to make some contacts and to know people in this field. I always was a silent reader and now I want to communicate with intresting people.
It seems to me that what he's doing is rather smart. It gives him an chance to be exposed to more opportunities than if he was trying to get hired and he can pick those on which he wishes to take a risk.
I would certainly change the wording a little to weed out the people who will just try to take advantage, but the overall strategy seems quite appropriate.
This will work very well for a person who's confident in their skills, but maybe having a hard time finding income from traditional sources. Get in, kick butt, make a statement and earn income.
You can also do work for non-profits or charities. Sparked.com always has some Web-related work that you could easily do in a couple of hours at a whack and build up a portfolio. (Sparked.com being a site I learned about here, and I've done a couple of little tasks there.)
Makes sense on paper but its a bad move, trust me, I've been there ... people simply don't appreciate free labor the way they would if they paid something for it.
Smarter move is to say "Hey, I bill out at $80/hr but to work at your startup I'll only bill $20/hr for 2 months", then make sure to send an invoice every 2 weeks with the bill at $80/hr with a line item showing the discount ... that way they are reminded of how lucky they are to have you.
PS: All this is moot if you aren't actually awesome at coding.
This is exactly the advice I was going to give Vlad. Start at a low $10 and work your way up the ladder. If your first contractor is happy with your work (ie. he'll be extremely happy for how cheap you developed a 100 man-hour project for 1k instead of 10k) then he will gladly pay you more for the next gig, or at least refer you to some colleagues. Then charge $20, then $30, and in no time you will have built a rock solid reputation and in a year you will be able to charge whatever you want based on your skills.
Never do work for free, ever. That diminishes your value and moral, and as collateral damage the coding market suffers as more and more people start working for peanuts.
But will this work with someone living and working in Russia? It's one thing to work remotely in the US for a US company and it's an entirely different ballgame to do this when you are outside the US. Am I right?
Whomever hires Vlad, please pay the guy at least $10 an hour and gain some respect from the community not to be seen as a greedy bastard abuser. That, and all the life-karma you'll get.
Idea HN: Create a page for 'Hackers in need' where people can offer their services for $10/hr until they get out of the trouble zone. Lots of people can benefit from some quick and inexpensive coding while helping a fellow coder.
I like this "hackers in need idea". Though there needs to be a way to keep out the leechers/time wasters. A turing test of sorts or captcha for programmers?? Dunno...
I'm always wary of free labor, mostly because I did some before so I know what it can feel like.
When you work for free, you never feel obligated to deliever or perform at your best because nobody is paying you, so if you get fed up you can just leave -- why put up with the bad environment? Sure it might be fun for a week or two, but people get bored, and it is usually monetary of personal incentives that keep us going. Working for free provides neither of these. It isn't my project, nor am I getting anything in exchange.
Now I'm not saying that he will be like this, but this flipside of mentality is definitely something to consider when you hire "free" labor.
Are for-profit enterprises in the United States allowed to accept free labor? I know that nonprofit organizations can accept volunteer labor (and do so all the time), but I thought that business corporations and business partnerships that check the law (in the United States, at least) find out that they cannot accept free labor. What are the applicable laws involved here?
Unpaid internships are legal in the United States. I know of a few businesses that build these internships into their model as a way of keeping costs down.
There is really something wrong in the job market when I work two years to get a good hire for my small development company (at a good hourly rate, telecommuting, etc.) and people like Vladimir have to give away their services...
Cut down 2 months to 2-3 weeks and your offer will pass for a reasonable probation period, albeit free to the hiring company. Alternatively, and this is more in line with what others are saying, - say "free 2-3 weeks of probation period and then pay me for this time if we continue working together."
I am just looking at this whole situation from employer's perspective, and the ability to test a developer for few weeks (and not needing to pay if he does not work out) is a really attractive proposition. On the other hand I would not consider dealing with a dev who's ready to work completely for free. Based on my past experience such devs are either seriously underqualified (and through that unreliable and require lots of mentoring and hand-holding) or they would gear down and slack if the project is not truly interesting for them. The money factor serves as a retainer and the conditional payment works as an incentive.
I just hope that whoever hires him gives him something truly challenging and engaging to do. The biggest risk of working for free is that people think that since it doesn't cost anything anyway, it doesn't matter what he does (e.g. the internship curse).
Vladimir, I'm not sure if what is your visa situation, but getting a work visa in the US is very hard and takes a lot of time and effort.
I would start researching it right away and collecting your documents (degrees, awards, letters of reference, etc...). If you just want to come visit, you won't be able to work here with a tourist visa so start looking into it.
Good luck.
Suppose Vladimir has an incorporated business in Russia, comes to the USA with his laptop and does some work for a USA startup from his laptop VPNned to his home base in Russia. The bills are sent from his Russian business address. After a while when his tourist visum expires, he flies back. Would this be viable?
I got a good job once by offering to trade 5 hours a week of work for desk space to (ostensibly) work on contracting. Within a couple weeks they were paying me full time. This is probably a better approach than offering half time for free.
I could never accept such an offer. I hope that Vladimir will gets at least a minimum U.S. hourly rate for his efforts. Edit: A minimum US hourly wage is a very decent pay in Russia.
"I can perform task like making your html pass validation tests, writing js widgets, adding ascii art to your nginx conf, writing specs for your code or hopefully implementing new features at your beloved startup."
I see what you did there. Testing to see if people are reading it all, are we? :D
Hey Vladimir, what kind of salary range are you looking for when you get hired on full time? Or what hourly rate are you looking for if someone was to work with you for a little while and decide "hey, this guy is awesome, I need to start paying him enough that he'll stick around and keep helping us out"?
Vladimir, you should find the open source projects that interest you and work on those, or build plugins for them. Why not volunteer for Rails or Sinatra? Or write Emacs plugins/extensions? Write about your experiences with these systems...blogging and contributing to open source will absolutely get you the contacts you are looking for, without having to resort to working in enterprise for free. While I would personally love the free help, I don't think any ethical entrepreneur here on HN would take free work, and we'd all encourage you to at least charge for what you're doing if it's going to be with a for-profit company.
While I agree that you shouldn't sell yourself short, I think it is also interesting that somone is taking the first step in letting their potential employer validate a potential employee's potential (too much potential there).
Also, it lets the employee validate the quality of the work.
I think it;s okay if done for a couple weeks (short project/assignment). If the employer likes him, he/she can pay him for the work done - out of goodwill.
Vladimir, I won't hire a developer to work for free. But if you can pay me 5$ (I donno what's the unit they talk here per hour, per day or even per week) I'll assign you work. And... you can have all the experience.
Your 1st assignment: As my office work is worse than yours like ftping files sending reports etc. you can create some apps for teaching me Ruby, Javascript etc. and then add my details too in you website.
[+] [-] bradleyland|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattdeboard|15 years ago|reply
Not trying to be a Debbie Downer at all, by the way. I moved from the valley to the Midwest (I know, I know...) so I know that there are tons of jobs for people like me (and Vlad, probably). However in my opinion "Don't work for free for a for-profit company!" isn't advice everyone is in a position to follow. I wish I could.
(Disclaimer: I am a junior dev with Django/js experience in both personal and open-source projects, without a degree. So take my whining for what it's worth.)
[+] [-] v-t|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeslush|15 years ago|reply
I would certainly change the wording a little to weed out the people who will just try to take advantage, but the overall strategy seems quite appropriate.
This will work very well for a person who's confident in their skills, but maybe having a hard time finding income from traditional sources. Get in, kick butt, make a statement and earn income.
[+] [-] Vivtek|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] futuremint|15 years ago|reply
But he should totally charge an hourly rate instead of free. I know people would pay for it.
[+] [-] tmachinecharmer|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viralinfection|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paolomaffei|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trustfundbaby|15 years ago|reply
Smarter move is to say "Hey, I bill out at $80/hr but to work at your startup I'll only bill $20/hr for 2 months", then make sure to send an invoice every 2 weeks with the bill at $80/hr with a line item showing the discount ... that way they are reminded of how lucky they are to have you.
PS: All this is moot if you aren't actually awesome at coding.
[+] [-] Kilimanjaro|15 years ago|reply
Never do work for free, ever. That diminishes your value and moral, and as collateral damage the coding market suffers as more and more people start working for peanuts.
[+] [-] brandnewlow|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shortlived|15 years ago|reply
EDIT: grammar
[+] [-] Kilimanjaro|15 years ago|reply
Idea HN: Create a page for 'Hackers in need' where people can offer their services for $10/hr until they get out of the trouble zone. Lots of people can benefit from some quick and inexpensive coding while helping a fellow coder.
[+] [-] dhruvbird|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrchess|15 years ago|reply
When you work for free, you never feel obligated to deliever or perform at your best because nobody is paying you, so if you get fed up you can just leave -- why put up with the bad environment? Sure it might be fun for a week or two, but people get bored, and it is usually monetary of personal incentives that keep us going. Working for free provides neither of these. It isn't my project, nor am I getting anything in exchange.
Now I'm not saying that he will be like this, but this flipside of mentality is definitely something to consider when you hire "free" labor.
[+] [-] tokenadult|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zecho|15 years ago|reply
The Department of Labor has a smell test for them: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm
[+] [-] brockf|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] abcd_f|15 years ago|reply
I am just looking at this whole situation from employer's perspective, and the ability to test a developer for few weeks (and not needing to pay if he does not work out) is a really attractive proposition. On the other hand I would not consider dealing with a dev who's ready to work completely for free. Based on my past experience such devs are either seriously underqualified (and through that unreliable and require lots of mentoring and hand-holding) or they would gear down and slack if the project is not truly interesting for them. The money factor serves as a retainer and the conditional payment works as an incentive.
Think about it ;)
[+] [-] micheljansen|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eyalfx|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Luyt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apike|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adlep|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karolist|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|15 years ago|reply
I see what you did there. Testing to see if people are reading it all, are we? :D
[+] [-] megamark16|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acconrad|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fara|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinplamondon|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lachyg|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhruvbird|15 years ago|reply
Also, it lets the employee validate the quality of the work.
I think it;s okay if done for a couple weeks (short project/assignment). If the employer likes him, he/she can pay him for the work done - out of goodwill.
Everyone wins (only in a perfect world).
[+] [-] ateacc|15 years ago|reply
Your 1st assignment: As my office work is worse than yours like ftping files sending reports etc. you can create some apps for teaching me Ruby, Javascript etc. and then add my details too in you website.
[+] [-] giardini|15 years ago|reply
No thanks, dude!