Back to the future with bookstores - <AUTHOR> http://www.cooper.com/journal/2011/09/back_to_the_future_with_bookst.html

<comment><USER2> I reckon an Amazon store that serves as an interface to their online store might be good. Don't sell books there, but rather you go in, and can browse through books, drink coffee etc just like a Borders store, and if you have a kindle, you can buy books on the spot, if you don't, you can order them shipped to your house. That way they only need a 1-2 copies of each book in the store, just as display stock. They could sell kindles there, and have computers/tablets for purchasing online (even perhaps let you buy books through your kindle app on iOS/android by scanning barcodes/qr codes). Staff could teach people how to use Amazon/kindles etc. Book signings/launches could also be held there.

That's basically how I've used Borders here in Australia before they went bust. I would go in, and enjoy the atmosphere of the physical book store, flick through books, and then take photos of them and go home and buy them online via Kindle or Book Depository for half the price. I don't mind if I don't get the book instantly (though I would anyway if it was out on kindle), I just enjoy browsing. It would be a good sales generator for Amazon with still a fairly low overhead.

<comment><USER3> This might be a good idea, if they can figure out how to make enough money to stay open. One problem with Borders was that coffee shops and bookstores don't mix; I bought an expensive art book one time at the big Borders in White Flint Mall and found a big coffee ring on one plate when I got it home.

ADDED: Thinking about it a little more, what is happening to bookstores in general looks like a good illustration of " _The answer to 'Why don't they...?' is almost always 'Money'_."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if this model could work with Amazon affiliates program - ensure that the bookstore gets a cut from people ordering books on the Amazon terminal. Maybe Amazon would subsidize this kind of store, instead of the publishers, to capture the mall-goers that browse around Borders just because it's there and end up buying a random new release.

That would kind of remind me of an Apple store - they could have Kindles lying around for you to preview sections of new releases, a "genius bar" for recommendations, easy payments with your Amazon account, free coffee for Prime members etc.

I don't think Amazon would actually do it because setting up Brick and Mortar storefronts doesn't seem to gel with their business, but it would be kind of neat and I could see this type of specialty meat-space front end for web properties really taking off.

<comment><USER5> one reason amazon doesn't like brick and mortar stores is that they will have to charge state sales tax where they set up shop. That's one advantage they have over B&N.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> These sound great, and do you know the best thing about his idea? There probably already is one in your town. It's called a _library_.

Seriously, they provide almost everything on his list: socialising spaces, quiet reading areas, computers, free wifi, book ordering, cafes and bibliophile events. And interestingly, they are paid for by membership fees (if you squint, government-run libraries make everyone a member and pay a fee via general taxation). These government-run libraries would make it quite hard to run a similar thing as a business. That's probably okay, because a library is somewhere between a merit and a public good (a quasi-public good).

<comment><USER7> That's a rosy picture of what a library is supposed to be. In my experiences they are places parents send their kids for free after-school day care, where homeless people go to get out of the heat, or where people who don't have a computer go to use the internet. Bibliophiles definitely use them, but they don't hang out there and socialize with like-minded people.

<comment><USER8> I don't know where you live, but I've had a lot of good luck finding nice libraries. When I spent a summer working in NYC, the SIBL library was just awesome in terms of facilities, hermann miller chairs, etc.

In Boston there's a few good ones too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a wonderful used and rare bookstore around the corner from my house (and it doesn't hurt that we're both less than a mile from a large university). The store has been around for at least twenty years and given the size of the store, and selection, I don't see it going anywhere any time soon.

Well, that is, as long as the owners live.

It's not uncommon to see books from the 1800s line the shelves. It's a place where one could spend hours perusing the stacks for long lost gems.

And they also sell books via Amazon. I think they've figured out their business model.

<comment><USER10> I suspect a lot of such bookstores are just pet projects of people who can afford them (they got other money sources).

<comment><USER9> The owners of the bookstore I mentioned also own/run another bookstore about a mile away that focuses on college textbooks (it's how they started---used text books along with other used/rare books).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Warm and fuzzy, but I have to ask how many people can honestly say they would pay a cover charge or monthly membership fee to be allowed to enter a bookstore. I suspect the number is quite low.

<comment><USER12> Have to agree - I wonder if this is trying to solve the problems faced by physical bookstores, rather than trying to solve problems faced by consumers.

Another reply to you mentions the niche-in-a-big-market thought (which is fair enough), but for me something like Book Depository solves my 'problem' perfectly - painless, cheap, etc. I will read a book in the morning, lying in some ridiculous position on the couch, in airports; no part of me at those times wishes I was reading in some public space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have thought about something like this combined with a Xerox Docutech. I worked with one during college and was impressed that it could take pdf files off the network and do limited runs for class notes. It could even do some simple binding with heavy stock cardboard for the covers and some kind of adhesive for the spine.

I wouldn't want anything like a Kinkos but maybe the store could also do higher end binding of single books. I don't know how that is done now but I would probably pay for nice editions of particular books. Especially if I could customize the covers, stock etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> My wife managed an independent bookshop for a few years (The Travel Bookshop) which had not only a prime London location and a nice niche, but a worldwide feature film to draw punters in from.

There's almost no money in this business, and some of the ideas in the article are frankly laughable (a "book gym"? LMAO) outside very small parts of the Valley perhaps in the boomiest of boom times.

I particularly liked the idea of a genius bar where they'll "fix your iPad". WTF? Sounds like one of the worst VC pitches you'll ever hear.

<comment><USER15> Nice try, Hugh Grant, but we know you're really an actor, not some bookshop owner.

<comment><USER14> If only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Barnes and Noble would get more business from me if they'd make their online side and the stores work better together.

For instance, they have the ability on the site to find if a book is available in your local stores. How about extending that so that I can have a view that only shows books that are in stock at my local stores?

Another one would be to allow exchanges through the store. Right now they do allow returns--that is, buy online and decide you want to return it, and you can drop the return off at your local store instead of going through the hassle of shipping. However, if you buy online, and they ship you the wrong item or a defective item, and so you want an exchange rather than a return, then you have to ship back to them and have them ship you the correct item.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the author tries hard to ignore the role of technology.

1\. It's clear that most books will be ebooks , especially for people interested in book communities.

2\. It's pretty easy for anybody with an interest to form an offline(or offline/online) community anywhere using digital tools. reddit meetups are a good example.grubwithus is another. And they facilitate better communities at a cheaper(sometimes free) price.

3\. The capability and benefits of online communities is always improving. Google+ hangouts is the latest example. Maybe in the future they'll replace offline book communities at all ?

</comment><comment><USER18> hes talking about a coffee shop with a book focus

starbucks makes good money on people who just want to sit and read. A good coffee shop niche would be adding in a library and encouraging people to discuss books and such

</comment><comment><USER7> Really tough sale, I'm not sure what value-add a "book store" can provide over a coffee shop.

Here's one idea: the customer pays a monthly membership. Any books they buy at the book store are shipped to the store and shelved for the customer. The customer can come in at any time and read their books or take them home. This is basically a privatized library. Maybe it could help with some of the problems libraries have.

But that's a very small niche. I'm not sure what a book store can provide that a coffee shop + kindle combination cannot.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice article. Interestingly, there's been a bit of buzz about Amazon finding local mail-holders (or distribution partners, or whatever) for "not home" deliveries. I think I saw an article somewhere today about a partnership with 7-Eleven stores - obviously, extending this to local bookstores could make lots of sense for everyone concerned (Amazon, customers, and local businesses who drive sales to Amazon).

The kiosk idea is interesting but would want some kind of transparent proxy to insert affiliate IDs, perhaps?

<comment><USER11> Amazon's book deliveries don't require a signature. They are waiting on the front porch or the mailbox depending on which carrier was used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder about the future of shops in general. It is nice to be able to see some products in reality before you buy them, but even now it is typical to seek shopping advice in a shop, then order from the cheapest internet vendor.

Could it be viable to create "look only" shops that only facilitate online sales? Maybe a lot of producers would even be willing to hand out the display merchandise for free?

</comment><comment><USER20> I work in a small bookstore/coffee-shop in a smallish commuter town and there's one massive thing the author is missing out on: if you order from Amazon you don't get the @40% margin that forms the bulk of your profits. Having said that, I don't know anything about the Amazon affiliate fees programme - I imagine it'd be a very small cut?

</comment><comment><USER21> I can only imagine that if bookstores started charging admission, big publishers would want a piece of it.

One other model that the article doesn't mention is evolving bookstores into 'show rooms' for books and ebooks. In a way, they are already for many people who use Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've often wondered why Amazon doesn't partner with coffee shops. Amazon delivers a small library of free books to coffee shops, and partners with publishers to provide free promotional copies of their books.

Win/win/win.

</comment><comment><USER23> Darwinism at its finest, find your niche or die.</comment>


Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor? - <AUTHOR> I'm a javascript developer working in London and I want to become a remote contractor so I can travel the world while working remotely. Where can I find people or companies that can help me getting into the world of contracting and even be a intermediary? Is anyone in this situation that want to share how they did it and how is going? <comment><USER3> I've quit my day job in 2012, found a contract with a great client on Upwork (forget how it was called at the time). Initially a 6 months project, I've worked with them for 2 years.

Got a few other contracts off that site, until one day I've asked one of my main clients to move out of that platform and work with me directly. Worked with them 2 years, until I got an offer in January to become a full time technical director and shareholder.

What I've learn contracting:

1\. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they probably aren't a good client in the first place.

2\. Increase your rates every year, as you get more experience and technical knowledge.

3\. Upwork was bad, and now is even worse. Move out of those kind of sites ASAP, when you can trust your client.

4\. If you do good work, you'll have old clients pinging you once in a while with new opportunities. So, do outstanding work, and you won't have to look for new contracts as much.

5\. Don't be afraid to learn. Try not to specialise too much. Generalists/full stack devs are very sought after. You'll start a contract as a web developer and soon you'll be doing DB optimisation and securing their infrastructure.

6\. Increase your rates.

<comment><USER4> > 1\. Increase your rates. Make them non-negotiable. There's people that are > ready to pay for quality. If a client asks you to lower your rate, they > probably aren't a good client in the first place.

What if you're mediocre, though?

<comment><USER5> It depends on which vector you deem yourself mediocre. If you think your technical skills are mediocre and want to be a technical contractor, then focus on being a great solutions provider.

And by "solutions provider," I mean take the time to deeply understand the root causes of your clients' problems, then help them find the actual solutions. Sometimes these solutions are not even technical, which is totally okay. Clients will love that you're helping them solve problems in addition to providing technical services.

<comment><USER4> I can write code that works, finish features, and I'm pretty good at debugging. I can also teach/encourage others without condescending, ask good questions, and explain a problem clearly technically and non-technically (once I understand it myself).

I guess I'm mediocre in that it consistently seems to take me 8-10 hours to finish jobs that come with a 4 hour time estimate (my company is big on estimates). I'm also pretty sloppy - code reviewers routinely catch minor errors that I should have known better than to commit.

I have the experience, way too often, of using some feature that I pushed months or years ago and learning that it's, like, haunted or something. Doesn't work the way it's supposed to at all. Obvious failures that I should never have called "done".

When it comes to building a complete product, from start to finish, I mostly can't get past MVP stage (talking about personal projects in this case). And I once spent over a month trying to update the version of TinyMCE for a CMS that I was working on, and did not succeed. I literally got another job and left the company with that task unfinished. The new job pays double, and I still feel like a bit of a fraud.

And yeah, I'm writing "bog-standard PHP" as the other commenter put it. I've tried to get work in other languages to diversify my skillset, and haven't succeeded. At this point I'm starting to not care anymore - I like PHP just fine, loose typing be damned, and I'm starting to think I want to move out of technical roles rather than improve my language skills.

<comment><USER5> If you like dealing with clients (and it sounds like you may be patient enough to be good at doing this), you could try your hand at being a project manager and managing several development contractors for the projects you get from your clients. I built a web development agency like this several years ago.

Basically, you start with the same clients that have been hiring you, then tell them you can assemble a team of developers to help get their project done, and all they have to do is work through you as the main point of contact.

This is easier said than done, of course. Starting with existing clients is a nice way to jump-start this kind of a business, but you'll need to find more clients eventually. There's also a whole arena of skills you'll need to develop in terms of recruiting, account management, and project management too.

This isn't for everyone. But someone with technical skills has a vast advantage in such a role over someone who doesn't, with all other skills being equal.

Just an option to consider as you think about moving out of a technical role.

<comment><USER4> I think I'd like to be a project manager, but honestly I'd be happy doing it at my day job. Any suggestions for how to show people that you can do that kind of job?

<comment><USER6> I suggest checking out the book "The Passionate Programmer".

There's a general focus in that book about building your personal brand in an organization so you basically have leverage to do what you want.

Beyond that, the short answer is to assume the role. Take on a PM-like presence amongst your team if you haven't already - ie. help any PMs you're currently working with on small tasks, ease their burden where you can - <USER2> have a candid discussion with your supervisor at some point about how you can see yourself in such a role.

<comment><USER5> I totally agree with everything brandall10's written. I've always found that "act as if" can be a powerful tool, except perhaps in dysfunctional organizations. In other words, "act as if" you're already a project manager. And you'll definitely need to let your manager know about this career aspiration too.

If you want to do this as a remote contractor, then I think your options are:

1) Look for an existing dev agency that needs remote project managers.

2) Start your own dev agency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a digital nomad who as in the same position. I couldn't find contract work for high-skill engineers. So, I started building a marketplace for it. Today that's Moonlight - we are still small, bootstrapped, and growing, but we have companies ranging from startups to a publicly-traded company hiring through the site. Hourly rates average a little over $100US.

[https://www.moonlightwork.com](https://www.moonlightwork.com)

<comment><USER8> I've been on Moonlight since it has launched and has not panned out very well for me. I'm in that ballpark of rates and most projects have been duds. Only 1 lead to a prospect and he balked on the rate (again, in the ballpark of what Phil is advertising here).

<comment><USER7> Thanks for being on Moonlight! We have been working hard to increase the number of jobs. It's been about doubling month over month and has been our #1 focus. We are working on a lot of product and marketing initiatives focused on that.

It looks like you've submitted a few proposals - unfortunately, half of the jobs stopped before selecting a developer. If we had more posts on the site, getting declined would be more of a numbers game and less noticeable. Still, keep at it - looks like you have two open matches right now!

The good news is that, among people who get selected for jobs, they often get rehired again and again by the same client.

<comment><USER8> I'll give it a shot again in 6 months. I've since landed a contract (not related to the platform) but my gut is that my effort was not worth it. I got much better results from my own local networking at higher rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I 55 and have worked remote many times during my career (including currently). The best way I've found is to work onsite initially and dazzle them. Then when the contract is up tell them you are willing to continue remote.

<comment><USER10> If the organisation is not setup for remote work you will sign yourself up for hell.

I guess it can work if you work alone and with high autonomy.

For many jobs just having someone say "yeah fine" is not good enough for success.

<comment><USER11> I agree this way is difficult to help you catch truly remote-first job, as requirement of sitting butt in an office contradicts it.

I recommend screening company with Glassdoor (WFH hints etc.) and at interview asking about communication/collaboration tools in use, remote teams etc.

Nowadays there is a large middle ground of companies which have globaly distributed offices. They may ask you to show up for some initial period to gain trust and mix into culture - definitely important for a long-term cooperation. Afterwards switching to remote is like relocating to different office but staying in the same project, which is pretty common practice. Tested myself several times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did this building a small agency in the marketing and ad space.

Happy to advise on specifics but in general here's how we did it:

Build up a portfolio of content (since we develop content) that shows we know what we're doing.

Go on speaking circuit for your niche and give lectures on your expertise.

Take whatever comes your way for first few deals. Always get a solid statement of work & contract.

Rinse and repeat. If you're ok with going slower this works well. I manage a team of 9 now and after some serious time spent training them I mostly just approve work and put out fires with clients.

<comment><USER13> > Build up a portfolio of content (since we develop content) that shows we > know what we're doing. Go on speaking circuit for your niche and give > lectures on your expertise.

Cannot emphasize this enough. I started a database blog years ago, and built it up into a 5-person remote consulting firm. Inbound marketing is king: build up your brand and people will bring you exactly the projects you want, for life (rather than you having to seek out work and settle for stuff you don't really want to begin with.)

<comment><USER14> Mind sharing a link to your blog (if it's still active)? Thanks :)

<comment><USER15> > Mind sharing a link to your blog (if it's still active)? Thanks :)

It seems to be there: [https://www.brentozar.com/blog/](https://www.brentozar.com/blog/)

Bam. Inbound marketing seems to go well, a HNer just linked to the blog by inspecting the HN profile the consultant put on HN ... ;)

<comment><USER13> Hahaha, it's true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It may make you feel dirty, but get on LinkedIn and connect with a bunch of recruiters. This is literally what they are there for. My LI feed and inbox are a constant stream of contracting opportunities in London, and a (small, admittedly) percentage of them are remote.

(Of course, they're no use to me, as I'm very happy as a mostly-remote startup CTO, but these opportunities are out there.)

Contracting tends to be something that's hard to break into but easier once you're there - what people want to see on a CV is previous contracting experience. So even if your first gigs aren't remote, they may help you in the long run.

<comment><USER17> I do this, too. Unfortunately, recruiters suffer from two really big problems for a contractor:

1\. They take a cut, a very big cut, of your hourly or daily rate. Thus, to the client, you seem very expensive, and to you, you seem cheaper than you should be. It becomes a new effort to maneuver a proper rate.

2\. Recruiters suffer from the fact that they are salespeople, and salespeople often intuitively omit information for fear they'd lose the deal. So they operate the same way as they do for employee recs. Here's a concrete example: several times in the last several months, I received offers of "contract to hire" even though the recruiter told me it was contract only. They failed to tell the client I was contract-only, and they failed to tell me it was a contract-to-hire. Believe me, they knew. Then the inevitable question, where I have to be careful not to be too mean in the response, "Can I ask you why you want to stay as a contractor? It's a really exciting company and there's stock opt... yadda yadda." For a contractor doing it right, every invoice is a bonus or an opportunity to purchase stocks with no vesting and no strings. :-)

<comment><USER18> > Recruiters suffer from the fact that they are salespeople ...

reminds me of the real estate agent trick of posting a listing for a home that's too good to be true. when a potential buyer calls that agent, the agent says the home is no longer available, but asks "are you currently working with an agent?"

<comment> 52-6F-62 God I've had people do that to me with _dogs_. No, I will not be conversing with you further about spending $1000 more on a dog I don't at all want.

<comment><USER19> I heard you can go greener and get the best deals on the used dogs market.

<comment> 52-6F-62 I (think I) 100% understand the snark, but that's usually where I'm looking. Not in the aforementioned situation though. So good call?

On a side note— with Toronto salaries we can't afford a dog anyway outside of getting to come home midday to walk it. Walker fees run close to $500 a month. I'm in love with the rescue Korean Jindos though. They're like goofier huskies. I just can't help but look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We actually have a few interviewers at Karat who are doing exactly what you're doing. (Disclaimer in case it wasn't clear: I work at Karat :)) It's remote contract work, but we find the work for you, so you don't need to spend any time finding clients etc. This can be really helpful for contractors who are just starting out like yourself, or for existing contractors who are looking to supplement their work.

At a high level how it works is: You put availability on your calendar; we schedule you for interviews in those slots. You can set as much or as little availability as you want week to week, at any time of day. The interviewing is all online, so you can do it from wherever you want as long as you've got a quiet location and a reliable high-bandwidth internet connection.

All we look for are solid technical chops and interpersonal skills, though prior interviewing experience is great. We train you on how to conduct interviews (generally takes about 25 hours including mentoring and practice interviews); training is paid and again on your own schedule. The only real restriction is that we ask that you be able to interview 10 hours a week on average, just because otherwise the time investment and ongoing training stop making sense.

If that sounds interesting you can apply here: [https://jobs.lever.co/karat/d44ab283-c7c0-4bbd-b8c3-4dc0ced6...](https://jobs.lever.co/karat/d44ab283-c7c0-4bbd-b8c3-4dc0ced64c86?lever- origin=applied&lever-source=HNTHREAD)

Also happy to answer any questions about it here or via email: email@example.com

<comment><USER21> I don't quite understand the proposition. Why would I need to do 10 hours of interviews per week?

<comment><USER20> First, I think my first post left out some context so I should be a bit more explicit that the job is being an interviewer: You interview software engineering candidates on behalf of our clients. (Possible you already get this, but mentioning it just in case.)

As for the 10 hours, we spend a lot of time onboarding and then continuously training our interviewers. Between that and the overhead of managing the relationship with the interviewer, we find things work best with interviewers above a certain activity level. Put another way, it's easier to work with 10 interviewers doing 10 hours a week each than 100 interviewers doing 1 hour a week each.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER22> What kind of pay does it involve? I'm always open to some steady gigs/moonlighting things as I find software clients for myself.

<comment><USER20> I'll double check with our interviewer team on Monday but I believe it's $70-100/hr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's my master list of remote job sites - you should be able to find something through here (my first remote gig was from HN who is hiring thread):

HN - [http://hnhiring.me/](http://hnhiring.me/)

Remote OK - [https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)

Stack Overflow - [https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=True](https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=True)

LiquidTalent - [http://www.liquidtalent.com/](http://www.liquidtalent.com/)

Working Not Working - [http://workingnotworking.com](http://workingnotworking.com)

Hired - [https://hired.com/contract-jobs](https://hired.com/contract-jobs)

Gigster - [https://gigster.com/](https://gigster.com/)

Mirror - [http://mirrorplacement.com/](http://mirrorplacement.com/)

Metova - [http://metova.com/](http://metova.com/)

Mokriya - [http://mokriya.com/](http://mokriya.com/)

HappyFunCorp - [http://happyfuncorp.com](http://happyfuncorp.com)

Savvy Apps - [http://savvyapps.com/](http://savvyapps.com/)

Clevertech - [http://www.clevertech.biz/](http://www.clevertech.biz/)

Workstate - [http://www.workstate.com/](http://www.workstate.com/)

AngelList - [https://angel.co/jobs](https://angel.co/jobs)

Authentic Jobs: [http://www.authenticjobs.com/](http://www.authenticjobs.com/)

Github Jobs: [https://jobs.github.com/](https://jobs.github.com/)

\- [https://www.workingnomads.co/jobs](https://www.workingnomads.co/jobs)

\- [https://remoteworkhub.com/remote-jobs/](https://remoteworkhub.com/remote- jobs/)

\- [https://www.crossover.com/](https://www.crossover.com/)

\- [https://remote.com/](https://remote.com/)

\- [https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/)

\- [https://getbetterluck.com/](https://getbetterluck.com/)

\- [https://remote.co/remote-jobs/](https://remote.co/remote-jobs/)

\- [https://remotive.io/find-a-job/](https://remotive.io/find-a-job/)

\- [https://www.skipthedrive.com/](https://www.skipthedrive.com/)

\- [https://www.outsourcely.com/remote-business-services- jobs](https://www.outsourcely.com/remote-business-services-jobs)

\- [https://www.wfh.io/](https://www.wfh.io/)

\- [http://jobscribe.com/](http://jobscribe.com/)

\- [https://www.remotelyawesomejobs.com/](https://www.remotelyawesomejobs.com/)

\- [https://landing.jobs/](https://landing.jobs/)

\- [https://remotebase.io/](https://remotebase.io/)

Crew: [https://crew.co/](https://crew.co/)

NoDesk - [https://nodesk.co](https://nodesk.co)

FreelanceDevLeads: [https://freelancedevleads.com/](https://freelancedevleads.com/)

FlexJobs: [https://www.flexjobs.com/](https://www.flexjobs.com/)

<comment><USER17> Thank you for generously sharing this! I wonder if we should have an HN contractor github wiki or something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > so I can travel the world while working remotely.

I thought the same thing. Perhaps it is because I work for someone else instead of for myself, but since I've been full time remote for the last 2 years, I've had 0 free time for anything. I rarely leave the house. Pretty much everything I need comes from online purchases or grocery delivery as I don't even have time to do that.

<comment><USER24> This x 1000

Before I worked remotely, I thought that working remotely would allow me time to exercise and eat better. I had dreams of going on a daily bicycle ride, instead of being stuck in my car.

The reality is that working remotely just allows me to put in insane amounts of hours. About once or twice a week I'll start my workday at three in the morning due to insomnia, and just work 12-16 hours straight.

I think this is particularly prevalent when the entire team is working remotely, because ALL of us are wrapped up in this crazy schedule.

<comment><USER25> Wait. You've made a choice to engage in unhealthy work habits. It may not seem like it, but this _is_ your choice. I've been working as a remote contractor for almost 20 years. If you want to remain sane and happy, you need to set boundaries, both with clients and yourself.

<comment><USER26> yeah I think it takes time to realize you need to actively develop these habits. I've been working remotely full time for 2 years and it wasn't until about a month ago that I realized that I wasn't exercising and doing the things I said I was going to do because I didn't prioritize them or make them a habit. I'm just as busy now with my work as I was when I was in an office, but during the day my office mates and I would take afternoon walks regardless. Also, I got a lot of steps in by walking to and from the office to where ever I parked my car (city jobs amiright...). So yeah, I've finally started a routine to go to the gym in the AM before work and/or go for runs/walks around my neighborhood at some point during the day.

tl;dr; you have to actively work to develop these habits because it's easy to just sit and work the entire day

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's funny how with all the job sites and modern tools we still live in the world where employees and employers can't find each other. I'm the CEO of a US based startup, but we're hiring everywhere. We actually have a few digital nomads at the company. Somehow we still have troubles finding more talent.

There are a few job boards dedicated to digital nomads, but the volume there is surprisingly low.

<comment><USER28> You should have a link or something in your profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> network and get to know directors/upper management at very large companies. You can do a lot of this by just hanging out at happy hour spots near a large corporate campus. Those people are the ones that get tasked with implementing large programs or processes. If you they know you and your skills are even remotely relevant then they'll reach out to you when they can't get anyone in the internal IT/tech department to give them the time of day.

Also, huge veins of money run through these places you just need to stick in a needle. Cutting a check for $150k means absolutely nothing to them. I've seen million dollar budgets burned with absolutely nothing to show in the end and the business team just shrugs and moves on.

Those are the gigs you want.

<comment><USER30> How close to stalking are you suggesting ?

<comment><USER31> Don't stalk. If you hang out _very_ frequently, you'll get multiple real _random_ encounters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I lived and worked in Edinburgh for 2 years working as a contractor for an engineering consultancy, I had to eventually leave the UK because my visa was going to expire.

They were so desperate for skilled engineers in Scotland when it was suggested I could keep working remotely they jumped straight on it. I'm now working 100% remotely for them in Canada.

As others have suggested getting yourself into the contracting market in London and then going remotely can work if you're a developer with the right skills though it may be slightly slower then trying to find remote work first.

<comment><USER33> May I ask which consultancy this was?

I have found that there is not a huge amount of remote work for companies based out of Scotland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am a remote executive recruiting contractor. Applied through a job listing. They liked me. They hired me. Now I look for senior and executive people online, remotely.

<comment><USER35> What's the best way to contact you? I'm in the market for a remote tech exec role but found all these remote job boards cater towards engineering roles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there a specific tie for you between being a contractor and working remotely?

I started contracting on-site for a Federal government department (leaving a salaried state government position for it), through an agency, then moved onto more on-site contracting for a telco, through a different agency (in a different state), before finally starting to take on clients directly.

For several years I worked primarily with a single company, effectively as a regular staff member, but paid based on invoiced hours.

I moved overseas while still working for them, started a new company ( I operated as a sole-trader before ) to allow me to invoice from my new country, and then started working with companies initially through word-of-mouth from existing acquaintances/former colleagues, and more recently through HN's "Seeking Freelancer" threads.

If you just want to travel but dont want the hassle of finding new clients, I'd suggest looking into a company like X-Team ([https://x-team.com](https://x-team.com)) - the company I was working for/with when I moved overseas - as they're 100% remote, and have (or had) a number of nomad-ish staff already.

</comment><comment><USER37> Just ask them. I had this world thrust uppon me, as I offered to help with night time, so now I live in SE Asia.

It's not all roses, internet connectivity and being available is a must. Travel is incredibly stressful as you need to be always online, so that means always having batteries, cables multiple phones, tools and travel SIM cards. You cannot leave anything to chance.

Get ready to be cut out of the office politick, which is great, but also means I didn't know our SVP walked out as he was signed onto the online collaboration tool for another 3 months after he stormed out. And it didn't help that he would ignore me from time to time.

Devops has more opertunity just because of the following the sun model.

So yeah, be flexible, add value and just ask, create the crissis and the solution. If only people were fully awake and always available and knew the infastructure@3am....

</comment><comment><USER38> We run a mobile game design agency - [https://mobilefreetoplay.com](https://mobilefreetoplay.com) helping people create apps. Some tips from me

       1. Get yourself an account on Transferwise.com so you can accept all currencies. It then works well to bill people in their local currency as they pay quicker.
       2. We use Xero for all accounting and invoicing. It works and saves time at end of year.
       3. Slack. I am on 9 different teams. I binned off email a long time ago.
       4. Write content on a blog and blog posts, this is the single best way we get new clients.
       5. Keep your prices high. We work with Google, Amazon, Warner Brothers and we got that through recommendations. High prices = top quality.

<comment><USER31> > We work with Google, Amazon

What kind of work do you do for Google/Amazon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I recently started posting about this here: [http://www.breakintoconsulting.com](http://www.breakintoconsulting.com)

My basic advice is: become a visible expert in the space by starting a blog, posting articles, and go to meetups and speak. Then, start with your network (old jobs and coworkers) to look for work, and expand out from there.

The good news is there is a ton of work for javascript developers right now, so that's one advantage you have.

</comment><comment><USER40> Consider finding a reputable and talented agency to work for. I some people automatically reject working for an agency, but when your goal is to travel, it's nice to have someone else maintaining the infrastructure for you e.g. generating leads, signing clients, and taking the liability.

That's what I did, I took a job with a great _local_ agency who is actually remote first. It has allowed me to spend more time with my family and plan actual world travel.

</comment><comment><USER22> Best thing to do is look on r/forhire on reddit, build up a portfolio on upwork/etc, and check all the remote job boards like remoteok, weworkremotely, etc..

Freelancing is hard to start - -you need to be part marketer, you don't get paid for the time finding new clients, but AFTER you have a steady stream of good business, it gets a bit easier to keep filling your pipeline with jobs through word of mouth / etc.

<comment><USER41> About how much can a relatively skilled developer get on upwork or similar? My feeling when bidding for projects there was that I needed to go incredibly low to compete with businesses in India or Pakistan. Or does it get better as you get more clients?

<comment><USER22> I'm still aiming a little low, but I've seen a lot of profiles of devs who charge 80-100/hour and seem to have a solid history on there.

My thinking is you need to start low till you build rep/reviews then you can start charging more per hour.

Edit: Also there's a lot of people who want u.s. or english native speakers. I'm in u.s. not planning on traveling much but I like working out of my basement and not wasting time commuting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> 1\. Get foot in the door. Bid lowest and touch the codebase, oh now it's dirty and you've access to their secret.

Tell them, oh it's dirty code - it's unmaintainable crap. I quoted you the wrong rate, to deal with this I'll need $500 per hour I've other contracts waiting for me. But yeaa this is something which I had done last month for a different client. Now, I am busy, so just drop me a line on whatsapp if you don't find anyone else to do it. Leave this, "Anyone who can really do, will charge at-least 2x of what I am quoting"

2\. Wait

3\. Wait

4\. You get the contract.

Don't regret for the ones who never get back to you, you'll make plenty from the one who tickle you the second time!

At $500/hr even if you are not the expert of the task you are undertaking, you'll find plenty of people on upwork to do it for 100-200/hr. Why? Those people just want to talk with a technical person who has clearly defined the scope of work! Most of those people are technically good from Russia.

<comment><USER43> So lie, cheat, and steal, basically.

You sound like the type who makes contracting and consulting so much harder for everyone else, because you exploit your clients ignorance and trust for your own personal gain.

Ironically, you'd make a lot more in the long run if you had a more long-term outlook instead of being so transactional.

<comment><USER42> I don't force them to make any decision. How am I exploiting them?

Most people end up with less money, not because they lack skill but because they've not used their skill at the right place at right time.

Buffet advise doesn't work for everyone.

<comment><USER44> >How am I exploiting them? By entering into an agreement with intention to terminate early and not telling about it beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Copying the part of my old comment on a similar past post:

> I (re)started my tech blog after several years and made it more active and > discussed things which were kind of like a "niche" that is web scraping and > automation. I wrote posts how things are done and put the code on Github. At > one side I was building my Github and in other hands, my SEO optimized posts > attracted Google and eventually developers and..site/business owners too > that helped me to get contractual work.

The biggest issue with us, techies, is that we don't know how to sell ourselves. Blogging could be pretty effective to get consulting work.

</comment><comment><USER46> Working remote only with a mix of direct customers and customers through TopTal. To have TopTal as a backup is great. Land a new gig in a week perhaps two if you're picky (and your reputation is good).

</comment><comment><USER47> We help senior remote developers around the world contract with companies here in the US, mostly Startups, for freelance work. Feel free to check us out at Skillhire.com

You'll have to go through a technical interview process but most jobs are seeking JS developers, especially Node, React-Redux and React Native devs.

Hopefully we're one more resource to help devs like yourself who want to travel and work.

</comment><comment><USER35> I just got contacted from a company called NewtonX that connects tech leaders with companies that need an initial phone consultation. I haven't gone through with it but it looks like a decent way to do remote work.

[https://www.newtonx.com](https://www.newtonx.com)

</comment><comment><USER48> Here is exactly what I do to get quality remote work:

[https://www.wisecashhq.com/blog/how-to-have-clients-find- you...](https://www.wisecashhq.com/blog/how-to-have-clients-find-you-rather- than-you-chasing-them)

</comment><comment><USER49> Become a contractor in London first, which I assume you aren't. That should get you started into this world!

It has world-famous daily rates even for generalistic sectors like JS/React.

Try to save some money, so you can afford the luxury of choosing clients later.

</comment><comment><USER50> Surprisingly, you have to do a lot of meatspace visits.

<comment><USER51> And if you're half way around the world and can't meet in person, people are really hesitant to work with you. I started out remotely with neither a compsci degree nor any prior experience at a tech company, and I definitely advise against being in that situation. The only good outcome was that it spurred me to generalize more so that I could build and deploy something for a client from start to finish on my own.

<comment><USER52> Nice. How did you get the job? Did you build a complete application from front to back on your own? Or was it through a connection?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'd like to expand more on this subject. Can anyone suggest the best strategies or resources on how to raise your contracting rate?

<comment><USER54> doubleyourfreelancing.com is a great resource

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Join toptal.

</comment><comment><USER56> Check out www.moonlightwork.com

Saw them on www.indiehackers.com, think that might help you!

</comment><comment><USER57> What's your email?

</comment><comment><USER58> Work on your social media reputation and presence. People pay more if you are top of your field as determined by how many twitter followers you have, etc. On one hand it's a bad metric, but we all value social proof.

</comment><comment><USER59> YunoJuno.com</comment>


Delphi - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(software) <comment><USER2> As someone who has spent 10 years working with Delphi (from 2008 - 2019), it lacks far behind compared to other modern IDEs. In 1995, Delphi was definitely ahead of its time, but has been unable to pick up. Each new release of the suite contains some new unusual bugs, while avoiding fixing some long standing issues.

That might be harsh, since each new release does contain improvements of some kind, but they feel incremental, and not at a pace where Delphi would ever catch up with other modern systems. It also stems from change in focus over the last ten years over making Delphi relevant again.

They wasted several years in the early 2010s by making Delphi a platform for mobile app development. The selling argument being that you could use Pascal to develop both for iOS and Android. Unfortunately, it never really matured enough to be useable. And so after several years of that misadventure, they finally went back to improving the core product.

Frankly, the only reason people still use Delphi today is if they have a large legacy codebase written in Object Pascal. Embarcadero took too long to realise this. They can charge a huge licence fee for the product, because their customers are basically stuck with it.

There are many things I like about Delphi and Object Pascal, mind you, but there are also many things I find too frustrating about it. Particularly because I know other IDEs and languages have already solved those problems. That, and the small community means its ecosystem is tiny and not frequently updated.

<comment><USER3> Examples?

<comment><USER2> I am not sure of which specific thing you wish me to give examples of, so I'll start with the positive aspects:

I like properties on objects. They are an elegant way of handling the get/set mess you see in Java. (Which subsequently is also why I dislike how interfaces in Object Pascal are designed, because they don't handle properties well.)

I kind of like the verboseness of the language. Which frankly makes none of the subsequent features, like generics, seem out of place. In a more terse language, like say Go, generics would look out of place in that syntax. But that's style.

As for bugs of Delphi, XE7 is a notorious example. It included a new syntax highlighter that would crash if you typed in a | anywhere in the IDE. And it would crash hard enough to crash the entire IDE.

Where I worked, we primarily used 32-bit programs, but every time you wanted to modify configuration for your project, it always defaulted to 64-bit, forcing you every time to manually switch it back to 32-bit to configure. The user interface has plenty of annoyances like that.

I could go on, as I am just grasping what's at the top of my head. But I don't need to make this entry too long.

EDIT: Can't post any more right now, so I'll add some specific IDE examples of missing features:

Basically, Delphi lacks a lot of 'quality of life' improvements, that other IDEs have seen over the past 20 years. It's mostly small quirks, some of them definitely bugs.

One that's rather unique to Pascal, since it's a one pass language, where you have an interface and an implementation division, is that when you write a method on a class definition, you can tell the IDE to create the implementation for those methods instantly. But if you write a public unit method (that's outside any class), it won't do the same thing.

Sometimes, it will stop suggestion completion, e.g. showing you a list of all methods and properties on a class where you are typing. I think when it cannot compile your project, it stops functioning. Which is often the case, when you are modifying your code.

But the biggest one - for me at least - is how slow it feels compared to other IDEs. It doesn't feel very optimised. Telling it to search for where a function is called (referenced) can take a bit.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I should have been more specific :-)

I wanted examples of things that other IDEs have that the Delphi IDE doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ainar-g For some time, (mostly pirated copies of) Delphi were extremely popular in Russia. The fact that it's (Object) Pascal allowed lots of graduates, whose courses were probably mostly taught in Pascal, to get to work fairly quickly. With that said, Delphi also had a reputation of a language with lots of bad code written in it, for the very same reason. People fresh from college or high school rarely write good code without mentors to point them in the right direction.

I personally think that Object Pascal is deeply underappreciated. It's a simple but powerful language.

<comment><USER4> I was pretty surprised, looking at Object Pascal, from the perspective of C++ development. Modern Delphi even offers generics and powerful macros, alongside the VCL. If Delphi had a better focus on cross-platform development I'd wager it'd probably be a lot more relevant today.

FreePascal and Lazarus are also worth checking out, as they offer a similar UI library (LCL in Lazarus) and pretty good Object Pascal support (with minimal tweaks a lot of Delphi code works - I took a medium size program written for XE8 and had it working just fine with a little rejiggering.)

<comment><USER5> > If Delphi had a better focus on cross-platform development I'd wager it'd > probably be a lot more relevant today.

I thought they did do this? I never tried but I got a lot of emails about iOS & Android next to Desktop from them up until a few years ago when unsubscribed to their mailing list.

Quick check; FireMonkey is apparently for writing cross platform apps on Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Linux & Windows.

Or you mean; actual IDE on Mac & Linux? Indeed without that I wouldn't touch it either.

I'd wager that if they did not do the 'interesting' pricing model, it'd be a lot more relevant. They should have free versions for open source / private use and 'sane' pricing for companies. They have none of that. E1700,- for the first year for 1 dev and if you want to build desktop apps for Linux it's more than double? Not a big deal for big corps, however, for anyone wanting to play around and write some small applications for their startup it makes no sense.

> FreePascal and Lazarus are also worth checking out

At least on Mac it is not very stable for me, I try it every year before christmas (when I have some time to test new things) and after 1-2 days I usually pass it on. From it actually not even starting (crashing on startup), to not compiling, to it just messing up the windows completely at random times... I hope they get it stable or that it is just me, because it would be great to have something like that for someone like me who made his first years of money creating products in Delphi (starting with 1 on 3.11) where Delphi was a secret weapon against people using C++.

<comment><USER2> > I thought they did do this? I never tried but I got a lot of emails about > iOS & Android next to Desktop from them up until a few years ago when > unsubscribed to their mailing list.

Indeed they do, but that's assuming those cross-platform features are any good. No one I've heard of uses Delphi for Android and iOS development. As a Delphi house, when we actually needed to develop an Android app, we went with Java and Google's Android Studio, because Delphi's offering simply wasn't mature enough. Nor was it useful to use any advance third-party libraries in your app.

Similarly, their MacOS and Linux offerings (not the IDE, because that's Windows only) aren't particularly good either. It's only really the Windows verion that gets official improvements, and FreePascal basically handles the Linux compiler. Which is fine, I guess.

But it's rather a hassle to maintain a codebase for cross-platform clients, since you actually need to fiddle with your code between Delphi and FreePascal.

<comment><USER5> Ah yeah, that sounds bad. Shame, it could've been nice, theoretically. I tried Kylix back in the day and hoped that would be the way forward (I actually bought shares in Borland/Inprise based on the Kylix announcement; it made me _a lot_ of money, but I was young and naive, I now understand that it was a lottery and I got in and out in time by cheer chance). They really messed it all up...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I loved Delphi and created countless of apps with it in the 90's and early 2000's. I heard that Embarcadero, the new owner of Delphi, released a free "Community Edition", so I decided to download it to see if it could compile my old apps, and my experience after that has been nothing but terrible. That ended my yearning for Delphi completely. The details: [https://twitter.com/esesci/status/1222311006635872256](https://twitter.com/esesci/status/1222311006635872256)

<comment><USER5> Oh I never saw that; I could not find that on the site. Well, then at least they tried and they are just not very good at what they do when I read all of this. Borland was a few decades ago. Feels like it all went down when they had to sell their campus after the bubble went.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This brings back memories. I learned programming both on my CASIO calculator and with pirated copy of Delphi. I'm French but the in-app manual was in English, so I would search in the English to French dictionary to decipher the meaning of the documentation. Mind you this was before internet was popular. I remember vividly looking up the word "behaviour" and failing to understand how it related to the List object . I later found a book about Delphi at a bookshop near my bus stop. I'd go after school (I was 14 at the time) and read the book and take notes while waiting for the bus. I couldn't afford the book so that's how I got away with it. (I'm sure if I had asked my parents they would have bought it though). The book explained object oriented programming using the metaphor of a car with a few methods such as switchGears() and properties like the number of wheels.

Later when I got access to the Internet I kept playing around with Delphi and found bindings for both DirectX and OpenGL. I wasn't a popular kid at school but when I brought back a 4 player vertical shooter I got my moment of glory.

I miss using Delphi, maybe I should find a copy somewhere

</comment><comment><USER3> Delphi is still the best thing for Windows app programming. It is so unfortunate what happen to it business wise.

<comment><USER8> Now that every supported Windows box ships with .NET, I would argue that C# + WinForms is the most convenient option to quickly put something together. And C# of the WinForms era was still recognizably a Delphi-like language with Java-like syntax.

<comment><USER9> Does it come with a form designer as polished as Delphi's? And have you used both?

Microsoft always seem to mess up GUI development from my experience but I'd love to be wrong here.

<comment><USER8> Yes, and yes. I did Delphi and VB6 in late 90s before moving onto C#, and I remember being amused at how it was Delphi and not VB skills that transferred the most. A bunch of stuff in the .NET object model - notably, first-class properties and events - was clearly motivated by the desire to have native support for abstractions that were idiomatic in Delphi (but were done "by convention" in e.g. Java). And then WinForms itself is so much like VCL, you feel right at home.

And yeah, it is very specifically designed around rich designer support, which is also very similar to the Delphi designer in practice. Same drag-and-drop experience with controls, a property grid to edit properties and wire up events, anchor-based layout etc. Components can be designer-aware as well, plugging into the designer UX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish there was something cross-platform that was as easy to use as Delphi but with a modern programming language (yes, we tried Lazarus, thanks). I'd love to have a decent alternative to Electron.

Belay that, I'd love to have an alternative, period.</comment>