Are you contracting on the side (while working full time)?

I tried taking on a side job last year and it made me miserable. The work was fairly easy, the people were great, and the money was decent, too. But taking on a whole new set of responsibilities and losing a chunk of my free time was just too much for me. Ultimately it just wasn’t worth the toll it took on my mental health.

One issue in particular that I ran into was the difficulty in context switching between my day job and my side job. I imagined being able to do an hour here or there before or after work. But in reality I found it really hard to get any meaningful work done in an hour, which meant I needed to allocate larger chunks of time than I originally planned. That meant I often ended up sacrificing entire evenings, or chunks of my weekend on my side job. The difficulty in context switching also caused me to procrastinate a lot, which also made me feel terrible about myself.

Yes. You have to learn a skill with demand that cannot be met. That is the easiest way to get side work.

Learn Salesforce development. I've accepted a new contract role that is full time hours and my older employer straight up told me, "We cannot match your new hourly rate, but here is still a raise. Feel free to work on things for us whenever you want, whenever you have time, remotely."

I'm nothing special, an average developer. But businesses cannot find enough Salesforce developers, so some take what they can get, even if it's part-time.

I suppose in a sense I do, although my "full time job" isn't development. I take care of my son at home during the day (and occasionally parts of the night), and otherwise work part to full time on software.

I've also worked part time contract gigs while working full time on software. It gets to be a lot pretty quickly.

I've come to think the impact on my quality of life isn't worth it. I'm so sleep deprived and the monetary rewards have never felt that great - especially now since I'm paid less than I have been in almost ten years. I think I'd feel a little differently if my son wasn't such a schedule mangler or I was earning what I'm used to, but... I'm fairly firmly in the camp now that my time is worth more than anything I can manage to get paid after a certain point.

Something worth considering is intermittently taking on smaller but lucrative contracts. Be selective. Don't commit to a long term slog in which you'll sacrifice your personal life and appreciation for your career.

I actually did some paid technical writing on the side in 2019 on top of my full time job as a developer.

It helped a lot that the company I work for started a technical content agency as a new division of the company and was okay with me doing extra paid work for them outside of normal work hours.

If you're a developer who is also a decent writer, maybe something like this would work for you?

I actually found technical writing to be a nice change of pace from my day job. If I'd tried to do extra paid software work on the side I think I'd have felt burned out rather quickly.

If you want to know more about getting into technical writing, my email address is in my profile.

a few years ago i quit my full time job but negotiated a consulting arrangement with the company on an hourly basis.

it was beneficial for them because i was able to offboard and knowledge transfer much more effectively over a few months of part-time work as opposed to the standard 2 weeks notice.

it was beneficial for me because right out of the gate i had a consulting contract with a yc startup at a rate that was slightly higher than my yearly salary which i could use as social proof when reaching out to new clients and negotiating rates.

i ended up consulting for about a year as my only source of income where i took on a couple other clients through my network (ex-coworkers starting companies and needing help faster than they could hire, ex-coworkers referring me to others who were stating companies) and a few lucky connections through upwork (he contacted me on linkedin so upwork never got a cut of the invoices i sent). i've also tried toptal and moonlight but no contracts have come out of those platforms.

a year ago i took on a new full time job and i've been consulting on the side since. i agree with ananonymoususer in that i can have as much extra work as i can handle however i was lucky to have already created relationships with clients before getting a full time job. i'd imagine approaching a new client while maintaining a full time job is a harder sell than simply letting an existing client know that your availability will be reduced moving forward.

I've been doing it for 35 years and it has been great. I've had as much extra work as I can handle. (Sometimes I have more than I can handle.) It's a great way to build/maintain skills, earn extra money, and create a reputation for yourself.

I'm a full-time freelancer/contractor but I did a lot of on-the-side freelance work when I was permanently employed years back. You need two things. 1. Your daytime job needs to be relatively easy and low-stress so you have surplus mental capacity to work more in the evenings and weekends. 2. You side gigs need to be simple, repeatable processes. I used to do things like custom email newsletter and blog design, which I could easily churn out using common templates. Pay-by-the-hour services such as SEO and PPC management can also be pretty lucrative.

I've done it off and on. There is apparently insatiable demand for "cheap" web development FWIW. Check with the local rotary club or "business club" in your area that has a bunch of local business owners.

Embedded development is also pretty much in demand, more so if you have FPGA skills as well.

As with most things different skills give you different places where you might hunt for piece work.

Don't do contracting on the side if you work for any of the big tech companies. They will find out and they will fire you for it, whether that is legal or not.

A card game to complement my lectures on innovation (adjunct prof with a 10 session syllabus). I figured rather than do only case studies and maybe a simulation (those are typically not great), I'd leverage my interest in board games to craft a game with a strong academic foundation. (I'm not a developer, so my options are a bit limited for side projects, but no-code is giving me a lot of hope and I have a couple of ideas for later this year)

I've found I can handle an extra 10 hours of work a week without negatively impacting the rest of my life -- work, social, sleep, hobbies. I've gotten all my contract work from prior work relationships or referrals from friends.

At this point, I'm looking to switch from hourly to project-based pricing -- I'm finally efficient enough to charge by value; there are only so many billable hours in a day.

I have contracted on the side a bit, but only for close friends and family. It's not really for the money, these are people I care about doing things I'm interested in, but at some point I found that having a formal paying relationship made everyone behave better, and kept me more interested. I'll admit the family side can be a little fraught- I think one of my relatives is still sore I wouldn't work past a certain point for free, but I think the boundaries are worth it.

I'm lucky in that I've been a career generalist and my personal network includes business owners. A lot of small to mid-sized business owners really want a second opinion on whatever the heck it is their full-time IT person is telling them. If you are already serving as that second opinion, its not inappropriate to so "hey, I'm happy to help out here, but I could be a lot more available on this sort of stuff in a formal consulting relationship." If they are interested, you can pursue it, if not, you've established some boundaries.

I do a side project once or twice a year, usually for one of the companies I’ve previously worked with. They usually get in touch when they’ve got a small, relatively self-contained project and need some additional resources to deliver it faster. As a former employee they know I’ll understand what’s going on and will be able to deliver, and I know what’s expected from me. It’s a good arrangement for everybody that’s certainly much easier when you leave a company on good terms!

I’d be cautious about the idea of having it be a “secondary source of income” or anything - that’s not feasible with a full-time role - but for my part I use the money to pay for hardware upgrades or similar. It’s important not to over-work though; I’d be skeptical of doing any more than maybe the 120 or so hours I do in a year.

I did this for a couple years when I was much much younger. I am not going to outright recommend no, but I should have been an order of magnitude more discerning. It is a wonderful recipe for burnout.

I went down this route before going in full time with contracting. With a full time job, I was capable of billing between 10-15 hours a week and it was only sustainable for a few months for me due to the balance of downtime and family time. Besides the extra cash, the economic diversification and the new skills acquired during this time made the venture worth it, but YMMV. Good luck!

Yes. I work on web design/development with a focus on brand development & auditing, and general marketing/seo. I've had a couple small gigs the last month and one ongoing partnership. Probably put in 15 hours of work last month between the two. https://bigboys.nyc

Yes, I've found that it gives me more variety in the work I do than I get in my day job. I find that for me an extra ~20hrs a week is all I can do without losing the will to live, but it's nice to know that if I got laid off from either position, I would be fine, and if I don't then it gives me investing money.

I did some years back, and at first it was nice. But it wasn't long before I wanted some free time and was happy when a contract was done. It's a way to try out working with different things for different companies. Also a way to overload yourself and burn out if you're not careful.

Currently no, but very often yes for the last 5 years or so.

It's a lot of work, sometimes OK and sometimes very stressful.

I used to do that but it was quite stressful. I prefer creating products on the side instead.

I did for a time but once my side gigs dried up I didn't look for more. Doing the work wasn't difficult but securing work is a huge PITA and I've got too much going on in my life to do that right now.

Yes. I allocate 10 hours a week to this. It can be kind of overwhelming. I use the funds to pay for side projects and hobbies.