[LRUG] [JOBS] Freelancer. And some reflections.

[Mark Burns]

I'd guess the main reason is the time zone difference. Plus when an
employer is looking for candidates if they open their options up to remote
working across the world, then suddenly the market size is huge. So if you
are considered then you'll be compared to a huge pool of vastly varying
quality and suitability. The decision paralysis that comes with that
probably factors in.

I'd guess that most companies choose to pay the London premium or do some
balance of off-shore teams/in house development. I've seen a fair few data
points where off shore work doesn't quite work, and I believe it's mostly
time zone and lack of real face to face communication that's hindered it.

So people are probably just wary of that.

Good luck though. I'd definitely do a similar thing myself if I could and
escape this London air.


On Mon, 27 Feb 2017 at 06:47, Thomas Buckley-Houston <tom at tombh.co.uk>
wrote:

> tl;dr I'm Bristolian, but Asia-based, looking for short or part-time
> work: http://tombh.co.uk
>
> I have the massively first-world problem of not needing much money.
> I'm looking at the job boards and everything is full-time. So I ignore
> each job's requested application process and just send a brief email
> asking about short or part-time work. The uniformity of the responses
> clearly indicate that I'm swimming against the tide. It crosses my
> mind that I can pretend to be interested in full-time work just to get
> 3 months of paychecks, but that's hardly a good precedent to be
> setting. Of course this is why I'm posting here, I don't have the work
> contacts I used to have and I'm sure short and part-time things exist,
> it's just not on the job boards.
>
> Is this a common predicament? It can't only be Londoners that have
> anything near a genuine need for the kind of money software people
> earn? Is a 5 day week provably the most efficient use of a person's
> time? From a business perspective, perhaps there are cases where the 5
> day week is merely an unchecked assumption, arising from the
> irrational fear of losing out to the competition? Expressing such
> views gives me the uneasy feeling I'm instantly checked off a lot of
> company's lists: evidently I'm not a motivated team player capable of
> handling the everyday realities of life at the coalface of industry
> leading standards.
>
> I'm a good developer, looking for work, I'm sure there must be
> something out there that's a genuine fit. No doubt my cynicism is in
> no insignificant part fuelled by the bite of financial vulnerability,
> which as I mentioned earlier is a peculiar kind of financial
> vulnerability I'm actually extraordinarily privileged to have.
>
> Thanks for listening,
> tom
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