[LRUG] ⚒️ Freelancer (still) available for work!

[Najaf Ali]

Hi Jakub and everyone,

Yes, you're definitely not the only one in this situation. I of course
worry that maybe there's something wrong with me or my network in
particular but lots of people I don't know or meet at networking events are
also relating similar experiences.

I am at the begging for money from friends and family stage. Some people
I've spoken to think this lull will be over soon, others think it might
last for a year or more, and yet others believe it's a permanent shift in
the industry.

After a lot of advice and encouragement from friends I've decided (😱) to
go back to full time work, probably as an engineering manager or staff
software engineer. I'm talking to a handful of companies in Tokyo and the
salaries/work environments etc are not entirely terrible. No firm offers
yet but it's only been a week since I started shopping around in earnest.

All the best,

-Ali

On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 9:23 PM Jakub Adler <adler.jakub at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Najaf,
> Thank you for sharing.
> I can see, that I'm not the only one in the same situation. I've
> experienced the same. I remember a year ago when being in contract and
> other years ago when working, being constantly contacted by recruiters
> looking for RoR devs.
> Now it's like a flat line. In the past few months, just a few
> opportunities came across with rates below the standards. I was contacted
> mainly for the perm roles. There are not many contracts right now tho.
> I hope you and others find some jobs in the near future, but there might
> be a possibility that it will go worse, as we might be on the verge of
> a huge recession. Not sure what is your point of view. Personally, in this
> "winter" time, I'm focusing on improving my skills and building some side
> hustle, and trying to identify opportunities coming out of nowadays
> situations.
> I'm considering building some services that will generate some side
> income, like plugins, or services related to Shopify as it is a hugely used
> online sell platform.
> Let me know (and maybe others), what you think about that.
> I wish you the best of luck. Don't give up.
> Take care
>
> Kind regards
> Jacob
>
> pá 12. 5. 2023 v 10:25 odesílatel Najaf Ali <ali.najaf at gmail.com> napsal:
>
>> Hi all!
>>
>> As per the subject line I'm still available for new Ruby/Rails/JS work.
>> More details available here: https://github.com/Najaf
>>
>> A few quick notes:
>>
>>    - Searching for new work in the current climate has been challenging
>>    and so *I am willing to consider significantly lower rates* than
>>    usual in order to keep the lights on. Please get in touch directly to
>>    discuss details.
>>    - Having so much time without work allowed me to catch up with some
>>    of you back in London. I've had something like forty zoom calls over the
>>    past few months. It was extremely common to hear about layoffs, freelancers
>>    like myself with nothing in the pipeline living off savings, and founders
>>    trying to stretch out their runways for as long as possible.
>>    - There were many theories as to the reasons for this. SVB + other
>>    banks collapsing, low interest rates, existential dread over ChatGPT,
>>    emperor husk firing half the engineering team on the bird site etc were
>>    interesting candidates and fun to discuss.
>>
>> Anyhow, I hope you're all well and weathering the current tech hiring
>> winter better than I am! On the bright side, at least I'm not running a
>> business that would be heavily impacted by situation like this, like say,
>> an agency 🤣
>>
>> If you'd like to discuss the potential for working together then please
>> email me and we can set up a call in the near future to discuss further.
>> Also if you'd like to catch up and talk shop then feel free to book
>> something in using this calendly link:
>> https://calendly.com/najaf-ali/call-with-ali
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> -Ali
>>
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