I agree, this is an interesting thread. I'd like to encourage junior developers that
things *do* work out, and offer a few tips on how to get to where you want to be.
I have 4 years experience in CF development; I wouldn't call myself a guru, but I can
use CF to do just about anything anyone could want to accomplish on the web. I worked
one year
for an educational web company, two years for a marketing agency, and have been
freelancing for a year. I have found abundant opportunities locally - I haven't been
able to follow
up of all the leads I've generated from the tips below. These tips are in no
particular order, and your mileage may vary - please don't flame me :-)
1. Identify your local ISPs and approach them with your skills. Put together a quick
flyer letting them know what you can do: build search engines, shopping carts, forms,
automated
email, databases, etc. Many ISPs have too many clients to offer good service for
special requests like these - you can get their overflow work.
2. Now, identify all of your ISPs clients (many ISPs list them somewhere on their
site) and go to their sites. Take a quick 10 minute tour and identify how you could
improve their
site using CF (or any other technology your are good at). Email or contact the client
directly and make your suggestions; most sites you'll find are bad only because no one
suggested anything better. If the client is interested, come to a fair price and do
the work. You could do this in cooperation with the ISP, or...
3. Become a mini-ISP yourself. You might already have a CF server, or could get one
for $3-5K (a small one). Put in in a collocation closet with the ISP (I pay $300/mo
for mine).
If you drum up 10 clients at $60/mo (give them email, search engine, shopping cart,
whatever, to make $60 sound like a deal) then your are making $300/mo - more clients =
more $$$.
Still too much to invest?...
4. Become a mini-mini-ISP. Cruise on over to sitehosting.net (or something like it)
where they offer CF hosting. Get it for $40/mo, sell it for $60/mo. In both of the
last two
cases, remember to charge something for the development in addition to the hosting fee
:-)
5. Above all else, I encourage people to look locally for opportunities... this list
is entertaining, but if you're hoping for it to consistently put food on the table, I
think
you'll go hungry. My experience is that face-to-face contact is the most important
factor in landing a job. Everyone has probably noticed that there are ten "on-site"
jobs on this
list for every telecommuter job.
Good luck out there Junior Developers! You shouldn't have to work for free!
John Pannell
ps - please don't use the above techniques in the Boise, ID region :-)
John Allred wrote:
> This is an interesting thread. Thanks to those who appear to
> be looking out for the interests of "Jrs" or "newbies." But
> why don't you leave the determination of whether a situation
> seems fair to us? Given the paucity of opportunities, maybe
> we are, indeed, ripe for the picking. But, unless you can
> offer some method for us to move into a structured work
> environment where we have access to more experienced
> programmers, training, and the opportunity to grow our
> skills and resumes, our options are extremely limited.
>
> I would also add that we might see support for Cold Fusion
> dwindling needlessly if we don't find some way to encourage
> people to hire the less experienced. Not every situation
> requires a guru, after all. I don't know how this would be
> accomplished, but I can tell you that standing on the
> outside looking in really sucks. There is no path to the
> goal that many of us can so clearly see.
>
> I recall a parallel in this from my earlier days as a
> musician. Those of us who played for a living were always
> irritated by the others who just loved to play for fun. It
> always skewed the pay downward. However, those who needed to
> hire musicians almost always got the quality they were
> willing to pay for. So I can understand if your concern in
> the immediate situation is that people working for free will
> take work away or drive pay rates down. The key is to not be
> in the market that makes decisions based solely on money.
>
> just my .02...
>
> --John
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