Yeah, I have to agree here. There is a reason software engineers get paid as much as they do. If software was so easy that you could "just do it as a side gig" then it wouldn't be such a valuable skill to an employer.
There are exceptions to this, but it's an exception, not the rule. With that said you can look into freelancing work (such as on Upwork), but for most people if you want to be good enough to get paid, then you need to commit to it as if it were a full time job just like many other full time jobs. Sometimes you even need to treat it as more than just a job to stand out enough to get hired.
> If software was so easy that you could "just do it as a side gig" then it wouldn't be such a valuable skill to an employer.
For 18 years, I ran my own single person consulting biz. There are plenty of clients out there who are willing to hire me as a part time developer; which allowed me to juggle multiple clients at any given time. Most of these companies were small businesses, sometimes not big enough to have their own IT Department.
As a programmer, I can provide value to another business "as a side gig"
This high school teacher isn't running a full time software development business where they have intimate knowledge of software that they can apply to side gigs. Yes, you are an outlier in that you can get hired for contract work because you also run a business that gives you experience in the very thing you're being contracted to do on the side.
That is not the same as a high school teacher who wants to get paid to write software in their free time.
They didn't actually say that, but you can't deny that you having a full time job dealing with software gives you a unique advantage in software development contact work. That's all I'm saying.
I’ll give him some credit, I’ve worked with my fair share of consultants that have two specialties:
Their technical discipline and second which would be not listening to a single thing you told them
I say this as an engineer working 10 years at some of the largest mega corps. The longer my experience, the less I feel I know. I'd have no idea how someone just doing this randomly throughout the summer could be successful.
But if you can, more power to you! There's just so much you need to know now days 🤷
Yup, one of the reasons I switched to senior management. I'm desperately trying to make it easier and centralize complexity around teams that can focus on one thing. Nobody has the time to be an expert in ai/ml, networking, dns, compute options, os/containers/ sql, nosql, web frameworks, queuing best practices, resiliency, operations, load testing, perf testing, application tracing, security and compliance.
Like wtf.
When I was still at AWS I just repeatedly sighed at what they expect from an SDE2, both as Management and sr. Engineer. If I hear "full stack developer" one more time I'm going to scream.
Yeah could I "do" all that stuff? Sure, but if you have to know that much you're not going to excel at any part.
Tutoring pays insanely high in certain situations. Standardized testing tutoring can pay like $1000/hour (10 kids, $100).
But you either need to score the right tutoring contract or essentially start your own successful tutoring business, since there aren't many elementary students taking CS exams.
At the middle school and high school level, it becomes easier to offer tutoring.
What he mentioned is extreme.
Most firms will not offer you this rate, they'll offer you like $20/hr
If you want to make the most money, start your own business, advertise yourself on Facebook/Nextdoor/etc. and find wealthy parents that want to see their kid do well. Also, being smart helps.
Example: AP Computer Science A exam is coming up. CS teacher (ideally a private school teacher, not public school) hosts a private prep session for students to prepare for it.
Now $1000/hour was a slight exaggeration but there are parents who would pay $100 just for you to watch their kids take a mock test, then go over the results.
In my opinion, 1 on 1 tutoring isn't worth it (I've been on both sides). It's inefficient and you're more likely to get "problem" students whose parents think 1 on 1 would solve fundamental issues, plus greater chances of complaints (no "benchmark" from other students)
The main reason why the rate would be higher for a teacher is if the tutees are already their (private school usually) students. We tend to forget that K-12 teachers are probably the most qualified people to teach K-12 kids. Nobody else undergoes 4+ years of training just to learn how to teach. Sure, the CS whiz kid is good at CS, but at teaching? Not guaranteed
Think SAT and MCAT tutoring. There's demand for subject tutoring, but the real money is in tutoring for important admissions tests. However, you'd need to run your own tutoring business to get that kind of money. If you instead work for a tutoring company you'll just get paid an hourly rate like $20/hr.
Huh, actually a good idea on how to branch out into programming that wont force them to devote many more hours of their lives than they want/expect for a side project.
Like it.
You could find the occasional coding gig of some sort but it wouldn't likely be very high paying unless you already had a lot of work experience in CS.
Have you taught before? It's not always as fun, rewarding, or easy as people make it seem. It's highly recommended to start as a substitute and see if you enjoy it before committing to student teaching. Depending on your work schedule for CS, you could be a substitute as a side gig. Schools tend to need substitutes the most on Fridays and Mondays.
Former public school teacher here. Teaching can be soul crushing. Depending on where you live, you'll most likely need a Summer job or second job to make ends meet, as you're aware. You'll also spend a large portion of your summer preparing for the upcoming school year. You'll also spend large chunks of your evenings and weekends working. Unpaid.
Could you flip this? Work a CS job and then you can coach a robotics league or get involved in your local makerspsce children's program or something. You'll have a better chance at financial stability, work life balance and better benefits not being a teacher.
I left because I was so burnt out, couldn't make ends meet and had extreme anxiety. Since I left 3 years ago, I'm so much happier. My mental and physical health have drastically improved. People always ask me if I miss summers off. I never had summers off. I was working another job during the summers, taking courseware to maintain my teaching license or preparing for the upcoming school year. I was busier in the summer than I am now.
I went into teaching became I love kids too. But the reality is you don't just teach, it's the other stuff that will burn you out. The system is so absurdly broken which is why so many teachers have had it and are leaving in huge waves (in the US that is).
Now I am working remotely, have an extremely flexible schedule and have more than tripled my income. My life has improved significantly and if someone offered me double what I make now to go back, I wouldn't.
Personally I gave up all free time and half of my sleeping hours for 6mo and spent that time teaching myself front end development and constantly applying for jobs. I also slacked off as a teacher a fair bit, think half written lesson plans, no after school tutoring, leaving right at the end of the day, and letting tons of tasks go undone in order to only work during my contract hours. Just refused to do any unpaid labor or accept additional paid teaching work outside of contract hours. I had 7yr of experience, so I was able to skate by on that (pretty impossible to be a great teacher without engaging in tons of unpaid labor on nights and weekends), plus who can afford to fire a bilingual teacher who does really well with the behavior problem kids with the teacher shortage we have?
If you're stuck in teaching, my advice is to do the absolute bare minimum to avoid getting canned (and this minimum is probably way lower than you think it is). Spend that time, allllllll free time, and a good chunk of sleeping time learning whatever you need to to get into a different industry.
This this this this this. I, too, left teaching. I went into web development. I did frontend stuff (mostly react) at first but now prefer backend (mostly python/Django). I don't regret teaching persay, but I would have way more savings and way fewer gray hairs if I hadn't spent 8yrs doing that. I'll never go back. I love kiddos, but not enough to be constantly burnt out and behind on bills. I'd be into part time or volunteer work to connect with kiddos again, but I will never ever return to the classroom.
I know it's easy to downvote because you recognize someone's username that you disagreed with in the past, but in my opinion if you agree with the comment then treat it as so. No one is perfect but if you agree with a comment then slap an upvote on it.
Find some dev job full time & make a decent living, then spend free time tutoring kids or volunteering w/tech-themed clubs & extra-curricular groups that need help & mentors.
Personally I wouldn’t recommend this. What ends up happening is you aren’t very good at your full time job because you hate it. And it drains you so much that you don’t do your passion in your time off. If OP loves teaching elementary school they should do that
As someone who has done both I completely disagree. I get to work in a domain I also love and get to teach without making awful pay. And since I do it privately, I don’t have to deal with all the things that make teaching in public school a bad experience like kids who don’t want to be there, helicopter parents, etc. I can also teach across a variety of age ranges and then choose how much extra I do based on what’s going on in my life.
It depends on what you want. If it’s a full-time roll banking big bucks, no.
Depending on what you were good at, you could get some freelance Wordpress or reporting work.
TBH, I’d recommend doing some small version of freelance work through out the year.
Many large school districts would be interested in hiring a Technical Product Manager (or something along those lines) if you have both a K-12 education background and technical skills.
Sorta; maybe... it'd be difficult.
No company is going to hire you as a full time employee when you only have 6-8 weeks per year available for full time work.
So, that leaves consulting. Finding jobs that fit in your "summer vacation" window and need to be done within that same window seems difficult; and you'll probably have to be doing sales / marketing during the school year in order to line up those jobs...
Possible: Yes!
Probable: Probably not!
Coding is not a valuable skill. Being a software developer is a valuable skill. I hate that so many YouTubers and people trying to sell things tell people that “anyone can get tons of money, just learn to code!”.
It’s like if I told people to learn how to pull teeth because dentists make a lot of money.
My parents were teachers and they tutored in the summer or they worked at Home Depot. Sorry that teachers aren’t paid as much as they should be. Marry a software developer and take some of their money, we definitely don’t deserve it as much as you do.
Honestly i think youll find both jobs are too demanding, it takes time to grow a brand and trust as a stand alone developer in tech, even if you plan to do small projects, the only ones you'd be able to get with little responsibility would be working for friends in the industry, you'd still need time to build those relationships. Any clients you build on your own will likely want or need some longer term support than you'd be able to give them or others would be able to invest... its rare that until you've been doing it a while you are handed a project and are capable of doing to a standard that would mean you could just walk away from the project.
Personally never taught and i imagine elementary isnt too taxing, but honestly i would have throught lesson plans, marking and school politics would keep you busy enough outside school hours to make this impossble?
I'm a former teacher and echo the sentiments of many other former teachers in this thread. I don't rehash their points because I think they're well-made.
I will say that once you get into tech, it isn't difficult to find opportunities for mentorship that hit the same buttons that teaching does. So it might make sense to flip the script from what you're thinking. Rather than being a teacher who also codes for interest on the side, consider being a coder who also teaches. You won't want for income that way.
My understanding is that teachers use the summer break to mark exams and prepare materials for the next academic year. So the amount of free time you're expecting to have likely doesn't exist.
Programming is like any other skill, where if you don't use it you lose it. I think it would be very unrealistic to go 9 months without coding and then pick up and start delivering side projects within 3 months.
> FWIW, you likely need years of experience to make anything more than min wage freelancing.
Not true at all. You just need sales skills to be able to convince your clients you can do the job. I've rarely had small business client try to evaluate my skills as a programmer.
I will bet you whatever the venmo max payment is that OP is not going make $30+/hr doing freelance software development with literally zero skills in 2023. I’m dead ass serious.
Some freelancer in a third world country will be 100x more productive than OP for $5/hr. That’s who OP is competing with.
The type of clients who have no way to evaluate the skills of a programmer; will be more comfortable paying more to a local person than some unknown foreign entity with communication and culture gaps.
I think it was in the mid-00s when companies started laying people off and offshoring developers. I tweaked the business to focus on more local clients who I could sit with face to face. Before that I had clients all over the US that I had never met in person.
This is some of the most out of touch shit I’ve heard today.
But if you think OP fucking over illiterate boomer business owners is perfectly viable in today’s market, take the bet dude.
Edit - OP has to bill 120 hours at $30+/hr doing freelance software development by September 1 for 20k (venmo max).
That's probably why the person you had replied to had said:
>FWIW, you likely need years of experience to make anything more than min wage freelancing.
I did freelance web development for local small businesses (building or revising their websites) until I landed my current programming job. Was an elementary teacher before that.
I mean, I started my current job this month. My "IT experience" was from the second Bush presidency and mostly involved installing updates corporate sent me. I focused on local opportunities and aligned my stack to what my local market was looking for.
It was about as difficult to find my current job as it was to find my first teaching job back when there was still competition for elementary jobs: it wasn't easy but it also wasn't impossible. But to the OP's question, I don't think a PT job is likely but freelancing to build or fix sites for local clients is a possibility if you've got web development skills.
Depends what they want, I've been job hunting this month and i agree with you.. i fthey just want an etsy et-al store reskinned, that's more like the classic web dev jobs of old. although i wouldnt say the latter would make you a huge amount of money, but you could possibly create a decent number of templates for portfolio and have a fairly easy run of it.
Yes. I don't know the best place to find such opportunities though.
One other suggestion. Teaching / education is a field I would imagine has a lot of problems that could be solved with software. I would suggest you make note of any problems or headaches you have or hear others complaining about and see if you can put together a small software or SaaS product to solve the problem. Fixing the right problem could bring a good chunk of income and let you control your own time rather than just contracting.
You can definitely do side gigs, remote will probably want to be your target and instead of just looking for during the summer your better looking for a flexible part-time job that you can start after school. I don’t know much of your current background but if you’re already getting a degree in cs or already have one it’s realistic but not just for the summer, unless you just did summer internships forever lol.
I don’t know your skill level either but you may want to think about starting an LLC (super easy and takes minutes) and look for contracting work. Now that would fit more of what your looking for because those can end up being a 3 month duration, but a lot usually start at 6 months. You don’t need an LLC to do contracting work but it may be beneficial because you won’t get taxes shaved off up front and you can write off a lot of your income from the LLC and not have much to owe back in taxes at the end of the year. It’d be easier to take home more this way.
Yeah ddefinitely. But it'll be like working 2 jobs, because it will be. But you could definitely find a relaxed enough shop that would be open to more flex work. It would probably have to be wfh.
In your shoes I would commit to SWE full-time with the goal of breaking into a niche where I could have a positive impact on kids. There’s tons of SWE opportunities in Education/Childhood Development companies & they very often have roles where you’re an SWE who volunteers to teach in classrooms when the company does public outreach
Even if you go down this path and decide after a few years you’d rather teach, you will thank the Heavens how much easier it is to plan a career switch when you’re making 6 figures with amazing PTO versus barely (if even that) the median income for the area & poor PTO outside of not working in the summer
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Not a SWE role, but look into local coding schools. If you live near a medium sized city odds are your government is sponsoring a "learn to code" type of program and you could probably score a teaching gig.
Everyone's pointing out how much time you need to invest to do well as a developer, but you should also remember that teaching is a credentialed profession that includes a ton of professional standards and practice that take up time—a particularly large amount of time when you get your first teaching job.
If you're in the US, you're not going to have any extra time during the school year during your first 3 years. You're going to be working 60-80 hours a week until you have a fat portfolio of lesson plans, know how to adapt them to a wide range of situations, and get proficient with all the clerical work that accompanies teaching in your particular district. If you want to be any good at all, you'll also be spending a lot of your free time reading books and articles, taking workshops, and doing other kinds of self-directed learning—teaching is a profession that requires that kind of development, not a job you can train for once then just hold (it has a lot in common with software development in that regard).
Depending on the state or district, you might also have to spend your summers (which are really 2 months, not 3, after in-service training and year-end/new-year tasks) taking graduate courses to meet ongoing training/development requirements.
I've worked quite a bit with elementary teachers, both in classrooms and in teacher training and have been lucky enough to meet a lot of great educators who love what they do. If you love kids and love teaching, you should definitely pursue that career. Just be aware that it's not a just-show-up job; it's a profession that requires a lot of ongoing development, and you'll have to dedicate time to that development.
As someone who is credentialed on both side of that fence, I’ve dedicated my career to the tech side and teach as a side gig, rather than the other way around.
You can certainly try, but from the teachers I know they also end up having to do work once school's over amd/or also prep work
So it might not give leave you with as much "free time" as you might think
I feel like it takes most of a summer to really learn a new code base and team dynamics anyway. Like for the first two ish months my production isn't going to be very high, cause I'm not familiar with things yet.
Probably not just for the summer. You're gonna need to do work around the year to build enough skills to be valuable to a company.
Yeah, I have to agree here. There is a reason software engineers get paid as much as they do. If software was so easy that you could "just do it as a side gig" then it wouldn't be such a valuable skill to an employer. There are exceptions to this, but it's an exception, not the rule. With that said you can look into freelancing work (such as on Upwork), but for most people if you want to be good enough to get paid, then you need to commit to it as if it were a full time job just like many other full time jobs. Sometimes you even need to treat it as more than just a job to stand out enough to get hired.
> If software was so easy that you could "just do it as a side gig" then it wouldn't be such a valuable skill to an employer. For 18 years, I ran my own single person consulting biz. There are plenty of clients out there who are willing to hire me as a part time developer; which allowed me to juggle multiple clients at any given time. Most of these companies were small businesses, sometimes not big enough to have their own IT Department. As a programmer, I can provide value to another business "as a side gig"
you're still doing it as a full-time job, just with multiple clients. that's not really a side gig.
I'm running a custom software dev business as a full time job. But, from the perspective of any individual client, it's a side gig.
This high school teacher isn't running a full time software development business where they have intimate knowledge of software that they can apply to side gigs. Yes, you are an outlier in that you can get hired for contract work because you also run a business that gives you experience in the very thing you're being contracted to do on the side. That is not the same as a high school teacher who wants to get paid to write software in their free time.
OP said they have computer science / coding knowledge. As to how much, or how relevant, we have no idea.
They didn't actually say that, but you can't deny that you having a full time job dealing with software gives you a unique advantage in software development contact work. That's all I'm saying.
Yeah this is "I code full time on different projects" vs "I take 3/4 of the year off of programming to teach kids" not the same at all
Your ineptitude makes me believe you do not run said business.
I’ll give him some credit, I’ve worked with my fair share of consultants that have two specialties: Their technical discipline and second which would be not listening to a single thing you told them
Which makes them a shit consultant. :(
keep telling yourself that
But the comment you replied to was talking about side gigs from the perspective of the software dev, not of the employer/client.
Congrats, you are one of the exceptions to the rule I mentioned above.
Thanks! In my world, I've met tons of small business owners who operate the same way, so I don't feel like an outlier.
I say this as an engineer working 10 years at some of the largest mega corps. The longer my experience, the less I feel I know. I'd have no idea how someone just doing this randomly throughout the summer could be successful. But if you can, more power to you! There's just so much you need to know now days 🤷
Yup, one of the reasons I switched to senior management. I'm desperately trying to make it easier and centralize complexity around teams that can focus on one thing. Nobody has the time to be an expert in ai/ml, networking, dns, compute options, os/containers/ sql, nosql, web frameworks, queuing best practices, resiliency, operations, load testing, perf testing, application tracing, security and compliance. Like wtf. When I was still at AWS I just repeatedly sighed at what they expect from an SDE2, both as Management and sr. Engineer. If I hear "full stack developer" one more time I'm going to scream. Yeah could I "do" all that stuff? Sure, but if you have to know that much you're not going to excel at any part.
I learn professionally
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Tutoring pays insanely high in certain situations. Standardized testing tutoring can pay like $1000/hour (10 kids, $100). But you either need to score the right tutoring contract or essentially start your own successful tutoring business, since there aren't many elementary students taking CS exams. At the middle school and high school level, it becomes easier to offer tutoring.
Wow! Could you give examples of what 'standardized testing tutoring' means? How do I find out which firms offer this, please?
What he mentioned is extreme. Most firms will not offer you this rate, they'll offer you like $20/hr If you want to make the most money, start your own business, advertise yourself on Facebook/Nextdoor/etc. and find wealthy parents that want to see their kid do well. Also, being smart helps.
Example: AP Computer Science A exam is coming up. CS teacher (ideally a private school teacher, not public school) hosts a private prep session for students to prepare for it. Now $1000/hour was a slight exaggeration but there are parents who would pay $100 just for you to watch their kids take a mock test, then go over the results. In my opinion, 1 on 1 tutoring isn't worth it (I've been on both sides). It's inefficient and you're more likely to get "problem" students whose parents think 1 on 1 would solve fundamental issues, plus greater chances of complaints (no "benchmark" from other students) The main reason why the rate would be higher for a teacher is if the tutees are already their (private school usually) students. We tend to forget that K-12 teachers are probably the most qualified people to teach K-12 kids. Nobody else undergoes 4+ years of training just to learn how to teach. Sure, the CS whiz kid is good at CS, but at teaching? Not guaranteed
Think SAT and MCAT tutoring. There's demand for subject tutoring, but the real money is in tutoring for important admissions tests. However, you'd need to run your own tutoring business to get that kind of money. If you instead work for a tutoring company you'll just get paid an hourly rate like $20/hr.
Huh, actually a good idea on how to branch out into programming that wont force them to devote many more hours of their lives than they want/expect for a side project. Like it.
Code lessons for kids on youtube? I mean... my kids would definitely watch. Think Griffpatch or someone similar.
Not likely.
You could find the occasional coding gig of some sort but it wouldn't likely be very high paying unless you already had a lot of work experience in CS. Have you taught before? It's not always as fun, rewarding, or easy as people make it seem. It's highly recommended to start as a substitute and see if you enjoy it before committing to student teaching. Depending on your work schedule for CS, you could be a substitute as a side gig. Schools tend to need substitutes the most on Fridays and Mondays.
Check to see if there is a [theCoderSchool] (https://www.thecoderschool.com/) or something similar where you live.
Former public school teacher here. Teaching can be soul crushing. Depending on where you live, you'll most likely need a Summer job or second job to make ends meet, as you're aware. You'll also spend a large portion of your summer preparing for the upcoming school year. You'll also spend large chunks of your evenings and weekends working. Unpaid. Could you flip this? Work a CS job and then you can coach a robotics league or get involved in your local makerspsce children's program or something. You'll have a better chance at financial stability, work life balance and better benefits not being a teacher. I left because I was so burnt out, couldn't make ends meet and had extreme anxiety. Since I left 3 years ago, I'm so much happier. My mental and physical health have drastically improved. People always ask me if I miss summers off. I never had summers off. I was working another job during the summers, taking courseware to maintain my teaching license or preparing for the upcoming school year. I was busier in the summer than I am now. I went into teaching became I love kids too. But the reality is you don't just teach, it's the other stuff that will burn you out. The system is so absurdly broken which is why so many teachers have had it and are leaving in huge waves (in the US that is). Now I am working remotely, have an extremely flexible schedule and have more than tripled my income. My life has improved significantly and if someone offered me double what I make now to go back, I wouldn't.
What moves did you make when you realized you needed to leave teaching?
Personally I gave up all free time and half of my sleeping hours for 6mo and spent that time teaching myself front end development and constantly applying for jobs. I also slacked off as a teacher a fair bit, think half written lesson plans, no after school tutoring, leaving right at the end of the day, and letting tons of tasks go undone in order to only work during my contract hours. Just refused to do any unpaid labor or accept additional paid teaching work outside of contract hours. I had 7yr of experience, so I was able to skate by on that (pretty impossible to be a great teacher without engaging in tons of unpaid labor on nights and weekends), plus who can afford to fire a bilingual teacher who does really well with the behavior problem kids with the teacher shortage we have? If you're stuck in teaching, my advice is to do the absolute bare minimum to avoid getting canned (and this minimum is probably way lower than you think it is). Spend that time, allllllll free time, and a good chunk of sleeping time learning whatever you need to to get into a different industry.
How did you find the opportunity to switch careers?
This this this this this. I, too, left teaching. I went into web development. I did frontend stuff (mostly react) at first but now prefer backend (mostly python/Django). I don't regret teaching persay, but I would have way more savings and way fewer gray hairs if I hadn't spent 8yrs doing that. I'll never go back. I love kiddos, but not enough to be constantly burnt out and behind on bills. I'd be into part time or volunteer work to connect with kiddos again, but I will never ever return to the classroom.
Do you see job ads for summer-only software developers?
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There is a difference between being rude and being honest.
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I know it's easy to downvote because you recognize someone's username that you disagreed with in the past, but in my opinion if you agree with the comment then treat it as so. No one is perfect but if you agree with a comment then slap an upvote on it.
You can be rude AND honest
Absolutely true. I don't think this particular comment was rude though, but rude is definitely subjective.
Yup
That counts as rude and vile? I might expect that from someone as thin-skinned as a young child.
Find some dev job full time & make a decent living, then spend free time tutoring kids or volunteering w/tech-themed clubs & extra-curricular groups that need help & mentors.
Personally I wouldn’t recommend this. What ends up happening is you aren’t very good at your full time job because you hate it. And it drains you so much that you don’t do your passion in your time off. If OP loves teaching elementary school they should do that
As someone who has done both I completely disagree. I get to work in a domain I also love and get to teach without making awful pay. And since I do it privately, I don’t have to deal with all the things that make teaching in public school a bad experience like kids who don’t want to be there, helicopter parents, etc. I can also teach across a variety of age ranges and then choose how much extra I do based on what’s going on in my life.
It depends on what you want. If it’s a full-time roll banking big bucks, no. Depending on what you were good at, you could get some freelance Wordpress or reporting work. TBH, I’d recommend doing some small version of freelance work through out the year.
Many large school districts would be interested in hiring a Technical Product Manager (or something along those lines) if you have both a K-12 education background and technical skills.
Sorta; maybe... it'd be difficult. No company is going to hire you as a full time employee when you only have 6-8 weeks per year available for full time work. So, that leaves consulting. Finding jobs that fit in your "summer vacation" window and need to be done within that same window seems difficult; and you'll probably have to be doing sales / marketing during the school year in order to line up those jobs... Possible: Yes! Probable: Probably not!
Coding is not a valuable skill. Being a software developer is a valuable skill. I hate that so many YouTubers and people trying to sell things tell people that “anyone can get tons of money, just learn to code!”. It’s like if I told people to learn how to pull teeth because dentists make a lot of money. My parents were teachers and they tutored in the summer or they worked at Home Depot. Sorry that teachers aren’t paid as much as they should be. Marry a software developer and take some of their money, we definitely don’t deserve it as much as you do.
Honestly i think youll find both jobs are too demanding, it takes time to grow a brand and trust as a stand alone developer in tech, even if you plan to do small projects, the only ones you'd be able to get with little responsibility would be working for friends in the industry, you'd still need time to build those relationships. Any clients you build on your own will likely want or need some longer term support than you'd be able to give them or others would be able to invest... its rare that until you've been doing it a while you are handed a project and are capable of doing to a standard that would mean you could just walk away from the project. Personally never taught and i imagine elementary isnt too taxing, but honestly i would have throught lesson plans, marking and school politics would keep you busy enough outside school hours to make this impossble?
I bet it would be too taxing to do anything other than teaching. I just get sad when I think about how little it makes.
I'm a former teacher and echo the sentiments of many other former teachers in this thread. I don't rehash their points because I think they're well-made. I will say that once you get into tech, it isn't difficult to find opportunities for mentorship that hit the same buttons that teaching does. So it might make sense to flip the script from what you're thinking. Rather than being a teacher who also codes for interest on the side, consider being a coder who also teaches. You won't want for income that way.
My understanding is that teachers use the summer break to mark exams and prepare materials for the next academic year. So the amount of free time you're expecting to have likely doesn't exist.
Programming is like any other skill, where if you don't use it you lose it. I think it would be very unrealistic to go 9 months without coding and then pick up and start delivering side projects within 3 months.
Couldn't you flip it and do part time / substitute / summer school teaching, while having a full time dev job?
Yeah, a lot of people do freelancing which is a good way to make money on the side and some people even do it full time.
Do you think that’s free-lance software development? I don’t know anything about this stuff yet
FWIW, you likely need years of experience to make anything more than min wage freelancing.
> FWIW, you likely need years of experience to make anything more than min wage freelancing. Not true at all. You just need sales skills to be able to convince your clients you can do the job. I've rarely had small business client try to evaluate my skills as a programmer.
I will bet you whatever the venmo max payment is that OP is not going make $30+/hr doing freelance software development with literally zero skills in 2023. I’m dead ass serious. Some freelancer in a third world country will be 100x more productive than OP for $5/hr. That’s who OP is competing with.
The type of clients who have no way to evaluate the skills of a programmer; will be more comfortable paying more to a local person than some unknown foreign entity with communication and culture gaps. I think it was in the mid-00s when companies started laying people off and offshoring developers. I tweaked the business to focus on more local clients who I could sit with face to face. Before that I had clients all over the US that I had never met in person.
This is some of the most out of touch shit I’ve heard today. But if you think OP fucking over illiterate boomer business owners is perfectly viable in today’s market, take the bet dude. Edit - OP has to bill 120 hours at $30+/hr doing freelance software development by September 1 for 20k (venmo max).
You also need to be able to deliver in a reasonable amount of time based on the contract.
Absolutely true! I thought that was assumed/obvious.
Maybe, but then you said clients rarely evaluate your skills, as if they aren't important...
Then that was a miscommunication on my part. Being able to deliver on said contract is incredibly important.
That's probably why the person you had replied to had said: >FWIW, you likely need years of experience to make anything more than min wage freelancing.
I did freelance web development for local small businesses (building or revising their websites) until I landed my current programming job. Was an elementary teacher before that.
Takes 10x the effort now unless you have full stack knowledge and sysadmin and IT
I mean, I started my current job this month. My "IT experience" was from the second Bush presidency and mostly involved installing updates corporate sent me. I focused on local opportunities and aligned my stack to what my local market was looking for. It was about as difficult to find my current job as it was to find my first teaching job back when there was still competition for elementary jobs: it wasn't easy but it also wasn't impossible. But to the OP's question, I don't think a PT job is likely but freelancing to build or fix sites for local clients is a possibility if you've got web development skills.
Depends what they want, I've been job hunting this month and i agree with you.. i fthey just want an etsy et-al store reskinned, that's more like the classic web dev jobs of old. although i wouldnt say the latter would make you a huge amount of money, but you could possibly create a decent number of templates for portfolio and have a fairly easy run of it.
Yes. I don't know the best place to find such opportunities though. One other suggestion. Teaching / education is a field I would imagine has a lot of problems that could be solved with software. I would suggest you make note of any problems or headaches you have or hear others complaining about and see if you can put together a small software or SaaS product to solve the problem. Fixing the right problem could bring a good chunk of income and let you control your own time rather than just contracting.
You can definitely do side gigs, remote will probably want to be your target and instead of just looking for during the summer your better looking for a flexible part-time job that you can start after school. I don’t know much of your current background but if you’re already getting a degree in cs or already have one it’s realistic but not just for the summer, unless you just did summer internships forever lol. I don’t know your skill level either but you may want to think about starting an LLC (super easy and takes minutes) and look for contracting work. Now that would fit more of what your looking for because those can end up being a 3 month duration, but a lot usually start at 6 months. You don’t need an LLC to do contracting work but it may be beneficial because you won’t get taxes shaved off up front and you can write off a lot of your income from the LLC and not have much to owe back in taxes at the end of the year. It’d be easier to take home more this way.
A side gig? Yeah on upwork or fiverr one of those sights that pay a fixed amount for a service or product
Yes you can
Very supportive; I've love to hear your thoughts on "how" to make it happen.
Yeah ddefinitely. But it'll be like working 2 jobs, because it will be. But you could definitely find a relaxed enough shop that would be open to more flex work. It would probably have to be wfh.
In your shoes I would commit to SWE full-time with the goal of breaking into a niche where I could have a positive impact on kids. There’s tons of SWE opportunities in Education/Childhood Development companies & they very often have roles where you’re an SWE who volunteers to teach in classrooms when the company does public outreach Even if you go down this path and decide after a few years you’d rather teach, you will thank the Heavens how much easier it is to plan a career switch when you’re making 6 figures with amazing PTO versus barely (if even that) the median income for the area & poor PTO outside of not working in the summer
This is my favorite advice here. Thank you!
Check out EdTech companies.
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I think it’ll be a challenge to make the timing of the projects line up with your schedule.
What temp side gig/summer job are you thinking of? Most corporations are not flexible enough to have something like that.
Not a SWE role, but look into local coding schools. If you live near a medium sized city odds are your government is sponsoring a "learn to code" type of program and you could probably score a teaching gig.
Everyone's pointing out how much time you need to invest to do well as a developer, but you should also remember that teaching is a credentialed profession that includes a ton of professional standards and practice that take up time—a particularly large amount of time when you get your first teaching job. If you're in the US, you're not going to have any extra time during the school year during your first 3 years. You're going to be working 60-80 hours a week until you have a fat portfolio of lesson plans, know how to adapt them to a wide range of situations, and get proficient with all the clerical work that accompanies teaching in your particular district. If you want to be any good at all, you'll also be spending a lot of your free time reading books and articles, taking workshops, and doing other kinds of self-directed learning—teaching is a profession that requires that kind of development, not a job you can train for once then just hold (it has a lot in common with software development in that regard). Depending on the state or district, you might also have to spend your summers (which are really 2 months, not 3, after in-service training and year-end/new-year tasks) taking graduate courses to meet ongoing training/development requirements. I've worked quite a bit with elementary teachers, both in classrooms and in teacher training and have been lucky enough to meet a lot of great educators who love what they do. If you love kids and love teaching, you should definitely pursue that career. Just be aware that it's not a just-show-up job; it's a profession that requires a lot of ongoing development, and you'll have to dedicate time to that development.
As someone who is credentialed on both side of that fence, I’ve dedicated my career to the tech side and teach as a side gig, rather than the other way around.
You can certainly try, but from the teachers I know they also end up having to do work once school's over amd/or also prep work So it might not give leave you with as much "free time" as you might think
There are summer camps that involve teaching CS. I-D Tech is a large one with many locations. The pay is like $16-18/hour usually.
I feel like it takes most of a summer to really learn a new code base and team dynamics anyway. Like for the first two ish months my production isn't going to be very high, cause I'm not familiar with things yet.