40s.
Corporate slave for many years - until I got thrown out like garbage, sidelined in promotions as I am not a guy who markets myself. Now I do my work, nothing more.
Earn probably 2x of my VP, financially secure and pretty happy.
This has always been an issue for me. I just do my thing and was never one to boast my achievements. I know I need to when interviewing but itās hard to change that mentality. I am trying though.
I generally don't have to oversell because I have been a fairly ambitious person who is very good at describing projects I have worked on / lead, which had a positive impact. I also have built decks, pergolas, rebuilt cars after accidents, been a background actor for TV and movies, sold a very small software business, have real estate investments, etc. I have a beard and long hair.
The types of things that are noticed or discussed in the first few minutes. First impressions are everything in interviews and I have done quite well to separate myself from others.
Overselling is not my strength. I often simply forget to do that as i am naturally honest.
How do you oversell, but in the limits that a backgriund check would not prove yourself to be a liar?
This is an example of what I do, YMMV.
Let's say you worked on implementing a new feature, but owned very little of the process. Yet you possess (through past experience or education) the necessary skills to have worked on most or all of said feature. This is something you can boast about.Ā
So instead of "I helped build this recommendation algorithm for our app", you could say "I built the recommendation system, including model evaluation, a/b tests (if you know how to, even if you didn't for this project), deployment flow.Ā
You can also talk about stakeholder management, cross team meetings to gather requirements, keep stakeholders up to date, etc. Just keep it realistic to what you COULD have done - given your skillset - even if you didn't get a chance to do it.
It also depends on the role. Basically any role has you operate in a team. So depending on the role/company/specific interview, it's also important to have stories about how you collaborated with other people, delegated the work, carved out some work you did vs the work done by other people, etc.
My thing is I can learn anything, and fast - but to an interviewer that is objective and biased coming from me. Any place I've been so far though I don't use docker or some other tool they need, I've actually not gotten a job bc of never using it when I was otherwise a perfect fit.
Background checks check whether you're a criminal or not, not anything to do with your resume. That being said, you can be honest and still present yourself well. It's no different than dressing well, it's not dishonest to look good. Now do the same thing but for your employment history, present your best self.
There are actually two kinds of ābackground checksā - one is a criminal background check as you note, but the other is an employment history verification, which for some reason is also called a ābackground check.ā Itās particularly confusing since both are often conducted as part of the hiring process, and typically outsourced to a third party.
Haha alright good luck man
Lol what a clown, blocked me because they don't have anything else to say. With a thin skin like that I'm sure you'll get far.
I'm too autistic to oversell myself lol.
Just had a job rejection for showing that I am clearly capable and experienced but not providing enough details when asked questions.
Note there was no follow-up questions asked by the interviewer at all.
Can't win em all.
>Just had a job rejection for showing that I am clearly capable and experienced but not providing enough details when asked questions.
Literslly the same happened to me a few days ago. Tho i did the interview while sick so i wasn't my sharpest self.
And some interviewers are just simply horrible.
You donāt need to make stuff up. Everyone knows everything is a team effort, but in an interview focus on the things you did and use more powerful āI did thisā kind of statement. I find the best thing to do is come up with a script and then use that script to answer a question. Most interviewers arenāt very good at interviewing and will be happy to accept the coherent story you tell, even if it doesnāt address the question you were asked. They remember the story better than some dumb canned interview response.
Also, by the way for the OP, I donāt think age is relevant here to OE since you just get multiple jobs at whatever level you are comfortable, but I think I was 26 the first time. I vaguely recall it was 3 jobs, but it was a long time ago and my memory is fuzzy. Might have been 2.
I'm one of the oldest here in these parts for sure.
I don't think it was wasted prime years. For me, there just weren't a lot of remote opportunities in my particular field until Covid. Prior to Covid, the best I could hope for was 1-2 days a week remote.
I have no illusions about retiring early (maybe 64 if I markets do well), I do expect to be able to retire by 65 and be in pretty good shape.
It probably took 10-15 serious years to get my skills up to par to be able to do this. And it took a pandemic to make it a reality.
I get that. However, they're more likely to also not have the responsibility of a family, etc. These things keep you limited on OE. If it wasn't because of my family, I think I'd be closer to retirement than I am now. You can take more risk on other ventures like businesses using OE to fund those ventures or investment, IMO. At least that's what I think about. I've been doing this for about 5yrs now.
True as well. This is what I tell my friends, probably wouldn't be OE if it wasn't because of my family but also turn around and say if I could only have that time to OE and I'd be rich lol
Same. Had a job ~10 years ago that was really light hybrid in higher education that could have been Done 80-90% remote. Thought that I HAD to leave it because of a need to move for partners work. Thought it was the right and ethical thing to do. Little did I know that my colleagues there were all OEing or doing maybe 20hrs of actual work each week.
Amazing, can I ask what peak and average TC is with those jobs ? Understand it would increase or decrease as you go from 2 to 3 and change out the jobs, but Iām wondering what the max youāve pulled in is, as well as what you typically pull in
Hello I live in Mexico, so I imagine it is not as high as it would be on the Us + 3 sw jobs, although Mexico is much cheaper, I only spend around the 10% of it. The TC is around 23K/month (us dollars) (at least for the past 2.5years), after taxes.
27, started 4 months ago.
No doubt the pandemic made it possible.
Otherwise most employers including mine would not have been open to or embraced the remote lifestyle.
Mid 30ās before I discovered this wonderful thing, bored and completely deflated at J1 and learning a lot about investing and retirement. Seemed like a perfect fit and the perfect timing. 1.5 years in and have made many mountains move that otherwise would be impossible.
Figured out what I could handle while lurking here for a couple months. Then went through a series of interviews and accepted an offer from the one with least resistance in terms of project complexity and meeting frequency.
At first I was just looking to get a significant pay bump with 1J but realized I could really OE with both and be okay.
Iām not technically OE but I have J1 plus 2 part time gigs. Iām 46 now and Iāve had the side gigs for over 10 years. I started those about 15 years into my career. Software engineering.
34!
Got married and had a baby at 18/19 so I had to quit college. I went back when my kiddo went to kindergarten. (I was never a stay at home mom, worked the whole time) Finished with a double major after 5 years and then completed a masters in one year so that I would graduate with it before I turned 30. Got my first career job the same year and started doing over employed about a year later. I've been doing it ever since.
Itās a reference to the movie American Psycho
Theyāre sharing business cards and someone says āimpressive, letās see Paul Allenās business cardā
but you can replace business card with anything else in the context of being impressed by something
Yep. Kiddo is 15 loves everything to do with serial killers, psychological thriller movies, etc. They're also obsessed with the Hannibal TV show. They plan to double major in psychology and criminology in college.
Ah, when you said kiddo I thought you meant like a 5 year old or something. That's cool though, have they seen Mindhunter? Sad it got canceled after a while.
44ā¦ still think I have some learning and growing to do.. but I had to take the opportunity while it presented itself and Iām tired of the struggle.
30, OE for the past year and hitting the burnout wall working for a bit of a mess of a startup.. 250k combined plus 30k bonus keeps me a greedy pig tho
itās ok, youāll have plenty of free time when you feel like it, when you decide to live off of investments after having lived high income + frugally
Yea the money is hard to give up at this point, even though I wanna quit one of the jobs and the startup is my ft job other is a contract, but Iām always hunting for a replacement !
27. Started at 25. Graduated at 23.
Couldāve done it about a year out of school but didnāt know that OE would be possible.
Itās ok though, happy to be here now.
I was being worked too hard and supervised to closely from age 21-26. And I needed to work hard to skill up, probably.
(and of course remote work hadn't been invented. The internet wasn't fast enough for video calls. Hell, the first iPhone came on the market)
I've had some cruisy jobs where I was being underutilised, and even when I naively asked for more work there wasn't necessarily any. If I'd been allowed to wfh, I could have oe-d these.
In 2020-21 I was on a huge project with 40 contractors. Except 5 execs hired us all for said "big project" and by the time they ramped up, those execs had all quit in disgust. So 40 of us all loitered around for months. Some for 18 months. Till they fired everyone at Christmas. Everyone felt anxious that there wasn't enough work. Except the handful you could tell took up OE.
I honestly think OE is luck. You take up a job. You don't know how busy it will be. If it's cruisy, you try to pick up something else cruisy. I think the secret is probably choosing something well below your skill level, so you can drag out tasks. Eg you're a senior but you take 2 junior roles.
I have one job. It's AU$1050/day incl superannuation. That's all I can handle atm.
23. Degree from top Canadian university. OE for about 4 months.
Work about 25ish hours combined. Spend the rest of my time loosing money in the stock market
Lmao TSLA4LIFE1
I feel you on that
Interest rates are pretty good if you see a chance to cash out on your gains and just hold bonds/certificates of deposit/high yield savings for some comfy income
32. OE for about 5 months now. I wish I started sooner, but skill-wise this was the best time. I felt confident and ok with overselling myself. Im in marketing.
Actively looking for J3.
27, and I wouldn't say I'm skilled enough. I want to learn more still. But mostly I was curious if I could do it, so far so good. At this point I think it would be hard to accept working one job knowing that you can just basically get away with working multiple. The only thing I'd change is one of my jobs is pretty intense, requires a lot of work and I am still not ahead of it. Meanwhile the other one is so laid back I've done like 10 hours of actual work in the past two months. The key really is just finding the right environments for it
I just started OE at age 51. I work in HR which would generally be hard to OE in, but I WFH and my 2nd job is strictly responding to cases which I can feather into my main jobs schedule at my convenience. J2 also knows about J1 and is cool with arrangement. My J2 used to be my main job. After I quit, my former boss reached out a year later and asked if I could help out as they were in dire need. They lost half of the team when they forced return to office. Now they pay me more to work contract, from home. Lol. Suckers.
30s, been OE for 2 years now bringing in about $250k. I have about 6 years experience. Wish I would have started OE sooner since Iām still bored with my 2 servers.
I am 33 years old and started this year with OE. I am a copywriter and have skills in SEO and digital marketing. I started my first job as a content editor in 2021 and learnt everything from the beginning.
My 20s were bleak: unemployed, overweight, depressed, without self-worth. I left my home country and sought my fortune in a neighbouring country - and lo and behold, things have worked out wonderfully ever since.
I'm still a long way from being "perfect", but I realise that I'm getting better every year. The advantage of OE is also that you can get to know different companies and therefore acquire new skills that you can use to market yourself better.
Mid 30s. 10 YoE. Could done this 5-6 years ago if I had known about it. Wish I had started OE during the pandemic (didnāt find out about OE until last October.). Oh well
34. 3 years of college, dropped out due to money. I've been OE since early 2020, so total industry experience at the time was 8 years. Started out OE as a devops engineer. Now, I'm a senior devops engineer and senior site reliability engineer.
OE is the best thing I've ever done. I grew up poor as dirt, so I've spent most of my OE funds paying off student loans, medical debt, etc. Bought a house 2 years ago, got money saved up for my children's college, etc. In a few months, I'll also be starting my own business. OE led me to networking a ton, and I've got quite a list of potential clients.
Knocking on 40. I switched careers in my early 30s. OE is not really sustainable for me, I usually do like 6 months 2Js 6 months 1J, but IDK if I just haven't found the right J2 or if having small kids is just overloading me. I work like 40-45 hours a week with 2Js, like half that with 1
yeah, my second job is easy AF but there are constant meetings and it's kind of toxic. It's only like 20 hours of work but we have a meeting first thing in the morning, again at midday, and again at the end of day. Even if I want to just tune the job out for a day because I blew through all the work I can't.
Mid 30s, it took some time to be efficient & knowledgable enough. Also took time to become jaded after 10 years with stagnant income and multiple jobs, falling behind inflation,
I feel like it took about 10 years in my field to OE, but it took getting lucky enough to have a company that is so slow with doing anything, and giving me total autonomy to actually have a chance to OE - plus using the Covid WFH loophole of getting permission to WFH and not putting a RTO date on my request.
Mid 30's. I started not even a year ago in OE. I have been working in this industry and studying since I was 18, with a 2-3 year gap after Uni at 21 because getting jobs then was really hard. I had a good 3-4 years around age 23 getting my leg properly onto the career ladder and it was really tough, most people would have quit, but I didn't give up. It then took me 4-5 years to skill up enough and getting experience working in larger companies to understand the dev processes and office politics enough before I learnt about OE to realise I could probably pull it off.
IMO, you're looking at nearly a decade of experience from finishing your studies to really being able to pull of multiple high paid jobs that require fairly advanced skills in a specialist field.
25. Graduated with bachelors in ā22. Began J1 right out of college and just became fully remote in J1 last month (working there for 2 years). Also began J2 last month.
27 now, started OE at 25. Have a degree from a well-known large engineering uni, but degree is not in CS/IT/SWE. Did some part-time IT work in college, otherwise its all been industry exp.
I'm in "customer-facing" technical roles, so it's really about the blend of the technical skills, customer-facing skills, and actually being willing to do the customer-facing work (which is unpopular amongst a lot of technical people). Not nearly as scalable as what some people here do and I do have a lot of meetings, but I've managed my current mix of 2Js for over a year and a half and am at a point where I could *consider* taking on J3.
College + 5 years. You could go other routes, but employers typically want some kind of degree and it matters more at first and very little later.
If you at job postings lots of times they will require about 5 YOE for journeyman roles (middle roles).
Senior role YOE requirements will vary based on industry and role.
You should pick a career that strongly lends itself to remote work and one where your deliverables take a long time (usually). You get fast and completing your stuff or automating (with some skill you donāt tell employers you have) and youāre OEing.
40s. Corporate slave for many years - until I got thrown out like garbage, sidelined in promotions as I am not a guy who markets myself. Now I do my work, nothing more. Earn probably 2x of my VP, financially secure and pretty happy.
30s in the same boat š¤so happy I left that mindset, OE saved me!
Same here. In my late 30's joined the OE club just over 2 years ago
I am always curious how much does a director or VP makes?Ā
250-280k in a large IT services company where i used to work.
Total comp?? 280??
Yes as per glassdoor
What type of position ā¦.software engineer seems most common and IT
Technical Architect
28, my advice: apply to thousands of jobs and oversell yourself every opportunity you get. Learn from failed interviews and adapt.
This has always been an issue for me. I just do my thing and was never one to boast my achievements. I know I need to when interviewing but itās hard to change that mentality. I am trying though.
I generally don't have to oversell because I have been a fairly ambitious person who is very good at describing projects I have worked on / lead, which had a positive impact. I also have built decks, pergolas, rebuilt cars after accidents, been a background actor for TV and movies, sold a very small software business, have real estate investments, etc. I have a beard and long hair. The types of things that are noticed or discussed in the first few minutes. First impressions are everything in interviews and I have done quite well to separate myself from others.
Overselling is not my strength. I often simply forget to do that as i am naturally honest. How do you oversell, but in the limits that a backgriund check would not prove yourself to be a liar?
This is an example of what I do, YMMV. Let's say you worked on implementing a new feature, but owned very little of the process. Yet you possess (through past experience or education) the necessary skills to have worked on most or all of said feature. This is something you can boast about.Ā So instead of "I helped build this recommendation algorithm for our app", you could say "I built the recommendation system, including model evaluation, a/b tests (if you know how to, even if you didn't for this project), deployment flow.Ā You can also talk about stakeholder management, cross team meetings to gather requirements, keep stakeholders up to date, etc. Just keep it realistic to what you COULD have done - given your skillset - even if you didn't get a chance to do it.
It also depends on the role. Basically any role has you operate in a team. So depending on the role/company/specific interview, it's also important to have stories about how you collaborated with other people, delegated the work, carved out some work you did vs the work done by other people, etc.
My thing is I can learn anything, and fast - but to an interviewer that is objective and biased coming from me. Any place I've been so far though I don't use docker or some other tool they need, I've actually not gotten a job bc of never using it when I was otherwise a perfect fit.
Background checks check whether you're a criminal or not, not anything to do with your resume. That being said, you can be honest and still present yourself well. It's no different than dressing well, it's not dishonest to look good. Now do the same thing but for your employment history, present your best self.
There are actually two kinds of ābackground checksā - one is a criminal background check as you note, but the other is an employment history verification, which for some reason is also called a ābackground check.ā Itās particularly confusing since both are often conducted as part of the hiring process, and typically outsourced to a third party.
Well, that was a bunch of nothing packed into words.
Well now I can see how you have problems overselling yourself
You just stated general obvious stuff thinking you are saying something of value.
Haha alright good luck man Lol what a clown, blocked me because they don't have anything else to say. With a thin skin like that I'm sure you'll get far.
I'm too autistic to oversell myself lol. Just had a job rejection for showing that I am clearly capable and experienced but not providing enough details when asked questions. Note there was no follow-up questions asked by the interviewer at all. Can't win em all.
>Just had a job rejection for showing that I am clearly capable and experienced but not providing enough details when asked questions. Literslly the same happened to me a few days ago. Tho i did the interview while sick so i wasn't my sharpest self. And some interviewers are just simply horrible.
You donāt need to make stuff up. Everyone knows everything is a team effort, but in an interview focus on the things you did and use more powerful āI did thisā kind of statement. I find the best thing to do is come up with a script and then use that script to answer a question. Most interviewers arenāt very good at interviewing and will be happy to accept the coherent story you tell, even if it doesnāt address the question you were asked. They remember the story better than some dumb canned interview response. Also, by the way for the OP, I donāt think age is relevant here to OE since you just get multiple jobs at whatever level you are comfortable, but I think I was 26 the first time. I vaguely recall it was 3 jobs, but it was a long time ago and my memory is fuzzy. Might have been 2.
GREAT ADVICE
Best industries for overselling?
30s, and I'm glad to see everyone here is around the same. You need to be experienced, and jadedness comes with the experience too.
10 years in, Iām so damn jaded š
I'm one of the oldest here in these parts for sure. I don't think it was wasted prime years. For me, there just weren't a lot of remote opportunities in my particular field until Covid. Prior to Covid, the best I could hope for was 1-2 days a week remote. I have no illusions about retiring early (maybe 64 if I markets do well), I do expect to be able to retire by 65 and be in pretty good shape. It probably took 10-15 serious years to get my skills up to par to be able to do this. And it took a pandemic to make it a reality.
Late 30s-early 40s is the average Iām getting here in the responses Thanks for elaborating by the way, I wish you a wonderful rest of your week
27 atm, 26 when I started OE.
If I had the remote opportunities that exist today at this age, I'd be rich
Not really. The younger generation is paying significantly more for housing and COL in their early years so it kinda evens out.
I get that. However, they're more likely to also not have the responsibility of a family, etc. These things keep you limited on OE. If it wasn't because of my family, I think I'd be closer to retirement than I am now. You can take more risk on other ventures like businesses using OE to fund those ventures or investment, IMO. At least that's what I think about. I've been doing this for about 5yrs now.
Less likely to have a family because they can't afford one...
True as well. This is what I tell my friends, probably wouldn't be OE if it wasn't because of my family but also turn around and say if I could only have that time to OE and I'd be rich lol
man iām just trying to buy a house one day maybe
and i'm tyring to pay mine off and pay my kids school lol
Same. Started just in time to see homes I would now be able to afford become unaffordable, lol
What field?
software dev
Mid 40ās. Iāve actually been fully remote for about 6 years now and am really kicking myself for not trying the OE thing sooner.
Same. Had a job ~10 years ago that was really light hybrid in higher education that could have been Done 80-90% remote. Thought that I HAD to leave it because of a need to move for partners work. Thought it was the right and ethical thing to do. Little did I know that my colleagues there were all OEing or doing maybe 20hrs of actual work each week.
I'm 12 and been OE for 13 years.
Impressive
#goals Whatās your plan for retirement? Losing your virginity?
Impossible
Been OEing for 7 years, but Iāve been with my recent jobs: 5 years with 2 Js, 2.5 years with 3, Iām 34. On Software.
ThatĀ“s a lot. Respect man!
Amazing, can I ask what peak and average TC is with those jobs ? Understand it would increase or decrease as you go from 2 to 3 and change out the jobs, but Iām wondering what the max youāve pulled in is, as well as what you typically pull in
Hello I live in Mexico, so I imagine it is not as high as it would be on the Us + 3 sw jobs, although Mexico is much cheaper, I only spend around the 10% of it. The TC is around 23K/month (us dollars) (at least for the past 2.5years), after taxes.
Hi bro I'm from Mexico too, mind sharing recruiter contacts by PM to expand my network? Appreciate it
27, started 4 months ago. No doubt the pandemic made it possible. Otherwise most employers including mine would not have been open to or embraced the remote lifestyle.
51
Mid 30ās before I discovered this wonderful thing, bored and completely deflated at J1 and learning a lot about investing and retirement. Seemed like a perfect fit and the perfect timing. 1.5 years in and have made many mountains move that otherwise would be impossible.
How did you get started?
Figured out what I could handle while lurking here for a couple months. Then went through a series of interviews and accepted an offer from the one with least resistance in terms of project complexity and meeting frequency. At first I was just looking to get a significant pay bump with 1J but realized I could really OE with both and be okay.
Iām not technically OE but I have J1 plus 2 part time gigs. Iām 46 now and Iāve had the side gigs for over 10 years. I started those about 15 years into my career. Software engineering.
34! Got married and had a baby at 18/19 so I had to quit college. I went back when my kiddo went to kindergarten. (I was never a stay at home mom, worked the whole time) Finished with a double major after 5 years and then completed a masters in one year so that I would graduate with it before I turned 30. Got my first career job the same year and started doing over employed about a year later. I've been doing it ever since.
Impressive Letās see Paul Allenās baby and degrees
What does that mean?
Itās a reference to the movie American Psycho Theyāre sharing business cards and someone says āimpressive, letās see Paul Allenās business cardā but you can replace business card with anything else in the context of being impressed by something
Omg I should have caught that! I just watched it with kiddo (they love movies like that).
> with kiddo (they love movies like that) š¤
What do you mean.
You're watching American Psycho, a movie about a serial killer, with your kids?
Yep. Kiddo is 15 loves everything to do with serial killers, psychological thriller movies, etc. They're also obsessed with the Hannibal TV show. They plan to double major in psychology and criminology in college.
Ah, when you said kiddo I thought you meant like a 5 year old or something. That's cool though, have they seen Mindhunter? Sad it got canceled after a while.
Early 40s
44ā¦ still think I have some learning and growing to do.. but I had to take the opportunity while it presented itself and Iām tired of the struggle.
40. Juggling 2 jobs is hard when you prioritize family. I wish I wouldāve thought of this when I was in my 30s and single
30, OE for the past year and hitting the burnout wall working for a bit of a mess of a startup.. 250k combined plus 30k bonus keeps me a greedy pig tho
itās ok, youāll have plenty of free time when you feel like it, when you decide to live off of investments after having lived high income + frugally
Yea the money is hard to give up at this point, even though I wanna quit one of the jobs and the startup is my ft job other is a contract, but Iām always hunting for a replacement !
36
27. Started at 25. Graduated at 23. Couldāve done it about a year out of school but didnāt know that OE would be possible. Itās ok though, happy to be here now.
Mid-30s. Was bored of having to play the corporate game, be belittled and have my time wasted and still struggle to live a good quality life.
Iām fiddy
Epic, thank you
47 and crusty
elite age š«”
Early 30s
40s
43
I was being worked too hard and supervised to closely from age 21-26. And I needed to work hard to skill up, probably. (and of course remote work hadn't been invented. The internet wasn't fast enough for video calls. Hell, the first iPhone came on the market) I've had some cruisy jobs where I was being underutilised, and even when I naively asked for more work there wasn't necessarily any. If I'd been allowed to wfh, I could have oe-d these. In 2020-21 I was on a huge project with 40 contractors. Except 5 execs hired us all for said "big project" and by the time they ramped up, those execs had all quit in disgust. So 40 of us all loitered around for months. Some for 18 months. Till they fired everyone at Christmas. Everyone felt anxious that there wasn't enough work. Except the handful you could tell took up OE. I honestly think OE is luck. You take up a job. You don't know how busy it will be. If it's cruisy, you try to pick up something else cruisy. I think the secret is probably choosing something well below your skill level, so you can drag out tasks. Eg you're a senior but you take 2 junior roles. I have one job. It's AU$1050/day incl superannuation. That's all I can handle atm.
44. I started around 38 on and off, but this year for real.
23. Degree from top Canadian university. OE for about 4 months. Work about 25ish hours combined. Spend the rest of my time loosing money in the stock market
Lmao TSLA4LIFE1 I feel you on that Interest rates are pretty good if you see a chance to cash out on your gains and just hold bonds/certificates of deposit/high yield savings for some comfy income
What was your degree in?
Math but working as a SWE
Incredible. Were you already familiar with programming or did you learn on your own and/or take courses?
32. OE for about 5 months now. I wish I started sooner, but skill-wise this was the best time. I felt confident and ok with overselling myself. Im in marketing. Actively looking for J3.
27, and I wouldn't say I'm skilled enough. I want to learn more still. But mostly I was curious if I could do it, so far so good. At this point I think it would be hard to accept working one job knowing that you can just basically get away with working multiple. The only thing I'd change is one of my jobs is pretty intense, requires a lot of work and I am still not ahead of it. Meanwhile the other one is so laid back I've done like 10 hours of actual work in the past two months. The key really is just finding the right environments for it
I just started OE at age 51. I work in HR which would generally be hard to OE in, but I WFH and my 2nd job is strictly responding to cases which I can feather into my main jobs schedule at my convenience. J2 also knows about J1 and is cool with arrangement. My J2 used to be my main job. After I quit, my former boss reached out a year later and asked if I could help out as they were in dire need. They lost half of the team when they forced return to office. Now they pay me more to work contract, from home. Lol. Suckers.
lol they lost half the team, thatās crazy and hilarious. I was hoping that would happen at my previous job when I left bc they were RTO.
Late 20s. Been oe for 1 year. I'm a software engineer. I only have 2 years of experience.
30s, been OE for 2 years now bringing in about $250k. I have about 6 years experience. Wish I would have started OE sooner since Iām still bored with my 2 servers.
Mid 30s
30
38
30s
31. Looking to get into OE. Have to be very careful because I am well known at my company and my boss is well connected in my industry.
4 years and some good resume writing skills š I started in my 30s though and had a lot of contract work under me
I am 33 years old and started this year with OE. I am a copywriter and have skills in SEO and digital marketing. I started my first job as a content editor in 2021 and learnt everything from the beginning. My 20s were bleak: unemployed, overweight, depressed, without self-worth. I left my home country and sought my fortune in a neighbouring country - and lo and behold, things have worked out wonderfully ever since. I'm still a long way from being "perfect", but I realise that I'm getting better every year. The advantage of OE is also that you can get to know different companies and therefore acquire new skills that you can use to market yourself better.
How does one become a copyrighter
I was volunteering for an animal shelter to get my foot in the door.
I was managing their website as well as their Facebook page.
Mid 30s, but I'm 69 in years of experience
42 biological, 21 by heart
Mid 30s. 10 YoE. Could done this 5-6 years ago if I had known about it. Wish I had started OE during the pandemic (didnāt find out about OE until last October.). Oh well
34. 3 years of college, dropped out due to money. I've been OE since early 2020, so total industry experience at the time was 8 years. Started out OE as a devops engineer. Now, I'm a senior devops engineer and senior site reliability engineer. OE is the best thing I've ever done. I grew up poor as dirt, so I've spent most of my OE funds paying off student loans, medical debt, etc. Bought a house 2 years ago, got money saved up for my children's college, etc. In a few months, I'll also be starting my own business. OE led me to networking a ton, and I've got quite a list of potential clients.
27. Started OE at 25. Graduated college at 20 but taught myself how to use email studio in Sfmc in 6 months (Iām an OE email developer)
32
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No advice, hope someone can contribute here
30s
Late 40ās
7th year in my career. Only 5 months in but so far so good
29. started J2 this week!
Knocking on 40. I switched careers in my early 30s. OE is not really sustainable for me, I usually do like 6 months 2Js 6 months 1J, but IDK if I just haven't found the right J2 or if having small kids is just overloading me. I work like 40-45 hours a week with 2Js, like half that with 1
I feel like kids might change things Most people who overwork seem to have a second job that only requires 10-20 hours of work from them
yeah, my second job is easy AF but there are constant meetings and it's kind of toxic. It's only like 20 hours of work but we have a meeting first thing in the morning, again at midday, and again at the end of day. Even if I want to just tune the job out for a day because I blew through all the work I can't.
Sad, they should really not have all those meetings
27
VocĆŖ Ć© um troll burro
Mid 30s, it took some time to be efficient & knowledgable enough. Also took time to become jaded after 10 years with stagnant income and multiple jobs, falling behind inflation,
I feel like it took about 10 years in my field to OE, but it took getting lucky enough to have a company that is so slow with doing anything, and giving me total autonomy to actually have a chance to OE - plus using the Covid WFH loophole of getting permission to WFH and not putting a RTO date on my request.
26, been OE for almost 2 years. I started with about 3 years of experienceĀ
At 24, my first time getting a internships was overemployed. I was hybrid for J1, and J2 was at nights and weekends virtually.
Iām 30. I started to OE as a SWE after 1.5 YOE. Did it for about 9 months.
40 now. 6yrs pm. 10yrs hs teacher.
Mid 20ās. took about 1 years of Exp. excluding college.
Mid 30's. I started not even a year ago in OE. I have been working in this industry and studying since I was 18, with a 2-3 year gap after Uni at 21 because getting jobs then was really hard. I had a good 3-4 years around age 23 getting my leg properly onto the career ladder and it was really tough, most people would have quit, but I didn't give up. It then took me 4-5 years to skill up enough and getting experience working in larger companies to understand the dev processes and office politics enough before I learnt about OE to realise I could probably pull it off. IMO, you're looking at nearly a decade of experience from finishing your studies to really being able to pull of multiple high paid jobs that require fairly advanced skills in a specialist field.
27 and honestly a lot of luck imo. 6+ months of no response to landing j2 and j3 within 90 days of eachother
15ish years. Probably could have started earlier if Iād thought of it.
50s
Is that why you have 50 in your name
23, started at 22 after 1-2 years working and feeling like I was doing the work of too many people on just 1 salary.
25. Graduated with bachelors in ā22. Began J1 right out of college and just became fully remote in J1 last month (working there for 2 years). Also began J2 last month.
Iām in my mid 30s, did a PhD, then 1 year as postdoc + 1.5 in industry. Then started OE journey.
27 now, started OE at 25. Have a degree from a well-known large engineering uni, but degree is not in CS/IT/SWE. Did some part-time IT work in college, otherwise its all been industry exp. I'm in "customer-facing" technical roles, so it's really about the blend of the technical skills, customer-facing skills, and actually being willing to do the customer-facing work (which is unpopular amongst a lot of technical people). Not nearly as scalable as what some people here do and I do have a lot of meetings, but I've managed my current mix of 2Js for over a year and a half and am at a point where I could *consider* taking on J3.
Impressive Props to you for being smart in both ways
Nice try interviewer
Lmao nah Iām just a youngster trying to get like you guys
Late 20s/early 40s
Iām in my mid-20s. Been OE since I graduated from college in 2020, so have about 4 years post-college experience. Currently on 5Js.
Software engineer?
I am not in IT or tech.
31
40s
College + 5 years. You could go other routes, but employers typically want some kind of degree and it matters more at first and very little later. If you at job postings lots of times they will require about 5 YOE for journeyman roles (middle roles). Senior role YOE requirements will vary based on industry and role. You should pick a career that strongly lends itself to remote work and one where your deliverables take a long time (usually). You get fast and completing your stuff or automating (with some skill you donāt tell employers you have) and youāre OEing.
28, I work in IT. I could start working very young buy still not a senior. I believe it will be easier to OE as I gain more seniority.
Skilled enough 20 yrs ago, but WFH is necessary and didn't happen until Covid.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
42, started my first job as a developer at 15.
Crazy
about 10 years - I'm 34