Any agencies doing part-time or remote contracts?

[northernladuk]

Could you not whore your skills out to some of these online sites like payperhour and contractor.net or something similar?

Have you seen the rates being offered on those things?

[borderreiver]

How remote are you? There must be some good stuff going on in Milan surely? And the rail connections from the north (Varese, Como etc) are usually OK if you don't want to commute by car.

[VectraMan]

Have you seen the rates being offered on those things?

Mostly $400 for 3 months work IIRC.

I managed 2/3 days a week in a contract, but by starting with a full time gig. And here there are a couple of contractors doing 4 day weeks, again having started doing 5 days and then negotiated.

You do see occasional WFH contracts with agents; actually I had an email this morning about a 2 day in the office / 3 days at home job, (but a permanent one).

[tdm]

Sounds like you need to find some global projects and argue that you can be more effective, cheaper from where you are, rather than needing to be on-site. One guy on this project literally flicks from place to place - he did a month in Morocco recently, and is in Spain for a few weeks at the moment. All you need is a laptop and an internet connection

I see, I do have expertise in some niche areas, but it's still very difficult to promote yourself for those positions when you're a thousand miles away.

[tdm]

How remote are you? There must be some good stuff going on in Milan surely? And the rail connections from the north (Varese, Como etc) are usually OK if you don't want to commute by car.

I live near Venice, which let's say isn't renown for its cutting edge IT industry. Commuting to Milan, even via bullet train, would take 2 hours, which seems okay, but the job market is almost dead there as well and even if I were getting a job in Milan, the average salary would be less than one-third of what I can get in northen europe. So it still makes more sense to fly in places such as London if you're planning to stay away for the whole week or more.

[tdm]

Could you not whore your skills out to some of these online sites like payperhour and contractor.net or something similar?

Actually, I've been looking into a couple of those sites (specifically, oDesk and elance), but you really have the feeling of touching the bottom of the barrel. You find yourself competing with people from bangladesh or the likes who bid on jobs which rates are between 5$ and 10$ (USD) an hour. It's basically a rat race, and people submitting jobs there doesen't seem to know what they are doing most of the time. And to be honest, the type of work you find there doesen't really fit my skills, I've been working with enterprise software, business intelligence, and complex data mining, I don't really feel at home writing wordpress plugins.

I'm doomed. I'll start considering the goats business.

[quackhandle]

Got a days consultancy tomorrow, working remotely.

It may be just a day or longer, who knows, but all down to networking (ie - being nosey) and linkedin.

qh

[aoxomoxoa]

I'm doomed. I'll start considering the goats business.

Hopefully the goat's business will have been cleared up before someone steps in it

[northernladuk]

I'm doomed. I'll start considering the goats business.

At least you will have a raft of great jokes to impress the ladies on a night out...

Are you married?
No but I have 200 kids
Really?
Yeah I am a goat-heard..

I can hear the knicker elastic snapping from here....

[socialworker]

goatherd