The average age of developers is increasing. A generation is leaving SF to start families in other cities. Fewer people want to come to SF due to costs and low quality of living, and startups are no longer expected to be in the Bay. Coding schools are graduating new developers all over the country (and the world). The future is remote.
I have a contrarian viewpoint: I think employment doesn't work with remote work at scale. People want independence and flexibility. A 9-5 workday isn't great for at-home knowledge work, and people want exposure to a variety of projects. I think the future is contract-based. That's what I'm building with Moonlight [1]: a distributed, contractor workforce.
"Contract engineer" has negative connotations in most companies. But, if you can have a multi-month, ~40 hr/week relationship with a contractor, it's easy to get hard work done. Developers work on their terms. Companies get access to amazing people. Hiring takes days, not months. There's no bullshit of traditional employment - like open offices, limits on vacation, or dress codes. The hardest part of becoming a freelancer is the scarcity mindset - building a network, finding jobs, collecting invoices, and lining up your next job. We're solving that by basically becoming a talent agent. To make a freelance lifestyle sustainable, we need to solve other parts of this model - such as community and career advancement. But, we're working on it!
It sounds aspirational. But, over half of Moonlight projects continue indefinitely. When companies like working with somebody, they don't stop.
It's not spam for an HN user to link to their work in a relevant context. If he were doing it in lots of threads it would be a different story, but that's not the case here.
I have a contrarian viewpoint: I think employment doesn't work with remote work at scale. People want independence and flexibility. A 9-5 workday isn't great for at-home knowledge work, and people want exposure to a variety of projects. I think the future is contract-based. That's what I'm building with Moonlight [1]: a distributed, contractor workforce.
"Contract engineer" has negative connotations in most companies. But, if you can have a multi-month, ~40 hr/week relationship with a contractor, it's easy to get hard work done. Developers work on their terms. Companies get access to amazing people. Hiring takes days, not months. There's no bullshit of traditional employment - like open offices, limits on vacation, or dress codes. The hardest part of becoming a freelancer is the scarcity mindset - building a network, finding jobs, collecting invoices, and lining up your next job. We're solving that by basically becoming a talent agent. To make a freelance lifestyle sustainable, we need to solve other parts of this model - such as community and career advancement. But, we're working on it!
It sounds aspirational. But, over half of Moonlight projects continue indefinitely. When companies like working with somebody, they don't stop.
[1] https://www.moonlightwork.com