This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
A caller has an idea to connect overseas web developers with clients in the U.S. Hey there, welcome to Side Hustle School. My name's Chris Guillebeau. In case you weren't aware, development, also known as programming, coding, et cetera, it is a hot career field. If you were looking at a field to go into, or if you know somebody who is, I don't know, just going into college, or whether they do college or not, in fact, definitely a very profitable field wherever you are in the world.
And in fact, it's very hard to find good help without spending a lot of money, which is why it's such a hot profession. Sometimes it's hard even when you do spend a lot of money. So that's what our caller's gonna tell us about. They've had kind of a negative experience at work with a web developer, again, not shocking just because they're in such demand. So back to their idea, how would it work to connect overseas web developers with clients in the U.S.
or could be somewhere other than the U.S.? The point is just connecting people in different markets and how could they, of course, profit from it? That's what we try to tie everything back to on Side Hustle School, not just how does the world work, but how can the world work for you? That's the whole point, right? How can you make extra money without quitting your job, build personal freedom to do more of what's important to you?
All right, broker liaison for overseas web developers, that's today's episode. It's coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]
Hi, this is Rebecca from Destin. The company I work for at my day job recently had a negative experience with a web developer. Two of them, actually, the first guy embraced the quiet quitting ethos and didn't take any initiative for anything and the second guy just kind of ghosted us.
It was frustrating and it seems like good help in this field is hard to find. That brings me to my idea. Is anyone working as some sort of broker or liaison between overseas web developers and companies in the US that wanna hire them for jobs? I don't just mean something like Fiverr, I mean more of a hand holding service. I'm not a developer myself, but I manage projects and am good at communicating expectations.
In both of these situations at my job, there were warning signs that our company ignored despite my raising concerns early. So I think there's value here, but I don't really know how to go about the next steps. [Music]
All right, so here's the deal, at least as I see it, first of all, there are a bunch of platforms doing this. It's not just Upwork and Fiverr. I mean, those are obviously two big ones, our caller mentioned Fiverr, but there are also professional recruitment agencies who specialize in exactly this problem.
So you always have to ask, how will I do this differently? What is my path to market? Because even overseas web developers aren't cheap. This is another point, if they're good. And there are plenty of good overseas web developers.
So the pricing may be relatively advantageous, but this is a skill that's valuable worldwide. And a lot has changed in recent years in terms of globalization and remote work. A friend of mine manages a team of developers in Russia and Ukraine, and he says his best employees they're earning more than $50,000 a year. So that's a far cry from what you've heard before about the low, low cost. It's just, it's a valuable profession.
So you always have to ask, as I said, how will I do this differently? What's my path to market? If you don't have an answer to that, I'd be much more cautious about proceeding. In fact, I'd probably encourage you to think about some other idea. Of course, if you do have some answers there, if you think about it some more and you're like, no, I do see this path, then that's great.
But in these situations where you have kind of a general idea but you're not sure about the specifics, there's two ways to go about it. One is to like research those specifics and really figure out, okay, what are the answers? Another way is to say, okay, this was interesting that I had this idea. I wonder if it might lead me to something that might be more feasible or just easier to get started in a short period of time, which is another way of saying feasible, of course. There are always all kinds of things you could do.
It's just important in life, I think, to say what is the best thing I can do right now. So that's my two cents there. It doesn't cost $50,000 a year. I hope it's helpful. Listeners, if you have a question, situstleschool.com/questions.
I love knowing what you're working on. I hope you're holding up all right during this holiday season as well as thinking about what you're going to build next year. I'll be right there with you. Thanks for tuning in. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
