My Journey from a Stable Programmer Job to Freelancing, Publishing on Substack, and Pursuing New Ventures
Discovering Insights and Sharing Experiences on the Path to Independent Work
About 6 months ago, I left my stable and well-paid job in search of the freedom to work as I want - first attempting an MVP in the software documentation area, then trying my luck as a publisher on my Substack, Turing Respawns (which is free for everyone), and adding to that, looking to sell my services as a freelance web dev (the two images below are part of the portfolio I present to my clients).
I have gained several insights so far - writing on Substack, I discovered that the choice of topics I should write about needs to be as concrete as possible and directed at things people want - from advice on how to advance in their careers to ways of finding a job in a difficult labor market. I am still perfecting my writing style, but no matter how many books and theories I had read on the subject, it would have been impossible to feel these conclusions in my skin without having experienced and gone through it.
As a freelance web dev, I also reached interesting insights in this journey for the freedom to choose to work on what I want - I realized that if our work (portfolio, website, profile) does not reach the eyes of thousands of people, the probability that 10-20 are interested and that of those, 1 or 2 contact us with a job request is almost zero. I also concluded that the more homogeneous the niche of the eyes that see our work, the fewer thousands of people we need to reach with our message.
And how to reach those thousands of people - well, the post you are reading is one way to try to reach some of you out there who might be interested in hiring a freelance web dev that you already know a bit about through my publications and portfolio (see animated gifs of the work I did above). Other ways are to grow your LinkedIn network, which requires a bit of patience and work but is not that difficult.
And that's it - subscribe to my Substack (it's free) and if you need a web dev (full stack javascript) for an extra job you have, you can reach me through my email - alexande.rijo@gmail.com - I am always available for a chat about any topic you want to discuss. Thank you for your reading and may things go well in your work and life.