Freelance work as an alternative to full time (Albeit underpaid) job

quicky008

Technomancer
I have been working as a faculty member at an engineering college these past few years.However of late,i have started becoming rather averse to this work as its not only rather monotonous,but also offers very little in the way of future prospects or growth in one's career.Not to mention the salaries being offered are low and therefore unsuitable from a long term perspective.

Also a lot of time is spent on commuting back and forth from this place to my home daily and at the end of the day i feel so fatigued and lethargic,that i barely have any strength or the energy to do anything else.

Thus i have been desperately thinking of quitting this job and switching to some freelance work (atleast for the time being)that can be done remotely.

On quora,i came across several posts by various individuals who claim that they are making more than 50k a month by doing freelance work in software development (especially web-development).Is it really possible to earn that much simply from freelance software development jobs?

Even though i want to pursue software development,i lack the essential skillsets that are a prerequisite for this kind of work.Many websites like udemy,course era etc offer a multitude of courses on software development-are these good enough to help a beginner (like me) acquire a good understanding of the intricacies of this field?And can this knowledge be useful for pursuing freelance work?

Someone suggested that i should learn full stack web development as it might prove useful while searching for freelance jobs.Is this course on full stack good enough?

Course era full stack development

Please share your thoughts and recommendations on this issue.Thanks.
 
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K_akash_i

Journeyman
It'd be better if u also insert ur educational qualifications so that the readers could suggest u other options and not just development.
 

Desmond

Destroy Erase Improve
Staff member
Admin
I knew some professors in my engineering college who said they prefer being a lecturer over working in the industry since they get more free time and equivalent pay. But I guess that's a personal preference.

With an MCA I think you can get a freelance job or even a full time one if you have the right skills.

Someone suggested that i should learn full stack web development as it might prove useful while searching for freelance jobs.Is this course on full stack good enough?

Course era full stack development
Full stack development is a good area if you want to freelance since you can build the whole application stack. I read a bit about that course and I see that it does not seem to specialize in a particular stack and it seems pretty generic:
The courses in this program will help you develop skill sets in a variety of technologies including: Cloud foundations, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, GitHub, Node.js, React, Cloud Native practices, DevOps, CI/CD, Containers, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Istio, Python programming, Databases, SQL, NoSQL, Django ORM, Bootstrap, Application Security, Microservices, Serverless computing, and more.
Perhaps this would be good for beginners, but IMO it's best to specialize in one stack rather than be a jack-of-all-trades.
 

K_akash_i

Journeyman
prolly backend programming imo (i heard that there are more coders and stuff available),ofc i have no idea about the jobmarket
 
OP
quicky008

quicky008

Technomancer
Perhaps this would be good for beginners, but IMO it's best to specialize in one stack rather than be a jack-of-all-trades.

Can you please suggest which stack should i proritize and attempt to learn first? I understand that trying to learn full stack in its entirety can be a bit overwhelming for a newbie like me.
 

TheSloth

The Slowest One
MERN and MEAN stack is a good start I guess
React/Angular with Java(better if Spring) is another popular job profile
Spring Microservices, this skill paired with Kafka, Kubernetes is very important right now. Spring is Java based framework.
 

Desmond

Destroy Erase Improve
Staff member
Admin
Can you please suggest which stack should i proritize and attempt to learn first? I understand that trying to learn full stack in its entirety can be a bit overwhelming for a newbie like me.
I'd suggest taking that course for now to understand basic concepts and perhaps later you can specialize in something else.

When thinking of a stack, consider the following layers that make it up: frontend, backend, database and optionally middleware. Technically all of these are distinct and you can mix and match any technology within a layer. Some examples are as follows:

Frontend: React, JQuery, Angular, etc. though these require a fundamental background in core web technologies: HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Backend: Java, Node.js, C#, Python, etc. Most general purpose programming languages make up this layer. But note that in practice you'd be specializing in some specific frameworks related to these languages. The language you use determines what framework you will specialize in. For example, for Node.js (whose main language is Javascript) you'd probably also have to learn Express.js or Backbone.js for MVC framework, etc, while for Java you'd use something like Spring and Hibernate. I'd suggest looking up market trends to see what is in most demand and choose that platform to specialize in.

Database: The database that your stack will use to persist data. Examples are MongoDB, MySQL, Cassandra, etc.

Middleware: These are tools that basically act as a "glue" that connects disparate systems. These are usually used in very specific use cases and it's not likely that an average developer would have to work with these. Nevertheless it's better to have some idea about these and when these are used. Examples are: message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc), cache (Redis, Memcached, etc), etc.

Technically you can mix and match these however you want as per your preference or as per the demand in the job market. Though, like @TheSloth mentioned, some stacks are standard like the MEAN (MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, Node.js), MERN (MongoDB, Express.js, React, Node.js), LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), etc.

BTW, as a faculty, what subject do you lecture on?
 
OP
quicky008

quicky008

Technomancer
I'd suggest taking that course for now to understand basic concepts and perhaps later you can specialize in something else.

When thinking of a stack, consider the following layers that make it up: frontend, backend, database and optionally middleware. Technically all of these are distinct and you can mix and match any technology within a layer. Some examples are as follows:

Frontend: React, JQuery, Angular, etc. though these require a fundamental background in core web technologies: HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Backend: Java, Node.js, C#, Python, etc. Most general purpose programming languages make up this layer. But note that in practice you'd be specializing in some specific frameworks related to these languages. The language you use determines what framework you will specialize in. For example, for Node.js (whose main language is Javascript) you'd probably also have to learn Express.js or Backbone.js for MVC framework, etc, while for Java you'd use something like Spring and Hibernate. I'd suggest looking up market trends to see what is in most demand and choose that platform to specialize in.

Database: The database that your stack will use to persist data. Examples are MongoDB, MySQL, Cassandra, etc.

Middleware: These are tools that basically act as a "glue" that connects disparate systems. These are usually used in very specific use cases and it's not likely that an average developer would have to work with these. Nevertheless it's better to have some idea about these and when these are used. Examples are: message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc), cache (Redis, Memcached, etc), etc.

Technically you can mix and match these however you want as per your preference or as per the demand in the job market. Though, like @TheSloth mentioned, some stacks are standard like the MEAN (MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, Node.js), MERN (MongoDB, Express.js, React, Node.js), LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), etc.

BTW, as a faculty, what subject do you lecture on?
Thanks for the detailed reply,i will definitely look into it and let you know if i have any further queries regarding this matter.

The subjects that are assigned to me every semester are not fixed and may vary depending on the whims and fancies of the head of the department,who sometimes even assigns his own workloads upon the remaining faculty members,while wasting his own time doing nothing but plotting newer and more novel ways of tormenting us(and he has some minions who happily abett him in his nefarious endeavours) .Anyways,the subjects i usually teach are networking,programming (C/C++,java etc),Database management etc.
 
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