David R. Heffelfinger

  Ensode Technology, LLC

 

So you want to become an independent consultant?


I have been an independent consultant for almost 7 years. Last month I had the opportunity to speak at the JavaOne conference, I identified myself as an independent consultant, after my talks a few attendees approached me to ask how to go about becoming one.

The other day a former coworker found my LinkedIn profile, saw that I'm independent now and gave me a call asking for advice and guidance on going on his own.

Since there seems to be a lot of interest in finding out how to strike it out on your own, I'll write down about my experiences here, then in the future direct people to this blog post.

The first thing I'd like to clarify is that I live in an area where most software development work is contract work anyway. Another thing that I'd like to point out is that by the time I decided to go out on my own I was already a published author, that fact helped me market my services and obtain work fairly easily. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

When doing contract work, there are three ways to go about it.

W2, 1099 or C2C?

When hired as a W2, you become a temporary employee of the company hiring you. The client (your temporary employer) takes care of your tax deductions. There are also 1099 contracts, in which the company hires you as an individual, but you are not their employee, you are responsible for deducting your own taxes. The third way to do it is a Corp to Corp contract, commonly abbreviated as C2C. When doing C2C contracts, you need to incorporate a company, in this case the clients hires your company, not you directly.

Before I incorporated Ensode Technology, LLC, I was doing a lot of W2 contracts, since like I mentioned before the majority of software development work in my area is contract work . W2 contracts usually lasts from 6 months to a year, in rare occasions it can go beyond that. Since I had no job security anyway I figured that I may as well go all the way, start my own company and incorporate.

How do I incorporate my own company?

Incorporating a company is very easy. First come up with a name, google it to make sure it is not taken (by the way Ensode stands for Enterprise Software Development). I incorporated Ensode Technology online and didn't even had to get up from my seat, if I remember correctly it cost me about $100 USD.

Getting a Business Bank Account

You need to get a business bank account primarily so that you can get paid. Your clients will be writing checks to your company, not to you personally. Any bank will be more than happy to help you open an account with them.

Getting Insurance

After incorporating, the next step was to get insurance, a lot of clients won't do business with you unless you are insured. I have liability insurance covering up to $1,000,000, it costs me about $500 a year.

Taking care of tax deductions

Lastly, I hired a payroll service to take care of my tax deductions, that sets me back around $85 USD a month or so.

Once you have incorporated your company, gotten liability insurance and hired a payroll service (this third step is optional, but I highly recommend it), you are ready to strike it out on your own, so the next question get asked a lot is:

How do you get projects?

When your company has only one employee, getting contracts is not much different from the way most other people find regular jobs. You post your resume on a job board, and wait for companies to contact you, once you start talking about a potential job, you should let them know that you are only looking for C2C contracts.

So there you have it, as you can see striking it out on your own is not really that hard. Good luck in your new venture.

 
 
 
 

So you want to become a technical author?


Last month at the JavaOne conference I had the opportunity to participate in a birds of a feather session titled "So you want to be a published technical author?". I was glad to share my experiences as a published book author, unfortunately the session was only 45 minutes and we had  5 people plus the moderator in the panel, so we didn't have time to cover everything we wanted to. Here are some things we covered during the session, plus a few more things that were left unsaid.

How do I get noticed?

The easiest way to get noticed is to blog about the topic you are interested in writing. Personally, the way I got discovered was when one of the articles I wrote for my own web site was linked to from The Server Side. My advice to aspiring authors would be to blog about your topic of choice then submit your own blog posts to Reddit, Hacker News and other popular technology sites.

Is it profitable?

Not directly. Yes, you'll get some extra cash, but not enough to live on. However, the fact that you are a published author will increase your demand as a programmer a lot, allowing you to charge higher rates. Also, being published opens the door to other opportunities that further increase your exposure, such as speaking engagements and invitations to write articles for high profile publications. A quote I read somewhere that deeply resonates with me: "You don't write books for the royalties, you write books for the consulting fees".

How do you find the time to write?

Very few technical authors write books for a living, for most of us that is something we do on the side. Since we have a full time job we have to write on nights and weekends. Personally, I have a home office in my basement where I go on the evenings to work on my books.

What topics should I write about?

Something you are passionate about. Personally, I tend to pick open source projects such as NetBeans and GlassFish and write about versions that are still in development and have not been officially released yet. I try to time the book publication to match the official release of the project in question. This approach has the risk that things I write about may change in the final version of the product, however the trade off is that your book will cover the latest version of the technology in question.


Why is it so hard to find Java talent?


One common complaint that I hear from my clients and recruiter friends is that it is very hard to find good Java talent.

I am fortunate enough to be on the other side of the coin, I have been working with Java for several years now, I have authored several books on Java and have been a speaker at Oracle's JavaOne conference on more than one occasion, so I'd like to think I'm one of those hard to find good Java developers.

Being on the other side of the coin, I am bombarded every day with emails from recruiters interested in my services, I am fortunate enough to be able to be selective about the projects I work with. In my experience there are three things that drive me away from accepting a project. Here are my suggestions on things you can do to attract top Java talent.

Make it easy to apply

It is mind boggling to me the number of companies that require me to go fill out some long, convoluted form just so that I can apply for a job with them. I have several other companies that are dying to hire me, don't make it a hassle for me to apply for a job for you. On a similar note, many companies require me to fill out some form made in Word that duplicates all the information that already exists in my resume.

If you want me to work for you, don't make it a hassle for me to apply.

Be flexible with your tax terms

For quite a few years now, I've been an independent consultant, in order to do this, I had to incorporate, hire a payroll service, and get insurance for my business. I already have an infrastructure in place to run my business, therefore I only take Corp-to-Corp (C2C) contracts. A lot of companies do W2 only, or want a permanent employee only. Again, I have several potential clients that want to hire me and agree to my terms, your chances of hiring me are slim to none if you are unwilling or unable to do a C2C contract.

Your project has to be interesting

I'm not going to pull any punches here, a lot of the Java projects out there just suck, plain and simple. If what you want me to do is maintain an old J2EE application using Struts 1 and Spring 1 or 2, I'm not going to be very interested in your project. You need to modernize your infrastructure if you want to attract top Java talent. I have actually researched the topic on modernizing legacy server side Java web applications, and wrote a series of articles for the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) a while back on the topic. The articles focus on Spring to Java EE migration, but the same concepts apply to J2EE to Java EE migration. If you need help modernizing a legacy project, drop me a note, this will certainly be an interesting project and I'll be happy to help.



 
 
 
 
 

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© David R. Heffelfinger