Side projects/Second job?

I have been trawling through my local job boards for any side project gigs that might be out there, but came up with nothing worthwhile. I did find one but the hours were crazy, like 6-midnight after usual work.

Anyone else do projects on the side? I dont want to be going end-user support after reading all those horror stories, did it for a few months a while ago (definitely not doing it again!). Web design is one of those things that I know people do on the side, but I suck at it and there are too many folks already doing it. How did you guys look for such work? Contacts/job boards/local groups?

Or should I just work on certs, gain more knowledge at my current work and look for a contract gig...

Ideas much appreciated!

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mattlee09

I actually introduced myself to some construction/building contractors and offered to bid on any cabling projects they had coming up. After getting in a few of those (which are easy, get in early enough with exposed walls and just drop the cables/conduit) I'm slowly realizing that, for many small businesses in my area, I can charge them a retainer to be on call for their network/PC needs.

chrisone

mattlee09 wrote: »

I actually introduced myself to some construction/building contractors and offered to bid on any cabling projects they had coming up. After getting in a few of those (which are easy, get in early enough with exposed walls and just drop the cables/conduit) I'm slowly realizing that, for many small businesses in my area, I can charge them a retainer to be on call for their network/PC needs.

Very smart , you should get some cabling certifications like cat6 and fiber would be great. You could fall back on this career with your own small business doing contract work with the client base you have built.

Forsaken_GA

mattlee09 wrote: »

I actually introduced myself to some construction/building contractors and offered to bid on any cabling projects they had coming up. After getting in a few of those (which are easy, get in early enough with exposed walls and just drop the cables/conduit) I'm slowly realizing that, for many small businesses in my area, I can charge them a retainer to be on call for their network/PC needs.

I did exactly that for a number of realtor offices, and independant realtors when I was in school (word got around). It was a good gig, it was sad when I graduated and found I no longer had time for it.

mattlee09

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

I did exactly that for a number of realtor offices, and independant realtors when I was in school (word got around). It was a good gig, it was sad when I graduated and found I no longer had time for it.

Actually, I think I'm slowly starting to get to that point myself already. I've got a decent amount of money saved up, no GF/kids (only 20, so not for another 10 years or so I hope

), and am pretty cool with just living at home until I get to that point honestly.

Unless the job really seems like it's going to turn out future prospects (I really look at whos involved with in the project, if it'd be worthwhile to make those connections, etc.) I think I'm going to start turning some of them away. Seems like anything extra I do is just cutting into my study time and causing what might could be a negative ROI (since I can't buy time with that money). So, to kind of tie into OP/thread, I would be happy to just be able to step back and work on certs (supposing your financially decent).

P.S. - I'm glad to hear I'm on the same track as you Forsaken. I saw in another thread you mentioned about having an enterprise network at your fingertips to test/play with, that's definitely a goal of mine to have something similar in the next year or so. Major props - I seriously envy and look up to you.

Forsaken_GA

mattlee09 wrote: »

P.S. - I'm glad to hear I'm on the same track as you Forsaken. I saw in another thread you mentioned about having an enterprise network at your fingertips to test/play with, that's definitely a goal of mine to have something similar in the next year or so. Major props - I seriously envy and look up to you.

Yeah, I built out my CCIE lab last year, so I have plenty of network gear to play with.

With the trend towards virtualization in the data center, I decided it'd be a good idea to get familiar with VMWare, so I built out an ESXi cluster with a storage backend this year. Playing with VMotion across the WAN and getting MPIO working perfectly are interesting experiments.