I’ve talked about asking for what you want in the past, such as in my e-book but I’ve even outdone myself lately! I thought I would share it with you all. I’m coming up to the end of my latest contract (after extending a couple times) and decided I want to move on to more interesting projects. The client also posted a position that would replace part of what I do. I’ve been working for for about a year without a break on this project and am in need of some vacation time. But since I realized they might have some issues with having someone else take over my job, I offered the following: I can be available for phone calls with a 1-2 hour response time for a minimum of 20 hours per month (any less and they will still pay for the 20 hours). And the rate (which is already pretty high as you know) was more than 50% higher since I will be ‘on call’. This will be for the summer months at this point. One key point is that I was offering to help them out without any attachment to the result. I was fine either way, the decision was totally up to them. Since their replacement was fairly junior they thought it would be beneficial to them. This arrangement is another consequence of finding a niche market, which I also talk about often. If your skills can be easily found elsewhere, it is less likely they will be as willing to accept some of these proposals.

Even though this will cut into my vacation time, it’s a pretty sweet deal since I can go for a 2 month summer vacation and be able to make some extra cash without having to use my computer, go to an office or be responsible for the day to day running of the environments.

Lately I’ve been getting used to working from home via VPN and am pretty much going to focus on only being available for remote development. The beauty of this is that I can work anywhere where there is an internet connection. Can anyone say “Hawaii”.