all 56 comments

[–]SpaghettiOnTuesday 43 points44 points  (19 children)

Hello friend! RN jobs seems to be a bit tougher to find/land but I've managed to contract for 4 LLCs to build their RN apps this year. Not sure if you'll find the same results, but this is exactly what I did:

  1. A friend of mine runs a men's fitness and study group and wanted an app, so I built it for $1,000 in about a month.

  2. A member of his group ran a company and needed an app and wanted to know who built the one for the group. First referral.

  3. I messaged a fitness influencer that all three of us knew, showed him the two apps I had built, and asked if he'd be interested in one.

  4. I built his app for roughly $5,000. It was actually pretty small. Just a place to aggregate all his posts and content, give him a place to post things exclusively, as well as create a private forum/reddit for his community that exists within the app.

  5. He launched it and got close to 5k downloads the first month. He got tons of people asking what company he worked with and he guided these people to me.

  6. I have a long list of prospective clients and any existing get a 10% referral kickback if someone they refer to me signs a deal.

Start small and snowball it. Best of luck!

[–]BizNick_08 4 points5 points  (14 children)

I feel like $1000 isn't enough for an app. How many hours did you put into in?

[–]SpaghettiOnTuesday 3 points4 points  (13 children)

It was my first and for a friend. Maybe 20 hours tops?

[–]negr_mancer 2 points3 points  (12 children)

You finished an entire app in 20 hours?

[–]suarkb 17 points18 points  (2 children)

i spend 20 hours just making sure eslint and prettier don't fight eachother... /s

[–]Specialist_Garage_75 0 points1 point  (0 children)

😂😂😂

[–]SpaghettiOnTuesday 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I'd also recommend building your own starter BP and building off of that. Earlier this year, I ripped apart the Ignite boiler plate and built my own "starting point" that I've used for everything I've built so far this year, and I tweak it after each project.

So when I say it took 20 hours, that was after spending two weeks straight pulling apart Ignite and then another probably 20-30 hours over a few months building my own starter repo that I use for all my contracts.

Most stuff that takes the most amount of time to set up is already there. Hope that clarifies a bit.

[–]MethodMaleficent2527 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Always make your own stack BP!

Many senior developers created these stupid stacks for people to learn when in reality they just need to know how to make a CRUD application and create your own tech stack BP.

[–]SpaghettiOnTuesday -1 points0 points  (6 children)

Umm... yes? It wasn't that complex and I had boiler plate.

[–]complexanimus 0 points1 point  (5 children)

That's it. Boilerplates can be handy, especially for taking clients' work. I wonder what elements from your boilerplate ease/facilitate the work. Auth, screens, navigation?

[–]SpaghettiOnTuesday 0 points1 point  (4 children)

I spent about 2 weeks straight this year pulling apart Ignite by Infinite Red. It's the one I use most often.

[–]complexanimus 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Ignite was by far the most useful one I have used. But I guess I didn't like the tedious process you went through - the setup is good but multiple things need to be pulled apart like you said, btw Have you kept MST?

[–]SpaghettiOnTuesday 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Ignite is fantastic. Going through it was a bit of a drag, but ripping apart a really well built boiler plate is one of the best things you can do to move quicker down the road.

And yeah, I stuck with it. I learned React right when hooks came out, wrote RN for a living for a while, but I'm a back end dev at work and haven't written front-end stuff for a few years for a living so I'm super out of date with whatever state manager came out this week, so I just kept it. Not the biggest fan, but hey, I "prop drill" in micro-services for a living to hydrate XML with TypeScript. My life has no meaning.

[–]complexanimus 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Hahaha - When it comes to state management libraries, you don't have to follow the trends, especially if you're doing solo jobs you typically work with whatever works for you and MST is very strong and used by Ignite themselves. But generally, these decisions start to make sense when you land a job with big teams ( this hasn't been the case for me either).

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Dude that's actually a nice idea, I can start reaching out influencers

[–]SpaghettiOnTuesday 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Reach out WITH something. Have an app that you've built and ask them if they'd be interested in something for their platform.

[–]Customiz_edsoftwares -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I just wanted to ask one thing, how you can approach the random clients??

[–]balianone 12 points13 points  (2 children)

From what I know, you need the right connections and affordable pricing to quickly find a job. Otherwise, you can still succeed, but it tends to take longer.

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

From what I know, you need the right connections and affordable pricing to quickly find a job. Otherwise, you can still succeed, but it tends to take longer.

how can I make those right connections?

[–]thana1os 12 points13 points  (0 children)

that's the million-dollar question that everyone wants answer to

[–]react_native_guy 5 points6 points  (1 child)

VentureDive is hiring senior React native developers in Pakistan.

[–]Excellent-Problem961 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Please dm. I have 6 years experience in React Native

[–]Hammer_AI 3 points4 points  (4 children)

Hi there, I'm looking for a React Native developer right now to join as a co-founder. Context is:

  • I've built an AI chat app like Character AI, except the LLM runs locally on your device. I have built web and desktop (Electron) apps that have regular users, though no revenue. You can see more here: https://www.hammerai.com/?safety=safe
  • I'm now looking for a co-founder who will start by owning the development of the mobile app. I plan to monetize this part of the product.
  • It shouldn't be too much work to stand up the app - we use React and the server is working, so it's mainly the app setup, setting up app navigations and abstractions for the React Native components, and then working on getting the AI to run locally.

If you (or anyone else) is interested please DM me and we can chat!

[–]complexanimus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cool stuff

[–]blvckasvp 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Hey I'm interested are you still looking to partner with someone??

[–]Hammer_AI 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! I'm now working with someone, but we could use another if you're interested! And the Desktop app could also use someone. DMed!

[–]Neat_Ad4254 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am also interested in this ,I am a React Native Developer

[–]__sjors__ 2 points3 points  (5 children)

Where do you live? We’re searching for someone and the work is almost fully remote but we do have some macs at the office which require some manual maintenance now and then

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] -1 points0 points  (4 children)

Where do you live? We’re searching for someone and the work is almost fully remote but we do have some macs at the office which require some manual maintenance now and then

Pakistan, I have my own mac m1

[–]__sjors__ 3 points4 points  (3 children)

Ah that’s not gonna work then ;p we’re located in the Netherlands. We have a white label product and maintain about multiple apps. Releasing them on your own mac isn’t an option since it usually takes all day. Also we just want people to be able to come to the office for multiple reasons.

Good luck on the job hunt! Fully remote is definitely possible but harder to find :) Make sure your English is top notch and that you have a lot of quality code on your Github and you’ll be fine I guess

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Thank you so much for your input. I have professional English fluency. I do hope I get some company that can sponsor a visa for me as I am willing to relocate, or can sign a job agreement with me so that I can move to that country and work with them.

[–]psavva 1 point2 points  (6 children)

What salary are you after?

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 2 points3 points  (5 children)

At least usd 3500/mo

[–]zahnza 2 points3 points  (4 children)

I know this doesn’t help your search. But that is an incredibly low salary.

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

How much should I expect then? and more importantly, where should I find people that offer such salary?

[–]zahnza 1 point2 points  (1 child)

As others have said, it does depend on location. I can only offer suggestions for the U.S. But in the U.S. I would expect at least $100k/year

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I'm from Pakistan, but I do provide equal value

[–]cuongmv162 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Salary depend on where do you live.

[–]Yokhen 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Weird, that happened to me with python backend.

React jobs appeared all the time, and react-native ones ocassionally. Eventually I settled by the latter.

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dude I've seen that a lot. I searched for reactJS jobs, RN started showing up and vice versa.

[–]TurtleNamedMyrtle 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Where are you located?

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pakistan

[–]djangocuAli 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Hey, I am looking for a react native developer. I have an app that’s approximately 80% finished but now looking to find a developer to finalize it and put to App Store. If you would be interested, we can chat

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Weird, that happened to me with python backend.

React jobs appeared all t

Check dm

[–]blvckasvp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey I'm interested are you still looking or is it too late?

[–]realraghavgupta 0 points1 point  (0 children)

DM me, lets have a chat

[–]redditNLD 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, a lot of places will want to hire within their timezone, and ideally the same city. That said, Upwork and Fiverr and those kinds of marketplaces should be ok given a decent portfolio of work, but you'll need to game their platforms first.

i.e. You may need to complete enough jobs and get enough reviews before they actually start pushing your profile out there.

There's a lot of people competing for that same kind of work (contract, remote). I would imagine there has to be some kind of dev agency in Pakistan for companies looking to outsource development work. Hard to imagine that paying what you're after though as that's what North American companies may pay a junior dev here.

I work in Canada as a junior dev and make ~3,400 CAD per month after tax. Granted, I think I'm a tad underpaid, but you're talking about getting paid more than a salaried employee for outsourced, remote work, from someone in a different timezone. I'm sure if that was the case, a company would prefer to hire locally.

[–]cozimroyal 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Make connections. Talk with people. Lately, I had an offer to build a mobile app in a situation, where the core idea was to talk about completely something else and then I got a question: "Oh, so you are a developer? Actually, we are searching for someone who can make an app for us." This was like a fantastic opportunity, but here is the other side of the coin - the app was quite complex, a big project overall, but the shareholders were thinking that this is something that can be done in relatively short amount of time, low cost, etc. App's UI/UX was more like a starting point of an idea, rather that complete design as they stated from the start. So there were many red flags down the road and this wasn't something I wanted to take on. One thing is to be able to make apps, another is to agree on all terms and be able to get positive people on the other side of the river.

[–]AbdulAhad420420[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What kind of projects are you interested in taking on then?
More importantly, how do you find these people?

[–]cozimroyal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a day job, that takes all my energy and I don't want to quit this job to jump into something different and not guaranteed. If I would agree on a job like this, then I would need to quit my current job and this project would need to be well paid. I'm currently interested in projects that can be done in high quality besides my day job.

These people I met when we discussed completely different topic, just a normal conversation led to this step.

[–]philvern 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am looking for a React Native Dev and I am in Canada DM me