My company has ran into a bit of a stumbling block recently and as a result I'm out of work. In fact, I just found out I won't even be getting paid for the last month (at least until if/when said blockage is fixed). I've got some big medical bills due soon and still have to pay rent and other things. I need something and quick. I'm trying not to get too far down the sex-worker line, so I'm turning my focus to short-term piecework in the software department.

I've been contracted for such things before, but usually that's on the order of 2-6 month jobs. I would perhaps be interested in even smaller pieces that take a few days to weeks to complete. Surely there's some here that have done this before. Where do you look for your jobs? What kinds of things should you seek, and which should you avoid? How do you prevent scammers, and how do you reassure the payee that you won't screw them over? In the last 6 or so years I've focused mostly on PHP development, but I've got some experience in a mix of other languages.

Elverion, I'm looking for short term coding projects for my GUI library Eagle.

Take a look here :
https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/616882

I recently got contacted about a second interview, so if I get the job I'm looking at I may have some extra cash in around a month or so when I get my first check. No promises, but I think you could probably contribute quite a bit to my library with your experience. Prices are negotiable, according to quality of work and time to complete the mini-project.

Edgar

I absolutely will have to look into that. I can perhaps begin reviewing the source code tomorrow. I also see a bit of talk about Lua, but seems it's not your preferred scripting language. Depending on how complex things are, I could perhaps take care of all the Lua stuff (if that's something you would even want) and you can see I've got a bit of experience doing exactly that on my MicroMacro project.

It may be a little while before I can actually pay anyone, so be warned. I don't want people taking on work without making some kind of agreement with me before hand.

As for LUA, I think you're making it harder on yourself than it has to be. All that's really needed is a way to turn a string into a function call (more complicated than it sounds) but I've been thinking of different ways to do that. It may be I end up writing my own C++ interpreter. Take a look at the dispatch code I wrote in the other thread, not the gui stuff. That's kind of what I was thinking of, but if you've got better solutions, I'm all ears.

As for taking a look at the library, please do. I've got a substantial bit of work sitting at home on my laptop I haven't committed yet, and I'm in the middle of rebuilding all my libraries with mingw-w64-gcc 7.1.

It would probably be beneficial to meet up in a private IRC channel to discuss things further. Or PM is fine, if you prefer snail mail.

Edgar

Absolutely. I'll try to catch you on IRC when I can. Or perhaps Discord if you would prefer; I can imagine that would be rather handy. Alternatively, you can contact me at [removed]

I'm sorry to hear about your circumstances. I can't help with finding work unfortunately (well, I know of an open position, but they're looking for somebody longer term, and it would be a local job so you'd have to relocate and the money wouldn't be worth it based on what I know; PM if you want details anyway).

What strikes me as odd is that your employer is withholding a month's worth of pay. Is that even legal? I would hope there would be a labor board or something in your state/province to fight that (but I guess they don't hold individuals responsible for squandering company funds).

A guy I work with does some odd jobs online. I don't know that it's really worth his time, but he has been doing it a while to supplement our meager income so I assume he either likes it or it pays off. If you'd like I could ask him what he uses to find them. I imagine there's no sure fire way to avoid getting screwed though in such a transaction, unless the platform you use to meet holds holds them accountable somehow.

I'm gonna say no, if you have your pay/contract in writing it's like an open-and-shut case.

Call the department of labor and/or any local/state equivalent. You can't not pay someone for work they've already completed.