Leonardo Soares - JAVA JEE Developer

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• Leonardo Soares
• JAVA JEE Developer

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• After reading Timothy Ferriss book The 4-hour
  workweek and learning about how to escape the
  rat race and how to live more and work less,
  Leonardo Soares decided to become a freelancer.
  So far it worked out quite well and even though
  the diligent JAVA/JEE Developer isnt earning
  40,000 per month yet, he enjoys the newly gained
  variety of his work. And lets be honest, being
  able to do what you love is already pretty
  amazing and as we all know money does not buy
  you happiness

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 1) First off, can you tell us a bit about
  yourself?
• My name is Leo, I am 34 years old and live in the
  sunny Rio de Janeiro.
• Currently I am involved in some personal projects
  (one of them is a platform for waste recycling)
  and always looking for a challenging new projects
  to work on.
• Ive been freelancing for about one year.

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 2) If you would search for your profile on
  Google, which are the three keywords you would
  type in the search bar?
• Positive, self-starter and persistent.
• Besides working home-office based most of the
  time, I like to solve problems, and having a team
  to share my successes and doubts is very
  grateful.

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 3) What was your inspiration and when did you
  actually decide to become a freelancer?
• Some time ago I read a book by Tim Ferriss (The
  4-hour workweek) and it helped me realize that
  you can get more out of life than spending all of
  your time working in the same business or
  company.
• Nowadays, I cant work only 4h per week, but I do
  try to choose what to work on, which is a big
  plus!

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 4) What kind of services have your clients asked
  you to provide?
• Demands vary a lot but project technical design
  and JEE development are common demands.
• I've been involved in some very specific
  technical projects for telecom and the banking
  industries also.

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 5) Do you use other freelancers or companies to
  provide skills that you dont possess?
• Ive been managing some projects and was
  responsible for IOS deliverables, which is not my
  strongest skill, for example. So, I can manage
  and deliver third party solutions as well.
  However, I do prefer to work on my own
  deliverables.

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 6) Now tell us, how do you find new clients that
  are interested in your services?
• This is a tough one.
• Here in Brazil we do have a very traditional 9-7
  work culture and it is not easy to find specific
  and interesting projects to work on as a
  freelancer.
• So basically what I do is, contact potential
  clients through my own professional network or at
  tech conferences that I attend.

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 7) What about freelancermap.com? Can you tell us
  a little bit about your experience with our
  IT-network?
• Im very impressed with the projects available on
  the platform. They seem to be very challenging
  and, technology wise , very interesting.
• Im new to the platform but I do believe that I
  will be involved in a nice project soon.

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 8) How do you set yourself apart from your
  competitors? What makes you special?
• Besides my technical expertise based on JAVA/JEE
  projects I have developed non-technical skills
  during my career. Ive managed projects and teams
  thus I developed leadership, negotiation, problem
  solving and estimation skills as well.
• These skills are necessary when you have a scrum
  master role in a project, for example.
• I also have some experience on digital marketing
  and business development.

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 9) What are the top three books, blogs or
  magazines you read to stay up to date in the
  IT-market?
• I am digging Scala programming language right now
  so I am reading Martin Oderskys book.
• For tech news I read wired.com, tnw.com,
  washable.com and lifehacker.com. For more IT
  business information I read CIO.com and
  infoworld.com and more development oriented
  infoq.com and stackoverflow.com forums.

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Leonardo Soares JAVA JEE Developer

• 10) Freestyle! Is there anything you would like
  to tell our readers?
• If you have a technical problem on a project or a
  challenging new project that needs to be done
  right away, dont hesitate to contact me.
• This is exactly what I am looking for and I am
  sure I can help you out.

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