Freelance

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Tiberius Florea outlines the difference between deep and broad skillsets and explains why broadening your skillset may further your career.

Premature optimization hurts experts and novices alike. How can you know when and how to optimize without shooting your project in the foot? This week, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Kevin Bloch walks project managers through some time-tested optimization strategies and when to use them.

Freelancer identity theft happens all the time. In fact, someone’s likely had their identity stolen as you read these words. Let’s hope it wasn’t you. In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Relja Damnjanovic shares his story about freelancer identity theft and offers lessons for freelancers, who don’t want to learn things the hard way.

You can buy capri pants, cheap flip-flops, and boonie hats anywhere on vacation, but beachside shops usually don’t carry quality hardware that can help you be more productive on the road or save you time and money for more enjoyable activities. In this post, Toptal Technical Editor Nermin Hajdarbegovic takes a look at inexpensive and readily available travel hardware designed to boost your productivity on the road. You can put most of these gadgets on your summer shopping list without making a dent in your travel budget.

Many product owners don’t have a technical background and thus often find themselves unprepared and scrambling when it comes to bringing on a new development team. This often results in hindered progress, wasted time, and frustration for everyone involved. If this sounds like it could be you, either now or in the future, then you should be somewhat concerned. In this blog post, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Carlos Ramirez III will walk you through the various steps of a typical transition process in project management so you can prepare for this eventuality and make the transition as smooth as possible.

Today, the notion of repetitively modeling or drawing the windows, doors, and walls of standardized buildings seems archaic, so why do it? If you want to handle DWG files and ACA objects programmatically, one of the best platform options is Teigha Architecture. In this article, Toptal Freelance Designer Alexey Abramovsky walks us through the DWG production of a small house to introduce us to the benefits of Teigha. Go from foundations to full render in this quick tutorial.

Do you have what it takes to travel the globe while working full-time? Can you work on the road while still finding enough time to take care of yourself and enjoy the adventures of travel? It’s not a lifestyle for everyone, but it’s probably not as tricky or demanding as you think, especially when you have a sense of purpose. In this article, Toptal Director of Operations Dror Liebenthal explains how to enjoy the nomadic lifestyle without compromising your professional performance, health, or social life.

It's tragically common for developers to come into a project where proper automated testing has been and will continue to be overlooked. It's a situation Freelance Developer Bhushan Lodha has found himself in all too often; fortunately, he's found a solution. In this article, he briefly covers the reasons why testing is overlooked and ultimately explains his "coding life hack" to ensure quality control even when he can't introduce a testing framework.

Synchronizing productivity for interdependent team tasks can be a hassle even in the best traditional workplace environments. Add in the inherent challenges of a remote team, and the hassle becomes two-fold. But it doesn't have to be. Toptal's Technical Editor Kate Scheer takes us along on her journey to inspire timely content from her remote authors, and her communication recommendations cross into other realms of remote work.