Freelancer Insides: Ugur Yorulmaz, Freelance Database Administrator

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Ugur Yorulmaz is a freelance Data Administrator and IT Consultant based out of Montenegro. He recently became a full-time freelancer and has come to speak to us today about what his job is like, the challenges he’s faced, and advice he has for newer freelancers, or perhaps freelancers with less industry experience.

Firstly, can you tell us bit about yourself?

I’m Ugur, I live in Podgorica, Montenegro. I moved here from Istanbul two years ago. I’m a DBA and Sys admin. I have 25 years of IT experience concerning databases, servers, basic networking, the cloud and programming. I started freelancing six years ago as a secondary source of income.  I’ve been working as a fulltime freelancer for the last two years since I moved to Podgorica.
 

If you would search for your profile on Google, which are the three keywords you would type in the search bar?

  • Remote database administration
  • System administration
  • IT consultant

What was your inspiration and when did you actually decide to become a freelancer? What is it to be a freelancer in Montenegro?

I had a full-time job at Podgorica, but it started to get boring for me after some time. Before I quit my job I had already been freelancing in my free time as a Database Administrator for six years. Then I made up my mind to move on as a freelancer. There isn’t any co-working space in my city, so I haven’t met any other freelancers yet.

What kind of services have your clients asked you to provide? Do you regularly work with local or remote clients?

I generally have remote customers and no local customers. I’m usually asked to identify bottlenecks and optimize relational databases under heavy load. I also give regular services like database administration, system administration and consulting. My clients sometimes need to move their on-premise application servers to AWS or Azure, sometimes they need the opposite. There is always a new challenge for me.

Clients can ask me to identify the bottleneck of their application and database servers and fix the root cause. For example, I had a new corporate client last month and their IT team could not resolve a poorly-performing application hosted on three Linux servers including Apache and MySQL. It was my first exposure to Apache and MySQL, but I could easily spot the bottlenecks with the help of an educated guess. I fixed the configuration of the Apache and MySQL servers. I also rewrote the poorly-performing queries and the problem was solved.

 

 

Do you use other freelancers or companies to provide skills that you don’t possess or to delegate tasks that you don’t enjoy that much (accounting, taxes, etc.)?

I have a freelancer accountant with whom I’ve been working regularly for the last two years, and also have a freelancer lawyer when I need legal services. I depend on them because their services are something in which I am not specialized, plus they are very good at their jobs and their rates are so reasonable, just like me!

There are a few tasks that every freelancer should actually consider to delegate.

Now tell us, how do you find new clients that are interested in your services?

I have my regular customers from Istanbul. My clients generally recommend me to their inner circle, and that’s how I find new customers. I’m trying to expand my business nowadays. That’s why I became a member of this international platform www.freelancermap.com.

Was it difficult for you to start freelancing? Did you ever want to quit or give up? Could you share with our readers the most important lessons that you have learned on the way?

One part of me who wants to live in a comfort zone has always thought to give up, find a 9 to 5 job and have a stable income because it is obviously easier to do so. On the other hand, the other part of me has always loved challenges and also wanted to be as flexible as possible. So, at this particular time I prefer to balance and satisfy my passion by continuing freelancing.

The most challenging part of the freelancing for me is finding new customers, rather than completing the technical tasks. Sometimes It becomes exhausting that you have to prove yourself to a new crowd that you have all the necessary skills for the job. I believe that by joining freelancermap I’ll get to skip that repetitive process. Throughout my journey the most important lesson that I’ve learned is that it’s the nature of the business that everyone wants their problem solved, so you have to be the solution by leaving them satisfied afterwards.
 

it’s the nature of the business that everyone wants their problem solved, so you have to be the solution by leaving them satisfied afterwards.

What about freelancermap.com? Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with our IT-network?

It’s nice that there are lots of projects in freelancermap.com. As far as I’ve noticed that you have a few projects in my area of expertise, database administration. It would be very nice for me if you have new projects surrounding that.

What is a typical day like for you? How do you manage to balance work and life? Do you use any apps or software to help you organizing yourself?

I check databases, reports, emails and instant messengers to understand anything that is going wrong. If there is no urgent issue, I work on my regular tasks. It’s easy to manage work and life balance for me because I have a few customers and projects.

What are the top three books, blogs or magazines you read to stay up to date in the IT-market?

Stack Overflow, LinkedIn and Reddit.

Freestyle! Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?

I will be glad to give one-hour free remote check-up until the new year if your relational databases suffer from performance problems. I’ve been experienced with SQL Server for 20 years and I’m also expanding my skills with PostgreSQL and MySQL.

 

Where to find Ugur Yorulmaz

 

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Would you like to share your freelance experience with us? We’d love to hear from you. Send us an e-mail to info@freelancermap.com

Natalia Campana

Natalia is part of the international team at freelancermap. She loves the digital world, social media and meeting different cultures. Before she moved to Germany and joined the freelancermap team she worked in the US, UK and her home country Spain. Now she focuses on helping freelancers and IT professionals to find jobs and clients worldwide at www.freelancermap.com

By Natalia Campana

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