Ask HN: Is it a good time to start freelancing?

I do freelancing. Any one person‘s advice is going to be from a pretty low sample size, but here is mine: the specific industry and the geography you have contacts in matters a ton more than “the economy“ that you read about in the headlines. Maybe that’s a good thing, or maybe a bad thing, but I would recommend talking to the exact people you would be trying to sell your services to.

If you cannot get meetings with those people, it is not a good time to start regardless of the overall economy

I've never noticed a big link between the stock market and my freelancing business. Perhaps there are more laid-off developers looking to freelance during a downturn, but companies also hire more contractors/freelancers during times of economic uncertainty and hiring freezes.

In any case, economic conditions count for about zero compared to your leads and sales skills.

Are you asking whether it's a good time to start freelancing full time or at all?

If the former, my advice is usually that if you have to ask, the answer is no. If you have enough work piling up to require you to freelance full time, then freelance full time. Otherwise, you're asking for pain. In my experience, the people who do well as a freelancer already have a solid professional reputation established, a network of people who are eager to give them work, etc.

If the latter, then yes, absolutely. IMO: every software engineer should take on freelance work every once in a while (time and circumstances permitting). Handling the entire end-to-end process (sales, discovery, implementation, delivery, payment, etc -- not necessarily in that order) not only helps build understanding of why things happen the way they do at work (especially if you work at an agency/consulting firm), but it helps to build communication skills that are helpful to your day job.

I think so if there's a value in your service.

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