Drawbacks of Freelance Web Development • Hacker News Board

Re: Drawbacks of Freelance Web Development

#21

Post by CM30 » Sun, Dec 27, 2015, 4:21 PM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #14

Another disadvantage of freelancing is generally lower bar of requirements and less interesting work. There are always exceptions, of course, but it's usually mind-destroying disposable CRUD work or building iOS clones of existing web apps, don't expect to eat "rich programmer food" [1] as a freelancer. Besides, you will rarely have an opportunity to learn from other/smarter people, so growing professionally will be…

On the other hand, I would point out that sometimes the opposite is true. Working alone (or perhaps in a place where you might be one of the best in the room) means you learn more about programming and how to solve problems than you would otherwise. Why? Because if you're the only one working on something, you have to be the one to solve all the difficult problems.

On the other hand, if you work with other/smarter people, it's also possible to end up not really doing as much challenging work, as they'll take over anything you see as too 'difficult' or too much effort to learn. It's definitely recommended to learn from others, but you have to make sure you're not just letting them do all the work.

Re: Drawbacks of Freelance Web Development

#22

Post by jk4930 » Sun, Dec 27, 2015, 7:30 PM UTC

blue1 wrote: post #17

hayksaakian wrote: post #8

Another angle is to progressively fire your smallest clients and get referrals from your larger ones. You can scale to 880$ per hour or whatever it was using this strategy. It could be hard emotionally to fire nice clients, so keep a good list of devs handy who you can send your undesirable work. Last thing is to read patio11's guide about freelancing -- its a very relevant read.

> patio11's guide about freelancing link?

http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/

Re: Drawbacks of Freelance Web Development

#23

Post by michaelbuddy » Mon, Dec 28, 2015, 7:21 PM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #14

Another disadvantage of freelancing is generally lower bar of requirements and less interesting work. There are always exceptions, of course, but it's usually mind-destroying disposable CRUD work or building iOS clones of existing web apps, don't expect to eat "rich programmer food" [1] as a freelancer. Besides, you will rarely have an opportunity to learn from other/smarter people, so growing professionally will be…

you can definitely get some weak projects but if you like for example to see small businesses grow and you do web / graphics / marketing you can take them and see them through a campaign that is above what they've ever had and get results that they only hoped for. I've seen from my work a company go from a low / medium player in their market to near top dog because they became more visible. It wasn't just marketing of course, their service was always good just they didn't stand out amongst the clutter.

I've also had a lot of uninteresting work at companies too. Because the areas I consider fun, planning, strategy, communicating with the clients are handled by account managers and designer devs get 2nd hand info after the meetings. In a lot of ways the luster or shine of the project is gone and it quickly turns into a digital todo list.

Re: Drawbacks of Freelance Web Development

#24

Post by michaelbuddy » Mon, Dec 28, 2015, 7:26 PM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #19

I agree with much of the article, but I also sort of question the idea you'll automatically make money being a freelancer. Because you see, a lot of small companies and individuals don't really respect freelancers and single developers as much as they do companies, and often see them as a cheap way to get things done. An awful lot of them think you can pay someone a couple of hundred quid for a clone of Facebook or t…

I too question automatically making money. I mean you can charge what you want, but you have to go after all the work, when it comes in you're on your own to complete it, even the most challenging stuff. Scope creep, customer service, complexity start eating away at your best estimates. Freelancing can be hard and you can easily fail every day just from having bad or less than perfect habits.

Re: Drawbacks of Freelance Web Development

#25

Post by mhassaan » Fri, Jan 01, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #5

mhassaan wrote: post #3

I have been doing freelancing for last 3 years and i agree with you but i think you can avail opportunity to scale your business if you are lucky to get big clients because you become a business for others and as every business man wants to scale his business so i think its solely you who can show a big picture to a client. If his business grows following your picture so as you.Its my point of view though i am not th…

In this kind of job is not so difficult to find people that speak English here in Italy, but most devs read and write (especially read) much better than they speak or understand.

You are quite right about this :) but i am sure developers somehow can understand each other no matter the language .