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Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

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Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#21

Post by josefresco »

nadam wrote: post #17

There was a time when I thought freelancing means freedom. I no longer think that. In my experience the difference between a day-job and freelancing is much smaller than the difference between freelancing and starting a startup. Freelancing and day-job are almost the same for me: work for other people to earn money from month to month to support my family. Starting a startup (or doing a side project) is different. It…

Just wait until that startup starts feeling like a real job. Then come back and comment on how different it is. Personally I have found working for myself to be quite different then doing the same thing for someone else. I have to find the work, I collect 100% of the revenue and as a result the preverbal buck stops at my desk. I sleep well.

Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#22

Post by zavulon »

listic wrote: post #18

It's not the first time that I hear health insurance mentioned in stories I read on Hacker News. As a person living far away from USA I'm afraid I'm not getting the situation, and they don't seem to write about this sort of stuff often on the Net - because that's the way things are, except I think they are different in different countries. For example, here in Russia every citizen including unemployed (which I am now…

(I'm also from Russia)

The doctors here are much better and don't need "motivation" in a Russian sense of this word.. They will give you their best treatment, if you have insurance. For this reason, insurance here is very expensive. There's a lot of poor people here that don't have any kind of insurance.

The cheapest insurance in NY, for example is ~ $300/m, but you also pay up a large amount if you require serious treatment($5-10,000), and every time you come to see a doctor ($25-50). There are many other options for insurance - the larger the monthly payment amount (premium), the less you pay out of pocket for visits and other things.

A best situation you can have here is a company paying for you. To buy the same insurance that I used to have when worked for a financial company here would be $500-600/month.

So it's a big issue for freelancers and everybody who doesn't work for companies that provide it.

It's going to change in 2013 though after new legislation that Obama just passed this year, but there are different opinions here what the effects will be exactly (that's a different topic entirely though)

Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#24

Post by edw519 »

OP has a big problem and it's not freelancing. Just look at what he has written...

He talks about his office, his coffee, his pants, his computer, his commute, even his tax deductions. He talks about what he can do, what he wants to do, how he can structure his day, what he feels like, how he'd like to feel.

He talks about everything except his customers.

I don't care if you're a freelancer, a consultant, an employee, a founder, or a volunteer, it's not about you. It's about your work and the people you're doing it for. That's it. Everything else is just a detail.

Once you start thinking about what you give instead of what you receive, your begin to focus on the task at hand instead of the whine of the day. OP oughta try it sometime.

Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#25

Post by jacquesm »

daleharvey wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he meant what he wrote he should get a job, seriously. I love the freedom that being a freelancer gives me and I could write about the hard times but I'd still do it without a bitter aftertaste like this. Of course everything has its good and its bad sides but this sounds like someone that is very frustrated but that has found nothing better than what he's doing. Also I notice he's a writer, now writing code and w…

the first few paragraphs are all about how much he loves his work, It sounds exactly like someone who loves what they are doing but wants to point out that it isnt all sunshine and roses for people thinking about doing the same thing. he is obviously a very good creative writer, you probably need to read it a little less literally. when I first seen the title I remembers pg's quote straight away "doing a startup is l…

Doing a startup is much more like running a marathon than it is like being punched in the face.

It's for people with stamina, and the will to fight back.

I've been doing this for many years now and the times that I got 'punched in the face' are relatively small, and most of the times they were simply setbacks that if I had thought a bit longer and had been a bit smarter I could have avoided. Being punched in the face repeatedly suggests that third parties are actively trying to hurt you as an individual, and I can only find two instances of that over the last 15 years, and in both those cases the counter-punch was a k.o., so I don't expect to see repeat performances from that corner.

Entrepreneurs as a rule are not from the soft side of life, they know the value of standing up for themselves.

Going out for funding and being turned down for instance is not being punched in the face, it is a learning experience that tells you that something about you, your product or your presentation needs work, or that the investors you've been talking to are simply wrong.

So you improve and you try again, such is the nature of entrepreneurship and the nature of life in general.

If you can't handle disappointment well then entrepreneurship may not be for you. Think of it as character building.

edit: the disagree by downmod crowd has it today it seems.

Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#26

Post by jacquesm »

edw519 wrote: post #24

OP has a big problem and it's not freelancing. Just look at what he has written... He talks about his office, his coffee, his pants, his computer, his commute, even his tax deductions. He talks about what he can do, what he wants to do, how he can structure his day, what he feels like, how he'd like to feel. He talks about everything except his customers. I don't care if you're a freelancer, a consultant, an employee…

I completely agree with you, he comes off as unprofessional and unmotivated. If I had a person like that near me I'd avoid them like the plague, the negativity is just too much.

Focus on the task at hand, get the job done, don't whine. Rinse, repeat, watch the money flow in and the people around you getting happier.

This is a typical case of a victim mentality. If you want things to change then change them, don't sit and wait for the world to change around you for your sake. Go do something.

Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#27

Post by nadam »

josefresco wrote: post #21
nadam wrote: post #17

There was a time when I thought freelancing means freedom. I no longer think that. In my experience the difference between a day-job and freelancing is much smaller than the difference between freelancing and starting a startup. Freelancing and day-job are almost the same for me: work for other people to earn money from month to month to support my family. Starting a startup (or doing a side project) is different. It…

Just wait until that startup starts feeling like a real job. Then come back and comment on how different it is. Personally I have found working for myself to be quite different then doing the same thing for someone else. I have to find the work, I collect 100% of the revenue and as a result the preverbal buck stops at my desk. I sleep well.

I don't know, maybe the problem is that my perception on freelancing is based on a non representative sample: For example I've browsed rentacoder.com for a while: my impression was that the market is extremely saturated, most of the tasks are quite boring, time consuming, low-payed and not much fun. Did not seem to be better than a day job. Being a well-recognized, top freelancer with special skills and good connections: that's good. But being an average freelancer does not seem to be very appealing. On the other hand at my startup I can create things which my bosses and customers did not even think of. Most fun software problems are not eceonomical to solve in very high quality for one client, but it is economical to solve if you can sell it as a product to lots of clients. This possibility of 'scale' makes startups very different. On the other hand the success rate it much lower. I have failed projects behind me, I know what failure is, but I've learned a lot from them, and still I try again (beside my day-job).

Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#28

Post by daleharvey »

jacquesm wrote: post #25
daleharvey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the first few paragraphs are all about how much he loves his work, It sounds exactly like someone who loves what they are doing but wants to point out that it isnt all sunshine and roses for people thinking about doing the same thing. he is obviously a very good creative writer, you probably need to read it a little less literally. when I first seen the title I remembers pg's quote straight away "doing a startup is l…

Doing a startup is much more like running a marathon than it is like being punched in the face. It's for people with stamina, and the will to fight back. I've been doing this for many years now and the times that I got 'punched in the face' are relatively small, and most of the times they were simply setbacks that if I had thought a bit longer and had been a bit smarter I could have avoided. Being punched in the face…

I feel compelled to mention that similarly to the OP, I am not having an existential crisis.

Its probably a cultural issue, At least personally I think if you cant have a proper bitch about something, you probably dont love it enough. Same as the british idiom that says you arent friends with someone until you can call them a [Insert crude insult]

Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#29

Post by larrywright »

rwhitman wrote: post #12
gexla wrote: post #10

One item I disagree with. You are a freelancer, but you are also a company. You are employed under whatever name you are doing business as. If you don't have a business name, then it's just your own name as a sole proprietor. You can give yourself a real work history and paychecks, just like you would be receiving by working for any other company. Whatever is left over after your regular paychecks you can give yourse…

You can't put yourself on salary unless the business entity is a corporation or an LLC taxed as a corporation. Even if you do payroll for yourself you still have to file a 1099 and a schedule c. For a freelancer a Corp is a bit overkill and you get taxed twice.

That depends on what you're doing. If you're a developer or a sysadmin or something, you need to set up a corporation to provide you some level of liability protection. I'm not a lawyer/tax expert, but my understanding is that this is not something you could do without at least an LLC in place.

If I'm wrong about this, someone please correct me.

Re: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead

#30

Post by wingo »

jacquesm wrote: post #23
fierarul wrote: post #2

A must read for any would-be freelancer. Freelancing doesn't mean just sitting in a Starbucks with your MacBook Pro.

Neither is it a litany of misery.

I don't think the author suggested that. I found the article highly amusing, with several lovely laugh-out-loud moments.

You are taking the article too seriously.

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