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

Any hints as to the profession you might try practicing freelance, your experience in it, or the geographical area you're hoping to work in?

If it's something you really want to do, I suggest you start doing it despite the world situation. You can't postpone your dream lifestyle by 3+ years only because there's a recession or whatever else. It might be harder than it would have 5-6 years ago, but also if you start now when the economy gets better again you'll be in a fantastic position.

As usual, the advice is to start on the side while having a job, so I wouldn't recommend quitting your day job and going into freelancing with 0 clients. But there's different ways of going about it that are not as abrupt (freelancing on the weekend, reducing your current hours, finding a different part-time job..)

It is. You still get the occasional "We'd like you to work on-site full-time because communication (or whatever other contrived, but never quite justified reason).", though.

It required a pandemic to "convince" people (recruiters, middle management, and many freelancers alike) that working on-site full-time isn't the only option and that it even might not be the most expedient option when working with independent contractors.

Often, freelancers were - and at times still are - seen as another type of employee, just without that annoying social security stuff ...

This is why there are all sorts of ridiculously complex, "so shady it can't actually be legal" schemes to avoid contractors being classified as falsely self-employed, rather than doing the simple, obvious thing and - you know - let them act as if they were actually self-employed.

Now is as good a time as any. In fact, starting a business - and that's what freelancing is - during an economic downturn isn't a bad idea at all: Less competition, more opportunity to niche down, potential clients who will actually need your services and will continue to do so when the economic outlook is better again.

IMHO, this is the perfect time to start building for yourself because 2023 is going to be highly unpredictable in terms of your main stint stability. Companies will start finding freelancers instead of full-timers for their non-core verticals.