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I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

neladunato.com

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Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#21

Post by freitzkriesler2 »

bombcar wrote: post #11

Agencies charge like a very good contractor but use midrange to lousy contractors/employees to do most of the work, and bring the good ones in only in need. It’s selling the difference between the two.

One guy I worked with spent a lot of effort evaluating Ukrainian and south American talent who had fluent or at least business level English.

It took him awhile but the devs he fed work to were solid engineers, almost FAANG tier but he paid them s*t or good for their locations. I've kept their names handy because poaching them would be dirt easy.

Knowing this as well as what you said, I avoid agencies now and simply assemble teams of individuals for this reason alone. They're easier to evaluate and you can let them go easily as opposed to a full service agency.

However, what annoys me the most about Upwork are agencies larping as solo guys. Anytime I evaluate a guy who has a solo freelancer account and then mentions he has guys he works with that bill through him, I cut them lose. This is easy to spot. I wish uowork would ban these guys.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#22

Post by delfinom »

freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #17
DeltaCoast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask how you find contracts? Are there that many contract roles posted in public or is it due to your network?

Upwork. Solely up work.

Wow, I tried upwork but it generally always seems to be entities in significantly cheaper countries underbidding everything.

How did you get started to snap up your first jobs on it?

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#23

Post by pxue »

DeltaCoast wrote: post #16
pxue wrote: post #12

As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.

Can I ask how you find contracts? Are there that many contract roles posted in public or is it due to your network?

100k:

- network

200k:

- high signaled / luke warm outbound on dev communities (YC work at a startup job board is one)

- referrals

300k++:

- dedicated outbound tech sale person

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#24

Post by ozim »

xwdv wrote: post #10

Can someone explain what the appeal of solo freelancing is in the age of bountiful remote work? My typical day as a remote worker is not that different from the one described: a couple hours of work per day and mostly leisure the rest of the time. And I probably still make more money than a freelancer. Consistently too. Is chasing down new clients all the time and working on multiple projects really that desirable to…

For me it is mostly freedom. Employment contracts usually go into "all your code belongs to us", "we own every piece of thought you ever had", "if you want to make PR to a project you like first write an email to your manager with approval, then you have to forward approval to owner of project".

If I want to make a side project I don't have to worry there will be any issue with copyright or god knows what. Because I am my own company and single customer cannot include in contract that I cannot do any other work.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#25

Post by j7ake »

I think the quantity to look for is the fraction of time you spend working on your own projects.

You want it to be about 40 hours a week.

Too little means you’re probably spending too much time on client or admin work.

Too much could mean you’re in a hyper competitive field and you’re struggling to keep up, eg academics.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#26

Post by frankreyes »

delfinom wrote: post #22
freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upwork. Solely up work.

Wow, I tried upwork but it generally always seems to be entities in significantly cheaper countries underbidding everything. How did you get started to snap up your first jobs on it?

No idea on the specifics, but the theory goes like this : clients have been burned many times over cheap solutions. Cheaper is usually more expensive on the long run. For this to break the circle you need reputation of reliability.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#27

Post by LapsangGuzzler »

pxue wrote: post #12

As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.

> As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.

Given the fight we’ve seen over WFH, I’m very inclined to believe that this is intentional by the industry. By focusing on paying top dollar for FTEs and demanding incredible amounts of time and energy from them, companies maintain a level of control that they wouldn’t have by working with a fractional engineering team.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#29

Post by devjab »

xwdv wrote: post #10

Can someone explain what the appeal of solo freelancing is in the age of bountiful remote work? My typical day as a remote worker is not that different from the one described: a couple hours of work per day and mostly leisure the rest of the time. And I probably still make more money than a freelancer. Consistently too. Is chasing down new clients all the time and working on multiple projects really that desirable to…

Unless you’re ridiculously well paid I think you’re considerably underestimating what many independent contractors end up earning.

I can only speak about my anecdotal network but everyone that I know who went the independent contractor road is making around a million or more a year. They didn’t start out like that, and I’m not sure how easy the road would be in the current economy, but the people who started out 10-15 years ago have it made for them. They did work a lot more than us who went into the corporate mill, but they are frankly going to “win” anyway considering some of them are basically set for retirement at age 40-45.

Re: I don’t want to grow my freelance design studio into an agency

#30

Post by wslh »

I sympathize with the sentiment of working on your own way instead of following the growth, or others mantra.

But I think Nela should also understand that she is an outlier deciding to work ALONE: what happens when someone decides to have children? Do a single person has the skills to manage the complexities of a business? Be ready all the time? I don't underestimate Nela skills, just saying, again, she is an outlier and should balance her own mantra.

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