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

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

#81

Post by mig4ng »

Regarding this topic, I know many people (myself included at the moment) that do not want the burden of freelance, starting their own business, etc. For these people, there are other alternatives.

For me, I have been working 4 days work weeks for multiple years now, and love it. The experiment went so good that the rest of the engineers in the time have Friday's afternoon off now.

You can do this, even if your company never had this type of working schedule or even if your team still works 5 days a week. You will not be left out nor called lazy. In my case I actually deliver more, and higher quality, since I started because previously I was developing physical pain in my hands/arms (because of work and sedentary life). I have started the process of working 4 days a week in 2 companies, a big (unicorn) one that is part of NYSE, and a small one of less than 20 employees. This works on all scales (not guaranteed it works with all companies).

Shameless plug: If you want help on this, I actually have in my bucket list to write a medium/short guide or handbook on how to do this. With examples, email templates and how to approach your employer.

If you are interested, fill this: https://forms.gle/8VkGnE6Rpq86BGQa6

*You'll only hear from me regarding this book.* I won't add you to any list, nor send you anything else not related to this.

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

#82

Post by Aurornis »

gumballindie wrote: post #67
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.

> Working for yourself at your own pace is. > As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this. We are trying this but have you seen the constant media siege bombarding us with “studies” show remote work is bad for you? In the uk there are now articles saying that even hybrid is bad. We want to be more independent but we are not always allowed to. Tech is meant to be the easiest path to independence…

Remote work is different from pace of work.

Going remote shouldn’t change the pace of worn. For some people, going remote causes their productivity to collapse (distractions, loneliness, feeling disconnected, less oversight) but those people should be managed individually.

But being remote or in office shouldn’t determine your pace of work.

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

#83

Post by candiddevmike »

beezlewax wrote: post #68
manicennui wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it humorous that anyone thinks they are capable of forcing talented people to do more than they want. Most of the people who feel pressure to make their corporate masters as happy as possible are either desperate or barely competent. All one must do is appear to be slightly better than all of the dead weight in the corporate world. No need to work hard. * I wanted to add that I am referring to software develop…

Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I feel I work harder than most people on my team. I always go for stories in areas that are more complex than the rest or areas that are new to me. I'm always trying to learn more to keep ahead of the rest. My performance reviews are always "exceeds expectations", but I haven't seen how this benefits anyone other than the company so far. Maybe I should just take it more easy but I feel li…

Not to be discouraging, but promotions rarely go to top performers in the sense of what you're doing. They go to movers and shakers, folks with heavy soft skills who routinely interact with skip levels and the like. Their work output is marginal to the influence they command.

Basically, you're most likely being taken advantage of and will never be properly rewarded for what you're doing, IME.

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

#84

Post by bdcravens »

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?

If you're in the US, restricting yourself to jobs where they are limiting to the US results lessens that problem (doesn't eliminate it - I suspect there's a ton of fronting accounts)

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

#85

Post by bdcravens »

ransom1538 wrote: post #58
freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upwork. Solely up work.

If you are cool with $12 USD an hour: it is the place to be.

You can do "decent" rates in the US if you only look at gigs that are only looking at US contractors.

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

#86

Post by manicennui »

beezlewax wrote: post #68
manicennui wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it humorous that anyone thinks they are capable of forcing talented people to do more than they want. Most of the people who feel pressure to make their corporate masters as happy as possible are either desperate or barely competent. All one must do is appear to be slightly better than all of the dead weight in the corporate world. No need to work hard. * I wanted to add that I am referring to software develop…

Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I feel I work harder than most people on my team. I always go for stories in areas that are more complex than the rest or areas that are new to me. I'm always trying to learn more to keep ahead of the rest. My performance reviews are always "exceeds expectations", but I haven't seen how this benefits anyone other than the company so far. Maybe I should just take it more easy but I feel li…

I think my employer is a bit unique. They don't have a lot of the problems that other companies have with long hours and asshole managers. I've gotten great reviews and bonuses for years and I've been promoted a number of times. Most of my value is in just making decisions for a bunch of indecisive people and having a deeper understanding of most things. They have pretty high turnover because no one cares about what the company does (lending), they aren't the highest paying employer for average employees, and the work isn't exciting. They put a lot more effort into retaining a small number of us.

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

#87

Post by mkl95 »

mig4ng wrote: post #81

Regarding this topic, I know many people (myself included at the moment) that do not want the burden of freelance, starting their own business, etc. For these people, there are other alternatives. For me, I have been working 4 days work weeks for multiple years now, and love it. The experiment went so good that the rest of the engineers in the time have Friday's afternoon off now. You can do this, even if your compan…

> have started the process of working 4 days a week in 2 companies, a big (unicorn) one that is part of NYSE, and a small one of less than 20 employees. This works on all scales (not guaranteed it works with all companies).

Don't take it as whataboutism, but many companies love adding clauses to engineers contracts that forbid them from working for other companies or starting their own business. In some cases they will also claim intellectual rights on all your creative output "while you are working for them". In my case even contributing to some Github repo could get me in trouble if my employer thinks a competitor is benefiting from it.

On the other hand, as someone who suffers from similar physical pain, a 4 day week would boost my quality of life significantly. So it's something I am looking forward to at my next job.

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

#88

Post by chiefalchemist »

arrowsmith wrote: post #75
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.

You make $500k/year from freelance contracts as a solo developer? What kind of companies and tech stack do you work with?

It's not clear if that's revenue or profit. Due to that intentional ambiguity I had to presume the latter.

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

#89

Post by mig4ng »

mkl95 wrote: post #87
mig4ng wrote: post #81

Regarding this topic, I know many people (myself included at the moment) that do not want the burden of freelance, starting their own business, etc. For these people, there are other alternatives. For me, I have been working 4 days work weeks for multiple years now, and love it. The experiment went so good that the rest of the engineers in the time have Friday's afternoon off now. You can do this, even if your compan…

> have started the process of working 4 days a week in 2 companies, a big (unicorn) one that is part of NYSE, and a small one of less than 20 employees. This works on all scales (not guaranteed it works with all companies). Don't take it as whataboutism, but many companies love adding clauses to engineers contracts that forbid them from working for other companies or starting their own business. In some cases they wi…

> Don't take it as whataboutism, but many companies love adding clauses to engineers contracts that forbid them from working for other companies or starting their own business.

That is true, and I actually have a friend that renegotiated that with their employer and removed that clause from his contract because he wanted to do consulting work outside his working hours. Sometimes it is as easy as asking, sometimes it is not possible.

> On the other hand, as someone who suffers from similar physical pain, a 4 day week would boost my quality of life significantly. So it's something I am looking forward to at my next job.

It is a major change in terms of life quality, even more if you use the extra free time to explore hobbies that add physical activity to your life. I tried climbing/bouldering and loved. Now I also go to the gym for lifting.

Also you don't need to wait for moving to a next job to negotiate 4 days work week. Just a reminder :)

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

#90

Post by jart »

Aurornis wrote: post #76
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.

> Working for yourself at your own pace is. > As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this. This is great for people whose own pace is reasonable and matched to their compensation. If you’re paying someone 50th percentile compensation and demanding a 90th percentile work pace and output from them, you’re just going to have endless turnover as you burn people out. Conversely, if you’re paying 90th…

> If you’re paying someone 50th percentile compensation and demanding a 90th percentile work pace and output from them, you’re just going to have endless turnover as you burn people out.

Only if they're a 50th percentile person.

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