51–60 of 124 posts
What are the best sources to get freelance jobs?
I quit my full-time a couple months ago and it's how I've gotten all my work.
These posts are always both inspiring and wrenching for me. I'm mid-career and come from the mold where getting a good fulltime job out of college is what one does. That's simply the way it was, at least in my circles (college, family, etc), and I never considered working for myself. Fast-forward 15 years. Corporate life has actually been pretty decent to me. I've not been jerked around too much, had some opportunity…
People tend to think that vacation allotments are set in stone. They're not, and you can definitely negotiate out of a "reset". If you're used to having 4 weeks, it's not unreasonable at all to ask for that in your next job.
It's weird to me that so many people do the customary +5k negotiation before they start a job but they fail to negotiate an additional week of vacation which would, in most cases, make them a lot happier than an extra ~$250 per month (after tax).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a big topic. To the author's point, the role of free time changes a bit once you have been able to plan your free time over a period of years rather than months. It takes on a very different rhythm. Beyond that, probably the biggest single evolution was in my relationship to the work itself. In the early months and years I loved being able to go heads down on a project without ever worrying about the politics of…
I'm keen to know whether you ever expressed these concerns? My recent (and limited in comparison to yours) experience is that as a freelancer demanding a certain wage my knowledge and feedback is taken in very high regard and if I feel something needs changing it has been.
The other path here is starting your own company, owning your own product. But if what you love about the freelance life is bountiful free time, that is not the path for you!
How does freelancing relate to consulting?
Same thing, slightly different connotations. Consulting implies a more advisory role while freelancing implies you are working on something. Another similar term is contracting. The implication of contracting is that you only work on one project at a time. Often enough at the company's office as well. Contracting is more like a temporary work situation. 'Creative' industries like web design and development have a ten…
What specifically is he using for a healthcare plan?
"Healthcare is a big and challenging topic, so if you find this to a problematic point for you, there’s a whole chapter devoted to it in the all-around very thorough book Working for Yourself. The short version is that if you can get on your spouse’s plan, that’s a great option, and COBRA can also be used if affordable, and can be turned into a personal plan after 18 months. I decided to go with an individual plan, looking extensively at both freelancersunion.org and ehealthinsurance.com before choosing a plan from the latter."
I've always wanted to turn to freelancing, mostly because my girlfriend has visa issues and it would allow me to go live with her full time and take better care of my family, but my biggest drawback and what stopped me was that I didn't know how to start getting decent projects. I'm a webdev, I mostly feel confident to start with PHP where I have lots of experience and worked on websites with millions uniques and thi…
I would say get involved in your local community... go to meet-ups, tech talks, Startup Weekends, etc, and become a known entity. The real benefit to this is you get to meet people who are already established, as usually those are the people who tend to do these things and sometimes they work in teams. I did a pro-bono project with a local known dev, he liked the work and invited me to come along on a long-term paid…
What do US freelancers do? Are these people who make websites for local bakeries? Can you do a 20-hr a week freelance job actually coding something? And how long do employers expect such projects to last? What kind of employers look for freelancers like that?
Any personal anecdotes or whatever will be most appreciated!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm keen to know whether you ever expressed these concerns? My recent (and limited in comparison to yours) experience is that as a freelancer demanding a certain wage my knowledge and feedback is taken in very high regard and if I feel something needs changing it has been.
Sure, and some jobs I had more influence and others I had less. But at the end of the day, it's not your baby. You don't have to live with consequences, and you don't get to. I eventually went back to a full time day job. Yes, I miss the opportunity to take a month or three off; I will probably bounce back to the freelance life at some point; but right now I have the satisfaction of working really hard as the true ow…
You know, you don't have to give up the "safety and security" of a full-time gig to have the freedom and control-your-own-schedule benefits of a freelancer. The "Results-Only Work Environment" ( http://www.gorowe.com ) is trying to merge the stability and benefits of a full-time job and the flexibility and freedom of freelancing. If more gigs embraced ROWE, perhaps folks wouldn't have to choose the lesser of two evil…
Only thing you're missing out on is the ability to work on and towards your own projects. Not sure about the average freelancer, but most technical freelancers I know see it as a stepping stone towards getting their own little SaaS or iPhone app business off the ground. If you're working full-time for a company, IME contracts tend to own all intellectual output at your time there, at home or otherwise. This doesn't m…
If you are billing significantly above $100 per hour, you are not a commodity technical talent and have leverage in negotiations. Redline the IP clauses you find objectionable, and supply alternate phrasing. Stress that whatever is paid for by the project from inception to delivery remains solidly available to the client. Lots more details for freelancers to work out, but I don't want to hijack this discussion and just wanted to point out you don't have to accept the standard boilerplate if you don't want to.
Guys, a question about this: reading HN, I have the feeling that in USA freelancers are a pretty common phenomenon in software. Where I work (Netherlands), all freelancers I know are working full-time 2 year projects anyway, not at all getting them the flexibility articles like these refer to. They mostly get paid more than the employees, in exchange for less job security and having to invest in education themselves.…
I don't know how that is in the US and would like to know as well. It's very possible in the Netherlands to do so though; you make enough with limited time, but I just see people start with that intension and then add up more and more , while people with 'jobs' work less and less.