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Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

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Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#101

Post by talkingquickly »

nolok wrote: post #10

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…

It's worth not being put off by the 20 dollar offers, a lot of people don't take them seriously and only look at the more realistic offers and if they do go for one of the ridiculously low ones, they almost certainly aren't worth working with.

The word of mouth jobs in my experience generally pay better and tend to be more interesting but I've had good experiences with freelancer.co.uk in particular when I've wanted bits and pieces while waiting for bigger pieces to start etc.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#102

Post by peteretep »

skrebbel wrote: post #57

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.…

It sounds like you're describing the difference between contracting and freelancing - the former where you work somewhat-like an employee for a fixed amount of time, and the latter where you take on projects for a certain price.

Having done them both, contracting was infinitely more pleasant. When you're freelancing, it's really easy for the "I'm working" and "I'm not working" time to blur, and very easy to lose work/life boundaries. In addition, dealing with non-regular clients can be a royal PITA.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#105

Post by pacomerh »

Biggest aspects from my experience:

- Follow your work times rigorously.

- Just because you own your time that doesn't mean you should spend it reading articles all day. (I personally look through HN in 1min, then save my interests into the pocket app and read them at night)

- Communicate with your clients a lot, sometimes all they need is to know how you're doing, they will appreciate it.

- BIG one, learn to automate tasks. If you code, get an application like codebox or something, stop re-coding the same stuff over and over.

- About the money, don't work for free, charge upfront percentage, the separate account thing is a good idea, I do that.

- Be an expert of your area. Basically, 'skills will set you free'

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#106

Post by skrebbel »

peteretep wrote: post #102
skrebbel wrote: post #57

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.…

It sounds like you're describing the difference between contracting and freelancing - the former where you work somewhat-like an employee for a fixed amount of time, and the latter where you take on projects for a certain price. Having done them both, contracting was infinitely more pleasant. When you're freelancing, it's really easy for the "I'm working" and "I'm not working" time to blur, and very easy to lose work…

Good point!

But can you do contracting for 20 hours a week?

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#107

Post by marcofucci »

Alan01252 wrote: post #62
skrebbel wrote: post #57

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.…

Not US but UK here. And yes, in my experience, yes you can do 20 hour weeks from freelance jobs. The people/companies who want you are simply those companies with more work than they can currently handle. It's not hard to see why, in the UK especially, there's a severe shortage of good developers. I can safely say ( hopefully without coming across as arrogant) that I'm a better developer than any other I've met whils…

> there's a severe shortage of good developers Couldn't agree more!

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#108

Post by davedx »

davidcann wrote: post #76
skrebbel wrote: post #57

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 did freelancing (web, then iOS) for 8+ years based in the US, but for companies (large and small) around the world. I rarely worked with companies in my local area. The problem is thinking of the clients as "employers". If you think of them as just clients and you have a lot of inbound leads (built up by word of mouth over time), then you can choose the projects that interest you. In my experience, projects ranged…

The tough part for me is, how to find leads? I have a lot of contacts from previous jobs but nobody I know who could give me any kind of freelance work. How do you bootstrap this?

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#109

Post by Loic »

skrebbel wrote: post #106
peteretep wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're describing the difference between contracting and freelancing - the former where you work somewhat-like an employee for a fixed amount of time, and the latter where you take on projects for a certain price. Having done them both, contracting was infinitely more pleasant. When you're freelancing, it's really easy for the "I'm working" and "I'm not working" time to blur, and very easy to lose work…

Good point! But can you do contracting for 20 hours a week?

I suppose it depends on your field. In my highly technical field (thermodynamics) this is what I am doing, in fact more about 3 to 4h a day. This is long term work (100+ days/year) at about $750/day.

This is why I always recommend people to specialize themselves and not to drop out of college. You will have hard time convincing someone that you are 12 times faster/better than a "normal" developer, but if you have only 1000 people in the world able to do the job the company want to be done, you do not need to convince anybody.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#110

Post by gjm11 »

patio11 wrote: post #95
theoj wrote: post #87

>> So as an example, a $100K salary, which corresponds to roughly $50 per hour working 40 hours a week, requires a freelancing rate of $56-58/hour to pay for healthcare and time off. Cringe -- this is bad advice for setting your consulting rate. In the US, the full cost of an $100K employee is not $100K. It's $100K salary + paid vacation time + employment taxes paid by employer + healthcare + office space & pro-rated…

Keep in mind that those guesstimations are for determining the floor rate one would ask for to maintain an expected standard of living, rather than determining the rate one would actually ask for. Your rate should be whatever you can convince people to pay you, and that can be a number well north of $90/hr. (While I love HNers, one should not rely on HN salary surveys to set one's rates. There are many factors that d…

Note that numbers in HN (and other) salary surveys can be distorted upwards too; people lie and half-lie on salary surveys, usually in the direction of claiming to be doing better than they really are. And while the HN demographic skews young and inexperienced, it also skews bright and energetic. (Which of course you ought to be too if you're considering consulting or freelancing in the first place.)

So: the numbers can be way too high because of lying, way too low because of demographics, on the high side because of demographics, way too low because it reflects people doing too-generic work, poorly chosen because it's from inexperienced or unsophisticated people, etc., etc., etc.

Better than nothing, no doubt. But use with extreme caution.

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