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Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

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Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#111

Post by mcdowall »

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…

I can't agree more about the standard of developers, a host of roles I've interviewed candidates for in my past 2 positions just don't get the same calibre of applicant for a permanent role vs contract.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#112

Post by kayoone »

Personally i didn't like freelancing from home all that much.. i did it for 3 years but overall you feel quite lonely sitting at home most of the day without coworkers to talk to. Work life/private life gets really mixed up and sitting around in your undies until noon wasnt really all that exciting after a while. Be careful to not isolate yourself too much! I love freelancing, but today i share an office with other freelancers and try to separate work/private life more clearly. Made me happier, YMMV

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#113

Post by carlio »

cageface wrote: post #22
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…

I've been doing iOS apps for the last year or so and lately I've had a bunch of people approach me for work mainly because they liked the apps I'd published on my own. I think if you want to get started freelancing the best thing to do is build up some kind of online portfolio to show people what you can do. If you're not a designer yourself maybe you could partner with a designer in a similar position that's interes…

There are also many website design concepts floating around both as simple images or HTML templates. You could use these (with the permission of the author/artist) to sidestep the design section.

For example: http://browse.deviantart.com/designs/web/

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#114

Post by peteretep »

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?

At my current client, I did! I went from 5 days to 3 days a week, split pretty much how I wanted. I've since gone back to 5 days, thinking that I might as well earn all I can from the contract before it's up, as I like the work and it's a good rate

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#115

Post by MattRogish »

alinajaf wrote: post #99
MattRogish wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's insane. I'd never work at a place that required me to signaway my rights. You reap what you sow.

Interesting, I take it this is not the norm in the US (I'm assuming that's where you're located).

I've worked in a half-dozen companies here in the US and never was asked to sign something remotely like that. Obviously there were IP clauses but they were all reasonable. That sucks if it's commonplace in the UK.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#116

Post by flyinRyan »

tluyben2 wrote: post #65
brandall10 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was coming here to say this; there are meet-ups, business breakfasts (VERY early but very nice to find clients), etc. A friend of mine from an underdeveloped part of the EU thought he could make no money there; he went to a few business breakfasts there after finding out they actually were held there. Few months later he has ONLY work from his region and more than enough to say he cannot take new work till beginnin…

Wow, how do you find out about these things? I'm in western Europe and have been planning to go freelance but getting started seems pretty intimidating so far.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#117

Post by GFischer »

capsule_toy wrote: post #72
brandall10 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do this a lot. A couple things I've realized: - Quite a few of the people you meet aren't going to lead to much. A few of them will lead to something but not until further down the road. Basically, not everyone is looking for freelance developers. - You have to know a bit about sales. If I'm talking to someone non-technical looking for an online store, I'm an expert in e-commerce, but if I was talking to someone in…

"in the States, I've found being too modest is a negative"

A Uruguayan delegation went to Silicon Valley recently, and one colleague mentioned one takeaway was that most americans are very "aggressive" selling themselves and outspoken, it came out as a bit of bullshitting to him, as we come from a more modest culture.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#118

Post by alinajaf »

MattRogish wrote: post #115
alinajaf wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I take it this is not the norm in the US (I'm assuming that's where you're located).

I've worked in a half-dozen companies here in the US and never was asked to sign something remotely like that. Obviously there were IP clauses but they were all reasonable. That sucks if it's commonplace in the UK.

Not sure if it's commonplace but I've worked at a comparable number of companies full-time and there's almost always a clause that mentions it. I don't think I've ever been threatened with it being enforced, but it's one of the reasons I went independent.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#119

Post by noahc »

edanm wrote: post #98
patio11 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That strikes me like "Dating advice: Explain to the average woman that accompanying you to the average restaurant followed by an average movie would make for an average evening."

Yes, but to explain why we're worth X% more than the average developer/freelancer, I need to know how much they make in the first place!

I'm pretty sure you don't. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, framing it terms of another developer will hurt you if you are charging more.

If you are delivering $100,000 in business value, and you charge $20,000 for it it is a win for the company. If another developer charges $10,000 for it. Going with them isn't twice the win for the company.

You don't say I'm worth x% more because I work x% faster. You are worth $20,000 (which just so happens to be x% more) because you've done this before, helped other clients realize 5x ROI and you've worked around the nasty #2343 bug in the database that will bite them if they go with someone else.

Re: Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

#120

Post by davidcann »

davedx wrote: post #108
davidcann wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't know your specialty, but in design or programming, you only really need a good example of your work to get started. Try the monthly freelancer posts on HN. Worst case, here's a list of RSS feeds I used to follow (some can filter by freelance/anywhere): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465077
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