I did this right away when I became a freelancer. Registered my own company, which I understood to be necessary to send invoices. Got an office to work from. But I'm still a freelancer. Or an independent contractor, but what's the difference?
Stop Freelancing
101–110 of 126 posts
Re: Stop Freelancing
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Faking the full-time bit is completely true, does not make sense ... but then seems to be a necessity. It's weird, 'cause I do think I'm unusually good as a temporary worker; I'm willing to tailor the time when I leave to something comfortable for the employer (whereas someone wanting a full-time job is going to jump at the request of a company that is willing to hire them full-time) And because I'm looking at it as…
Offer a Contract-to-Recruit service?
hah. I haven't even managed to get recruiters to throw me a small bone when I give them people.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
From a business writing standpoint? that whole sentence is superfluous. The whole thing is an insertion of humility, something that is important when speaking about yourself to other nerds, but is essentially social fluff. My takeaway is primarily not that I did verbosity wrong, though certainly that comment wasn't right, but that the verbosity itself is the problem. Take, for example one of the bits of writing I'm m…
For me that pdf chapter example was very hard to read.
>For me that pdf chapter example was very hard to read.
Huh. Interesting. I often value other people's opinions based on my perception of their skill. Going through your comment history, you do have a very terse, very readable style, so it's probably worth my time to look over that chapter.
The whole thing suffers from the apparent fact that I had been reading a lot of Nietzsche at the time. Man. "The will to power" was very clearly a collection of notes that he did not intend to publish that were organized and published by lesser men. Not something one ought to use to calibrate one's aesthetics.
Hm. I need to read, perhaps, more Churchill. "Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all." Though, if I remember correctly, the context of that quote is a paragraph on the merits of germanic vs. latin derived words, his thesis, if I recall, was that Germanic words are generally better than those derived from Latin. That man could write; His work was a joy to read, but it also effectively communicated his ideas. I like his speaking style, too; Especially in contrast to the 'uncontrolled rage' style that was popular with the other warlords of his day, something my modern sensibilities associate with comical powerlessness.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#104huh. Interesting. The thing is? I have no trouble at all getting freelancing or "contract" work where I'm paid by the hour, and where I'm expected to pretend like I want to be a full time employee. I mean, other than the pretending, I have no objections; usually the work is easy and the pay is good. The thing is, I like mercenary work, and I'm good at it (Most of the gigs I've gotten, well, they seem to be looking fo…
I'm going to be roughly saying the same thing as josh but I noticed a few examples. Paragraph #1 is barely a sentence. "The thing is.." used more than once and paragraph 4 spurred this comment. That much in parenthesis likely shouldn't be. I'm only commenting because I myself do this quite often. I'll be very verbose and break into parenthesis for almost no reason. I've noticed a trend lately in my writing that may h…
>I'm only commenting because I myself do this quite often. I'll be very verbose and break into parenthesis for almost no reason. I've noticed a trend lately in my writing that may help you: my verbose emails get largely ignored. I can ask for 5 things that are clear as day to me and get barely a response for one. I've often said the same thing in emails multiple times until the other party finally understands.
This is something I have a hard time with; sometimes I want to repeat something that I think the other party is having a difficult time with, but often that just makes the document longer, and they don't read it.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
A very simple change you could make to your writing would be to swap out commas for other punctuation. Parentheses, semicolons, and other less often used punctuation serve distinct purposes and add to readability. I'm no expert. Here is a stab at fixing a sentence of yours. >I mean, it's not perfect (or even very good by English-major standards) but compared to your average salesperson, well, I think highly of myself…
From a business writing standpoint? that whole sentence is superfluous. The whole thing is an insertion of humility, something that is important when speaking about yourself to other nerds, but is essentially social fluff. My takeaway is primarily not that I did verbosity wrong, though certainly that comment wasn't right, but that the verbosity itself is the problem. Take, for example one of the bits of writing I'm m…
Here is a simple improvement that should help a lot. Write everything in the active voice. This will make your language less "pretty", but more understandable. Doubly so when talking to people with a short attention span.
Let me rewrite your first paragraph to show the difference.
From a business writing standpoint? that whole sentence is superfluous. The whole thing is an insertion of humility, something that is important when speaking about yourself to other nerds, but is essentially social fluff.
vs
That whole sentence is superfluous from a business writing standpoint. It is an insertion of humility. Social fluff that would be important when speaking about yourself to other nerds.
Re: Stop Freelancing
#106Disclaimer: below opinions based solely on personal experience
As a "freelancer who knows how to deliver and maintain software" I easily find clients who understand prototyping, prioritization, shipping features incrementally.
As soon as I try to market myself as "software company", every conversation seems to start with – excuse my language – estimating and budgets. What's more, they ask to estimate something vague, "oh and here we do some reports, maybe with charts".
I prefer estimating only small bits to inform decision at hand: do we refine the design so that it looks less "Bootstrapy" (2 days) or add referrals feature (3 days). And in my experience clients who embrace this style of work seek "freelancers".
Re: Stop Freelancing
#107In general, presenting yourself as a professional is essential, but it’d be disadvantageous to act like a dev shop if you’re an individual. In technology, there's a general distrust of "general contractor" style operations. No one wants to hire a developer for $200/hr, only to have him turn around and send the work to an off-shore developer for $20/hr. In fact, most freelance contracts have "no sub-contractor" clause…
I don't think the OP meant 'looking as if there are more people' vs 'being up-front about being one guy', but more 'looking as if you're a solutions provider' vs 'presenting yourself as a programming guy'. Having had a few experiences recently that opened my eyes to the differences, I wholeheartedly agree. 'Solution provider' = profit center, 'programming guy' = cost center. I've send quotes for being a 'solution provider' accepted without as much as an eyelash batted that I thought, when I send them, would have them running away screaming; and I've had quotes for being a 'programming guy' rejected as 'too expensive' where I would most likely have worked below minimum wage on that project.
Not difficult to predict which route I'm taking now...
Re: Stop Freelancing
#108This feels very culture-specific. Purely anecdotally, I started freelancing a few months ago, and my experiences are very different. I live in the Netherlands. Here, relatively few programmers decide to freelance, and most who do clearly present themselves as a one-man company, not just as "a guy". It's also impractical to freelance without being registered as a business, so maybe the registration process helps some…
Well I'm in the Netherlands too (although I consult for international clients mostly), and my experience is opposite from yours and very much in line with the OP's :)
Re: Stop Freelancing
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have two websites, one for my "freelance profile" (dave78.com) and one for my "business" (redskyforge.com). The thing is, I hardly ever send anyone my "business" site, because I don't think it sells me/my business as well as the freelance site. I would also love to see other peoples' sites!
I'm no expert, but I think that your portfolio is HUGELY more convincing than your business site. I get that your business can't really sell your skills, but it can sell your past projects, just to give some idea of the scale of the things you've done. For example, you say "Enterprise . Mobile . Web" but don't have a single example there. I tried to click on them, but they don't link anywhere. If I pay you, will I ge…
That's pretty much it! I made the company website on the train home from work one day and haven't changed it since, because I always use my profile website when networking or finding work.
I think the biggest issue at the moment (besides time) is that I'm still not 100% sure where I want to take my career next. Lately I've become interested in either building my own startup or joining one in some kind of technical lead role. Neither of these ideas, or my current freelancing career, really need this business website. Whereas, if I decided I wanted to move into consulting, possibly moving beyond a one-man operation, the business website would suddenly be much more important.
Thanks for the feedback. :)
Re: Stop Freelancing
#110Interesting. I've been toying around with this idea for a while, but inexperience with starting a company is prohibitive enough to prevent action. How is your current freelance shell company marketed? I'd love to see what that website looks like, and how you advertise it differently.
I have two websites, one for my "freelance profile" (dave78.com) and one for my "business" (redskyforge.com). The thing is, I hardly ever send anyone my "business" site, because I don't think it sells me/my business as well as the freelance site. I would also love to see other peoples' sites!
I'm trying to update mine at the minute. I'm currently working on getting a few recommendations.
Any advice welcome. Maybe we should turn this into a ask/show hn submission?