Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

thecut.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 254 posts

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#241

Post by porker »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #237
porker wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is your change request process? I have done everything from formal documentation of changes, requiring pricing and sign-off for every variation, to vaguer schemes. The change request system sucks; it loses sight of why we're building the software and turns into a war of attrition. The issue is always they say the spec is open to interpretation and they meant this, or they expect it to work this way (which is s…

Ya, fair enough. It sounds like you've exhausted the paths that every waterfall developer exhausts before moving on to some kind of agile framework (ex. Scrum). Clients don't like it as much of course, but the we can do is convince them that it fits the way that everyone works better -- nobody knows exactly what they want up front, and if they do, then they're wrong because as soon as they get to use the thing the ne…

> But working (and billing) in weekly Sprints seems to work very well once you've convinced your client that the framework is the right way to do it. Client want a quote, but we tell them we can't really give them any sort of estimate until we see how they work (with us). So, a two week trial period is often a good way to get that going.

I like the idea of a trial period. Get them on-board with low risk to them. As this pattern of working is exactly what I want but can't get clients to do (see my reply to your sibling commenter).

A difficulty is they invariably say the last agency/project did fixed price, so do any others they're talking to, so even if your results are good why aren't you.

They don't feel safe, and it's that safety I need to give back to them.

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#242

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

rburhum wrote: post #151
mistrial9 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"True wealth" has many meanings in life, not only finance. When you substitute all of life for finance, its a trap.

Of course if you see it in a macro sense you are right. My comment was within the context of this article: My point was that [Time worked == money generation] is exactly the opposite way of looking at things.

This is something multiple clients of mine have told me.

They were straight up about letting me know, hiring me is great for them because they can make a crap ton of income once the product is completed.

That's the nature of things though. You make money the most money by owning things that make money.

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#243

Post by Hoasi »

josefresco wrote: post #41

"I went outside to get coffee and ran into three different neighbors who wanted to chit-chat. I wanted to scream, ‘For every word that comes out of your mouth, I’m losing money!" This is a statement from someone who either hasn't been freelancing that long, or who hasn't realized that "brain down time" is just as important as raw coding hours. I've worked "for myself" for almost 20 years and for the first 5 I too pan…

> "I went outside to get coffee and ran into three different neighbors who wanted to chit-chat. I wanted to scream, ‘For every word that comes out of your mouth, I’m losing money!"

That was the point of the whole article... Wrong way to look at the problem. A freelancer who get paid by project, not hourly, will never encounter this kind of problem. Hourly assignments are like being an employee but without any of the benefits.

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#244

Post by vicbun »

photoguy112 wrote: post #28

I went from hourly, to per project, to weekly billings. When I charged hourly I ended up working A LOT more than 9-5. Per project work was good but I ended up losing a lot of prospects in the quote. Since many of my projects ran into the 20-40k range, my closing rate was 1/10 (already pre-screened, what I deemed as high quality prospects). This made me feel like crap. Instead of per project, I decided to increase the…

I found transitioning to full project billing extremely satisfying.

The main downside is not clear project requirements, scope creep and you said / I said issues.

One way I found very helpful in mitigating it is getting a prototype of the UI, with some comments about what's unseen.

Getting an "idea to prototype" thing done is not expensive in context of any 25k+ projects and gains are huge on both sides.

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#245

Post by sacado2 »

chrisweekly wrote: post #95
rb808 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem though is how do you bill clients? If you're "working" and surfing HN you could possibly bill that, but walking around talking to neighbours doesn't cut it.

Project-based billing solves this neatly. It also ensures alignment of incentives (ie, working faster / more efficiently yields higher effective rate, vs working faster -> get paid less), and is helpful in emphasizing value. For time and materials projects, avoid hourly if possible; that leads to micromanagement and commodification of your skills. I recommend billing by sprints or by the week. Try to limit granularit…

It's better from the client POV too. As a client, I have work that must be done, I want to know how much it will cost, I don't care whether it takes you 3 hours or 10 hours, and I especially don't want to hear "whoops... I miscalculated, I will need more time, gimme more money".

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#246

Post by sacado2 »

mtberatwork wrote: post #164
pault wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered going hourly with a staffing agency? A senior developer can charge a three figure hourly rate and if you aren't known in the industry an agency can place you at companies that can afford to keep you working full time. I've always gone above and beyond at my salaried jobs because I find the work gratifying, and I've been thrilled being able to charge for those extra hours. I doubled my yearly incom…

> medical insurance is a relatively minor expense Many more "expenses" than just health insurance. Retirement, health insurance, business insurance (e.g. E&O), federal/state/county taxes, accountants (you need one), lawyers (perhaps), etc...that $200K/year salary dwindles fast (assuming you can maintain that year after year).

Don't know if the equivalent exists where you live, but in France you can work with a contractor that does all the administrative work and just pays you a salary. You don't have to worry about accounting, tracking payments, business insurance, health insurance, retirement, etc. as you technically don't own a business, but you're still a freelancer, choosing who you work with, for how long, at which rate, etc. You have a salary without having a boss. I've used this system a few years ago, pretty cool.

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#247

Post by gdy »

gdubs wrote: post #173

“If we’re already in the time-is-money mindset, we can reframe our leisure time as something that enables us to be more productive in the future,” It’s a bummer that we’ve gotten to a point that in order to relax and enjoy time off we need to somehow frame it as “productive”. I think it speaks to something deeper.

Something like fear of living in poverty when you get too old to work as a programmer?

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#248

Post by balabaster »

akulbe wrote: post #227
balabaster wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm normally rather careless with money too... I earn far more than I need to live quite comfortably on a normal basis, there's rarely a month where I spend anywhere close to what comes in. But when I do want something, I don't think twice about buying it. Recently I've been shoveling it into a long term project that will hopefully pay dividends in the longer term, but the jury's presently out on whether that will ac…

Out of curiosity, what kind of work do you do?

I'm pretty much a jack of all trades.

My professional expertise and where I've spent the majority of my career is in software engineering, systems architecture, devops and test automation. In what little spare time I have I'm co-founder and instructor for an educational organic farm which means I'm often playing carpenter, mechanic and vet as well as being a full time Dad.

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#249

Post by Valakas »

hackathonguy wrote: post #39
UweSchmidt wrote: post #17

On the other hand, equating time (especially work time) with money helps with making sense of what money is actually worth. These days every product category is full of well presented temptations in any price range. The correct way to evaluate a 1000$ phone, a mechanical keyboard with custom keycaps, fantastic coffee machines and barbecues and car parts and designer handbags is to put them in relation to "how many ho…

I completely agree, but would like to note a common fallacy following this logic. If my hourly rate is $20, I might think that a $200 phone is worth 10 hours. The thing is, the majority of those $20 I make are probably already allocated to things like rent, food, transportation and so on. If those things account for 50% of my expenses, for example, the $200 phone is actually worth 20 hours of my time. (That is, unles…

Indeed. I use something instead called "savings rate". How much per hour of the money I make is not spent in basic stuff? I also go one step further. In calculating this savings rate, i add to the 40 work hours, much more that are spent for work and/or are not actually free time: commuting, dressing for work, shopping basics, washing dishes/clothes, ... etc. From there you get the real non-free-time-cost of anything non-basic you buy. Turns out things are much more expensive than they actually seem like.

Re: The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

#250

Post by akulbe »

balabaster wrote: post #248
akulbe wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what kind of work do you do?

I'm pretty much a jack of all trades. My professional expertise and where I've spent the majority of my career is in software engineering, systems architecture, devops and test automation. In what little spare time I have I'm co-founder and instructor for an educational organic farm which means I'm often playing carpenter, mechanic and vet as well as being a full time Dad.

Would love to talk with you more. Do you blog somewhere? I have an email in my profile.
Post reply on HN