"Accidentally" Freelance

http://notes.unwieldy.net/post/57035586783/accidentally-freelance

by endtwist • 13 years ago

123 55 13 years ago

notes.unwieldy.net

scottshea• 13 years ago

I find it interesting that so many people have a hard time comprehending Freelancing yet support entrepreneurs. An insurance or mortgage broker is ultimately a Freelancer who can sell their output to a corporation and I doubt any of them face the same strange stares.

drjacobs• 13 years ago

I think the difference is in the perception that entrepreneurs create jobs while freelancers work for themselves. Clearly a bit of both here though.

tspike• 13 years ago

Everyone in the tech startup scene belongs to the same social hierarchy, where certain behaviors are rewarded and others punished, with success measured in successful rounds raised and big exits.

Freelancers are inherently part of the ecosystem, but they don't fit neatly into the hierarchy, much like senior engineers in large companies who have no interest in management.

Insurance agents and mortgage brokers belong to a different social group, so they're accorded "other" status and not measured by the same metrics.

csbartus3• 13 years ago

Freelancing is a startup. You have a market, you have a new idea and product and you go after customers.

You do marketing, sales, development, design, accounting, networking. You grow your own business like your own startup.

Moreover freelancing is a lean, slim startup. You don't spend time on investors and hiring. You won't change the world -- only yours. And that's good enough.

You do only you know the best.

tudorconstantin• 13 years ago

I see you as being a startup person - while startups work hard to develop a business, you are the business. While startup businesses scale out, you scale up.

Wish you best of luck in your pursuits, congrats.

hudibras• 13 years ago

It'll be interesting to find out the standard startup reaction once he takes on an additional employee and changes "No thanks, I'm a freelancer" to "No thanks, I have my own small business. But give me your card and I'll let you know if something opens up..."

scarecrowbob• 13 years ago

As a freelance worker, I find this interesting... it seems like a big gap between "I only have to make enough off this to make my time work out for me" and " I have to make enough off this to make a profit off someone else's time". I don' think that the second works out very well for where I am in life, but it seems to be where most of the people I work with find themselves.

IME, generally startups aren't looking for agencies, because they have at least enough knowledge to hire individuals rather than agencies or turn-key solutions.

rwhitman4• 13 years ago

If they have funding, they'll still try to poach you. For some reason people seem to think "consultant" = up for grabs

mikeho1999• 13 years ago

I wonder if the bias towards or against freelancers is dependent upon your geographic location...

Living in the SF Bay Area as someone who regularly bounces back and forth between freelancing and working full-time as a co-founder or lead tech of a startup, I didn't find any difference in attitude or reaction if I said "I'm working at a startup" vs. "I'm a full time freelancer."

LOL, in fact, the reaction tended to be either "oh yeah? me too!" or "oh yeah? so is my brother / sister / mother / daughter / father / son / dog / cat / etc."

Looking at the OP's footer, looks like he's in NYC... so I wonder if the bias there is a bit different?

rwhitman4• 13 years ago

It is. Been in both markets, and there is definitely a stigma around freelance here in NYC that I never encountered on the west coast.

rdouble• 13 years ago

If anything it's the opposite. NYC has way more freelancers because that is typically how it's been done in agency work.

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

Totally agree - for me it seems that I can build capital in my business / personal brand as a freelancer that I can't in a job.

smm20002• 13 years ago

Part of the reason is that most contractors in tech are less qualified than full time employees and will never pass full interview loop.

tjbiddle• 13 years ago

"Most"? Do you have statistics?

shubb• 13 years ago

My perception is the opposite -

Perm employees, particularly junior ones, are often hired because they can be developed.

Whereas, contractors need all the skills to do the job on day one.

As a perm employee, I assume contractors are somewhat elite at what they do.

Silhouette• 13 years ago

I'm guessing you've been downvoted because you didn't back up your claim that "most" contractors are like that. There is an element of truth to what you say, though.

Typically with freelance/contract work, there's less of an interview stage. Because the client can let a freelancer go immediately if things aren't working out, there is less risk to taking them on initially, particularly in places like Europe where there tend to be relatively strong protections for employees.

Combine that with a level of workers whose effective charging rate is in the same region as the equivalent salaried position, and a lot of people who wouldn't do well in a closely supervised, salaried position can get by as freelancers.

Naturally a client who doesn't understand the freelance/contracting market and expects to hire good people at the same rate as they would quote an employee's salary is taking a chance on the quality they get. They might luck out and get someone good but naive from the contracting side, or they might just find someone who isn't very good but gets by because of the lesser supervision.

One thing that is almost certain is that the good people will eventually realise they are underpriced and adjust their rates accordingly, while the bad ones won't. Moreover, rates for good people can scale up far more in proportion to the value they actually offer when they're working semi-independently than it would as an employee on salary.

In short, if you want to engage a freelancer, you probably will get what you pay for much more directly than if you were hiring someone on salary. And that means if you're offering well under market rates (and if you're hiring at a direct translation of salary, you are) then there's a good chance you're going to work with not-so-good people.

smm20002• 13 years ago

I based my opinion on my personal experience in several large technology companies. In these companies contractors were treated like second class citizens - they got worst offices/desks, were not invited to offsites and were assigned the most boring work that nobody else wanted to do. In one company they were not allowed to take free drinks from the fridge (this one was ridiculous). They could not work for the company for more than 12 month without taking forced three month break so they were never assigned to work on important parts of projects. Essentially - if you have choices why will you agree to work as contractor in such situation? Most of them wanted to become FTE but only a few were capable of passing interview loop.

Outside of tech or in smaller companies situation can be completely different. I can easily believe that contractors can be more vastly more qualified than average IT employee at random retail/fast food/etc company.

Another exception are people working in consulting arms of Microsoft/Oracle/HP. I know that those guys know what they are doing and can easily charge $300+/hour. I never worked with them.

codesuela• 13 years ago

I will not comment on the very condescending generalization made by this comment. Instead I will ask this: Do you really need employees hired for a specific task to go through rigorous testing which depending on the company you are applying for offers very little real world benefit beyond satisfying HR? I can't count the number of comments here on HN where people were complaining that they didn't get the job even though passing the tech test with flying colors. Isn't it way more efficient to hand someone a real life task and see how he executes it? Also freelancers are expected to be more self reliant then employees who have an immediate superior and a more general role in the company structure.

In my experience there are two types of freelance work, one where you are basically an employee with a different contract (more money, less security). The other is where you are expected to take on as much responsibility as possible and manage yourself (I like to think of it as an one man army). I've been in both roles and neither is inherently better because if you force one role on your client, it is going to end badly and leads to dissatisfaction for both parties (been there done that, went with self reliance mode when employee mode was desired, needless to say I am now much more vigilant and make sure I know what the client wants).

I can't be really angry with the parent comment because I've seen the same kind of arrogance from contractors. The counter to his point could be that employees are afraid of performing or getting tested in the real world, hence they train for a series of theoretical interviews and whiteboard coding and once they land the job they just float along the other employees, stay low and perform as little as needed. This is not my opinion but rather what I have heard from other contractors so don't take offense. Not to mention that one shouldn't be offended by general statements because they offer a modicum of truth at best.

svmegatron• 13 years ago

"Actually, I run a small agency."

themodelplumber8• 13 years ago

As a freelancer, I really appreciated this article. While I know what a startup is, in my actual working experience, a "startup" is often some variant of "the SaaS thing my best client's worst employee wanted us to switch to last month." Otherwise we'd be using the proper name of the business without any regard for whether they are a startup or a farming collective or a couple of floating brains in a sealed chamber.

I have also had experiences where I say "I'm a freelancer" and watch peoples' mouths drop open. They think I'm basically Peter Parker without the Spiderman, living on the cheap without a single concern for the future. The truth is a bit of an improvement on that. I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer, who helps my inner INTJ learn and grow into a better salesman, marketer, team leader, and negotiator. While most of my stuff is building web things for people, I get a variety of work from traditional illustration to music to 3D modeling. I support a wife and three kids, and we take vacations regularly. I'm not wealthy by any stretch, but people who visit my rental say it's pretty big for NorCal and I get to work in a backyard office with a nice skylight. And every one of my big clients has an IT guy who actually trusts me with their web stuff. Having worked in IT in the past, that's a big deal to me.

Someday maybe I'll do something different, but I've been freelancing full-time for almost ten years now, and I've never had a bad year or even a hard year. I don't miss free bagels & juice or XM radio and I definitely don't miss anything that looks like it came from the food section of an office supply store. I don't distrust startups, but I have absolutely no reason to be interested in working for one.

wallflower2• 13 years ago

I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer

Intrigued. If you don't mind me asking, what does he teach you? That seems like a business idea - successful Myers-Briggs teach others of their same type how to handle their strength and weaknesses - which sounds like what this executive is already doing.

themodelplumber8• 13 years ago

Intrigued. If you don't mind me asking, what does he teach you?

The most important one has been "tolerating others and, optimally, succeeding with them" since I can be pretty stubborn and defensive when I meet with, say, a big-E social media consultant. I will typically tell my consultant, "hey, I don't know what type of person this is but I need to figure out how to work with them better." The consultant asks me some questions and nails it pretty quick. The tough part is that he isn't easy on me--he is usually sympathetic to the person in question and tells me how I can get my act together. :-)

The next most important has been "homing in on others' needs" as I used to really put my tech blinders on and assume that everyone would want solution X. So, more listening, more following up with surveys, etc.

After that, I often ask him, "I need somebody to help me with X" so he'll point out that I'm looking for an ISTJ or whatever it may be. In fact we recently went over this for some troubles I was having, and it turned out the MBTI type I needed was my wife :-) So that problem disappeared pretty quickly.

Surprisingly I've told quite a few people about this guy's MBTI skillset, and the fact that he's certified, and they are extremely skeptical to the point of saying, "well I don't believe in that pseudo-scientific stuff, but thanks anyway." I think it's mostly awkward because this guy's an engineer; his dad was an expert on ceramic heat shields, and he's done a LOT of work & research to arrive at something that works. But some people who should know better just don't want to listen.

girvo• 13 years ago

There's a really easy fix for this. Say you're a Consultant instead

lsc3• 13 years ago

yeah. it's actually a lot easier to get freelance gigs if you act like this is just something you are doing to get your foot in the door (to a full-time job) - If you actually want to freelance (and are willing to give the employer the full benefits of hiring a freelancer... e.g. you don't need to feel bad/be legally afraid when you fire me, I only show up and charge you when you actually need work done, etc...) that is... actually a lot harder to get, from what I've seen, even if you aren't charging a premium (though, the people who do operate as 'real freelancers' do charge a premium.)

The whole system, in the mid range, at least, is setup such that freelancing is a funnel to evaluate full-time folks. If you aren't interested in being full-time (or pretending like you are full time) you are in a different (and, from what I've seen, harder to get into) market.

It's funny; at the very bottom, you have the $15-$50/hr folks who work as 'real freelancers' - often from mid-america or overseas. I hire out of that pool, as do most small businesses.

Then in the mid range, in the $40-$100/hr range, you have the 'body shop' that hires you and rents you to a fortune-1000 company - and, in that case, you generally want to pretend that you are interested in a full-time job, and willing to work as a 'pretend' full time person. (The interesting thing here is that I've worked through that range, and I've been in situations where managers who knew me called me back up, arranged things with me, /then/ had me go through the body shop to be made into a pretend employee who shows up for 8 hours every day, which is a little silly, because I've got a corporation. It's got non-consulting revenue that dwarfs what you are going to pay me.)

In my experience, it's super easy to get both those sorts of jobs.

Getting a job where you act as a 'real freelancer' in the $50-$100 range? in my experience, is actually kinda difficult. I've gotten a few 'real freelancer' gigs at the $200 mark, but those were pure serendipity. (and... much to my shame and regret, I didn't treat that customer accordingly. I mean, I did my job, but I didn't add that bit of "professionalism" with the follow up and such, so we ended up drifting apart.) actually, I've billed as many hours in the $200 range as a 'real freelancer' as I have at the $60 range, I mean, not counting my time working through body shops. (I've billed... probably almost a year of hours at the mid $70s mark, going through a body shop, pretending to be a 'real employee' - and the body shop, of course, took a cut on top of that, so I think I'm worth money... it's just, they want 'fake employee' and not 'freelancer')

Thinking back to those $200/hr gigs, it's possible also that I'm missing a certain skillset. A certain follow up and 'you don't need to worry about it' or something? Possible. My style is very much "here is all the information you could possibly want" - and that's probably not always the best style; many times you hire an expert and want, instead a "here is the best course of action for you" with minimal supporting information.

Hm. I wonder if I would be better at that now that I have a lot more experience running a business, and hiring experts that are outside my field (where I want the "This is what you should do" with minimal supporting information.)

themodelplumber8• 13 years ago

The part you mention as difficult took me 5 years to get comfortable with--as in, "ready to start thinking about buying a house as a full-time freelancer."

If you are a serious freelancer who wants to make a go of it as a lifestyle, you are selling a result (e.g. beautiful website, better search rankings, lovely illustrations). So when somebody calls you and says, "we are looking for a freelancer," you start to realize that maybe they want some sort of staff auxiliary rather than a result, and they won't respect your boundaries like other clients, and you learn to ask them if they can pay $150/hr. just so you can test the waters. You might even try to recommend that they dial up a college student and see what they do. I did this last week with a furniture company that was about to pay me $600/week for an hour-long meeting and maybe 1-2 hours of web design work. Sooner or later they'd realize they don't need my skill set, and I don't really want direct furniture sales in my portfolio. My job is just to help them out.

Lots of long-term freelancers will drop the hourly stuff ASAP too. In this way you'll get freelancers who say, "my favorite client pays me $500/hr. for web design," and they're really just saying they bill by the project. But go talk to those clients--they're typically very happy and feel like they've got a real solution on their hands.

lsc3• 13 years ago

Lots of long-term freelancers will drop the hourly stuff ASAP too.

Hm. See, I've been thinking about this. I'm a sysadmin. A computer janitor. The essence of my job is that when something breaks, I fix it. (I'm actually way better at that part of the sysadmin role than at the architecture part, though I can do that, too; there are many sysadmins who are better architects than I am. However, there is this phenomena; the more senior a sysadmin is, the harder it is to make him or her carry a pager. I carry a pager, and in /that/ set, well, I look pretty good.)

So yeah, what I'm charging you for is something you probably won't need much at all of (I mean, I'll help you apply patches and do backups and other simple bullshit, but I'll probably make my PFY do that, or train up one of your kids.) My real value is that when something breaks at 3am on a Sunday morning, I'll wake up and deal with it. Really, unless you are twitter, I've got enough spare hardware that your stuff could literally catch fire and as long as I've got backups, we're good.

Problem is, how to charge? I've got a bunch of folks wanting to pay me $50/month. Which I could do if I automated all the PFY work. (which, I could do if I didn't give you root, and I only let you use my versions of the programs I chose to support.) but it's one of those things where I'd need thousands of customers to make it worth my time. At that point, we need to do shifts, etc, etc... I mean, it's a realistic business, but a deep/hard one.

I mean, I'm going to want like two to four grand for the two or three days of my time that a full "shit caught fire at 3am" cleanup is going to take (not that you'd be down for two or three days; I'll get you back up the first day, but I'm not going to be particularly useful for the next few days... which presents something of a problem if these things happen in succession.)

But that's the thing, I can do a better job if I'm there all along, and I can say "don't do that" when you are setting the thing up, and I can make sure you have accessible backups and stuff.

I've sent out some feelers at the $500-$1000/month range, were I keep a spare going (which means more ongoing work for me, keeping the spare up to date, but it means much less pain when shit does break.) But, eh, I haven't gotten interest, and frankly, I'm not sure if that's enough to make it worth the brainspace. And that's the thing, if you get up to $4000-$5000, well, you can get a midwesterner or an indian or a russian mostly kinda sorta full-time, and yeah, at that rate, they aren't going to be as good as I am, but there is a lot of value in having someone mostly full time (which I would not be, even at that rate.) So maybe the right model for me is "wake me up, place a five grand deposit; I keep the money if I fix your shit in the next X hours" or something. I could be talked into that, if I had some reasonable assurance of getting paid.

I think the root cause might be that most small companies use "the cloud" and don't feel they need that kind of sysadmin experience (and spare pool... "the cloud" vastly diminishes the market value of my giant spare pool, probably even more than it does my SysAdmin experience.) and larger companies would prefer to have someone on-staff full-time.

Also, well, I'm very good at marketing "value" - e.g. most of my experience is competing on price (yes, yes, I know I'm behind the curve. I am working on it. You do not understand how much I am working on it.) and, well, this is not an area where I want to compete on price. I'm pretty okay getting woken once a week. If I get woken 3 times a week, for more than one week in a row? things start to get bad. Wake me up every night? well, I've had times in my life when all I did was sleep and respond to emergencies; I can do it, but I'd really prefer not to go back there. So yeah; I have a very limited number of "wake me up" slots I can sell. They need to be expensive.

noelwelsh2• 13 years ago

That's a lot of extrapolation from a few awkward conversations to reach the conclusion "There’s this stigma in the startup universe around being a contractor, consultant, or freelancer."

I have a hard time believing there really is an industry wide stigma against freelancers in NYC. It certainly isn't the case around here. Plenty of startups come from people, like myself, who have run consultancies for a while.

A major motivation for me to move out of consultancy is to make money while I'm sleeping. The fact you're selling time is the limiting factor on consultancy/freelancing, and one disadvantage the OP doesn't mention.

There's no shortage of socially awkward engineers, so perhaps the OP has just run into a few who don't know what to do when the conversation goes off the script they're expecting?

themodelplumber8• 13 years ago

A major motivation for me to move out of consultancy is to make money while I'm sleeping.

Actually quite a few consultants and freelancers do this. I've been making money while sleeping, as a freelancer, for the last 5 years. It's actually my favorite part of what I do, and I have an advisor who helps me figure it out as I go along. Perhaps a startup is just another vehicle for pursuing this dream that is better suited to you.

There really is that annoying "freelancer???" thing, but I think it's really just a matter of the other party's experience & education.

rwhitman4• 13 years ago

Curious, what type of advisor?

noelwelsh2• 13 years ago

I should have said "move out of pure consultancy". I imagine I'll be doing consultancy for a while.

I think there are lots of great models between pure freelancing (paid for time) and pure product. The simplest is probably retainer or support agreements, which often net one money for no work. Info products are another popular route. What's your model, if you don't mind me asking?

esschul• 13 years ago

At least in Norway, the pay is also about 30% higher without the need of a administration. So there's that too. Instead of saying freelance, say independent contractor.

rwhitman4• 13 years ago

So glad to hear someone articulate this. I'm pretty over people making this assumption that because I'm a consultant I'm just ready to drop all my clients and join their startup.

I have a business. I like my business. If you want to do business with me, thats great. Otherwise, don't insinuate that the position you're offering me is a better life for me. I chose my path, and the assertion that I "want more" is insulting. I have good reasons not to pursue what you're offering. Move on.

medell• 13 years ago

Well said. I echo the thoughts in the article about working on a variety of projects with different types of businesses. I love meeting with clients, understanding their problems, and then getting to see how my work directly saves time or affects the bottom line. I'd probably be doing this even if I didn't get paid.

stdbrouw• 13 years ago

While I sympathize with the author and faced the same kind of attitude while I was freelancing, it's a simple truth that it's easier for freelancers to change what they're doing and join a startup than it is for most employees. You're already used to weird hours, you like having decision-making power, can wear many different hats, you can deal with a little financial uncertainty, you're not leaving any colleagues hanging and so on. It's a good profile for a startup engineer.

Yes, it's presumptuous to think that you can't possibly be a freelancer because you want to be.

No, that doesn't mean you should get upset because someone thinks you'd be a open to a recruitment pitch.

k__• 13 years ago

If you're an employee, you quit your job and get going. If you're a freelancer, you have to get rid of all of your customers, which is much more troublesome than to just quitting a job.

random42• 13 years ago

It is more than _just_ troublesome. Once you out of "freelancing game" your leads start to dry up and if in future you want to go back to freelance consulting, will have to do all the hard legwork you have already done long back to re-establish yourself.

csbartus3• 13 years ago

I'm just moving from a startup to freelancing.

I founded a local e-commerce company almost 7 years ago which now has its own life with employees and investors.

I quit my day job to dedicate myself to bigger challenges like designing beautiful websites which deliver the message.

Why? I found more interesting and creative solving new problems. And when I'll have enough international contacts I'll launch another new company.

Which is by the way already in research phase. http://newsledge.com

teh_klev• 13 years ago

Imagine my disappointment when I opened that link to discover there were no sledges.

csbartus3• 13 years ago

oh ... newssledges is already taken ;)

Flakes000• 13 years ago

Keeping my job while I do freelancing. I get more money.

div• 13 years ago

If that's the case, it sounds like you're either not charging enough, or don't have enough work lined up.

Striking out on your own means you take on more risk in exchange for a LOT more potential upside.

mcdougle• 13 years ago

No offense to any startup founders/workers here, but freelancing just sounds more appealing to me -- I'd rather be the boss than the employee, and starting a freelancing business just seems less binary (as in it's either major success or outright failure). I have huge dreams for growing a small freelancing business into a huge international software company, but if it never gets to that point, I should still be very successful with my small freelancing business.

And, as the author noted, freelancing allows you to grow your skills and learn new ones just like any business -- because even though it's not a "startup," it is a business!

Supermighty• 13 years ago

I wonder if he stopped calling himself a freelancer and used a business name that he "worked for" would he stop receiving these kinds of offers.

It's all about branding and perception.

orrjacob00• 13 years ago

I am one of these accidental freelancers. I take on work that seems interesting as it comes to me. I make enough money that it isn't high priority to "have something to work on" at any point in time, and I have a dozen or so of my own side projects, a handful of which make money.

In this space, I guess, the point is that you can make a lot of money by being productive -- we're not forced to work 9 to 5 and there's so much opportunity in terms of "stuff left to do" anyone with some business sense can find profitable projects to work on on our own. Work becomes more of an option.

It's a really fortunate place to be.

"Accidentally" Freelance

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