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Ask HN: What is stopping you from becoming a freelancer?
- twobyfour 9y agoBeen there before. Didn't like the part of the work commonly referred to as account management. Hated always having to be selling and closing.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoDon't know where to get work that's worth it and my day job keeps me comfortable. It sounds like it'd be great working on some lucrative govt contracts, though, like that one to replace CA's Social Security system?, that was so insanely overpriced people were coming out of the woodwork offering to do it for far lower prices.
- SirLJ 9y agoit's too much work, e.g. time spent to look for clients...
- putnam 9y agoTell me more
- zcrackerz 9y agoIt seems difficult to get into unless you know the right people. All of the freelancing sites are filled with listings looking for very specific technologies. Many have ridiculously small budgets or tons of bids that are impossible to compete with.
- putnam 9y agoTell me more
- BjoernKW 9y agoIf you don't know the right people you'll never know the right people. In other words: If you don't try to meet those people chances are you never will. A successful freelancing career in the software industry can be built on personal expertise, effort and on gradually building up a personal network. Existing contacts certainly help but they're by no means necessary.
- lafar6502 9y agoGeneral shittiness of such work
- putnam 9y agoTell me more
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoHello, would you like to know more?
- putnam 9y agoYes
- mant 9y agoHealth Insurance
- putnam 9y agoTell me more
- collyw 9y agoClients. I do mainly backend work which ends up in house and doesn't give you much of a portfolio to show off, so its difficult to get clients without having something to show off your work. Front end stuff seems more likely to get you freelance stuff but Javascript isn't a nice ecosystem.
- BjoernKW 9y agoDon't worry so much about technologies or gaudy, showy stuff. What are the business problems you could solve for potential clients? Make a portfolio of those.
- Maultasche 9y agoThis is good advice. Most clients don't care what you use as long as you can solve their business problems. You could use toothpicks and duct tape, and as long as their business problems get solved, they are happy. Also, they care more about the value of the solution to them than how many hours you spend doing it. If you spend an hour doing something that increases their revenue by $500k a year, they'd generally be quite happy handing over $20k for that hour's worth of work. You may find some that are extremely fussy and try to negotiate unrealistically low prices that would have you working for long hours. Those people do not understand the value of your work, and aren't worth working for. Focus on what results you can achieve rather than exactly how you will achieve them. When I want my pipe leak fixed, I don't care what tools or parts the plumber uses as long as it gets fixed.
- myinitialsaretk 9y agoI've worked as a freelancer for extended periods of time. Always get fed up with: 1. Networking and selling myself as a freelancer. 2. Getting paid in a timely manner. Any marketplace I've found is a race to the bottom in terms of quality and price.
- BjoernKW 9y ago> 1. Networking and selling myself as a freelancer. That's the best part of it. Networking and sales done properly means giving away some value for free so potential clients consider it beneficial to work with you for additional value.
- gt_ 9y agoAfter freelancing for 3 years, the most difficult part for me was getting paid for my work. Communicating job requirements was not always difficult. I even enjoyed the process and the challenge. But, I learned there was no way to charge for the work I did both accurately and ethically. This resulted in constantly taking one for the team and doing a ton of extra free work. That extra work also made transitions between jobs require scheduling days or weeks of just in case time. Checks arrived late about 9 out of times. 2 weeks late was the norm but up to 3 months late is what I learned to expect. There was apparently nothing I could do about this. I used a PO box to isolate issues with paper checks and communicated electronic payment info on all invoices. I didn’t like the varying levels of quality demanded and the terms of negotiating them. I really like doing great work, but almost more importantly, I needed to do great work for my portfolio. I would make sacrifices for projects that would help me get more work. So, I would take the job with an agreement to do that, and later be told “we decided we just need something quick. spend as little time as possible” due surprise money/time constraints. This led to work of significantly quality lower than what was already in my portfolio, unless I did more extra free work to make it good.
- goblins 9y agoMy general lack of any skill
- afarrell 9y agoI don't know how to estimate the length of time it takes to build a piece of software if I've never built something like it. I don't know where to learn this skill. I don't know how to go about researching where to learn this skill.