That's exactly what I am doing now. I have been enrolled as a PhD student in computer science and working at the same time for almost 3 years. I cannot really

That's exactly what I am doing now. I have been enrolled as a PhD student in computer science and working at the same time for almost 3 years. I cannot really recommend it, mainly because of the workload. However there are things to be learnt both from academia and from the private sector. Moreover, being a PhD student won't make you earn any real money any time soon, nor give you any valuable work experience, IMO. > You can work on whatever you want with no pressure. Nor being a PhD candidate, nor being a freelancer guarantee that you can work on whatever you want with no pressure. And doing both at the same time will only make things harder to manage your time and actually do it "with no pressure".