In my many years consulting, I've seen two types of clients: 1. Corporate - pays the market rate but will not assume the legal risk of taking on individual dev

In my many years consulting, I've seen two types of clients: 1. Corporate - pays the market rate but will not assume the legal risk of taking on individual developers; will only work with another corporation or agency. 2. Mom & pop - will work with individual developers but only on a fixed bid; expectations are about a quarter of realistic budget. So my choices as a freelancer are: work 8-hour days and get paid my full rate through a recruiter (yes, they skim off the top but who cares, my rates are what they are), or work long days + weekends on freelance projects and get paid pennies on the dollar (both in terms of lower hourly rates and never getting paid for all the hours you work). Add to that the tax benefit from maintaining a home office, and you realize that there is simply no reason not to work through an agency/recruiter. They take care of finding the good (i.e. paying) clients, billing, etc. A developer "coop" is simply neither here nor there... at least from my experience here in New York.