It's up to you what kind of clients you take and what boundaries you set. Personally, I won't even entertain any arbitrary constraints on my schedule (or even a

It's up to you what kind of clients you take and what boundaries you set. Personally, I won't even entertain any arbitrary constraints on my schedule (or even arbitrary meetings; I go the extra mile for clients who don't need any synchronous communication at all), but I know plenty of "freelancers" who are indistinguishable from FT employees in every practical sense. It helps to quote for deliverables instead of time spent. Then the client has no incentive to concern themselves with your schedule (plus if you know what you are doing, it's the easiest way to achieve really high hourly rates). But people who do 8-5 "freelancing" as individual contributors in a dev team, I don't know what is the point of that (besides tax evasion)? I particularly like working with small(-ish) business owners who don't have any corporate background whatsoever. They never use phrases such as "catch up" and tend to be genuinely human.