6 ms·

If you work full time for a company, you get your paycheck at a regular interval. If you don't get it, you can complain to your accounting department or to the

If you work full time for a company, you get your paycheck at a regular interval. If you don't get it, you can complain to your accounting department or to the government in severe cases. If a client decides he's not going to pay you for whatever reason, he can just block you on Slack, email, and everywhere else. Sometimes you can use a contract but good luck executing the clauses when you're on the other side of the planet. Even if you're able to sue, it takes months or years and a massive amount of energy. You might even lose if the other lawyer's able to find any loopholes in your contract. Personally, I think this is too much for a single person to handle. How are you going to have enough energy left to do actual creative work if you have to deal with all of that? If you decide to start an agency and have your own legal department, then it's another story. There are some agencies who derive the majority of their revenue from legal actions anyway.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Well yeah, but the height of said paycheck, the hours you're expected to put in, other benefits, are all sliders that both the employee and employer will want to min/max.
ivanhoe 5y ago
> You might even lose if the other lawyer's able to find any loopholes in your contract. Your experience seems very grim. I've been in freelancing for decades and never had such a situation. Even non-paying customers were rare to me, and I only once had to actually sue. You will still loose some money sometimes, mostly due to your own bad estimates and client's bad inputs, but that's a fact one needs to plan ahead when running their own business. Sometimes you'll screw over the client as well - a well paid gig will come over that you don't want to miss and client's project will be put on the back burner. Not nice, but hat's also the part of running a business, knowing your priorities and cutting where needed. But all in all, I don't think freelancing is in any way significantly different, nor harder than running an agency (or any business) - only that you have to accept that you need to play more than one roles until you can afford to hire people for that. Having 5 to 9 job is easier, but also has its many downsides, so I wouldn't dismiss freelancing without even trying it for a while. If nothing else it's a great way to learn both about technical and financial stuff, because it constantly forces you to figure out how to do and solve new problems, no 2 projects are exactly the same, unlike working in a companies where people spend entire careers maintaining the same piece of in-house code.
lowercased 5y ago
I've been in software for >25 years, and independent for ... 15+. "when you're on the other side of the planet." Don't take that work. It may sound easier said than done, and I remember days when I had no specific projects lined up and no sizeable network to reach out to for referrals/leads. It's not a great feeling, but if you can press through you can get to a point where you're not taking projects from around the planet. Even understanding that might be hyperbole - I took a project in a different state, and the guy ended up not paying. $8k. This was, to me at the time, a fortune, and needed. I tried to sue, and it took a long time, extra $, and... owing to some problems, was not resolved in my favor, even with facts on my side. I understand the headaches. I've had one other time where someone in my own town - who came through a personal referral - had a payment bounce, didn't pay on time, and I found out was underpaying others on the project. I was uneasy a week in, but pressed on to not upset the mutual friend we had. Lost out multiple thousands in the end, taking on some other subcontractors with the assurance of payment which didn't happen. These are hard lessons to learn, but you generally only need to learn them once (or twice...). If you spot a problem ahead of time, walk away, don't engage, or require some up front deposit. Again, easier said than done, but it weeds out a lot of projects ahead of time that. Projects can often be hard enough to be successful with - avoiding some known red flags up front saves a lot of headache. And... with FTE, you have all your eggs in one basket, and your choice of working relationships is limited. Your earlier comment about 'one word replies'... you get that often with colleagues in FTE situations. At least, I've seen it enough to know it's a potential problem. You have more choice about who you work with in freelance/contract situations than you do in FTE situations (you're moved to team X without any say so, assigned to new projects, etc).
- balfirevic 5y ago
  > "when you're on the other side of the planet." Don't take that work. I have a suspicion that you live on a highly compensated side of the planet.
  - lowercased 5y ago
    Guilty as charged, and it was an assumption on taking work inside vs outside your legal jurisdiction. I recognize that it may be harder for some (many?) to find good clients/projects closer to home. That said, I run in to folks in the US that have similar issues/complaints (no idea if GP is in US or not), when often there may be better options. You need to look, and keep looking. I've been doing this since the mid 90s, and the effort it took to network, get exposure and build a brand was, IMO, much harder back then than now. However, there is likely more competition today than... 25+ years ago, so, perhaps it balances out in some way.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Well yeah, but the height of said paycheck, the hours you're expected to put in, other benefits, are all sliders that both the employee and employer will want to min/max.

ivanhoe 5y ago

> You might even lose if the other lawyer's able to find any loopholes in your contract. Your experience seems very grim. I've been in freelancing for decades and never had such a situation. Even non-paying customers were rare to me, and I only once had to actually sue. You will still loose some money sometimes, mostly due to your own bad estimates and client's bad inputs, but that's a fact one needs to plan ahead when running their own business. Sometimes you'll screw over the client as well - a well paid gig will come over that you don't want to miss and client's project will be put on the back burner. Not nice, but hat's also the part of running a business, knowing your priorities and cutting where needed. But all in all, I don't think freelancing is in any way significantly different, nor harder than running an agency (or any business) - only that you have to accept that you need to play more than one roles until you can afford to hire people for that. Having 5 to 9 job is easier, but also has its many downsides, so I wouldn't dismiss freelancing without even trying it for a while. If nothing else it's a great way to learn both about technical and financial stuff, because it constantly forces you to figure out how to do and solve new problems, no 2 projects are exactly the same, unlike working in a companies where people spend entire careers maintaining the same piece of in-house code.

lowercased 5y ago

I've been in software for >25 years, and independent for ... 15+. "when you're on the other side of the planet." Don't take that work. It may sound easier said than done, and I remember days when I had no specific projects lined up and no sizeable network to reach out to for referrals/leads. It's not a great feeling, but if you can press through you can get to a point where you're not taking projects from around the planet. Even understanding that might be hyperbole - I took a project in a different state, and the guy ended up not paying. $8k. This was, to me at the time, a fortune, and needed. I tried to sue, and it took a long time, extra $, and... owing to some problems, was not resolved in my favor, even with facts on my side. I understand the headaches. I've had one other time where someone in my own town - who came through a personal referral - had a payment bounce, didn't pay on time, and I found out was underpaying others on the project. I was uneasy a week in, but pressed on to not upset the mutual friend we had. Lost out multiple thousands in the end, taking on some other subcontractors with the assurance of payment which didn't happen. These are hard lessons to learn, but you generally only need to learn them once (or twice...). If you spot a problem ahead of time, walk away, don't engage, or require some up front deposit. Again, easier said than done, but it weeds out a lot of projects ahead of time that. Projects can often be hard enough to be successful with - avoiding some known red flags up front saves a lot of headache. And... with FTE, you have all your eggs in one basket, and your choice of working relationships is limited. Your earlier comment about 'one word replies'... you get that often with colleagues in FTE situations. At least, I've seen it enough to know it's a potential problem. You have more choice about who you work with in freelance/contract situations than you do in FTE situations (you're moved to team X without any say so, assigned to new projects, etc).

balfirevic 5y ago
> "when you're on the other side of the planet." Don't take that work. I have a suspicion that you live on a highly compensated side of the planet.
- lowercased 5y ago
  Guilty as charged, and it was an assumption on taking work inside vs outside your legal jurisdiction. I recognize that it may be harder for some (many?) to find good clients/projects closer to home. That said, I run in to folks in the US that have similar issues/complaints (no idea if GP is in US or not), when often there may be better options. You need to look, and keep looking. I've been doing this since the mid 90s, and the effort it took to network, get exposure and build a brand was, IMO, much harder back then than now. However, there is likely more competition today than... 25+ years ago, so, perhaps it balances out in some way.