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Freelancing: A 6-Month Retrospective

231 points by llambda 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
42_huh 14y ago
Why is it that I do not see people in India freelancing? I do not know of a single person who freelance in software development and I live in Bangalore, touted as the Silicon Valley of India. Is it that the developers here are not good enough, or not trustworthy enough. Or is it that they are unwilling to take the plunge into the unknown. I do think there surely is an inertia factor to it. But that's true anywhere else. Maybe I just haven't looked well enough.
- plinkplonk 14y ago
  I live in Bangalore. Did 'freelancing' for >10 years. Now doing a spot of product dev (so not doing that anymore). I know many people who do (and drop back into BigCo jobs for a year or two when they want to take it easy for a while). Lots of people freelance in Bangalore. The key is to have some kind of specialized skill (design,analytics, etc) - vs generic web stack (J2EE, RoR etc) skills.
  - 42_huh 14y ago
    Hey! Great to know that I was wrong! Do you know a lot of people doing it/did it, or are you an exception? And who were you clients, i.e, were your clients Indian companies or are people in the US, UK etc ready to invest in freelancers in India. And did it pay well enough for other people to consider it?
    - plinkplonk 14y ago
      I've worked for both Indian and US 'companies' (quotes because some were research labs etc).My 'clients' were people who came looking for me because they know someone who recommended me. I never did any marketing and have no skills therin, and probably would botch it if I tried. I am not an exception.I know tonnes of people who do 'freelancing', though most of them end up starting small companies to take care of taxes etc. (they do much better marketing than I do) and work on a time and materials (x $/hour) basis (I don't). They work for companies in the US/Europe. With rare exceptions, it doesn't make economic sense to work for Indian companies, though it depends on the value you can add. Pays much better than the BigCo salaries (I know people making more than 100k US $). The hard thing is establishing a reputation for competence, since with so many body shopping companies (Infosys, TCS etc) hiring (literally) battalions of borderline incompetents, "Indian developer" has come to be synonymous with "incompetent fraud" in many people's minds in the west (can't blame them, really), especially in the outsourced context. Standing out in this sea of ultra cheap incompetence takes a lot of work. The ability to communicate well (both oral and written) in English is critical. All that said, here is some free advice. If you don't have any specialized skills, are not prepared to work really really hard (much harder than in your usual Indian Bigco), don't (personally) know any potential clients, don't jump into freelancing. It is not easy. By the time I was ready to quit the 9 to 5 BigCompany grind, I had many offers to freelance. I just got lucky and I am really the wrong person to give advice on how to freelance in India. And that is all I have to say. Cheers.
ZanderEarth32 14y ago
Very nice look at making the move. I freelance on the side now, but I might look to do this in a couple of years if things go (or don't go) well with my next move. Health insurance wise, we're you able to get coverage for yourself, or are you participating in a COBRA plan from your previous employer? To be honest, health insurance is probably the one thing that would keep me employed in regular salaried position. The fear of having a medical emergency and it wiping out my savings is a scary and totally realistic possibility.
- epoxyhockey 14y ago
  There are a couple of options for health insurance. If you have a spouse who has health insurance through their job, you can join their health insurance plan. If you want to go solo, I've had good success with using ehealthinsurance.com. When I was laid off from a job a few years ago, I compared the COBRA price to ehealth, and I found COBRA to be priced about 4 times higher than if I chose a similar plan from ehealth. And, with the same brand insurer.
  - wtracy 14y ago
    I've been worried about getting labeled with "pre-existing conditions" that won't be covered if I go that route, for things that I'm currently covered for. Can anyone comment on that?
    - codenerdz 14y ago
      We'll see what the outcome of ObamaCare in regards to pre-existing conditions, but the way things are right now, if you go with an individual insurance(i.e. not part of a larger company's group plan), should you develop a medical condition, you will eventually be priced out of cheaper "risk categories", i.e. your insurance costs will be increasing year after year and you wont be able to change plans into other competitive healthcare plans because they will deny you due to these pre-existing conditions. Many states, including california, provide special plans for those who are denied coverage elsewhere, but they are ridiculously expensive(think over a $1k per month per person). If you have a family and your spouse doesnt have insurance, healthcare could be an expensive gamble...
blu3jack 14y ago
Would love to hear the follow up after a couple of years. I did freelancing for six years & the benefits and drawbacks both become a lot more starkly drawn -- & somewhat different -- over time.
- osxwm 14y ago
  What were those starkly drawn benefits and drawbacks you discovered in your six years of freelancing?
  - ralphb 14y ago
    I'm also interested in hearing more.
  - blu3jack 14y ago
    It's a big topic. To the author's point, the role of free time changes a bit once you have been able to plan your free time over a period of years rather than months. It takes on a very different rhythm. Beyond that, probably the biggest single evolution was in my relationship to the work itself. In the early months and years I loved being able to go heads down on a project without ever worrying about the politics of the project or the organization: I was there to get the thing done. However, I am the kind of guy who cares about his work. Eventually I found this same experience to be dissatisfying. I felt that I was abandoning my children into a hostile corporate world with no one to look after them. Moreover, as a freelancer you have much less influence over the product and the process. You're a hired gun. Sure, you can do a great job and collect a good paycheck, but if you love what you do it can be frustrating to have extremely limited input into decisions outside the scope of your contract. Back to the author's very excellent point, I also found the management of benefits and finances to go from a source of engagement to just another hassle. When you are setting up your system, it's fun. When you are executing it, and occasionally screwing it up (taxes!), it's just another headache.
    - Alan01252 14y ago
      I'm keen to know whether you ever expressed these concerns? My recent (and limited in comparison to yours) experience is that as a freelancer demanding a certain wage my knowledge and feedback is taken in very high regard and if I feel something needs changing it has been.
Alan01252 14y ago
I'm almost at the end of my second month freelancing (post to come soon) and find this inspiring. My biggest struggle at the moment is what to aim for, yes working three days a week and getting similar money to what I was earning full time is great. Yet at the same time I'm not sure if this is enough for me personally. In fact when I start talking to my friends in full time jobs I kinda feel guilty! Maybe I need some more hobbies, but at the moment the draw of earning more money by working harder is far too appealing. It seems I just can't say no to money.
- jaggederest 14y ago
  Do it then, and save it so you don't have to work. Part of the glory is being able to decide for yourself. When I was freelancing, I'd be putting in 50-60 hour weeks most of the time, because I felt like the hustle really paid off, but any time I got burnt out, boom, time off.
osxwm 14y ago
How does freelancing relate to consulting?
- Danieru 14y ago
  Same thing, slightly different connotations. Consulting implies a more advisory role while freelancing implies you are working on something. Another similar term is contracting. The implication of contracting is that you only work on one project at a time. Often enough at the company's office as well. Contracting is more like a temporary work situation. 'Creative' industries like web design and development have a tendency to use freelancing. While consulting or contracting would almost always be used when developing a java program for a bank.
  - mrooney7828 14y ago
    Indeed, I used the term freelancing as in my mind it is the parent term of both contracting and consulting. I think "6 months of working for myself" or "6 months of self-employment" would also be equivalent.
RawData 14y ago
Where do you find work? Is I just word of mouth?
- mrooney7828 14y ago
  I tried to address this in http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-month-retrospective/#comment-574737739 http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-mo..., but let me know you find it lacking!
- wqfeng 14y ago
  No. I have the same question.
sneak 14y ago
This guy knows what he's talking about. He omitted the part about not having to put on pants to go to work, though. That's worth $25k/year to me, easy.
- xxbondsxx 14y ago
  I don't get this with developers. Are pants that uncomfortable? That much of a terrible obligation that you'd forego 25k a year?
  - sneak 14y ago
    Specifically, it's more the "working someone else's schedule" than anything. Also, traveling to some other physical location. Commuting is a total drag, and it's nice sometimes in the middle of a project to postpone the shower until _after_ work that day and sit around in your skivvies in Get Shit Done mode until dinnertime. Surely I can't be the only one who transitions from sleeping to awake with some crazy architectural change or refactoring in their head? I go straight to the keyboard and do it while it's all crystal clear in my mind. The only time in the last five years I've _ever_ set an alarm clock is when I've had a doctor's appointment before noon. Home is comfy.
  - davekinkead 14y ago
    As someone reading this post while working from home on my sunny balcony at 10:30 am and still in PJs, the freedom is worth at least $25k per year.
- robryan 14y ago
  I could do this, but the majority of the time I choose to work fairly close to regular hours at a coworking office. So I guess this freedom is worth different amounts to different people.
jagira 14y ago
A well written introspective piece. I left my job a few months before you did (Aug '11) and have a similar experience. Here are some of the things that I've learned - a) Set your working hours. Try to follow them, but not religiously. Having a batch of hours as free time is much better than being occupied throughout the day even for a 4 hour gig. b) Get a small long term (ongoing) project. Few hours every month. Use the income from this project to pay the bills and perform other chores. c) Any conversation with a random (or known) person about your profession can turn into a lead. You need to be in sales mode more than before.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  Set your working hours. Try to follow them, but not religiously. Having a batch of hours as free time is much better than being occupied throughout the day even for a 4 hour gig. Yup. Very good lesson to learn. Setting hours for work is much more useful than timing when you work.
nolok 14y ago
I've always wanted to turn to freelancing, mostly because my girlfriend has visa issues and it would allow me to go live with her full time and take better care of my family, but my biggest drawback and what stopped me was that I didn't know how to start getting decent projects. I'm a webdev, I mostly feel confident to start with PHP where I have lots of experience and worked on websites with millions uniques and things like that; and am able to setup/debug most part of the stack, but every single time I find that either I can't find any good opportunities, or people want to see "previous experience" and they don't consider what I did at my jobs as counting because it's not websites I did from top to bottom. When I ask on various websites, people tell me to compete on the various freelancing sites but it feels like so much bullshit with all those 20$ offers getting the upper hands even if it's obvious it will fail ... Does anybody on HN have any idea on how I can help myself in that area ? I have absolutely no design skill so I can't just do dummy websites by myself, or they would look terrible. (for the sake of the question, please just assume I know how to do my job well and my problem is mostly image/marketing myself)
- Alan01252 14y ago
  There's really no excuse here for not getting something on-line. Twitter bootstrap, Theme Forest, etc make it easy to create something that looks reasonably good. Also do you have any projects on github/bitbucket? Have you contributed to any open source projects? These are all things employers look for and set you apart from other developers. I've found people aren't too interested in my previous job roles, they're more interested in talking to me. Every time I've sat down and talked to a client, not only have they felt confident enough to hire me as a freelancer, I'm almost always asked if I'm looking for full time work. I don't market myself as a web designer. I'm a web developer, I do programming not design, and I make that clear right from the start. The companies I work for have more than enough people who can do design. They don't have people with the skills and experience I do as a developer.
- pault 14y ago
  Try to market yourself to design/ad agencies. They always need contractors and have a huge network of clients that need professional work and have the budget for it. I'm currently on salary (working remotely, though), but almost all the work I've ever had came through my connections from a 2 year stint I did at a design firm. If you're in a large city it should be easy to find some industry events to check out (AIGA events are a good place to start). I always had a lot of luck selling my developer skills to designers, and selling my design skills to developers.
wyclif 14y ago
What specifically is he using for a healthcare plan?
- AlecM 14y ago
  Check out www.ehealthinsurance.com. It's legit and many health insurance company websites use their platform to return quotes. Be careful if you have certain prescription needs and check with each company if they cover what you need; the list changes company to company.
- donw 14y ago
  I'm also a consultant, and use Kaiser in California. I'm paying about $160 a month for full coverage. Although my plan does have a $2000 deductible, preventive care is free, so other than my premiums I haven't had to cough up anything yet.
  - r00fus 14y ago
    What about prescription drug coverage? What are your copays for non-generic vs. generic?
    - donw 14y ago
      That I can't answer, as I haven't needed to get a prescription for anything in awhile.
- ryanwaggoner 14y ago
  Health insurance costs vary dramatically. My wife and I have bought our own insurance in CO, CA, and OR. We usually pay around $150-250 / month (for us both, not each) for a decent plan with a deductible of $2k-5k. I always use esurance.com. That said, he's in the worst insurance market in the US: NYC. To get the equivalent of the $168 / month plan we have now, esurance was at least $800-1200. Sickening. Best bet I found is Freelancers Union. Health insurance is horribly broken in NYC.
- mrooney7828 14y ago
  I got a lot of questions about this so I added a paragraph which hopefully helps to address it: "Healthcare is a big and challenging topic, so if you find this to a problematic point for you, there’s a whole chapter devoted to it in the all-around very thorough book Working for Yourself. The short version is that if you can get on your spouse’s plan, that’s a great option, and COBRA can also be used if affordable, and can be turned into a personal plan after 18 months. I decided to go with an individual plan, looking extensively at both freelancersunion.org and ehealthinsurance.com before choosing a plan from the latter."
zupatol 14y ago
Does anyone have an idea what kind of programming jobs lend themselves best to part-time work? The author doesn't mention the kinds of projects he works on. I'm unemployed since last week and I've been trying to find a part-time programming job for more than three months in Geneva, Switzerland. Part-time freelancing sounds great, but I have no idea where to look for clients.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mrooney7828 14y ago
  See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4215576 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4215576, but just look at what niche skills you have and find markets where those are needed. Generally if they are in demand, putting yourself on LinkedIn / Github with those specialties is all you need, for example http://mrooney.github.com/about http://mrooney.github.com/about.
MattRogish 14y ago
You know, you don't have to give up the "safety and security" of a full-time gig to have the freedom and control-your-own-schedule benefits of a freelancer. The "Results-Only Work Environment" (http://www.gorowe.com http://www.gorowe.com) is trying to merge the stability and benefits of a full-time job and the flexibility and freedom of freelancing. If more gigs embraced ROWE, perhaps folks wouldn't have to choose the lesser of two evils. Not saying that freelancing or consulting is bad, just that I think there's a viable alternative. I don't know what the future looks like, but I certainly hope the "40 hr salary work-week" goes away.
- alinajaf 14y ago
  Only thing you're missing out on is the ability to work on and towards your own projects. Not sure about the average freelancer, but most technical freelancers I know see it as a stepping stone towards getting their own little SaaS or iPhone app business off the ground. If you're working full-time for a company, IME contracts tend to own all intellectual output at your time there, at home or otherwise. This doesn't matter much if all you do is put out MIT licensed experimental programming language parsers, but I wouldn't put many companies above executing on those terms should a product you build in your off-time achieve success.
  - yourapostasy 14y ago
    That's just a matter of negotiation. If you are billing significantly above $100 per hour, you are not a commodity technical talent and have leverage in negotiations. Redline the IP clauses you find objectionable, and supply alternate phrasing. Stress that whatever is paid for by the project from inception to delivery remains solidly available to the client. Lots more details for freelancers to work out, but I don't want to hijack this discussion and just wanted to point out you don't have to accept the standard boilerplate if you don't want to.
    - alinajaf 14y ago
      I think it's possible that you've misunderstood the comment I was replying to. The poster is referring to permanent employees under a ROWE-like system. As you say, I would have to be in dire financial straits before I accept a freelance contract that even casually mentioned IP outside the scope of a given clients project.
autarch 14y ago
Without knowing what his income goals are, it's hard to know how well this would work for others. Most people can't easily charge more than $100 per hour for consulting, unless you have niche, in-demand skills, or are notably above-average in skills and you can back that up somehow (like you wrote a major FS/OSS tool that people know about).
- mrooney7828 14y ago
  Pretty much anyone will have specific experience that they can market themselves for. Just think about what you've done in your past few jobs, and you probably know more than 99% of developers in those specific areas you worked in. If you check out my About page at http://mrooney.github.com/about http://mrooney.github.com/about, you can see I'm not marketing myself just as a general web developer, as you don't stand out that way and can't charge a good rate against all the competition.
bedris 14y ago
Earlier this year in the Harvard Business Review, Jody and Matt Miller wrote about a phenomenon that is similar in spirit to that of freelancing hackers, which they dubbed supertemping: "Supertemps are top managers and professionals—from lawyers to CFOs to consultants—who’ve been trained at top schools and companies and choose to pursue project-based careers independent of any major firm." It is pretty interesting to see freelancing become a "first-class citizen" in the high-skilled employment world, whereas previously it wasn't widely accepted beyond a few select occupations. URL: http://hbr.org/2012/05/the-rise-of-the-supertemp/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2012/05/the-rise-of-the-supertemp/ar/1
dsirijus 14y ago
What are the best sources to get freelance jobs?
- mikescar 14y ago
  I've found it's networking, all the way. A lot of random work will come from the ether once you've done good work for a few clients, and then they recommend you to their contacts. I quit my full-time a couple months ago and it's how I've gotten all my work.
LVB 14y ago
These posts are always both inspiring and wrenching for me. I'm mid-career and come from the mold where getting a good fulltime job out of college is what one does. That's simply the way it was, at least in my circles (college, family, etc), and I never considered working for myself. Fast-forward 15 years. Corporate life has actually been pretty decent to me. I've not been jerked around too much, had some opportunity to travel, and have been compensated reasonably well. My wife and I have had a comfortable life so far. So, what's the problem? LACK OF TIME OFF. I've been stuck behind antiquated US corp vacation policies for a long time, and having had my vacation "reset" due to a job move is weighing on me a lot. 3 weeks total time off (which includes sick leave). I'm almost 40 and have a young family, and more and more I think the current PTO situation is BS. I actually don't mind working in an office 5 days a week, but I would like some more time out of the office. So it's great to read someone achieving that, but I'm also incredibly jealous. Yes I could "just do it", but that would go against very deep and well-set views of how I need to provide for my family. I'm not able to stomach the risk (and unfamiliarity) at this point. I suspect that it will need to get worse (i.e. my job goes to shit), and that will force my hand and it could get much better.
- sneak 14y ago
  > Yes I could "just do it", but that would go against very deep and well set views of how I need to provide for my family. I'm not able to stomach the risk at this point. My suggestion: Temporarily cut your family's expenses down to the bone. Food, shelter, telephones, insurance, connectivity, clothing etc. Save up six months of the pre-cut household burn rate. Put it into another bank account that doesn't have an ATM card. This is your "I have been hit by a car and can't work for an extended period of time" fund. Save up three months of the post-cut household burn rate. Put that into your normal savings account. This is your "I can't find new freelance projects for a few weeks" fund. If you're financially adventurous (like me), this can be in the form of available balances on credit cards. (I invest the cash in various speculative places, and then have the CCs in the event that I have no work temporarily. That doesn't actually end up happening, though - it's just a feel-good safety blanket.) Then, do what the article says. Worst-case, if you find yourself burning through your three-month, you can always pull the rip-cord and go get another wage slave job. At no point do you have less than six months of runway, so you're safe. PS: Make sure you're always contributing your max $5k/year into your Roth, too. If you're ever really capital-F Fucked you can eat the tax penalties and get to that, too. I think of this as the "lawyer fees to fight the federal indictment" money.
skrebbel 14y ago
Guys, a question about this: reading HN, I have the feeling that in USA freelancers are a pretty common phenomenon in software. Where I work (Netherlands), all freelancers I know are working full-time 2 year projects anyway, not at all getting them the flexibility articles like these refer to. They mostly get paid more than the employees, in exchange for less job security and having to invest in education themselves. What do US freelancers do? Are these people who make websites for local bakeries? Can you do a 20-hr a week freelance job actually coding something? And how long do employers expect such projects to last? What kind of employers look for freelancers like that? Any personal anecdotes or whatever will be most appreciated!
- tluyben2 14y ago
  Friends of mine in the Netherlands (i'm Dutch) who freelance are like me; once starting to freelance you rather work MORE than less. Not for the money but for the freedom of being able to take on whatever you like. And then ofcourse you don't like it anymore as you end up doing way to much. Jobs protect you from that (or should). I don't know how that is in the US and would like to know as well. It's very possible in the Netherlands to do so though; you make enough with limited time, but I just see people start with that intension and then add up more and more , while people with 'jobs' work less and less.
  - skrebbel 14y ago
    Cool, thanks for the response. What kind of work do you and your friends do? And, now that we're nearby anyway, in which city/area? (I'm in Eindhoven)
    - tluyben2 14y ago
      Most people I know are in software development in the Noord Holland area. My freelance days where a long time ago after university; I freelanced all over NL in software development, my first gig was in Den Bosch. After that I just started companies and moved things to a bigger scale :) Currently we do projects for Dutch, UK and German companies and that's what I liked most. I never liked freelancing very much really; it's all too chaotic for me (unless you take a 2-year project which is not in my nature).
gridmail 14y ago
What has become a letter to Hacker News: GO TO LOS ANGELES. LOS ANGELES HAS IDEAS TOO. GO INVEST IN LOS ANGELES. Every day I here stories of kids with half the ability of me getting rich and companies with half my potential getting invested in. I have been a web developer for 10 YEARS running some of the largest websites in southern california, but I am still JUST AN EMPLOYEE. God DAMNIT Northern california get your asses together and step up to the plate The talent is here. We have been conjuring ideas and staying poor. I know the entertainment industry runs the show here, but there is plenty of room! Please get off your LUCKING asses and come to southern california you will see a world of young developers (aging now) who were never offered millions for their ideas doing the work of 10 men. One man armies here running some of the biggest websites in the business, but getting treated like janitors at entertainment companies. Do you know what hacker news looks like to us one man armies in southern california??? It looks like a fantasy world where people actually discuss technology meanwhile here in southern california it is still taboo and social suicide to mention you do anything with websites in mixed company. Maybe you should just stay up there and hand money back and forth to each other while we developers here save our pennies and eventually do it ourselves. After all the entertainment industry isn't going to do it. They don't want to lose their slaves. But who do you think builds all those mickey mouse websites, porn and hundreds of miles of online stores. Guys like me with working knowledge from decades and literally suit cases full of ideas. There might even be more developers here than there. But we are treated like garbage and second class citizens. Well this is an invitation. The entertainment industry isn't going anywhere and as long as you are afraid to cohabitate the same city as them you are missing the kind of talent that prefers warm weather and beaches. What kind of person would enjoy that. The smart kind. Where are all the biggest ideas? They are right here. They always have been. You can sleep on my couch. -the talent
Rodeoclash 14y ago
If anyone is looking to freelance in Australia (specially Melbourne) then please reach out to me at sam@dragonflylist.com - specially if you're a front-end developer or mobile developer. We don't take a percentage of your earnings (we charge a subscription to the agencies instead) and we have WAY too many requests for positions for us to fill at the moment.
shocks 14y ago
I'm currently trying to get into the freelancing gaming. This article and the comments here have been very helpful! Thanks everyone. :)
yen223 14y ago
Are there any freelance jobs which aren't web-related? I am a software engineer specializing in robotics systems, and I find it really hard to find contract work that doesn't involve Javascript/PHP/etc, let alone one that involves engineering systems.
- mechanical_fish 14y ago
  There are definitely freelance jobs that don't involve the web - I know folks who have them, doing e.g. optics design - but they're rarer, just because the potential customer base is so much smaller. And obviously in robotics systems it will be harder to telecommute. The usual advice is to specialize in something that's specific but in demand. For example, you could get really good at setting up a particularly common type of robotics system, or setting up systems for a particular type of problem. Perhaps try approaching the sales folks for a robot company and seeing if their customers are often looking for experienced freelancers: If so, would they be willing to recommend you? (Of course, if the robotics company has its own consulting division you might not have much luck with this plan…)
theoj 14y ago
>> So as an example, a $100K salary, which corresponds to roughly $50 per hour working 40 hours a week, requires a freelancing rate of $56-58/hour to pay for healthcare and time off. Cringe -- this is bad advice for setting your consulting rate. In the US, the full cost of an $100K employee is not $100K. It's $100K salary + paid vacation time + employment taxes paid by employer + healthcare + office space & pro-rated related expenses (like cleaning of said office space). This metric is called the "fully loaded cost" of an employee and ends up being 1.3x-1.5x of the salary. But even this calculation fails to capture the flexibility advantages that your clients get from hiring short term. It ignores the fact that as a consultant you are hired only when you are needed and are 100% utilized, while a yearly employee may not be fully utilized every day of the year. Essentially, an employer that hires a full time employee agrees to "buy in bulk" and pay for time that may or may not be fully utilized. By necessity this means that your rate should be higher to account for the additional value provided plus provide cushion for those in-between project times when you are looking for work or doing proposals. Two quick and dirty metrics I have seen for determining rate per hour are 1) yearly salary / 1000 and 2) 2x full time employee hourly rate. Both of these converge on about $100/hr. Un-official data from HN seems to confirm a median freelance rate in that range (about $90/hr): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420203 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420203
- patio11 14y ago
  Keep in mind that those guesstimations are for determining the floor rate one would ask for to maintain an expected standard of living, rather than determining the rate one would actually ask for. Your rate should be whatever you can convince people to pay you, and that can be a number well north of $90/hr. (While I love HNers, one should not rely on HN salary surveys to set one's rates. There are many factors that drag it down: HN has a global audience but you do not have to sell to global consumers of programming talent. HN, in other surveys, frequently skews to young and inexperienced -- you may not be young and inexperienced. Many HNers are unsophisticated about pricing to extract value from mutually beneficial business relationships -- you should not be unsophisticated in this manner. Many HNers occupy positions which are low on the value chain such as undifferentiated "web design" which do not command high hourly rates -- you should upgrade your skillset or marketing such that you can command higher hourly rates. etc, etc)
wqfeng 14y ago
Are there some online sites to get a freelance job?
pacomerh 14y ago
Biggest aspects from my experience: - Follow your work times rigorously. - Just because you own your time that doesn't mean you should spend it reading articles all day. (I personally look through HN in 1min, then save my interests into the pocket app and read them at night) - Communicate with your clients a lot, sometimes all they need is to know how you're doing, they will appreciate it. - BIG one, learn to automate tasks. If you code, get an application like codebox or something, stop re-coding the same stuff over and over. - About the money, don't work for free, charge upfront percentage, the separate account thing is a good idea, I do that. - Be an expert of your area. Basically, 'skills will set you free'
kayoone 14y ago
Personally i didn't like freelancing from home all that much.. i did it for 3 years but overall you feel quite lonely sitting at home most of the day without coworkers to talk to. Work life/private life gets really mixed up and sitting around in your undies until noon wasnt really all that exciting after a while. Be careful to not isolate yourself too much! I love freelancing, but today i share an office with other freelancers and try to separate work/private life more clearly. Made me happier, YMMV

231 points by llambda 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Why is it that I do not see people in India freelancing? I do not know of a single person who freelance in software development and I live in Bangalore, touted as the Silicon Valley of India. Is it that the developers here are not good enough, or not trustworthy enough. Or is it that they are unwilling to take the plunge into the unknown. I do think there surely is an inertia factor to it. But that's true anywhere else. Maybe I just haven't looked well enough.

plinkplonk 14y ago
I live in Bangalore. Did 'freelancing' for >10 years. Now doing a spot of product dev (so not doing that anymore). I know many people who do (and drop back into BigCo jobs for a year or two when they want to take it easy for a while). Lots of people freelance in Bangalore. The key is to have some kind of specialized skill (design,analytics, etc) - vs generic web stack (J2EE, RoR etc) skills.
- 42_huh 14y ago
  Hey! Great to know that I was wrong! Do you know a lot of people doing it/did it, or are you an exception? And who were you clients, i.e, were your clients Indian companies or are people in the US, UK etc ready to invest in freelancers in India. And did it pay well enough for other people to consider it?
  - plinkplonk 14y ago
    I've worked for both Indian and US 'companies' (quotes because some were research labs etc).My 'clients' were people who came looking for me because they know someone who recommended me. I never did any marketing and have no skills therin, and probably would botch it if I tried. I am not an exception.I know tonnes of people who do 'freelancing', though most of them end up starting small companies to take care of taxes etc. (they do much better marketing than I do) and work on a time and materials (x $/hour) basis (I don't). They work for companies in the US/Europe. With rare exceptions, it doesn't make economic sense to work for Indian companies, though it depends on the value you can add. Pays much better than the BigCo salaries (I know people making more than 100k US $). The hard thing is establishing a reputation for competence, since with so many body shopping companies (Infosys, TCS etc) hiring (literally) battalions of borderline incompetents, "Indian developer" has come to be synonymous with "incompetent fraud" in many people's minds in the west (can't blame them, really), especially in the outsourced context. Standing out in this sea of ultra cheap incompetence takes a lot of work. The ability to communicate well (both oral and written) in English is critical. All that said, here is some free advice. If you don't have any specialized skills, are not prepared to work really really hard (much harder than in your usual Indian Bigco), don't (personally) know any potential clients, don't jump into freelancing. It is not easy. By the time I was ready to quit the 9 to 5 BigCompany grind, I had many offers to freelance. I just got lucky and I am really the wrong person to give advice on how to freelance in India. And that is all I have to say. Cheers.

ZanderEarth32 14y ago

Very nice look at making the move. I freelance on the side now, but I might look to do this in a couple of years if things go (or don't go) well with my next move. Health insurance wise, we're you able to get coverage for yourself, or are you participating in a COBRA plan from your previous employer? To be honest, health insurance is probably the one thing that would keep me employed in regular salaried position. The fear of having a medical emergency and it wiping out my savings is a scary and totally realistic possibility.

epoxyhockey 14y ago
There are a couple of options for health insurance. If you have a spouse who has health insurance through their job, you can join their health insurance plan. If you want to go solo, I've had good success with using ehealthinsurance.com. When I was laid off from a job a few years ago, I compared the COBRA price to ehealth, and I found COBRA to be priced about 4 times higher than if I chose a similar plan from ehealth. And, with the same brand insurer.
- wtracy 14y ago
  I've been worried about getting labeled with "pre-existing conditions" that won't be covered if I go that route, for things that I'm currently covered for. Can anyone comment on that?
  - codenerdz 14y ago
    We'll see what the outcome of ObamaCare in regards to pre-existing conditions, but the way things are right now, if you go with an individual insurance(i.e. not part of a larger company's group plan), should you develop a medical condition, you will eventually be priced out of cheaper "risk categories", i.e. your insurance costs will be increasing year after year and you wont be able to change plans into other competitive healthcare plans because they will deny you due to these pre-existing conditions. Many states, including california, provide special plans for those who are denied coverage elsewhere, but they are ridiculously expensive(think over a $1k per month per person). If you have a family and your spouse doesnt have insurance, healthcare could be an expensive gamble...

blu3jack 14y ago

Would love to hear the follow up after a couple of years. I did freelancing for six years & the benefits and drawbacks both become a lot more starkly drawn -- & somewhat different -- over time.

osxwm 14y ago
What were those starkly drawn benefits and drawbacks you discovered in your six years of freelancing?
- ralphb 14y ago
  I'm also interested in hearing more.
- blu3jack 14y ago
  It's a big topic. To the author's point, the role of free time changes a bit once you have been able to plan your free time over a period of years rather than months. It takes on a very different rhythm. Beyond that, probably the biggest single evolution was in my relationship to the work itself. In the early months and years I loved being able to go heads down on a project without ever worrying about the politics of the project or the organization: I was there to get the thing done. However, I am the kind of guy who cares about his work. Eventually I found this same experience to be dissatisfying. I felt that I was abandoning my children into a hostile corporate world with no one to look after them. Moreover, as a freelancer you have much less influence over the product and the process. You're a hired gun. Sure, you can do a great job and collect a good paycheck, but if you love what you do it can be frustrating to have extremely limited input into decisions outside the scope of your contract. Back to the author's very excellent point, I also found the management of benefits and finances to go from a source of engagement to just another hassle. When you are setting up your system, it's fun. When you are executing it, and occasionally screwing it up (taxes!), it's just another headache.
  - Alan01252 14y ago
    I'm keen to know whether you ever expressed these concerns? My recent (and limited in comparison to yours) experience is that as a freelancer demanding a certain wage my knowledge and feedback is taken in very high regard and if I feel something needs changing it has been.

Alan01252 14y ago

I'm almost at the end of my second month freelancing (post to come soon) and find this inspiring. My biggest struggle at the moment is what to aim for, yes working three days a week and getting similar money to what I was earning full time is great. Yet at the same time I'm not sure if this is enough for me personally. In fact when I start talking to my friends in full time jobs I kinda feel guilty! Maybe I need some more hobbies, but at the moment the draw of earning more money by working harder is far too appealing. It seems I just can't say no to money.

jaggederest 14y ago
Do it then, and save it so you don't have to work. Part of the glory is being able to decide for yourself. When I was freelancing, I'd be putting in 50-60 hour weeks most of the time, because I felt like the hustle really paid off, but any time I got burnt out, boom, time off.

osxwm 14y ago

How does freelancing relate to consulting?

Danieru 14y ago
Same thing, slightly different connotations. Consulting implies a more advisory role while freelancing implies you are working on something. Another similar term is contracting. The implication of contracting is that you only work on one project at a time. Often enough at the company's office as well. Contracting is more like a temporary work situation. 'Creative' industries like web design and development have a tendency to use freelancing. While consulting or contracting would almost always be used when developing a java program for a bank.
- mrooney7828 14y ago
  Indeed, I used the term freelancing as in my mind it is the parent term of both contracting and consulting. I think "6 months of working for myself" or "6 months of self-employment" would also be equivalent.

RawData 14y ago

Where do you find work? Is I just word of mouth?

mrooney7828 14y ago
I tried to address this in http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-month-retrospective/#comment-574737739 http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-mo..., but let me know you find it lacking!
wqfeng 14y ago
No. I have the same question.

sneak 14y ago

This guy knows what he's talking about. He omitted the part about not having to put on pants to go to work, though. That's worth $25k/year to me, easy.

xxbondsxx 14y ago
I don't get this with developers. Are pants that uncomfortable? That much of a terrible obligation that you'd forego 25k a year?
- sneak 14y ago
  Specifically, it's more the "working someone else's schedule" than anything. Also, traveling to some other physical location. Commuting is a total drag, and it's nice sometimes in the middle of a project to postpone the shower until _after_ work that day and sit around in your skivvies in Get Shit Done mode until dinnertime. Surely I can't be the only one who transitions from sleeping to awake with some crazy architectural change or refactoring in their head? I go straight to the keyboard and do it while it's all crystal clear in my mind. The only time in the last five years I've _ever_ set an alarm clock is when I've had a doctor's appointment before noon. Home is comfy.
- davekinkead 14y ago
  As someone reading this post while working from home on my sunny balcony at 10:30 am and still in PJs, the freedom is worth at least $25k per year.
robryan 14y ago
I could do this, but the majority of the time I choose to work fairly close to regular hours at a coworking office. So I guess this freedom is worth different amounts to different people.

jagira 14y ago

A well written introspective piece. I left my job a few months before you did (Aug '11) and have a similar experience. Here are some of the things that I've learned - a) Set your working hours. Try to follow them, but not religiously. Having a batch of hours as free time is much better than being occupied throughout the day even for a 4 hour gig. b) Get a small long term (ongoing) project. Few hours every month. Use the income from this project to pay the bills and perform other chores. c) Any conversation with a random (or known) person about your profession can turn into a lead. You need to be in sales mode more than before.

adrianhoward 14y ago
Set your working hours. Try to follow them, but not religiously. Having a batch of hours as free time is much better than being occupied throughout the day even for a 4 hour gig. Yup. Very good lesson to learn. Setting hours for work is much more useful than timing when you work.

nolok 14y ago

I've always wanted to turn to freelancing, mostly because my girlfriend has visa issues and it would allow me to go live with her full time and take better care of my family, but my biggest drawback and what stopped me was that I didn't know how to start getting decent projects. I'm a webdev, I mostly feel confident to start with PHP where I have lots of experience and worked on websites with millions uniques and things like that; and am able to setup/debug most part of the stack, but every single time I find that either I can't find any good opportunities, or people want to see "previous experience" and they don't consider what I did at my jobs as counting because it's not websites I did from top to bottom. When I ask on various websites, people tell me to compete on the various freelancing sites but it feels like so much bullshit with all those 20$ offers getting the upper hands even if it's obvious it will fail ... Does anybody on HN have any idea on how I can help myself in that area ? I have absolutely no design skill so I can't just do dummy websites by myself, or they would look terrible. (for the sake of the question, please just assume I know how to do my job well and my problem is mostly image/marketing myself)

Alan01252 14y ago
There's really no excuse here for not getting something on-line. Twitter bootstrap, Theme Forest, etc make it easy to create something that looks reasonably good. Also do you have any projects on github/bitbucket? Have you contributed to any open source projects? These are all things employers look for and set you apart from other developers. I've found people aren't too interested in my previous job roles, they're more interested in talking to me. Every time I've sat down and talked to a client, not only have they felt confident enough to hire me as a freelancer, I'm almost always asked if I'm looking for full time work. I don't market myself as a web designer. I'm a web developer, I do programming not design, and I make that clear right from the start. The companies I work for have more than enough people who can do design. They don't have people with the skills and experience I do as a developer.
pault 14y ago
Try to market yourself to design/ad agencies. They always need contractors and have a huge network of clients that need professional work and have the budget for it. I'm currently on salary (working remotely, though), but almost all the work I've ever had came through my connections from a 2 year stint I did at a design firm. If you're in a large city it should be easy to find some industry events to check out (AIGA events are a good place to start). I always had a lot of luck selling my developer skills to designers, and selling my design skills to developers.

wyclif 14y ago

What specifically is he using for a healthcare plan?

AlecM 14y ago
Check out www.ehealthinsurance.com. It's legit and many health insurance company websites use their platform to return quotes. Be careful if you have certain prescription needs and check with each company if they cover what you need; the list changes company to company.
donw 14y ago
I'm also a consultant, and use Kaiser in California. I'm paying about $160 a month for full coverage. Although my plan does have a $2000 deductible, preventive care is free, so other than my premiums I haven't had to cough up anything yet.
- r00fus 14y ago
  What about prescription drug coverage? What are your copays for non-generic vs. generic?
  - donw 14y ago
    That I can't answer, as I haven't needed to get a prescription for anything in awhile.
ryanwaggoner 14y ago
Health insurance costs vary dramatically. My wife and I have bought our own insurance in CO, CA, and OR. We usually pay around $150-250 / month (for us both, not each) for a decent plan with a deductible of $2k-5k. I always use esurance.com. That said, he's in the worst insurance market in the US: NYC. To get the equivalent of the $168 / month plan we have now, esurance was at least $800-1200. Sickening. Best bet I found is Freelancers Union. Health insurance is horribly broken in NYC.
mrooney7828 14y ago
I got a lot of questions about this so I added a paragraph which hopefully helps to address it: "Healthcare is a big and challenging topic, so if you find this to a problematic point for you, there’s a whole chapter devoted to it in the all-around very thorough book Working for Yourself. The short version is that if you can get on your spouse’s plan, that’s a great option, and COBRA can also be used if affordable, and can be turned into a personal plan after 18 months. I decided to go with an individual plan, looking extensively at both freelancersunion.org and ehealthinsurance.com before choosing a plan from the latter."

zupatol 14y ago

Does anyone have an idea what kind of programming jobs lend themselves best to part-time work? The author doesn't mention the kinds of projects he works on. I'm unemployed since last week and I've been trying to find a part-time programming job for more than three months in Geneva, Switzerland. Part-time freelancing sounds great, but I have no idea where to look for clients.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mrooney7828 14y ago
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4215576 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4215576, but just look at what niche skills you have and find markets where those are needed. Generally if they are in demand, putting yourself on LinkedIn / Github with those specialties is all you need, for example http://mrooney.github.com/about http://mrooney.github.com/about.

MattRogish 14y ago

You know, you don't have to give up the "safety and security" of a full-time gig to have the freedom and control-your-own-schedule benefits of a freelancer. The "Results-Only Work Environment" (http://www.gorowe.com http://www.gorowe.com) is trying to merge the stability and benefits of a full-time job and the flexibility and freedom of freelancing. If more gigs embraced ROWE, perhaps folks wouldn't have to choose the lesser of two evils. Not saying that freelancing or consulting is bad, just that I think there's a viable alternative. I don't know what the future looks like, but I certainly hope the "40 hr salary work-week" goes away.

alinajaf 14y ago
Only thing you're missing out on is the ability to work on and towards your own projects. Not sure about the average freelancer, but most technical freelancers I know see it as a stepping stone towards getting their own little SaaS or iPhone app business off the ground. If you're working full-time for a company, IME contracts tend to own all intellectual output at your time there, at home or otherwise. This doesn't matter much if all you do is put out MIT licensed experimental programming language parsers, but I wouldn't put many companies above executing on those terms should a product you build in your off-time achieve success.
- yourapostasy 14y ago
  That's just a matter of negotiation. If you are billing significantly above $100 per hour, you are not a commodity technical talent and have leverage in negotiations. Redline the IP clauses you find objectionable, and supply alternate phrasing. Stress that whatever is paid for by the project from inception to delivery remains solidly available to the client. Lots more details for freelancers to work out, but I don't want to hijack this discussion and just wanted to point out you don't have to accept the standard boilerplate if you don't want to.
  - alinajaf 14y ago
    I think it's possible that you've misunderstood the comment I was replying to. The poster is referring to permanent employees under a ROWE-like system. As you say, I would have to be in dire financial straits before I accept a freelance contract that even casually mentioned IP outside the scope of a given clients project.

autarch 14y ago

Without knowing what his income goals are, it's hard to know how well this would work for others. Most people can't easily charge more than $100 per hour for consulting, unless you have niche, in-demand skills, or are notably above-average in skills and you can back that up somehow (like you wrote a major FS/OSS tool that people know about).

mrooney7828 14y ago
Pretty much anyone will have specific experience that they can market themselves for. Just think about what you've done in your past few jobs, and you probably know more than 99% of developers in those specific areas you worked in. If you check out my About page at http://mrooney.github.com/about http://mrooney.github.com/about, you can see I'm not marketing myself just as a general web developer, as you don't stand out that way and can't charge a good rate against all the competition.

bedris 14y ago

Earlier this year in the Harvard Business Review, Jody and Matt Miller wrote about a phenomenon that is similar in spirit to that of freelancing hackers, which they dubbed supertemping: "Supertemps are top managers and professionals—from lawyers to CFOs to consultants—who’ve been trained at top schools and companies and choose to pursue project-based careers independent of any major firm." It is pretty interesting to see freelancing become a "first-class citizen" in the high-skilled employment world, whereas previously it wasn't widely accepted beyond a few select occupations. URL: http://hbr.org/2012/05/the-rise-of-the-supertemp/ar/1 http://hbr.org/2012/05/the-rise-of-the-supertemp/ar/1

dsirijus 14y ago

What are the best sources to get freelance jobs?

mikescar 14y ago
I've found it's networking, all the way. A lot of random work will come from the ether once you've done good work for a few clients, and then they recommend you to their contacts. I quit my full-time a couple months ago and it's how I've gotten all my work.

LVB 14y ago

These posts are always both inspiring and wrenching for me. I'm mid-career and come from the mold where getting a good fulltime job out of college is what one does. That's simply the way it was, at least in my circles (college, family, etc), and I never considered working for myself. Fast-forward 15 years. Corporate life has actually been pretty decent to me. I've not been jerked around too much, had some opportunity to travel, and have been compensated reasonably well. My wife and I have had a comfortable life so far. So, what's the problem? LACK OF TIME OFF. I've been stuck behind antiquated US corp vacation policies for a long time, and having had my vacation "reset" due to a job move is weighing on me a lot. 3 weeks total time off (which includes sick leave). I'm almost 40 and have a young family, and more and more I think the current PTO situation is BS. I actually don't mind working in an office 5 days a week, but I would like some more time out of the office. So it's great to read someone achieving that, but I'm also incredibly jealous. Yes I could "just do it", but that would go against very deep and well-set views of how I need to provide for my family. I'm not able to stomach the risk (and unfamiliarity) at this point. I suspect that it will need to get worse (i.e. my job goes to shit), and that will force my hand and it could get much better.

sneak 14y ago
> Yes I could "just do it", but that would go against very deep and well set views of how I need to provide for my family. I'm not able to stomach the risk at this point. My suggestion: Temporarily cut your family's expenses down to the bone. Food, shelter, telephones, insurance, connectivity, clothing etc. Save up six months of the pre-cut household burn rate. Put it into another bank account that doesn't have an ATM card. This is your "I have been hit by a car and can't work for an extended period of time" fund. Save up three months of the post-cut household burn rate. Put that into your normal savings account. This is your "I can't find new freelance projects for a few weeks" fund. If you're financially adventurous (like me), this can be in the form of available balances on credit cards. (I invest the cash in various speculative places, and then have the CCs in the event that I have no work temporarily. That doesn't actually end up happening, though - it's just a feel-good safety blanket.) Then, do what the article says. Worst-case, if you find yourself burning through your three-month, you can always pull the rip-cord and go get another wage slave job. At no point do you have less than six months of runway, so you're safe. PS: Make sure you're always contributing your max $5k/year into your Roth, too. If you're ever really capital-F Fucked you can eat the tax penalties and get to that, too. I think of this as the "lawyer fees to fight the federal indictment" money.

skrebbel 14y ago

Guys, a question about this: reading HN, I have the feeling that in USA freelancers are a pretty common phenomenon in software. Where I work (Netherlands), all freelancers I know are working full-time 2 year projects anyway, not at all getting them the flexibility articles like these refer to. They mostly get paid more than the employees, in exchange for less job security and having to invest in education themselves. What do US freelancers do? Are these people who make websites for local bakeries? Can you do a 20-hr a week freelance job actually coding something? And how long do employers expect such projects to last? What kind of employers look for freelancers like that? Any personal anecdotes or whatever will be most appreciated!

tluyben2 14y ago
Friends of mine in the Netherlands (i'm Dutch) who freelance are like me; once starting to freelance you rather work MORE than less. Not for the money but for the freedom of being able to take on whatever you like. And then ofcourse you don't like it anymore as you end up doing way to much. Jobs protect you from that (or should). I don't know how that is in the US and would like to know as well. It's very possible in the Netherlands to do so though; you make enough with limited time, but I just see people start with that intension and then add up more and more , while people with 'jobs' work less and less.
- skrebbel 14y ago
  Cool, thanks for the response. What kind of work do you and your friends do? And, now that we're nearby anyway, in which city/area? (I'm in Eindhoven)
  - tluyben2 14y ago
    Most people I know are in software development in the Noord Holland area. My freelance days where a long time ago after university; I freelanced all over NL in software development, my first gig was in Den Bosch. After that I just started companies and moved things to a bigger scale :) Currently we do projects for Dutch, UK and German companies and that's what I liked most. I never liked freelancing very much really; it's all too chaotic for me (unless you take a 2-year project which is not in my nature).

gridmail 14y ago

What has become a letter to Hacker News: GO TO LOS ANGELES. LOS ANGELES HAS IDEAS TOO. GO INVEST IN LOS ANGELES. Every day I here stories of kids with half the ability of me getting rich and companies with half my potential getting invested in. I have been a web developer for 10 YEARS running some of the largest websites in southern california, but I am still JUST AN EMPLOYEE. God DAMNIT Northern california get your asses together and step up to the plate The talent is here. We have been conjuring ideas and staying poor. I know the entertainment industry runs the show here, but there is plenty of room! Please get off your LUCKING asses and come to southern california you will see a world of young developers (aging now) who were never offered millions for their ideas doing the work of 10 men. One man armies here running some of the biggest websites in the business, but getting treated like janitors at entertainment companies. Do you know what hacker news looks like to us one man armies in southern california??? It looks like a fantasy world where people actually discuss technology meanwhile here in southern california it is still taboo and social suicide to mention you do anything with websites in mixed company. Maybe you should just stay up there and hand money back and forth to each other while we developers here save our pennies and eventually do it ourselves. After all the entertainment industry isn't going to do it. They don't want to lose their slaves. But who do you think builds all those mickey mouse websites, porn and hundreds of miles of online stores. Guys like me with working knowledge from decades and literally suit cases full of ideas. There might even be more developers here than there. But we are treated like garbage and second class citizens. Well this is an invitation. The entertainment industry isn't going anywhere and as long as you are afraid to cohabitate the same city as them you are missing the kind of talent that prefers warm weather and beaches. What kind of person would enjoy that. The smart kind. Where are all the biggest ideas? They are right here. They always have been. You can sleep on my couch. -the talent

Rodeoclash 14y ago

If anyone is looking to freelance in Australia (specially Melbourne) then please reach out to me at sam@dragonflylist.com - specially if you're a front-end developer or mobile developer. We don't take a percentage of your earnings (we charge a subscription to the agencies instead) and we have WAY too many requests for positions for us to fill at the moment.

shocks 14y ago

I'm currently trying to get into the freelancing gaming. This article and the comments here have been very helpful! Thanks everyone. :)

yen223 14y ago

Are there any freelance jobs which aren't web-related? I am a software engineer specializing in robotics systems, and I find it really hard to find contract work that doesn't involve Javascript/PHP/etc, let alone one that involves engineering systems.

mechanical_fish 14y ago
There are definitely freelance jobs that don't involve the web - I know folks who have them, doing e.g. optics design - but they're rarer, just because the potential customer base is so much smaller. And obviously in robotics systems it will be harder to telecommute. The usual advice is to specialize in something that's specific but in demand. For example, you could get really good at setting up a particularly common type of robotics system, or setting up systems for a particular type of problem. Perhaps try approaching the sales folks for a robot company and seeing if their customers are often looking for experienced freelancers: If so, would they be willing to recommend you? (Of course, if the robotics company has its own consulting division you might not have much luck with this plan…)

theoj 14y ago

>> So as an example, a $100K salary, which corresponds to roughly $50 per hour working 40 hours a week, requires a freelancing rate of $56-58/hour to pay for healthcare and time off. Cringe -- this is bad advice for setting your consulting rate. In the US, the full cost of an $100K employee is not $100K. It's $100K salary + paid vacation time + employment taxes paid by employer + healthcare + office space & pro-rated related expenses (like cleaning of said office space). This metric is called the "fully loaded cost" of an employee and ends up being 1.3x-1.5x of the salary. But even this calculation fails to capture the flexibility advantages that your clients get from hiring short term. It ignores the fact that as a consultant you are hired only when you are needed and are 100% utilized, while a yearly employee may not be fully utilized every day of the year. Essentially, an employer that hires a full time employee agrees to "buy in bulk" and pay for time that may or may not be fully utilized. By necessity this means that your rate should be higher to account for the additional value provided plus provide cushion for those in-between project times when you are looking for work or doing proposals. Two quick and dirty metrics I have seen for determining rate per hour are 1) yearly salary / 1000 and 2) 2x full time employee hourly rate. Both of these converge on about $100/hr. Un-official data from HN seems to confirm a median freelance rate in that range (about $90/hr): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420203 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420203

patio11 14y ago
Keep in mind that those guesstimations are for determining the floor rate one would ask for to maintain an expected standard of living, rather than determining the rate one would actually ask for. Your rate should be whatever you can convince people to pay you, and that can be a number well north of $90/hr. (While I love HNers, one should not rely on HN salary surveys to set one's rates. There are many factors that drag it down: HN has a global audience but you do not have to sell to global consumers of programming talent. HN, in other surveys, frequently skews to young and inexperienced -- you may not be young and inexperienced. Many HNers are unsophisticated about pricing to extract value from mutually beneficial business relationships -- you should not be unsophisticated in this manner. Many HNers occupy positions which are low on the value chain such as undifferentiated "web design" which do not command high hourly rates -- you should upgrade your skillset or marketing such that you can command higher hourly rates. etc, etc)

wqfeng 14y ago

Are there some online sites to get a freelance job?

pacomerh 14y ago

Biggest aspects from my experience: - Follow your work times rigorously. - Just because you own your time that doesn't mean you should spend it reading articles all day. (I personally look through HN in 1min, then save my interests into the pocket app and read them at night) - Communicate with your clients a lot, sometimes all they need is to know how you're doing, they will appreciate it. - BIG one, learn to automate tasks. If you code, get an application like codebox or something, stop re-coding the same stuff over and over. - About the money, don't work for free, charge upfront percentage, the separate account thing is a good idea, I do that. - Be an expert of your area. Basically, 'skills will set you free'

kayoone 14y ago

Personally i didn't like freelancing from home all that much.. i did it for 3 years but overall you feel quite lonely sitting at home most of the day without coworkers to talk to. Work life/private life gets really mixed up and sitting around in your undies until noon wasnt really all that exciting after a while. Be careful to not isolate yourself too much! I love freelancing, but today i share an office with other freelancers and try to separate work/private life more clearly. Made me happier, YMMV