6 ms·

"Accidentally" Freelance

123 points by endtwist 13y ago

scottshea 13y ago
I find it interesting that so many people have a hard time comprehending Freelancing yet support entrepreneurs. An insurance or mortgage broker is ultimately a Freelancer who can sell their output to a corporation and I doubt any of them face the same strange stares.
- drjacobs 13y ago
  I think the difference is in the perception that entrepreneurs create jobs while freelancers work for themselves. Clearly a bit of both here though.
- tspike 13y ago
  Everyone in the tech startup scene belongs to the same social hierarchy, where certain behaviors are rewarded and others punished, with success measured in successful rounds raised and big exits. Freelancers are inherently part of the ecosystem, but they don't fit neatly into the hierarchy, much like senior engineers in large companies who have no interest in management. Insurance agents and mortgage brokers belong to a different social group, so they're accorded "other" status and not measured by the same metrics.
- csbartus 13y ago
  Freelancing is a startup. You have a market, you have a new idea and product and you go after customers. You do marketing, sales, development, design, accounting, networking. You grow your own business like your own startup. Moreover freelancing is a lean, slim startup. You don't spend time on investors and hiring. You won't change the world -- only yours. And that's good enough. You do only you know the best.
tudorconstantin 13y ago
I see you as being a startup person - while startups work hard to develop a business, you are the business. While startup businesses scale out, you scale up. Wish you best of luck in your pursuits, congrats.
hudibras 13y ago
It'll be interesting to find out the standard startup reaction once he takes on an additional employee and changes "No thanks, I'm a freelancer" to "No thanks, I have my own small business. But give me your card and I'll let you know if something opens up..."
- scarecrowbob 13y ago
  As a freelance worker, I find this interesting... it seems like a big gap between "I only have to make enough off this to make my time work out for me" and " I have to make enough off this to make a profit off someone else's time". I don' think that the second works out very well for where I am in life, but it seems to be where most of the people I work with find themselves. IME, generally startups aren't looking for agencies, because they have at least enough knowledge to hire individuals rather than agencies or turn-key solutions.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- rwhitman 13y ago
  If they have funding, they'll still try to poach you. For some reason people seem to think "consultant" = up for grabs
mikeho1999 13y ago
I wonder if the bias towards or against freelancers is dependent upon your geographic location... Living in the SF Bay Area as someone who regularly bounces back and forth between freelancing and working full-time as a co-founder or lead tech of a startup, I didn't find any difference in attitude or reaction if I said "I'm working at a startup" vs. "I'm a full time freelancer." LOL, in fact, the reaction tended to be either "oh yeah? me too!" or "oh yeah? so is my brother / sister / mother / daughter / father / son / dog / cat / etc." Looking at the OP's footer, looks like he's in NYC... so I wonder if the bias there is a bit different?
- rwhitman 13y ago
  It is. Been in both markets, and there is definitely a stigma around freelance here in NYC that I never encountered on the west coast.
  - rdouble 13y ago
    If anything it's the opposite. NYC has way more freelancers because that is typically how it's been done in agency work.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Totally agree - for me it seems that I can build capital in my business / personal brand as a freelancer that I can't in a job.
smm2000 13y ago
Part of the reason is that most contractors in tech are less qualified than full time employees and will never pass full interview loop.
- tjbiddle 13y ago
  "Most"? Do you have statistics?
- shubb 13y ago
  My perception is the opposite - Perm employees, particularly junior ones, are often hired because they can be developed. Whereas, contractors need all the skills to do the job on day one. As a perm employee, I assume contractors are somewhat elite at what they do.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  I'm guessing you've been downvoted because you didn't back up your claim that "most" contractors are like that. There is an element of truth to what you say, though. Typically with freelance/contract work, there's less of an interview stage. Because the client can let a freelancer go immediately if things aren't working out, there is less risk to taking them on initially, particularly in places like Europe where there tend to be relatively strong protections for employees. Combine that with a level of workers whose effective charging rate is in the same region as the equivalent salaried position, and a lot of people who wouldn't do well in a closely supervised, salaried position can get by as freelancers. Naturally a client who doesn't understand the freelance/contracting market and expects to hire good people at the same rate as they would quote an employee's salary is taking a chance on the quality they get. They might luck out and get someone good but naive from the contracting side, or they might just find someone who isn't very good but gets by because of the lesser supervision. One thing that is almost certain is that the good people will eventually realise they are underpriced and adjust their rates accordingly, while the bad ones won't. Moreover, rates for good people can scale up far more in proportion to the value they actually offer when they're working semi-independently than it would as an employee on salary. In short, if you want to engage a freelancer, you probably will get what you pay for much more directly than if you were hiring someone on salary. And that means if you're offering well under market rates (and if you're hiring at a direct translation of salary, you are) then there's a good chance you're going to work with not-so-good people.
svmegatron 13y ago
"Actually, I run a small agency."
themodelplumber 13y ago
As a freelancer, I really appreciated this article. While I know what a startup is, in my actual working experience, a "startup" is often some variant of "the SaaS thing my best client's worst employee wanted us to switch to last month." Otherwise we'd be using the proper name of the business without any regard for whether they are a startup or a farming collective or a couple of floating brains in a sealed chamber. I have also had experiences where I say "I'm a freelancer" and watch peoples' mouths drop open. They think I'm basically Peter Parker without the Spiderman, living on the cheap without a single concern for the future. The truth is a bit of an improvement on that. I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer, who helps my inner INTJ learn and grow into a better salesman, marketer, team leader, and negotiator. While most of my stuff is building web things for people, I get a variety of work from traditional illustration to music to 3D modeling. I support a wife and three kids, and we take vacations regularly. I'm not wealthy by any stretch, but people who visit my rental say it's pretty big for NorCal and I get to work in a backyard office with a nice skylight. And every one of my big clients has an IT guy who actually trusts me with their web stuff. Having worked in IT in the past, that's a big deal to me. Someday maybe I'll do something different, but I've been freelancing full-time for almost ten years now, and I've never had a bad year or even a hard year. I don't miss free bagels & juice or XM radio and I definitely don't miss anything that looks like it came from the food section of an office supply store. I don't distrust startups, but I have absolutely no reason to be interested in working for one.
- wallflower 13y ago
  > I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer Intrigued. If you don't mind me asking, what does he teach you? That seems like a business idea - successful Myers-Briggs teach others of their same type how to handle their strength and weaknesses - which sounds like what this executive is already doing.
  - themodelplumber 13y ago
    >Intrigued. If you don't mind me asking, what does he teach you? The most important one has been "tolerating others and, optimally, succeeding with them" since I can be pretty stubborn and defensive when I meet with, say, a big-E social media consultant. I will typically tell my consultant, "hey, I don't know what type of person this is but I need to figure out how to work with them better." The consultant asks me some questions and nails it pretty quick. The tough part is that he isn't easy on me--he is usually sympathetic to the person in question and tells me how I can get my act together. :-) The next most important has been "homing in on others' needs" as I used to really put my tech blinders on and assume that everyone would want solution X. So, more listening, more following up with surveys, etc. After that, I often ask him, "I need somebody to help me with X" so he'll point out that I'm looking for an ISTJ or whatever it may be. In fact we recently went over this for some troubles I was having, and it turned out the MBTI type I needed was my wife :-) So that problem disappeared pretty quickly. Surprisingly I've told quite a few people about this guy's MBTI skillset, and the fact that he's certified, and they are extremely skeptical to the point of saying, "well I don't believe in that pseudo-scientific stuff, but thanks anyway." I think it's mostly awkward because this guy's an engineer; his dad was an expert on ceramic heat shields, and he's done a LOT of work & research to arrive at something that works. But some people who should know better just don't want to listen.
girvo 13y ago
There's a really easy fix for this. Say you're a Consultant instead
lsc 13y ago
yeah. it's actually a lot easier to get freelance gigs if you act like this is just something you are doing to get your foot in the door (to a full-time job) - If you actually want to freelance (and are willing to give the employer the full benefits of hiring a freelancer... e.g. you don't need to feel bad/be legally afraid when you fire me, I only show up and charge you when you actually need work done, etc...) that is... actually a lot harder to get, from what I've seen, even if you aren't charging a premium (though, the people who do operate as 'real freelancers' do charge a premium.) The whole system, in the mid range, at least, is setup such that freelancing is a funnel to evaluate full-time folks. If you aren't interested in being full-time (or pretending like you are full time) you are in a different (and, from what I've seen, harder to get into) market. It's funny; at the very bottom, you have the $15-$50/hr folks who work as 'real freelancers' - often from mid-america or overseas. I hire out of that pool, as do most small businesses. Then in the mid range, in the $40-$100/hr range, you have the 'body shop' that hires you and rents you to a fortune-1000 company - and, in that case, you generally want to pretend that you are interested in a full-time job, and willing to work as a 'pretend' full time person. (The interesting thing here is that I've worked through that range, and I've been in situations where managers who knew me called me back up, arranged things with me, /then/ had me go through the body shop to be made into a pretend employee who shows up for 8 hours every day, which is a little silly, because I've got a corporation. It's got non-consulting revenue that dwarfs what you are going to pay me.) In my experience, it's super easy to get both those sorts of jobs. Getting a job where you act as a 'real freelancer' in the $50-$100 range? in my experience, is actually kinda difficult. I've gotten a few 'real freelancer' gigs at the $200 mark, but those were pure serendipity. (and... much to my shame and regret, I didn't treat that customer accordingly. I mean, I did my job, but I didn't add that bit of "professionalism" with the follow up and such, so we ended up drifting apart.) actually, I've billed as many hours in the $200 range as a 'real freelancer' as I have at the $60 range, I mean, not counting my time working through body shops. (I've billed... probably almost a year of hours at the mid $70s mark, going through a body shop, pretending to be a 'real employee' - and the body shop, of course, took a cut on top of that, so I think I'm worth money... it's just, they want 'fake employee' and not 'freelancer') Thinking back to those $200/hr gigs, it's possible also that I'm missing a certain skillset. A certain follow up and 'you don't need to worry about it' or something? Possible. My style is very much "here is all the information you could possibly want" - and that's probably not always the best style; many times you hire an expert and want, instead a "here is the best course of action for you" with minimal supporting information. Hm. I wonder if I would be better at that now that I have a lot more experience running a business, and hiring experts that are outside my field (where I want the "This is what you should do" with minimal supporting information.)
noelwelsh 13y ago
That's a lot of extrapolation from a few awkward conversations to reach the conclusion "There’s this stigma in the startup universe around being a contractor, consultant, or freelancer." I have a hard time believing there really is an industry wide stigma against freelancers in NYC. It certainly isn't the case around here. Plenty of startups come from people, like myself, who have run consultancies for a while. A major motivation for me to move out of consultancy is to make money while I'm sleeping. The fact you're selling time is the limiting factor on consultancy/freelancing, and one disadvantage the OP doesn't mention. There's no shortage of socially awkward engineers, so perhaps the OP has just run into a few who don't know what to do when the conversation goes off the script they're expecting?
- themodelplumber 13y ago
  >A major motivation for me to move out of consultancy is to make money while I'm sleeping. Actually quite a few consultants and freelancers do this. I've been making money while sleeping, as a freelancer, for the last 5 years. It's actually my favorite part of what I do, and I have an advisor who helps me figure it out as I go along. Perhaps a startup is just another vehicle for pursuing this dream that is better suited to you. There really is that annoying "freelancer???" thing, but I think it's really just a matter of the other party's experience & education.
  - rwhitman 13y ago
    Curious, what type of advisor?
    - themodelplumber 13y ago
      Business consultant. Former tech exec and JPL engineer. He has a pretty interesting past and I'm lucky to have found him.
      - chatmasta 13y ago
        Do you pay him, or is it more of a mentorship role? I've been thinking about getting an arrangement like this.
esschul 13y ago
At least in Norway, the pay is also about 30% higher without the need of a administration. So there's that too. Instead of saying freelance, say independent contractor.
rwhitman 13y ago
So glad to hear someone articulate this. I'm pretty over people making this assumption that because I'm a consultant I'm just ready to drop all my clients and join their startup. I have a business. I like my business. If you want to do business with me, thats great. Otherwise, don't insinuate that the position you're offering me is a better life for me. I chose my path, and the assertion that I "want more" is insulting. I have good reasons not to pursue what you're offering. Move on.
medell 13y ago
Well said. I echo the thoughts in the article about working on a variety of projects with different types of businesses. I love meeting with clients, understanding their problems, and then getting to see how my work directly saves time or affects the bottom line. I'd probably be doing this even if I didn't get paid.
stdbrouw 13y ago
While I sympathize with the author and faced the same kind of attitude while I was freelancing, it's a simple truth that it's easier for freelancers to change what they're doing and join a startup than it is for most employees. You're already used to weird hours, you like having decision-making power, can wear many different hats, you can deal with a little financial uncertainty, you're not leaving any colleagues hanging and so on. It's a good profile for a startup engineer. Yes, it's presumptuous to think that you can't possibly be a freelancer because you want to be. No, that doesn't mean you should get upset because someone thinks you'd be a open to a recruitment pitch.
- k__ 13y ago
  If you're an employee, you quit your job and get going. If you're a freelancer, you have to get rid of all of your customers, which is much more troublesome than to just quitting a job.
  - random42 13y ago
    It is more than _just_ troublesome. Once you out of "freelancing game" your leads start to dry up and if in future you want to go back to freelance consulting, will have to do all the hard legwork you have already done long back to re-establish yourself.
    - 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
      I disagree completely. If you have been successful freelancing (or consulting) in the past, chances are you are comfortable with running your own show and selling yourself. As such, an experienced freelancer won't be intimidated by the prospect of having to build a new client base. It will require work, but it's not new territory. The person who has always been an employee, on the other hand, is far more likely to find the transition from employee to freelancer to be a challenge. Beyond relationship building and sales, there are a number of skills and traits that one needs to have to be successful as a freelancer and many people who try their hand at it find that they don't have those skills or traits.
csbartus 13y ago
I'm just moving from a startup to freelancing. I founded a local e-commerce company almost 7 years ago which now has its own life with employees and investors. I quit my day job to dedicate myself to bigger challenges like designing beautiful websites which deliver the message. Why? I found more interesting and creative solving new problems. And when I'll have enough international contacts I'll launch another new company. Which is by the way already in research phase. http://newsledge.com http://newsledge.com
- teh_klev 13y ago
  Imagine my disappointment when I opened that link to discover there were no sledges.
  - csbartus 13y ago
    oh ... newssledges is already taken ;)
Flakes000 13y ago
Keeping my job while I do freelancing. I get more money.
- div 13y ago
  If that's the case, it sounds like you're either not charging enough, or don't have enough work lined up. Striking out on your own means you take on more risk in exchange for a LOT more potential upside.
mcdougle 13y ago
No offense to any startup founders/workers here, but freelancing just sounds more appealing to me -- I'd rather be the boss than the employee, and starting a freelancing business just seems less binary (as in it's either major success or outright failure). I have huge dreams for growing a small freelancing business into a huge international software company, but if it never gets to that point, I should still be very successful with my small freelancing business. And, as the author noted, freelancing allows you to grow your skills and learn new ones just like any business -- because even though it's not a "startup," it is a business!
Supermighty 13y ago
I wonder if he stopped calling himself a freelancer and used a business name that he "worked for" would he stop receiving these kinds of offers. It's all about branding and perception.
orrjacob00 13y ago
I am one of these accidental freelancers. I take on work that seems interesting as it comes to me. I make enough money that it isn't high priority to "have something to work on" at any point in time, and I have a dozen or so of my own side projects, a handful of which make money. In this space, I guess, the point is that you can make a lot of money by being productive -- we're not forced to work 9 to 5 and there's so much opportunity in terms of "stuff left to do" anyone with some business sense can find profitable projects to work on on our own. Work becomes more of an option. It's a really fortunate place to be.

123 points by endtwist 13y ago

I find it interesting that so many people have a hard time comprehending Freelancing yet support entrepreneurs. An insurance or mortgage broker is ultimately a Freelancer who can sell their output to a corporation and I doubt any of them face the same strange stares.

drjacobs 13y ago
I think the difference is in the perception that entrepreneurs create jobs while freelancers work for themselves. Clearly a bit of both here though.
tspike 13y ago
Everyone in the tech startup scene belongs to the same social hierarchy, where certain behaviors are rewarded and others punished, with success measured in successful rounds raised and big exits. Freelancers are inherently part of the ecosystem, but they don't fit neatly into the hierarchy, much like senior engineers in large companies who have no interest in management. Insurance agents and mortgage brokers belong to a different social group, so they're accorded "other" status and not measured by the same metrics.
csbartus 13y ago
Freelancing is a startup. You have a market, you have a new idea and product and you go after customers. You do marketing, sales, development, design, accounting, networking. You grow your own business like your own startup. Moreover freelancing is a lean, slim startup. You don't spend time on investors and hiring. You won't change the world -- only yours. And that's good enough. You do only you know the best.

tudorconstantin 13y ago

I see you as being a startup person - while startups work hard to develop a business, you are the business. While startup businesses scale out, you scale up. Wish you best of luck in your pursuits, congrats.

hudibras 13y ago

It'll be interesting to find out the standard startup reaction once he takes on an additional employee and changes "No thanks, I'm a freelancer" to "No thanks, I have my own small business. But give me your card and I'll let you know if something opens up..."

scarecrowbob 13y ago
As a freelance worker, I find this interesting... it seems like a big gap between "I only have to make enough off this to make my time work out for me" and " I have to make enough off this to make a profit off someone else's time". I don' think that the second works out very well for where I am in life, but it seems to be where most of the people I work with find themselves. IME, generally startups aren't looking for agencies, because they have at least enough knowledge to hire individuals rather than agencies or turn-key solutions.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
rwhitman 13y ago
If they have funding, they'll still try to poach you. For some reason people seem to think "consultant" = up for grabs

mikeho1999 13y ago

I wonder if the bias towards or against freelancers is dependent upon your geographic location... Living in the SF Bay Area as someone who regularly bounces back and forth between freelancing and working full-time as a co-founder or lead tech of a startup, I didn't find any difference in attitude or reaction if I said "I'm working at a startup" vs. "I'm a full time freelancer." LOL, in fact, the reaction tended to be either "oh yeah? me too!" or "oh yeah? so is my brother / sister / mother / daughter / father / son / dog / cat / etc." Looking at the OP's footer, looks like he's in NYC... so I wonder if the bias there is a bit different?

rwhitman 13y ago
It is. Been in both markets, and there is definitely a stigma around freelance here in NYC that I never encountered on the west coast.
- rdouble 13y ago
  If anything it's the opposite. NYC has way more freelancers because that is typically how it's been done in agency work.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Totally agree - for me it seems that I can build capital in my business / personal brand as a freelancer that I can't in a job.

smm2000 13y ago

Part of the reason is that most contractors in tech are less qualified than full time employees and will never pass full interview loop.

tjbiddle 13y ago
"Most"? Do you have statistics?
shubb 13y ago
My perception is the opposite - Perm employees, particularly junior ones, are often hired because they can be developed. Whereas, contractors need all the skills to do the job on day one. As a perm employee, I assume contractors are somewhat elite at what they do.
Silhouette 13y ago
I'm guessing you've been downvoted because you didn't back up your claim that "most" contractors are like that. There is an element of truth to what you say, though. Typically with freelance/contract work, there's less of an interview stage. Because the client can let a freelancer go immediately if things aren't working out, there is less risk to taking them on initially, particularly in places like Europe where there tend to be relatively strong protections for employees. Combine that with a level of workers whose effective charging rate is in the same region as the equivalent salaried position, and a lot of people who wouldn't do well in a closely supervised, salaried position can get by as freelancers. Naturally a client who doesn't understand the freelance/contracting market and expects to hire good people at the same rate as they would quote an employee's salary is taking a chance on the quality they get. They might luck out and get someone good but naive from the contracting side, or they might just find someone who isn't very good but gets by because of the lesser supervision. One thing that is almost certain is that the good people will eventually realise they are underpriced and adjust their rates accordingly, while the bad ones won't. Moreover, rates for good people can scale up far more in proportion to the value they actually offer when they're working semi-independently than it would as an employee on salary. In short, if you want to engage a freelancer, you probably will get what you pay for much more directly than if you were hiring someone on salary. And that means if you're offering well under market rates (and if you're hiring at a direct translation of salary, you are) then there's a good chance you're going to work with not-so-good people.

svmegatron 13y ago

"Actually, I run a small agency."

themodelplumber 13y ago

As a freelancer, I really appreciated this article. While I know what a startup is, in my actual working experience, a "startup" is often some variant of "the SaaS thing my best client's worst employee wanted us to switch to last month." Otherwise we'd be using the proper name of the business without any regard for whether they are a startup or a farming collective or a couple of floating brains in a sealed chamber. I have also had experiences where I say "I'm a freelancer" and watch peoples' mouths drop open. They think I'm basically Peter Parker without the Spiderman, living on the cheap without a single concern for the future. The truth is a bit of an improvement on that. I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer, who helps my inner INTJ learn and grow into a better salesman, marketer, team leader, and negotiator. While most of my stuff is building web things for people, I get a variety of work from traditional illustration to music to 3D modeling. I support a wife and three kids, and we take vacations regularly. I'm not wealthy by any stretch, but people who visit my rental say it's pretty big for NorCal and I get to work in a backyard office with a nice skylight. And every one of my big clients has an IT guy who actually trusts me with their web stuff. Having worked in IT in the past, that's a big deal to me. Someday maybe I'll do something different, but I've been freelancing full-time for almost ten years now, and I've never had a bad year or even a hard year. I don't miss free bagels & juice or XM radio and I definitely don't miss anything that looks like it came from the food section of an office supply store. I don't distrust startups, but I have absolutely no reason to be interested in working for one.

wallflower 13y ago
> I pay for monthly consults with a former SV tech executive & INTJ engineer Intrigued. If you don't mind me asking, what does he teach you? That seems like a business idea - successful Myers-Briggs teach others of their same type how to handle their strength and weaknesses - which sounds like what this executive is already doing.
- themodelplumber 13y ago
  >Intrigued. If you don't mind me asking, what does he teach you? The most important one has been "tolerating others and, optimally, succeeding with them" since I can be pretty stubborn and defensive when I meet with, say, a big-E social media consultant. I will typically tell my consultant, "hey, I don't know what type of person this is but I need to figure out how to work with them better." The consultant asks me some questions and nails it pretty quick. The tough part is that he isn't easy on me--he is usually sympathetic to the person in question and tells me how I can get my act together. :-) The next most important has been "homing in on others' needs" as I used to really put my tech blinders on and assume that everyone would want solution X. So, more listening, more following up with surveys, etc. After that, I often ask him, "I need somebody to help me with X" so he'll point out that I'm looking for an ISTJ or whatever it may be. In fact we recently went over this for some troubles I was having, and it turned out the MBTI type I needed was my wife :-) So that problem disappeared pretty quickly. Surprisingly I've told quite a few people about this guy's MBTI skillset, and the fact that he's certified, and they are extremely skeptical to the point of saying, "well I don't believe in that pseudo-scientific stuff, but thanks anyway." I think it's mostly awkward because this guy's an engineer; his dad was an expert on ceramic heat shields, and he's done a LOT of work & research to arrive at something that works. But some people who should know better just don't want to listen.

girvo 13y ago

There's a really easy fix for this. Say you're a Consultant instead

lsc 13y ago

yeah. it's actually a lot easier to get freelance gigs if you act like this is just something you are doing to get your foot in the door (to a full-time job) - If you actually want to freelance (and are willing to give the employer the full benefits of hiring a freelancer... e.g. you don't need to feel bad/be legally afraid when you fire me, I only show up and charge you when you actually need work done, etc...) that is... actually a lot harder to get, from what I've seen, even if you aren't charging a premium (though, the people who do operate as 'real freelancers' do charge a premium.) The whole system, in the mid range, at least, is setup such that freelancing is a funnel to evaluate full-time folks. If you aren't interested in being full-time (or pretending like you are full time) you are in a different (and, from what I've seen, harder to get into) market. It's funny; at the very bottom, you have the $15-$50/hr folks who work as 'real freelancers' - often from mid-america or overseas. I hire out of that pool, as do most small businesses. Then in the mid range, in the $40-$100/hr range, you have the 'body shop' that hires you and rents you to a fortune-1000 company - and, in that case, you generally want to pretend that you are interested in a full-time job, and willing to work as a 'pretend' full time person. (The interesting thing here is that I've worked through that range, and I've been in situations where managers who knew me called me back up, arranged things with me, /then/ had me go through the body shop to be made into a pretend employee who shows up for 8 hours every day, which is a little silly, because I've got a corporation. It's got non-consulting revenue that dwarfs what you are going to pay me.) In my experience, it's super easy to get both those sorts of jobs. Getting a job where you act as a 'real freelancer' in the $50-$100 range? in my experience, is actually kinda difficult. I've gotten a few 'real freelancer' gigs at the $200 mark, but those were pure serendipity. (and... much to my shame and regret, I didn't treat that customer accordingly. I mean, I did my job, but I didn't add that bit of "professionalism" with the follow up and such, so we ended up drifting apart.) actually, I've billed as many hours in the $200 range as a 'real freelancer' as I have at the $60 range, I mean, not counting my time working through body shops. (I've billed... probably almost a year of hours at the mid $70s mark, going through a body shop, pretending to be a 'real employee' - and the body shop, of course, took a cut on top of that, so I think I'm worth money... it's just, they want 'fake employee' and not 'freelancer') Thinking back to those $200/hr gigs, it's possible also that I'm missing a certain skillset. A certain follow up and 'you don't need to worry about it' or something? Possible. My style is very much "here is all the information you could possibly want" - and that's probably not always the best style; many times you hire an expert and want, instead a "here is the best course of action for you" with minimal supporting information. Hm. I wonder if I would be better at that now that I have a lot more experience running a business, and hiring experts that are outside my field (where I want the "This is what you should do" with minimal supporting information.)

noelwelsh 13y ago

That's a lot of extrapolation from a few awkward conversations to reach the conclusion "There’s this stigma in the startup universe around being a contractor, consultant, or freelancer." I have a hard time believing there really is an industry wide stigma against freelancers in NYC. It certainly isn't the case around here. Plenty of startups come from people, like myself, who have run consultancies for a while. A major motivation for me to move out of consultancy is to make money while I'm sleeping. The fact you're selling time is the limiting factor on consultancy/freelancing, and one disadvantage the OP doesn't mention. There's no shortage of socially awkward engineers, so perhaps the OP has just run into a few who don't know what to do when the conversation goes off the script they're expecting?

themodelplumber 13y ago
>A major motivation for me to move out of consultancy is to make money while I'm sleeping. Actually quite a few consultants and freelancers do this. I've been making money while sleeping, as a freelancer, for the last 5 years. It's actually my favorite part of what I do, and I have an advisor who helps me figure it out as I go along. Perhaps a startup is just another vehicle for pursuing this dream that is better suited to you. There really is that annoying "freelancer???" thing, but I think it's really just a matter of the other party's experience & education.
- rwhitman 13y ago
  Curious, what type of advisor?
  - themodelplumber 13y ago
    Business consultant. Former tech exec and JPL engineer. He has a pretty interesting past and I'm lucky to have found him.
    - chatmasta 13y ago
      Do you pay him, or is it more of a mentorship role? I've been thinking about getting an arrangement like this.

esschul 13y ago

At least in Norway, the pay is also about 30% higher without the need of a administration. So there's that too. Instead of saying freelance, say independent contractor.

rwhitman 13y ago

So glad to hear someone articulate this. I'm pretty over people making this assumption that because I'm a consultant I'm just ready to drop all my clients and join their startup. I have a business. I like my business. If you want to do business with me, thats great. Otherwise, don't insinuate that the position you're offering me is a better life for me. I chose my path, and the assertion that I "want more" is insulting. I have good reasons not to pursue what you're offering. Move on.

medell 13y ago

Well said. I echo the thoughts in the article about working on a variety of projects with different types of businesses. I love meeting with clients, understanding their problems, and then getting to see how my work directly saves time or affects the bottom line. I'd probably be doing this even if I didn't get paid.

stdbrouw 13y ago

While I sympathize with the author and faced the same kind of attitude while I was freelancing, it's a simple truth that it's easier for freelancers to change what they're doing and join a startup than it is for most employees. You're already used to weird hours, you like having decision-making power, can wear many different hats, you can deal with a little financial uncertainty, you're not leaving any colleagues hanging and so on. It's a good profile for a startup engineer. Yes, it's presumptuous to think that you can't possibly be a freelancer because you want to be. No, that doesn't mean you should get upset because someone thinks you'd be a open to a recruitment pitch.

k__ 13y ago
If you're an employee, you quit your job and get going. If you're a freelancer, you have to get rid of all of your customers, which is much more troublesome than to just quitting a job.
- random42 13y ago
  It is more than _just_ troublesome. Once you out of "freelancing game" your leads start to dry up and if in future you want to go back to freelance consulting, will have to do all the hard legwork you have already done long back to re-establish yourself.
  - 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
    I disagree completely. If you have been successful freelancing (or consulting) in the past, chances are you are comfortable with running your own show and selling yourself. As such, an experienced freelancer won't be intimidated by the prospect of having to build a new client base. It will require work, but it's not new territory. The person who has always been an employee, on the other hand, is far more likely to find the transition from employee to freelancer to be a challenge. Beyond relationship building and sales, there are a number of skills and traits that one needs to have to be successful as a freelancer and many people who try their hand at it find that they don't have those skills or traits.

csbartus 13y ago

I'm just moving from a startup to freelancing. I founded a local e-commerce company almost 7 years ago which now has its own life with employees and investors. I quit my day job to dedicate myself to bigger challenges like designing beautiful websites which deliver the message. Why? I found more interesting and creative solving new problems. And when I'll have enough international contacts I'll launch another new company. Which is by the way already in research phase. http://newsledge.com http://newsledge.com

teh_klev 13y ago
Imagine my disappointment when I opened that link to discover there were no sledges.
- csbartus 13y ago
  oh ... newssledges is already taken ;)

Flakes000 13y ago

Keeping my job while I do freelancing. I get more money.

div 13y ago
If that's the case, it sounds like you're either not charging enough, or don't have enough work lined up. Striking out on your own means you take on more risk in exchange for a LOT more potential upside.

mcdougle 13y ago

No offense to any startup founders/workers here, but freelancing just sounds more appealing to me -- I'd rather be the boss than the employee, and starting a freelancing business just seems less binary (as in it's either major success or outright failure). I have huge dreams for growing a small freelancing business into a huge international software company, but if it never gets to that point, I should still be very successful with my small freelancing business. And, as the author noted, freelancing allows you to grow your skills and learn new ones just like any business -- because even though it's not a "startup," it is a business!

Supermighty 13y ago

I wonder if he stopped calling himself a freelancer and used a business name that he "worked for" would he stop receiving these kinds of offers. It's all about branding and perception.

orrjacob00 13y ago

I am one of these accidental freelancers. I take on work that seems interesting as it comes to me. I make enough money that it isn't high priority to "have something to work on" at any point in time, and I have a dozen or so of my own side projects, a handful of which make money. In this space, I guess, the point is that you can make a lot of money by being productive -- we're not forced to work 9 to 5 and there's so much opportunity in terms of "stuff left to do" anyone with some business sense can find profitable projects to work on on our own. Work becomes more of an option. It's a really fortunate place to be.