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Ask HN: Freelancing? How's Work?

52 points by samullen ↗ HN
I've been freelance Rails developer for 8 years and have never wanted for work. Over the past six months, however, things seemed to have dried up. And it's not just me. I've spoken with devs in other languages, designers, devops, and writers and everyone's saying the same thing: work's slowing down.

A couple people think it's because companies are more optimistic and are therefore hiring full-time workers instead of contractors.

What do you think? Are you seeing the same downturn?

17 comments

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jasdeepsingh
Doing Ruby/Rails/JS/Nodejs for past 4 years roughly. Things did dried up a bit over the past ~3 months, But I'm sure if I were to do some sales outreach, I'd be able to find work in a couple days. (Good that I have some of my clients on retainer contracts for supporting and maintaining their projects which keeps the bank balance and cashflow stream healthy)

Not too worried about the downtime though, because I always wanted to take a few months off from consulting to build our own product. So, i've been happily utilizing this time to build: https://servicehq.ca

Once we roll out with 3-4 customers, My plan is to do a time split between consulting gigs and my own product.

PS: I'm based in Toronto, Canada.

danielvf
No slow down here, (US South East)
jamesmp98
Curious. What state.
danielvf
Charlotte metro area, which straddles NC and SC.

I'm on the SC side of the line. Less taxes. :)

gk1
I'm not seeing it, but then again I only work with 2-3 companies for months at a time, so I'm less sensitive to minor ups and downs. I also consult on software marketing and not development, so I wonder if there's more demand for consultants in the former than the latter. That would be surprising.

Instead of labeling yourself a Rails developer, could you switch to consulting on business problems? It may be that you use Rails to solve them, but that shouldn't be relevant to the client.

See: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

ruairidhwm
No slow down in Madrid or Edinburgh :)
[deleted]
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glenn_a_allen
I've been doing freelance SAP work since 2005 and there have been ups and downs. A couple of years ago was rock bottom, due to companies afraid to spend and H1B abuse. It's picking up a bit now but after 2015 I'm always a bit nervous.
jespr
How do you go about finding new work?
davidbanham
Things are fine in Sydney, Australia.
erklik
They are horrible over west, in Perth. Everything is basically dried out.
zer00eyz
There is a bit of nervousness in the US market right now...

I talk to a lot of retailers (not job related I just talk a lot) and most of them are lamenting that things are slow right now.

The problem is that there isn't a problem, just the perception of one. If you cut the fat now your saving money for the bad thing that MIGHT happen.