As the article alludes, but maybe doesn't state clearly enough, the most important and only thing that really matters when operating independently is the ability to get and retain clients. If you cannot do this, no amount of skill in other areas matters, and if you can do this, skill in other areas is probably helpful but not critical.
Anything you do that does not directly lead to getting a new client, or getting an existing client to sign up for more work, is wasted effort. Obviously you need to fulfill your obligations to clients (falls under the latter).
I always joke when I am freelancing that actually doing the job is 50% of my time, and the other 90% of my time is sales, marketing, and business development.
To share a failure - back in 2015, I tried to set up as a freelancer and ended up going back to perm/employed work about a year later.
Between subcontracting from established freelancer friends and reaching out to my network I was able to get a few projects, and things were progressing nicely but then my biggest single client had some internal issues and basically didn't pay me for 6 months.
My financial situation going into freelancing was not good - I had some debt going in, and then put some incidental expenses like visiting a customer's city and staying in a (cheap and amazingly nasty) hotel for a few weeks on a credit card. The gap between invoicing the work and getting paid was too much and I realised I needed reliable cash flow.
They say the main reason businesses fail is lack of capital. Turns out starting a business with negative capital is hard. Too hard for me.
Sounds like you had terrible clients. Stuff like this seems to be very common, I had simular problems. The hardest part is to be relentless and judge bad people was wanting and move on to better things.
No, basically I delivered an app, but the engineer on their side got fired so the back end didn't get done. They didn't want to pay me until they rehired and finished the backend so they could see the app working.
Small claims court in most areas has a max cap of dollar amount. Someone owed me $8k. Small claims maxes out at $5k.
IN RETROSPECT... I could possibly have taken them to small claims twice, over two unpaid invoices - each around $4k. That would have kept me under the limit, and possibly sped everything up a lot.
Even dragging them into court for part recovery, is a victory.
Also, if it is a larger corp, even 50 people, small claims court means you are expending far less energy, and funds, than they do.
A corp of even 50 will probably hire a lawyer for advice, and to prep the case, even though the lawyer cannot be in court.
The lawyer may try to hound you, trying to pretend they can compel discovery (again check local small claims laws here!)
Many small claims courts don't even allow recovery costs. Meaning, they just spent $20k, and pulled half a dozen employees into repeated discussions, you spent $100 on filing, and some of your time.
I have so little sympathy for miscreants who have no valid reason to pay, other than the one cited above. Pfft. Need to test it, will take half a year.
Come on! Their incompetence is not a valid reason to place an account in arrears.
I work, you pay, that's that.
(No anger here at all!)
So drag them into small claims, and watch them waste multiples of what they would have originally paid.
It helps to have a financial buffer. When I started freelancing in 2012, I could do so while keeping the unemployment benefits I got for getting fired in the bankruptcy of my last employer (they survived and actually had a healthy business, but they'd made some poor financial decisions driven by a bug in their home-made accounting system). I ended up not really going anywhere that first year, got a few minor gigs, but after a year I got approached by a recruiter for a bigger client, and that took off. I've been doing half-year to year-and-a-half projects for various large client, including a railway company and 4 banks.
But I rely a lot on recruiters finding me on LinkedIn. I hate LinkedIn with its dark patterns, but it's where 90% of my work comes from, so I don't complain too hard.
I bill NET 15 to protect myself, and it's served me well. A fair number of potential clients balk, preferring their usual NET 30 (or even longer), and if they don't come around, I wish them well and walk away from the opportunity.
If funds aren't in my account on the scheduled date (it's printed clearly on invoices), all work (even a tiny commit or Slack message) is suspended for the client. Thankfully this doesn't happen often, and when it does, the client almost always gets with the program thereafter. After two late payments (it's in my contract), I can terminate the engagement as-is, that's to say no wrap-up work of any kind.
This all helps to keep me paid, and just as importantly, improves the quality of my clients.
I abandoned freelancing/moonlighting over collection issues. Including one client that I was basically 40 hours a week who didn't pay for six months, just like OP.
If I ever start again, I hope to be more diligent.
Always worth watching: https://vimeo.com/22053820 featured on Reddit's /u/freelancing, poetic symbolic title F*ck You, Pay Me.
Usually this goes with paying some, but not all. There's always an excuse and they promise to pay more soon.
Most likely it is even a valid excuse. The problem is that the bill runs up over time and you end up deeper and deeper.
These customers tend to be super nice.
I still don't hate the customer that teached me how this works, but I did have to engage a lawyer and that's one thing I never want to go through again.
>The moment a customer does not pay a bill within the specified terms is the moment you must stop working for them.
Be reasonable and communicate. I've had clients tell me in advance they'd be late and had mega corps tell me they are holding all payments until next quarter. . This is really where you have to live with your client being slow pay. When things go sideways, sometimes the right call is to get your work in per the deadline so that when you do end up in court, the whole amount of the bill can be collected, not just the part you turned in.
The big thing is communicate and be reasonable. I've also had clients where I've been able to ask for an advance (and got it) or ask for them to pay earlier. Being flexible set that up (i.e. you were slow last quarter... any chance we can speed up the next milestone payment?)
>This also means that you must invoice regularly.
#1 mistake that most freelancers make is not billing or waiting until "it's worth doing". Have a great system for tracking your hours and deliverables and billing them, as that is all you'll usually need to win any billing dispute.
Yep. Also late fees. I do net 30 with statutory interest (8% plus base rate) which is the maximum on UK B2B invoices. Acts as a nice encouragement and bumps you to the top of the payment pile.
To quote Ray, this is through US colored glasses advice. How would a developer from, let's say, Middle East find good clients? If they only walk and take down notes of business in their area, they will only get jobs that pays according to local wages, none of them would be even $25/h let alone the dream of $150/h like US freelancers.
Yeah, Upwork will "mandate that you keep an app running that randomly takes screenshots of your desktop" but for me, an East European freelancer, was the only way to find clients from US/Canada with which I developed long term relationship.
Perhaps instead of fully vilifying platforms with "Beware of Freelance Platforms, They Are Evil", the author might want to walk a mile in our, less fortunate ones from shitty countries, shoes. My 2 cents.
Eastern European dev here too, chiming in to confirm the validity of this argument in my experience.
> Upwork will "mandate that you keep an app running that randomly takes screenshots of your desktop"
Of course, this feels really intrusive and back in the day i negotiated fixed price contracts on Upwork with clients, though finding good projects on the platform (and not just ones that ask you to fix neglected WordPress installs) also took a lot of effort.
Nonetheless, when studying in University and before having a proper long term job (in this case in a local company due to the stability of it and academic requirements to work in a credentialed company), it was a nice way to help me get some income!
I second that. "Don't go to freelancing platforms, reach out to your network and local companies" is only good advice if you happen to be in the social/geographical/economical environment that has plenty of opportunities. Local market in any of East European countries is far smaller than it is on Upwork, Fiverr et. al. and is highly unlikely to pay first world rates. One may say that freelancing platform encourage race to the bottom kind of dynamics. That is true to some degree, but for the most part that is a problem only if you are doing commodity work and primarily compete on price. There is a relatively obscure sub-economy in the world of freelancing platform with people doing professional services for professional rates even by the standards of the first world.
Honestly it couldn't be easier if you have some degree of skill - register on Toptal.com and the jobs literally flow in ($70p/h + depending on skills) and you don't have to worry about contracts, marketing, management, invoices etc - you literally just do the work.
This was my experience too. After the initial period where recruiters are a bit afraid to give you your first engagement everything starts flowing really smooth.
I started at Upwork and was constantly writing proposals and struggling with the search to find relevant jobs.
But on Toptal, even after an abrupt end of the contract I get something else in less than a week and it's zero effort from me and all effort from the Toptal team.
Even if I get bored and want a change, announcing the end of contract turns on the avalanche of offers from the Toptal team.
It's just insanely smooth and I had no idea I'd find something like that, initially.
The interview process is onerous more than difficult: mostly leetcode style questions that need lots of practice for, plus a basic but time-consuming take-home task.
And for me the scheduling was super difficult: the whole process took weeks, with the only times available at odd hours West Coast US time, and my recruiter flaking and rescheduling once.
Beyond some basic level of coding, it's more a test of patience and time.
Automatically evaluated leet coding session (2 hours) + Live English language check interview (15 mins) + 2 week fake template project + Live coding session (30 mins).
I was fortunate enough to pass everything without additional attempts and had no job at that time. Some of my friends got in after 1 year (after you fail at some step, 2nd attempt is delayed), some never managed to complete the whole process.
Their interview process is well documented (for instance, here https://clevercoder.net/2017/09/04/toptal-passed-interview/). My experience was that it was doable, though you need to brush up your algorithm skills and have luck with the problems you get.
agree, it is easy if you are a good engineer. I usually work with headhunter, they take my CV and arrange interviews with customers. From there is just like applying for a normal job. Key is to have a good CV and perform in the interviews.
Addion: I guess what I'm doing is called "contractor". Working for one client at a time but for multiple months. For me this is more profitable then working for 10 clients at the same time. Between the contracts, you also have time to rest a litte.
What's the things with Toptal ? You need to succeed 3 different technical interviews where one is a one week long project and if you pass all 3, you are not guarantee to have contracts.
I've heard of people not having contracts after succeeding everything.
To me there is no way I will work for one useless algorithm exam, one interview with a Toptal engineer and then one week long project.
> You need to succeed 3 different technical interviews where one is a one week long project and if you pass all 3, you are not guarantee to have contracts.
Sounds like I might as well be doing regular interviews....
Toptal selection is flawed exactly in the same way many tech hiring processes are: they heavily bias against people who are busy enough not to be able to fit 1-3 weeks long unpaid projects into their schedule. Sure, it weeds out incompetent people, but that's not the same as selecting top people.
Hmm, while that’s a random number with no specific skills attacked, $70ph works out ~£412pd which is not very high at least by London standards compared to getting a contract job as a developer.
Would you mind going into your experiences with Toptal more? I’ve been curious about them but it’s hard to tell whether it’s any different from the other freelance sites.
Not OP, but I do about 50% of my freelancing though Toptal (the rest through my network). I see them as having 2 advantages over other sites:
1. Unlike smaller sites and job boards, they have lots of work available. Every couple of days something is posted that aligns perfectly with my skills.
2. Unlike odesk/fiverr/elance they pay market rates. Not FAANG or CTO or IPO rates, but I charge more on Toptal than I ever earned working for Bay Area startups. Plus you get paid net 20; they're on the hook for getting paid from the client.
Everything else about Toptal is frustrating: the byzantine interview process that's irrelevant to the actual work you perform, constant pressure to decrease your rates, the big cut they take, legal restrictions on forming relationships with clients outside Toptal, staff who won't leave you alone during the application process but vanish the second the contract is signed.
I wouldn't want to rely solely on them for freelancing. But they're great when I have a gap in my schedule: I can fill out minimal online applications on Monday, start work by the end of the week, money in the bank by the end of the month.
Could you expand on the restrictions regarding relationships with clients outside Toptal? When I signed the contract, I remember paying attention to this and being pleased to read that you are allowed to work directly with a client after one year from the engagement's end date (which is similar to a clause I had when I was employed for a consulting firm). Are there other restrictions than this?
Guess it depends on where in the world. But for many, $70 per hour wouldn't be that great when all costs are subtracted, down time without billing included etc.
Frankly, Toptal rates are not good enough if you know what you're doing / are a senior. They seem to take way too much. There are lots of agencies, in Europe at least, that specialize in freelancer staffing and take a much lower cut -- depends on an agency of course and how transparent they are, but you should be able to find one taking 10€/h and passing on the rest to you.
Even better is to have direct clients but that's then a lot more time consuming.
> My biggest gripe with freelancing is the conflict of interest between you and your client. On one hand, they want you to work on their project, while on the other, they want to save as much money as possible.
But this is not limited to freelancing - it exists in normal work contracts, too.
If you work full time for a company, you get your paycheck at a regular interval. If you don't get it, you can complain to your accounting department or to the government in severe cases.
If a client decides he's not going to pay you for whatever reason, he can just block you on Slack, email, and everywhere else. Sometimes you can use a contract but good luck executing the clauses when you're on the other side of the planet. Even if you're able to sue, it takes months or years and a massive amount of energy. You might even lose if the other lawyer's able to find any loopholes in your contract.
Personally, I think this is too much for a single person to handle. How are you going to have enough energy left to do actual creative work if you have to deal with all of that? If you decide to start an agency and have your own legal department, then it's another story. There are some agencies who derive the majority of their revenue from legal actions anyway.
Well yeah, but the height of said paycheck, the hours you're expected to put in, other benefits, are all sliders that both the employee and employer will want to min/max.
> You might even lose if the other lawyer's able to find any loopholes in your contract.
Your experience seems very grim. I've been in freelancing for decades and never had such a situation. Even non-paying customers were rare to me, and I only once had to actually sue. You will still loose some money sometimes, mostly due to your own bad estimates and client's bad inputs, but that's a fact one needs to plan ahead when running their own business. Sometimes you'll screw over the client as well - a well paid gig will come over that you don't want to miss and client's project will be put on the back burner. Not nice, but hat's also the part of running a business, knowing your priorities and cutting where needed.
But all in all, I don't think freelancing is in any way significantly different, nor harder than running an agency (or any business) - only that you have to accept that you need to play more than one roles until you can afford to hire people for that. Having 5 to 9 job is easier, but also has its many downsides, so I wouldn't dismiss freelancing without even trying it for a while. If nothing else it's a great way to learn both about technical and financial stuff, because it constantly forces you to figure out how to do and solve new problems, no 2 projects are exactly the same, unlike working in a companies where people spend entire careers maintaining the same piece of in-house code.
I've been in software for >25 years, and independent for ... 15+.
"when you're on the other side of the planet." Don't take that work. It may sound easier said than done, and I remember days when I had no specific projects lined up and no sizeable network to reach out to for referrals/leads. It's not a great feeling, but if you can press through you can get to a point where you're not taking projects from around the planet.
Even understanding that might be hyperbole - I took a project in a different state, and the guy ended up not paying. $8k. This was, to me at the time, a fortune, and needed. I tried to sue, and it took a long time, extra $, and... owing to some problems, was not resolved in my favor, even with facts on my side. I understand the headaches.
I've had one other time where someone in my own town - who came through a personal referral - had a payment bounce, didn't pay on time, and I found out was underpaying others on the project. I was uneasy a week in, but pressed on to not upset the mutual friend we had. Lost out multiple thousands in the end, taking on some other subcontractors with the assurance of payment which didn't happen.
These are hard lessons to learn, but you generally only need to learn them once (or twice...). If you spot a problem ahead of time, walk away, don't engage, or require some up front deposit. Again, easier said than done, but it weeds out a lot of projects ahead of time that. Projects can often be hard enough to be successful with - avoiding some known red flags up front saves a lot of headache.
And... with FTE, you have all your eggs in one basket, and your choice of working relationships is limited. Your earlier comment about 'one word replies'... you get that often with colleagues in FTE situations. At least, I've seen it enough to know it's a potential problem. You have more choice about who you work with in freelance/contract situations than you do in FTE situations (you're moved to team X without any say so, assigned to new projects, etc).
Guilty as charged, and it was an assumption on taking work inside vs outside your legal jurisdiction. I recognize that it may be harder for some (many?) to find good clients/projects closer to home. That said, I run in to folks in the US that have similar issues/complaints (no idea if GP is in US or not), when often there may be better options.
You need to look, and keep looking. I've been doing this since the mid 90s, and the effort it took to network, get exposure and build a brand was, IMO, much harder back then than now. However, there is likely more competition today than... 25+ years ago, so, perhaps it balances out in some way.
I've been through it. Eventually you simply start seeing it as a game where you either win or lose. In 90% of cases, outcome for the client is inverse.
Let's face it: custom software development is a systematic mistake, it shouldn't exist in the imaginary world where all actors are rational and well-informed. Hiring individual developer is fine, as long as you (customer) are technical and can manage him on "assign task in tracker and check and merge resulting PRs" level. If you are not, you get yourself a technical cofounder who will be willing to do it for stock alone (otherwise he will be that party that scams you, passing whatever minimum money necessary down the value chain). In any other situation, you just get ripped.
Contrary, once you figure the art of sales sufficiently (which will amount to weeding out the qualified clients), you will see that however honest and hardworking you are, your projects result in nothing.
Well, of course that hiring a consultant to lead the project for you will cost you more than not paying anything to your co-founder who works for stock only. If you can find a co-founder with both the expertise and will to work just for some hypothetical money on the end of the rainbow, great for you, you should go with it.
And if not, you can always hire a consultant and accept it as a realistic cost of running the business, instead of feeling being ripped off because you could have had it cheaper "only if".
Thing is, anyone working for money and also acting as a gatekeeper at distributing more money will have a conflict of interest impossible to ignore. Especially when the person is from a low-trust society, as facilitated by freelance sites. And, these people are better skilled at negotiation/bullshitting AND can work "cheaper" (or so it seems) so they will always have an upper hand in negotiations vs good ones, unless the client is deeply technical - but in this case, read above, he'll manage devs himself and hire them individually => no potential for a custom software dev company there.
"Autistic" is not an acceptable term to use in a derogatory way, and not fair to the TONS of people on the autism spectrum who work hard to fit in at a predominantly neurotypical workplace.
I don't know if you meant it in that way but your use of that word is very unsavory in this context, and I urge you to be a little more considerate in your use of that word when you finish your search and join a company.
> why should I have to deal with autistic people who can only give 1 word replies to every question?
Well, sorry to burst your bubble but you're already dealing with autistic people in your daily life. Worse, you're being a dick about it. It's a spectrum (or more like an equalizer with many sliders); the ones you describe are low in communicativeness (or low in giving a shit about you), most manage all right. See also: masking.
But yeah tl;dr IT has tons of people on the spectrum; just because you don't notice them means they're good at masking and/or you can't actually tell.
To give parent the most charitable interpretation of their comment, they dislike dealing with antisocial and/or poorly communicating people at work.
Whether that's because the individual is on the spectrum, or because they're a dick who just doesn't care... is a medical diagnosis question.
But there's a reason "reasonable accommodation" exists in disability law. There's a balance to be struck between increasing workplace equality and doing so at the expense of coworkers.
I think everyone who's worked in the industry 5+ years has been on a team or project with someone who "reasonable" probably shouldn't have covered, whatever the underlying diagnosis.
I wouldn't even call it "low in communicativeness".
Because if you ask a question that can be answered in one word, but are expecting more for whatever reasons, that's your own damn fault.
It's like greeting people with "How are you doing?" It's not a real question. No one wants a comprehensive answer to that. So if you actually answer that question, people are going to get annoyed with you.
This style of communication is infuriating to some of those on the spectrum because it involves navigating a byzantine set of rules that are never defined and ever shifting.
Communication should be clear, concise, and honest if you want it to be effective. Don't make the other side work to understand you. If you want to know something, ask for that information. Don't ask a vaguely related question and hope the other side volunteers the information. Because it's just like the "How are you doing?" greeting. Except, we're not supposed to volunteer information there. And sometimes we're not even supposed to volunteer information in those other situations. So when do you expound? You're stuck in a position of trying to read the other person's mind trying to figure out if they really want to know something. It's tiring and infuriating.
GP seems to exhibit lack of social and cultural awareness. Not all but many people on spectrum also lack social and cultural awareness. They have more in common with autistic people than they would like to.
"Deal with autistic people"? What's the difference between you saying something like that and saying you just prefer working with able bodied adults not having to "Deal with parapalegics". Good luck in your future corporate job, I hope its not sitting next to me.
I’m confused at this position that bothersome colleagues who don’t communicate enough can be attributed to a specific diagnosis. People can be all sorts of non communicative just because they don’t believe you’re worth their time, or they’re too busy to answer your questions.
I'm afraid I can imagine what life would be like if I had you as a colleague, and I don't think I'd enjoy it. I'm not that sensitive, but I do think respect is important, and if you can't respect your co-workers, even after having it pointed out politely, I simply don't want you in my team.
If you struggle finding good projects at companies that respect you and your work, maybe this is something you could work on.
> A big problem in this industry is sensitive people like you. ... I can't imagine what life would be like if I had you as a colleague.
Jesus Christ. There's just no need for this level of bile, on Hacker News or anywhere else for that matter.
The funny thing is, I have a lot of sympathy for your original comment. I have worked with the odd coworker or two (hence throwaway) who surely were autistic and were impossible to work with and the two things were certainly connected. It may not be PC but it's true. But stately things plainly doens't need to extend to personal insults, never mind this extreme.
why should I have to deal with autistic people who can only give 1 word replies to every question?
Because tolerance is a valuable thing, and makes your workplace a better, stronger one by allowing safe harbor for alternate viewpoints. I suspect your future employer would not look fondly on your choice of words if you chose to use "autistic" in the same manner in a professional setting.
A big problem in this industry is sensitive people like you
I am proud to be problematic to the industry in general and to you in particular if taking a stand against unacceptable derogatory language is considered "problematic".
Personal attacks will get you banned here. So will taking HN threads further into flamewar. No more of this, please.
Needless to say, using 'autistic' as a slur is also flamebait and therefore against the site guidelines. No more of that, please, either.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. You've broken it badly in this thread.
One that doesn't apply to individuals only based on their birth.
There are plenty of autistic people that do and don't have trouble communicating. Like there are plenty of neurotypical people who do and don't have trouble communicating.
Sure, the percentages are skewed very differently, but it's nowhere near all or nothing.
Different take: Interpreting that comment as being somehow mean and against autistic people is dishonest, judgemental, and frankly evokes a sense of taking advantage of a situation to promote a personal goal.
The discussion is effectively de-railed, the person's comment demeaned and substance distracted from, and here we all are, forced to discuss this topic whereas 100% likely that the person that used the term "autistic" is neither against autistic individuals, isn't going to discriminate against actual autistic individuals, and is a decent human being that hasn't hurt anyone. So what have we accomplished?
The last phrase was sort of a joke and I'm not sure whether I should feel guilty or not.
Anyway, what I've found is that people who speak out against "bad words" are quite toxic. It's obvious that autistic in this sense isn't the clinically diagnosed condition but in that of slang. If I say that you're like a pig, it doesn't mean that you go oink oink. And yet, educated people will take everything you say literally and turn into missionaries.
Reminds me of the time when the church destroyed pretty much every text on Greek philosophy simply because they said that the soul doesn't exist.
Sanctimonious is the word I like to use. Someone tried to defend me once about something stupid and trivial. I told them not to (in so many words). It's definitely patronizing and people shouldn't do it, especially so reflexively. What, 6 people jumped on that bandwagon?
This is sensible, except "pig" can't be taken literally when talking about a human.
> educated people will take everything you say literally and turn into missionaries
On the other hand, "Autistic" can and is taken literally regularly. So it feels pretty disingenuous for you to expect "educated people" to determine and keep track of how YOU specifically use the phrase compared to all the other people in their lives.
And if one of the people reading/hearing what you say IS autistic, their experience of others using the phrase is probably not as light-hearted as yours. There are plenty of people out there who DO mean it literally. So it is entirely up to the person reading/hearing the comment to make that determination.
You want to blast people in a professional setting who can't string together sentences, go for it. But describing them in a way that CAN be taken literally will cause problems.
TL;DR: My suggestion is to stick to "bad words" that people can't be born with.
I think you missed the point, twice. The point is it's also literally true that all the bad managers and colleagues are not autistic. And this is obvious. It's given. Unless you have gone out of your way to deliberately misinterpret it. And op then finds you toxic and presumably doesn't care about your personal issues on the topic.
Just paraphrasing OP as you seemed to miss the points he raised.
ADHD here. I think we're probably the least likely to care. In fact everyone being so sensitive is much worse for me so I would prefer if we all just cared a lot less about feelings so I can go back to giving one word answers to stupid questions.
The GP shouldn't have included that flamebait, but focusing on it just makes the thread worse. That's one reason the site guidelines say:
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
I'm curious what kind of tools do you have for moderating HN?
Like do you have a tool that highlights threads that are racking up tons of posts/downvotes/etc. or something like that? Or is 80% of your day spent reading every thread posted?
What part of these guidelines advises against the use of derogatory speech?
I'll grant that focusing on it was not in the spirit of the HN guidelines. That's on me. However, GP's comment would have been just as unacceptable if it was distinguishing based on race, or gender, or LGBT status. I'm surprised and a bit disappointed that there's no explicit guidelines against derogatory uses of that kind of language.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
Personally, I would say yes, derogatory speech is flamebait, because there will of course be those that criticise it and those that defend it as plain speaking - a classic flame war. It's also (certainly in this case) unrelated, tangential and clearly controversial.
There's also this bit:
> Be kind. ... Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
The clause about "including at the rest of the community" suggests that it also applies to those not in the community.
> Finding the best clients to work with is basically the hardest part IMO
This is why recently I've started curating freelance jobs from many different sources - job boards + LinkedIn + Twitter etc, filtering them and sharing the best leads with freelancers. Started getting huge shoutouts from some web agencies/shops. This is totally free for now and planning to release it as a service [1]
Most of these companies in this list are most likely to hire freelance developers/marketers/writers.
It's still in beta, feel free to reach out/dm me if you would like to access the full document. [2]
What I prefer in freelancing vs full-time employment is that you can time the market, especially if you have a skill that's in-demand.
Companies that have an urgent need for a certain skill will be happy to take you on as a freelancer for higher money, either while they look for permanent staff or if it's just a one-off bet and they're not yet sure whether it's worth getting permanent resource for something that may be discontinued. Get a steady stream of these gigs for a year and you make twice the money you'd make as a permanent (outside FAANG maybe), and if you keep your burn rate low you can also leave the bulk of the money in the company for the next tax year and take advantage of the lower tax brackets which you can't do as a permanent employee.
Regarding the $1/hour MVP, that's just down to where you find your gigs. I recommend getting your gigs either directly via your network, or failing that, via recruiters - yes they take a cut and they might be shit but there's also good ones (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392115) - in my experience good old "brick & mortar" (well, not so much during the pandemic but you see what I mean) recruiters have a barrier to entry that's very effective at keeping "$1/hour millionaire-maker SaaS" at bay, which also helps with regards to getting paid as what's left is typically established businesses within your own country and in reach of the legal system you have access to.
Absolutely do not waste your time on Upwork or similar - that's the bottom of the barrel where $1/hour MVP is commonplace in a self-reinforcing feedback loop, as good talent leaves which means good projects also leave and the only thing remaining is crap - on both sides of the market that is.
Limited companies in most jurisdictions I believe.
In the UK:
Your company pays corporation tax based on profits during the tax year. Whatever money is left can be disbursed to employees, shareholders, etc.
You as an individual pay tax based on your yearly income. There are several tax brackets depending on how much you make, as well as "free" brackets (you don't pay anything on the first ~12k of employment income, and there's an equivalent for dividends but much smaller).
Anything you pay yourself from your company then incurs this individual-level taxation, but since you can choose how much you pay yourself you can only pay the minimum (to stay within "acceptable" tax brackets) and keep the rest in the company for next year or for company-level investments (new hardware, expanding the business, etc). For limited-company contractors, the usual strategy is to pay yourself ~12k/year of salary and the rest is in the form of dividends which you can vary depending on your situation & needs.
Is it complex to manage? Depends on the jurisdiction; some are more evolved than others. In the UK I find it super easy and while I can bitch all day about the amount of tax I'm paying, at least the documentation is quite clear and they make it super easy to manage everything. I do have an accountant but at this point it's mostly for advice and "just in case" than anything else - day to day is handled by FreeAgent and I just have to make sure the data is entered properly and the software takes care of the rest.
If you have a US LLC that's a pass-through (or an S Corp taxed similarly) it's not possible. In the US at least it's only really possible if you're paying corporate and personal income taxes, which for approximately 99% of freelancers will be much more expensive than just paying the taxes in the year you make the money.
> Many developers go freelance thinking that they will be able to do what they love without having to deal with autistic colleagues and managers
Hang on... what is it that makes "having to deal with autistic colleagues and managers" so bad that it's the only example reason you give for going freelance?
My primary reason for going freelance is that I'm in control of my days off. Everytime I'm employed, I worry if I'll have enough vacation days to take two weeks off around Christmas. As a freelancer, I have as many days off as I want. That, and all my compensation being in money, adds up to a lot less bureaucracy for me. (And I have an accountant do my taxes for me.)
> without having to deal with autistic colleagues and managers
Every client is a manager, but often they don't have those skills (and... they probably shouldn't have to). So, either you need to become a manager, convince them to, or bring someone else on to do it and ... you'll end up with a small team of folks. Bam - you now have to deal with a variety of communication styles.
Try dealing with a client who wants integration with a third party system, then tells you the data is wrong based on data they see in their own internal tool that they won't give you access to ("you might screw it up"). "The customer is always right..." except when they're not.
> they want you to work on their project, while on the other, they want to save as much money as possible.
So... don't charge hourly? Or time-based? Flat rate problem/project estimation is another way to go, but ... I've found many clients don't actually want to think that way, because you end up having to say 'no' to almost any change in the scope of an engagement. And you end up spending almost as much time trying to scope out changes and agree to new terms as you would just working on the problem.
There's a lot of chaff at the bottom of the market. I encourage everybody to avoid that segment.
I've been freelancing for 9 years (with a 1-year interruption last year as a regular employee, but I managed to escape that), starting with small projects for small customers, but very quickly moving on to larger projects for larger customers that pay better. My second client (a 4-person company) stiffed me for about $600, which lead me to avoid such small companies, and I've never had any payment problems since moving on to bigger clients.
There's usually a recruiter in between, which partly sucks, because they have their own margin, but I can imagine it may also have played a role in making my payment more reliable. Those recruiters also find my projects for me, so I barely do any acquisition of my own. I guess I could do more, but this works well enough for me.
(I have no problem working with autistic people; I come from a family that's probably riddled with high-functioning autists (though only one was ever diagnosed), and at work I've noticed I'm pretty good at translating for people who struggle to express their technical ideas.)
Same here, I've been billing clients for consulting work for 7 years now, the only person who refused to pay was my 2nd or 3rd client for a $200 job lol.
I'm very interested in how you've used recruiters to help source freelance work. The ones I've spoken to are either uninterested in doing it (90% or so?) or just have the same poorly run companies as your second client.
I don't understand why a recruiter would talk to a freelancer and yet not be interested in sourcing freelance work? What is that recruiter doing?
What I do is quite simple: make sure my CV is on LinkedIn and similar places, make sure it ends up in the databases of recruitment agencies. Then, when they see a freelance opportunity for which they think I'd be a good fit, they call or mail me, and if I'm available, we discuss it, and if I'm interested, they send my CV to the client. If the client is interested, I talk to the client. If we agree, I sign a contract with the recruiter, they sign a contract with the client, and I work for the client but bill my hours to the recruiter. Recruiter gets their cut.
I could probably cut out the recruiter's margin if I was able and willing to do their work, but that's a lot of work, and I'd rather focus on programming.
> having to deal with autistic colleagues and managers
The discussion around using "autistic" as slang for someone with communication problems is a problem because it can be taken literally or as slang. And without knowing you, I can't be sure which way you meant it, especially in an industry where there are MANY autistic people.
So my suggestion is to avoid "bad words" that can be taken literally because without knowing you personally, I can't be SURE how you MEANT it. And my experiences with people throwing around "autistic" could be SIGNIFICANTLY less light-hearted than yours.
TL;DR: My suggestion is to stick to "bad words" that people can't be born with.
You're selling a product (service.) You need to market the product.
You also need to handle administration of the business or outsource those tasks.
Regardless of who is putting in this effort, your business needs to pay for it (your time or the time someone else puts into it.)
Add to that, self-employment taxes, insurance, sick leave, vacation leave, equipment, office, utilities, etc. Anything you aren't charging for, you're subsidizing.
That's ABC stuff.
I don't like the word freelancing, because people take the label with a bunch of assumptions, which may not be correct. The language "the most important thing" is also troublesome because it may put you in the wrong frame.
The reality is that running a business is a common complex thing. It's like relationships, many people are in them, but being such a common part of life doesn't make them easier to figure out. Society gives you basic scaffolding, which you need to use or not use as basic building blocks. Come to the problem with an empty cup and start building from scratch. And then it still isn't easy, as many people get caught up in details which isn't necessarily giving back the same return on the end result. My heuristic is to start with the envisioned end-result, work backwards and then build a plan going forwards again. The entire time, you have an eye on that end-result and asking if what you are doing is serving that end-point. And then, as Tyson said, "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." But a plan is better than no plan.
There's no "the most important thing." It's more complex than that. You have to approach a complex problem with agility to shift frames. Be creative. Be curious. Ask questions. Do research. Answer the questions. Every article about "this is how you do <insert complex thing> is missing massive amounts of detail.
Also note, there is a goldmine of articles on making money on building software in HN. Do a search. If you stop at this thread, you're seriously missing out.
ETA: This is more about the mindset than the nuts and bolts. There are tons of golden posts here on the nuts and bolts. Do a search and see what pops up with the most votes and comments.
Not OP but everything that is not written is scary.
Suddenly you have someone telling you what you told them and starts wondering: did I really promise that?
(Written doesn't prevent people from trying that trick, as one particulariy brilliant but not very pleasant guy tried to tell me: "yes, <my name> that is what you wrote [in the mail] but not what you meant." However, in these cases I have a written record and I am confindent with myselves and that nasty person can bugger off.)
Not saying one should never talk to people on the phone but when one are stressed out and stretched out thin it is not high on my wishlist.
I hate phones as well but I've developed myself a ritual for alleviating th burden of anxiety-causing calls. Maybe this helps someone else as well:
1. Take pen and paper
2. Write a brief script how to start the call. Just sufficient amount of notes that you have a clear and concise agenda
3. During call take notes
4. If you don't understand something, repeat for the other party what they've said. Not in a way that it can be understood you agree with them as this can become a really problem with business dicussions, but using phrasing as "Can I repeat what you said so I am clear on this. According to you..."
5. At the end of the call, if there are topics that should be handled by you or the other party, review what was agreed topic by topic.
I generally find people appreciate this structured approach in calls. At least it reduces most of the anxiety from my part to minimum.
Depending on your local laws, it might be legal to record calls. Do so and then after the call listen to it again and take notes - that'll allow you to track what's been said.
This prompted me to finally look at Australian law on the point. It varies by state: some allow you to record if you’re a party to the conversation, others require consent or similar, but all of the latter have an exception for if you’re protecting the lawful interests of one party, which sounds to me like blanket permission to record.
Kinda like how snakes are protected in Australia and it’s illegal to kill them unless you or your family or such are in immediate danger from a snake, which basically means if you see a snake you can kill it.
"Hey XYZ, it was such a pleasure speaking with you today. I'm going to shoot ya an email in a bit just to follow-up with everything we discussed. Have a great day!"
Or - if that scares you still - just shoot them an email anyway to follow-up and recap without preluding. It gives them the opportunity to change/add/whatever in-text, and they can't say you said something differently because you can point to the email and say - no, we said this (And you didn't correct me).
Skip the conversation over phone/skype, and it will work even better. Worked fine for me for 20 years (since 1998), until Covid, when Zoom become the new norm.
What you do is write notes (or use the meeting transcription) and after the meeting send the important points around in an email as minutes of the meeting.
That way you still have a written record to refer to.
It’s not easy to explain. I have to talk to someone. Maybe it’s someone I know, someone I talk to every week at church, but… this is by phone. It’s different. I know I have to make a phone call today or tomorrow, but I know I can’t ring now because he’ll be out on the farm, and if I ring now I’ll probably interrupt their evening meal or their family Bible readings, and now it’s too late, and now he might be at work, and… oh. I was supposed to call him the day before yesterday. Oops.
I want to drop my car off for a service in Ballarat when I head down to Melbourne later this week, but that takes ringing them to make a booking. I should have done this in the middle of last week, when I planned to go down. All it takes is ringing their number, saying “can I book my car in for a service, drop off on the 13ᵗʰ or 14ᵗʰ, collection on the 15ᵗʰ”. For some reason that I can’t express, I haven’t made that phone call, and it’s probably too late now. I guess that DPF light will just continue flashing for a while longer.
I could go on and on. It’s quite ridiculous how much trouble I have caused myself (and others, sometimes) just because I don’t like making phone calls. I’ve delayed things that would benefit me for years in a couple of cases. Receiving phone calls isn’t my favourite, either. I’m not crash hot with email or letters either, but phones and text messages are significantly worse.
Phone call quality used to be fairly terrible, and I think that helped make it more of an ordeal too. That excuse is mostly gone now.
If you don’t mind, or like, phones, you might be surprised just how many people are quite averse to making phone calls, some to the point of hating it with the passion of perhaps not a thousand suns, but at least a brown dwarf or two. Five or six of my seven siblings are in much the same boat as me, and my parents don’t like phones either. A couple of my siblings, and multiple other people I’ve talked with, find they more or less forget what they were going to talk about as soon as the call connects, and so it becomes an ordeal where they have to write a detailed list of what they want to talk about before dialing, or else their mind is just blank.
But there is yet hope for me: I’m setting myself up as the local IT guy in my rural area, in significant part to force myself to deal with people more. Computers are easy, they do what I tell them to do, and I’m even pretty good at telling them the right thing to do; but people are what actually matter in life. I’m waiting for the return of Jesus and the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth, and I don’t think we’ll need software then. Well, a bloke rang me yesterday, I answered, and today I did my first job, and even got paid straight away.
I have done freelancing for many years but I prefer FT job over it. The reason is piece of mind. You don't have to worry about your financials. Running a business or SAAS business is also better
If anyone has any questions about anything let me know. The post is meant to be a getting started guide. Beyond answering questions here I'd be happy to follow up with additional posts about specific topics if there's interest.
There's so many deciding factors that go into this. There's timing, you, them, the situation, etc.. It could be a specific percent today and a different percent 2 weeks from now.
I never really payed attention to quantifying these types of stats because I think as an individual your sample size is going to be too small to get meaningful data out of it. In my mind it's always a numbers game where the only thing that matters is if I land a gig or not.
I tweak things based on individual calls and kind of use my gut to guide me. It's not the most scientific thing but I don't think personal sales with a small'ish sample size is going to be purely scientific. So much of it is dependent on reading the other person in real-time and adjusting as you go.
When in doubt honesty and less "hard sale" tactics have worked well.
It's dependent on the business and project / contract.
Anywhere from $100 to $200 an hour generally but I don't always stick to that.
There's a lot of things to think about. For example having a relationship with a high value trades person (plumber, doctor, lawyer, etc.) has an immense amount of long term value. That doesn't mean you need to drastically cut your rates, but it's something to think about when evaluating how much to charge.
For smaller more common local businesses where it's mostly trading time for money (as opposed to raw materials), I don't mind cutting rates by a lot because it's mutually beneficial for both of us. For example, if a haircutter wants a basic site, instead of charging them $500 to throw up a WP site in a day I might offer to do the site for something substantially less (let's say $150).
I won't bring it up directly that I'm cutting them a massive deal but if you word it around how you want to help a local business and you generally like the person they'll often offer you a deal on their end like free haircuts for life. To me that's more beneficial than a few hundred bucks up front. Not just from a greedy position of expecting something better later, but I've found having a wider network of friends or contacts proves to be useful time and time again.
This is generally good advice, but there is a caveat to the point about networking: it dilutes you. selling out is a real thing, I've found, and the more you care about others and their whims the less of yourself will be left in the work. This is fine if you work in marketing, for example, where your job is to sell someone or something else, but if you're a product person, be careful.
If you are a product person, i recommend slowing down, think about stuff and dedicate yourself to the parts of your work and the relationships you find meaningful. It pays less, at least in the short term, but it is quite nice to feel true to yourself.
I started a freelancing business in 2017 that ultimately involved me freelancing and cutting my teeth. Stuck with it and after a long struggle finally broke through. Some things I've learned:
- Passive marketing just won't work early on. That means spending time on your website, buying Google Ads etc will likely only be dead-ends until you've established yourself. (The exception might be writing niche content about some industry if you happen to know one well).
- I've used all of the freelancing platforms- Toptal, Upwork etc. You can make good money but you probably won't grow your business. Your objective if you're trying to grow a business is to scale up, and these platforms mandate that you're the one who has to do the work. I know there are Upwork firms, but I think they're worthless. Oh and Thumbtack is a scam.
- The Meetup angle didn't necessarily work for me, but I've learned that going to non-developer meetups are more fruitful, if you're willing to learn about an industry.
- The low hanging fruit in 2022 for finding clients is probably investing 15 minutes a day into building a Linkedin network (trivial and you don't need to pick up a phone :)). That means growing your connections, and learning to search for people looking for a developer for X, Y, Z, filtering out full-time hires etc.
- Actually the lowest hanging fruit is referral business, so when you get your first clients do a great job and send them emails every few months reminding them to put you in touch with anyone they know.
- When a client asks you to do something extra always say no. Always. If they're a great client, do something extra that they didn't ask for. This sounds insane, but the second you do submit to doing an extra request, a client will subconsciously discount your work and time and take it for granted. It almost never wins kudos, almost always wins more requests. I've seen this happen 35+ times. When you do something they didn't ask for, they tend to be more appreciative and touched.
- The following are essential business processes you should set up if you want to grow: task management (Github issues for me, make sure to adopt a task format with predictable attributes whatever you use), communication (Slack, invite my clients to a dedicated channel), CRM (I use Hubspot which is free for just CRM), and a project cycle.
- By project cycle I mean a contract where you're cash-flow positive, i.e. charge hourly deposits up front as much as possible, as well as defined expectations. What happens when the project finishes? How do you prevent scope creep?
- PayPal invoices are nice but they were my biggest expense, 3% of my revenue! Do ACH if possible, or Wire Transfer if the fixed fee is less than the PayPal cost. I even set up a consulting business for invoicing just because this is such a big issue [1]. But don't optimize this until it's worthwhile.
Feel free to get in touch if anyone needs any help getting established. My email is my HN username +3@gmail.com
Actually at what point does one become not freelance but a studio? I find people/company treat you at a spectrum of seriousness, payment dueness in particular, between "freelance" and studio. Is it a business registration, team size, or mentality? Otherwise I would suggest not to use the term freelance but to start your own studio house instead.
This seems like a good idea. Present yourself as a business, and don't make it obvious you're a one man show (I'm not saying lie, I'm just saying watch how you present yourself).
Part of this is in the way you present - do you have a business structure, do you use all the right terminology and language? I personally say I am a small business and rely on the funds coming in, and cannot afford to loan money to a large business then get into a position where a large amount of money is outstanding. The payment terms are part of my negotiation before I sign the contract, and go on the contract. This includes politely informing that I stop work if the owed balance gets to the size I specify, typically two weeks fulltime.
Having got agreement at the executive level, it often gets tried on anyway, but the very first day it's late I start letting people know, and consuming their time, and reiterating reasons why its setup to pay. I follow the chain of people to get actual contact to the accounts paying person and build a personal relationship with them, as an individual they have a commitment to paying rather than just another bill on the stack. An individual who will ring them for a person plea, plus consume their time, if they don't pay as agreed.
This reminds them it's an issue and that my work continuing relies on them paying, as they agreed. I do this politely, but clearly, and conscientiously. I find this significantly increases my chances of getting paid properly.
The critical time for this is when the first, and perhaps second bills are paid. Once they are trained that yours is a bill to to pay without games, it tends to become smooth sailing.
Also, in the case where it is delayed - stop working. This is critical. If you work when they are not paying as agreed you're undermining your main leverage and will possibly have big problems.
Be polite, always, yet clear and firm about the agreements made, and be ready to walk away and find new work if necessary. Usually late payments will be resolved in days to a week and if it's taking longer then put your effort to finding new work.
I was a freelance/contract developer for 2 years, went back to full time. And I had a golden ticket (a company had full time amount of work avail, I only did and billed for 20h/wk, paid every other week).
Now that almost all dev work is going to be remote friendly, The only advantage to freelancing that I can see is the flexibility to work less than 40 hour weeks, or take more time off than vacation time you're allotted.
That freedom is purchased with a lot of stress and uncertainty, and may not actually result in that much freedom if you're semi-actively always looking for leads.
Ultimately I found the type of work companies go to freelancers for is terribly uninteresting most of the time.
> Now that almost all dev work is going to be remote friendly, The only advantage to freelancing that I can see is the flexibility to work less than 40 hour weeks, or take more time off than vacation time you're allotted.
Oh, there's a few more reasons: taxes (paid in arrears, after expenses), carry your own insurance/benefits (can work really well if you are young & healthy), business can own property, corporate veil, separate business finance from personal, have more than one client, etc...
> Ultimately I found the type of work companies go to freelancers for is terribly uninteresting most of the time.
Health insurance is not pro. At a big four I am paying ~$50/month for great health insurance, freelancing it was 650 from Covered California and involved repeated heated calls to every party involved.
> Health insurance is not pro. At a big four I am paying ~$50/month for great health insurance,
Most employers aren't passing through the whole premium. With my current company, we're covering 85% of the premium for our employees, so they see some token amount out of their paychecks, but the actual premium is a lot bigger than $50/month.
It's hard to beat HC insurance from a big employer. When you have to buy your own, it can work out as you usually can get a higher hourly rate than an employee by 25-30%. You also avoid double deductibles when your employer changes the plan changes mid-year. You also avoid COBRA if you quit or are fired.
You can go further and say there is little to no advantage in freelancing. A lot of remote dev work isn’t even 40/hrs a week of constant work. You can pick a low stress job working from home and still make six figures, more than most freelancers with far less stress.
I’ve given up on ever pursuing freelancing because I realized I actually didn’t want to be self-employed, I just wanted to work from home and be in control of my time.
Even then, I've found setting boundaries can actually help with promotions. Making it clear that your time is valuable to you can help force others to value your time. As long as you're spending the rest of your time on the right stuff (80/20 rule totally applies), you can have stellar performance AND a 40 (or effectively less) hour work week.
There’s plenty of jobs that are just heads down coding, cranking out tickets and attending a couple zoom meetings a week. Once you find such a job, just stick to it. Don’t go getting promoted to some higher position where you have to endure more meetings or become responsible for more things and have a bunch of people depending on you.
When you want more income, pick up a second job that is also similar. You should easily clear a quarter million dollars or more a year this way, and all you’re doing is writing code and going to some meetings. Easy.
In Europe freelancing is still the main way for a proper paycheck. The salaries have been rising so we'll see if the situation changes, but for now the six-figure jobs are still somewhat elusive outside freelancing.
> I realized I actually didn’t want to be self-employed
Good for you. I spend a lot of time on /r/freelance and I've identified this as the main reason most freelancers have trouble and just flat out don't like it. They really just don't like running a small business. It's essentially impossible to thrive as a freelancer unless you accept (actually embrace!) this.
> The only advantage to freelancing that I can see is the flexibility to work less than 40 hour weeks, or take more time off than vacation time you're allotted.
I've been doing contract work exclusively for the past 9 years now and this is exactly why I continue with contract arrangements. If I could find a "permanent" position with flexibility like this I would likely consider transitioning away from contract work.
Has anyone had luck approaching strangers at Meetup.com meetups, as the TFA recommends? My experience has been that people mostly go to meetups with friends, to talk to their friends, and are generally averse to talking to complete strangers without some strong pre-existing connection (former classmate, colleague of spouse, etc.). I went to a few dozen tech meetups in South Bay with nothing really to show for it.
165 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 255 ms ] threadAnything you do that does not directly lead to getting a new client, or getting an existing client to sign up for more work, is wasted effort. Obviously you need to fulfill your obligations to clients (falls under the latter).
I always joke when I am freelancing that actually doing the job is 50% of my time, and the other 90% of my time is sales, marketing, and business development.
Between subcontracting from established freelancer friends and reaching out to my network I was able to get a few projects, and things were progressing nicely but then my biggest single client had some internal issues and basically didn't pay me for 6 months.
My financial situation going into freelancing was not good - I had some debt going in, and then put some incidental expenses like visiting a customer's city and staying in a (cheap and amazingly nasty) hotel for a few weeks on a credit card. The gap between invoicing the work and getting paid was too much and I realised I needed reliable cash flow.
They say the main reason businesses fail is lack of capital. Turns out starting a business with negative capital is hard. Too hard for me.
In most places, no lawyers are allowed, and no discovery. Filing is cheap typically.
Discovery is vital to keep nonsense costs down.
If anyone is thinking of going into consulting:
- simple, plainly worded contracts with pay schedules are important
- check your local small claims court, focus on if lawyers are allowed, if discovery is allowed
- find out what your local demand letter laws are like. A demand letter may be required prior to small claims court.
IN RETROSPECT... I could possibly have taken them to small claims twice, over two unpaid invoices - each around $4k. That would have kept me under the limit, and possibly sped everything up a lot.
Also, if it is a larger corp, even 50 people, small claims court means you are expending far less energy, and funds, than they do.
A corp of even 50 will probably hire a lawyer for advice, and to prep the case, even though the lawyer cannot be in court. The lawyer may try to hound you, trying to pretend they can compel discovery (again check local small claims laws here!)
Many small claims courts don't even allow recovery costs. Meaning, they just spent $20k, and pulled half a dozen employees into repeated discussions, you spent $100 on filing, and some of your time.
I have so little sympathy for miscreants who have no valid reason to pay, other than the one cited above. Pfft. Need to test it, will take half a year.
Come on! Their incompetence is not a valid reason to place an account in arrears.
I work, you pay, that's that.
(No anger here at all!)
So drag them into small claims, and watch them waste multiples of what they would have originally paid.
He has an example where the same thing happened, an entire department got laid off.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U
But I rely a lot on recruiters finding me on LinkedIn. I hate LinkedIn with its dark patterns, but it's where 90% of my work comes from, so I don't complain too hard.
This also means that you must invoice regularly.
Learned that the hard way.
If funds aren't in my account on the scheduled date (it's printed clearly on invoices), all work (even a tiny commit or Slack message) is suspended for the client. Thankfully this doesn't happen often, and when it does, the client almost always gets with the program thereafter. After two late payments (it's in my contract), I can terminate the engagement as-is, that's to say no wrap-up work of any kind.
This all helps to keep me paid, and just as importantly, improves the quality of my clients.
If I ever start again, I hope to be more diligent.
Always worth watching: https://vimeo.com/22053820 featured on Reddit's /u/freelancing, poetic symbolic title F*ck You, Pay Me.
If you are freelancing, watch it once a week.
Most likely it is even a valid excuse. The problem is that the bill runs up over time and you end up deeper and deeper.
These customers tend to be super nice. I still don't hate the customer that teached me how this works, but I did have to engage a lawyer and that's one thing I never want to go through again.
I was naive and just starting out then. Today I would never put up with something like that.
Be reasonable and communicate. I've had clients tell me in advance they'd be late and had mega corps tell me they are holding all payments until next quarter. . This is really where you have to live with your client being slow pay. When things go sideways, sometimes the right call is to get your work in per the deadline so that when you do end up in court, the whole amount of the bill can be collected, not just the part you turned in.
The big thing is communicate and be reasonable. I've also had clients where I've been able to ask for an advance (and got it) or ask for them to pay earlier. Being flexible set that up (i.e. you were slow last quarter... any chance we can speed up the next milestone payment?)
>This also means that you must invoice regularly.
#1 mistake that most freelancers make is not billing or waiting until "it's worth doing". Have a great system for tracking your hours and deliverables and billing them, as that is all you'll usually need to win any billing dispute.
They pre-approve the bill / contract and pay you (minus a fee) and deal with your client themselves.
Yeah, Upwork will "mandate that you keep an app running that randomly takes screenshots of your desktop" but for me, an East European freelancer, was the only way to find clients from US/Canada with which I developed long term relationship.
Perhaps instead of fully vilifying platforms with "Beware of Freelance Platforms, They Are Evil", the author might want to walk a mile in our, less fortunate ones from shitty countries, shoes. My 2 cents.
> Upwork will "mandate that you keep an app running that randomly takes screenshots of your desktop"
Of course, this feels really intrusive and back in the day i negotiated fixed price contracts on Upwork with clients, though finding good projects on the platform (and not just ones that ask you to fix neglected WordPress installs) also took a lot of effort.
Nonetheless, when studying in University and before having a proper long term job (in this case in a local company due to the stability of it and academic requirements to work in a credentialed company), it was a nice way to help me get some income!
I started at Upwork and was constantly writing proposals and struggling with the search to find relevant jobs.
But on Toptal, even after an abrupt end of the contract I get something else in less than a week and it's zero effort from me and all effort from the Toptal team.
Even if I get bored and want a change, announcing the end of contract turns on the avalanche of offers from the Toptal team.
It's just insanely smooth and I had no idea I'd find something like that, initially.
And for me the scheduling was super difficult: the whole process took weeks, with the only times available at odd hours West Coast US time, and my recruiter flaking and rescheduling once.
Beyond some basic level of coding, it's more a test of patience and time.
I was fortunate enough to pass everything without additional attempts and had no job at that time. Some of my friends got in after 1 year (after you fail at some step, 2nd attempt is delayed), some never managed to complete the whole process.
Having a serious side project in your CV helps. For me its https://www.monsterwriter.app/
I've heard of people not having contracts after succeeding everything.
To me there is no way I will work for one useless algorithm exam, one interview with a Toptal engineer and then one week long project.
Sounds like I might as well be doing regular interviews....
1. Unlike smaller sites and job boards, they have lots of work available. Every couple of days something is posted that aligns perfectly with my skills.
2. Unlike odesk/fiverr/elance they pay market rates. Not FAANG or CTO or IPO rates, but I charge more on Toptal than I ever earned working for Bay Area startups. Plus you get paid net 20; they're on the hook for getting paid from the client.
Everything else about Toptal is frustrating: the byzantine interview process that's irrelevant to the actual work you perform, constant pressure to decrease your rates, the big cut they take, legal restrictions on forming relationships with clients outside Toptal, staff who won't leave you alone during the application process but vanish the second the contract is signed.
I wouldn't want to rely solely on them for freelancing. But they're great when I have a gap in my schedule: I can fill out minimal online applications on Monday, start work by the end of the week, money in the bank by the end of the month.
Even better is to have direct clients but that's then a lot more time consuming.
But this is not limited to freelancing - it exists in normal work contracts, too.
If a client decides he's not going to pay you for whatever reason, he can just block you on Slack, email, and everywhere else. Sometimes you can use a contract but good luck executing the clauses when you're on the other side of the planet. Even if you're able to sue, it takes months or years and a massive amount of energy. You might even lose if the other lawyer's able to find any loopholes in your contract.
Personally, I think this is too much for a single person to handle. How are you going to have enough energy left to do actual creative work if you have to deal with all of that? If you decide to start an agency and have your own legal department, then it's another story. There are some agencies who derive the majority of their revenue from legal actions anyway.
Your experience seems very grim. I've been in freelancing for decades and never had such a situation. Even non-paying customers were rare to me, and I only once had to actually sue. You will still loose some money sometimes, mostly due to your own bad estimates and client's bad inputs, but that's a fact one needs to plan ahead when running their own business. Sometimes you'll screw over the client as well - a well paid gig will come over that you don't want to miss and client's project will be put on the back burner. Not nice, but hat's also the part of running a business, knowing your priorities and cutting where needed.
But all in all, I don't think freelancing is in any way significantly different, nor harder than running an agency (or any business) - only that you have to accept that you need to play more than one roles until you can afford to hire people for that. Having 5 to 9 job is easier, but also has its many downsides, so I wouldn't dismiss freelancing without even trying it for a while. If nothing else it's a great way to learn both about technical and financial stuff, because it constantly forces you to figure out how to do and solve new problems, no 2 projects are exactly the same, unlike working in a companies where people spend entire careers maintaining the same piece of in-house code.
"when you're on the other side of the planet." Don't take that work. It may sound easier said than done, and I remember days when I had no specific projects lined up and no sizeable network to reach out to for referrals/leads. It's not a great feeling, but if you can press through you can get to a point where you're not taking projects from around the planet.
Even understanding that might be hyperbole - I took a project in a different state, and the guy ended up not paying. $8k. This was, to me at the time, a fortune, and needed. I tried to sue, and it took a long time, extra $, and... owing to some problems, was not resolved in my favor, even with facts on my side. I understand the headaches.
I've had one other time where someone in my own town - who came through a personal referral - had a payment bounce, didn't pay on time, and I found out was underpaying others on the project. I was uneasy a week in, but pressed on to not upset the mutual friend we had. Lost out multiple thousands in the end, taking on some other subcontractors with the assurance of payment which didn't happen.
These are hard lessons to learn, but you generally only need to learn them once (or twice...). If you spot a problem ahead of time, walk away, don't engage, or require some up front deposit. Again, easier said than done, but it weeds out a lot of projects ahead of time that. Projects can often be hard enough to be successful with - avoiding some known red flags up front saves a lot of headache.
And... with FTE, you have all your eggs in one basket, and your choice of working relationships is limited. Your earlier comment about 'one word replies'... you get that often with colleagues in FTE situations. At least, I've seen it enough to know it's a potential problem. You have more choice about who you work with in freelance/contract situations than you do in FTE situations (you're moved to team X without any say so, assigned to new projects, etc).
I have a suspicion that you live on a highly compensated side of the planet.
You need to look, and keep looking. I've been doing this since the mid 90s, and the effort it took to network, get exposure and build a brand was, IMO, much harder back then than now. However, there is likely more competition today than... 25+ years ago, so, perhaps it balances out in some way.
Let's face it: custom software development is a systematic mistake, it shouldn't exist in the imaginary world where all actors are rational and well-informed. Hiring individual developer is fine, as long as you (customer) are technical and can manage him on "assign task in tracker and check and merge resulting PRs" level. If you are not, you get yourself a technical cofounder who will be willing to do it for stock alone (otherwise he will be that party that scams you, passing whatever minimum money necessary down the value chain). In any other situation, you just get ripped.
Contrary, once you figure the art of sales sufficiently (which will amount to weeding out the qualified clients), you will see that however honest and hardworking you are, your projects result in nothing.
And if not, you can always hire a consultant and accept it as a realistic cost of running the business, instead of feeling being ripped off because you could have had it cheaper "only if".
"Autistic" is not an acceptable term to use in a derogatory way, and not fair to the TONS of people on the autism spectrum who work hard to fit in at a predominantly neurotypical workplace.
I don't know if you meant it in that way but your use of that word is very unsavory in this context, and I urge you to be a little more considerate in your use of that word when you finish your search and join a company.
Well, sorry to burst your bubble but you're already dealing with autistic people in your daily life. Worse, you're being a dick about it. It's a spectrum (or more like an equalizer with many sliders); the ones you describe are low in communicativeness (or low in giving a shit about you), most manage all right. See also: masking.
But yeah tl;dr IT has tons of people on the spectrum; just because you don't notice them means they're good at masking and/or you can't actually tell.
Whether that's because the individual is on the spectrum, or because they're a dick who just doesn't care... is a medical diagnosis question.
But there's a reason "reasonable accommodation" exists in disability law. There's a balance to be struck between increasing workplace equality and doing so at the expense of coworkers.
I think everyone who's worked in the industry 5+ years has been on a team or project with someone who "reasonable" probably shouldn't have covered, whatever the underlying diagnosis.
I understand this, but I also strongly oppose the fact that OP equated "autistic" and "antisocial and/or poorly communicating".
That is an incorrect and harmful generalization towards people on the autism spectrum.
Because if you ask a question that can be answered in one word, but are expecting more for whatever reasons, that's your own damn fault.
It's like greeting people with "How are you doing?" It's not a real question. No one wants a comprehensive answer to that. So if you actually answer that question, people are going to get annoyed with you.
This style of communication is infuriating to some of those on the spectrum because it involves navigating a byzantine set of rules that are never defined and ever shifting.
Communication should be clear, concise, and honest if you want it to be effective. Don't make the other side work to understand you. If you want to know something, ask for that information. Don't ask a vaguely related question and hope the other side volunteers the information. Because it's just like the "How are you doing?" greeting. Except, we're not supposed to volunteer information there. And sometimes we're not even supposed to volunteer information in those other situations. So when do you expound? You're stuck in a position of trying to read the other person's mind trying to figure out if they really want to know something. It's tiring and infuriating.
Why should anyone else have to deal with people like you?
If you struggle finding good projects at companies that respect you and your work, maybe this is something you could work on.
Jesus Christ. There's just no need for this level of bile, on Hacker News or anywhere else for that matter.
The funny thing is, I have a lot of sympathy for your original comment. I have worked with the odd coworker or two (hence throwaway) who surely were autistic and were impossible to work with and the two things were certainly connected. It may not be PC but it's true. But stately things plainly doens't need to extend to personal insults, never mind this extreme.
Because tolerance is a valuable thing, and makes your workplace a better, stronger one by allowing safe harbor for alternate viewpoints. I suspect your future employer would not look fondly on your choice of words if you chose to use "autistic" in the same manner in a professional setting.
A big problem in this industry is sensitive people like you
I am proud to be problematic to the industry in general and to you in particular if taking a stand against unacceptable derogatory language is considered "problematic".
Needless to say, using 'autistic' as a slur is also flamebait and therefore against the site guidelines. No more of that, please, either.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. You've broken it badly in this thread.
There are plenty of autistic people that do and don't have trouble communicating. Like there are plenty of neurotypical people who do and don't have trouble communicating.
Sure, the percentages are skewed very differently, but it's nowhere near all or nothing.
I don't care.
Grow an skin.
People in my life who are on the spectrum, that I care about, care.
I'm not standing up for you so much as I'm standing up for them.
The discussion is effectively de-railed, the person's comment demeaned and substance distracted from, and here we all are, forced to discuss this topic whereas 100% likely that the person that used the term "autistic" is neither against autistic individuals, isn't going to discriminate against actual autistic individuals, and is a decent human being that hasn't hurt anyone. So what have we accomplished?
Anyway, what I've found is that people who speak out against "bad words" are quite toxic. It's obvious that autistic in this sense isn't the clinically diagnosed condition but in that of slang. If I say that you're like a pig, it doesn't mean that you go oink oink. And yet, educated people will take everything you say literally and turn into missionaries.
Reminds me of the time when the church destroyed pretty much every text on Greek philosophy simply because they said that the soul doesn't exist.
> educated people will take everything you say literally and turn into missionaries
On the other hand, "Autistic" can and is taken literally regularly. So it feels pretty disingenuous for you to expect "educated people" to determine and keep track of how YOU specifically use the phrase compared to all the other people in their lives.
And if one of the people reading/hearing what you say IS autistic, their experience of others using the phrase is probably not as light-hearted as yours. There are plenty of people out there who DO mean it literally. So it is entirely up to the person reading/hearing the comment to make that determination.
You want to blast people in a professional setting who can't string together sentences, go for it. But describing them in a way that CAN be taken literally will cause problems.
TL;DR: My suggestion is to stick to "bad words" that people can't be born with.
Just paraphrasing OP as you seemed to miss the points he raised.
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm curious what kind of tools do you have for moderating HN?
Like do you have a tool that highlights threads that are racking up tons of posts/downvotes/etc. or something like that? Or is 80% of your day spent reading every thread posted?
I'll grant that focusing on it was not in the spirit of the HN guidelines. That's on me. However, GP's comment would have been just as unacceptable if it was distinguishing based on race, or gender, or LGBT status. I'm surprised and a bit disappointed that there's no explicit guidelines against derogatory uses of that kind of language.
Does "derogatory speech" count as "flamebait"?
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
Personally, I would say yes, derogatory speech is flamebait, because there will of course be those that criticise it and those that defend it as plain speaking - a classic flame war. It's also (certainly in this case) unrelated, tangential and clearly controversial.
There's also this bit:
> Be kind. ... Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
The clause about "including at the rest of the community" suggests that it also applies to those not in the community.
This is why recently I've started curating freelance jobs from many different sources - job boards + LinkedIn + Twitter etc, filtering them and sharing the best leads with freelancers. Started getting huge shoutouts from some web agencies/shops. This is totally free for now and planning to release it as a service [1]
Most of these companies in this list are most likely to hire freelance developers/marketers/writers.
It's still in beta, feel free to reach out/dm me if you would like to access the full document. [2]
[1] -> https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR/status/148021905157812224...
[2] -> https://twitter.com/RahulrangarajR
Companies that have an urgent need for a certain skill will be happy to take you on as a freelancer for higher money, either while they look for permanent staff or if it's just a one-off bet and they're not yet sure whether it's worth getting permanent resource for something that may be discontinued. Get a steady stream of these gigs for a year and you make twice the money you'd make as a permanent (outside FAANG maybe), and if you keep your burn rate low you can also leave the bulk of the money in the company for the next tax year and take advantage of the lower tax brackets which you can't do as a permanent employee.
Regarding the $1/hour MVP, that's just down to where you find your gigs. I recommend getting your gigs either directly via your network, or failing that, via recruiters - yes they take a cut and they might be shit but there's also good ones (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29392115) - in my experience good old "brick & mortar" (well, not so much during the pandemic but you see what I mean) recruiters have a barrier to entry that's very effective at keeping "$1/hour millionaire-maker SaaS" at bay, which also helps with regards to getting paid as what's left is typically established businesses within your own country and in reach of the legal system you have access to.
Absolutely do not waste your time on Upwork or similar - that's the bottom of the barrel where $1/hour MVP is commonplace in a self-reinforcing feedback loop, as good talent leaves which means good projects also leave and the only thing remaining is crap - on both sides of the market that is.
In the UK:
Your company pays corporation tax based on profits during the tax year. Whatever money is left can be disbursed to employees, shareholders, etc.
You as an individual pay tax based on your yearly income. There are several tax brackets depending on how much you make, as well as "free" brackets (you don't pay anything on the first ~12k of employment income, and there's an equivalent for dividends but much smaller).
Anything you pay yourself from your company then incurs this individual-level taxation, but since you can choose how much you pay yourself you can only pay the minimum (to stay within "acceptable" tax brackets) and keep the rest in the company for next year or for company-level investments (new hardware, expanding the business, etc). For limited-company contractors, the usual strategy is to pay yourself ~12k/year of salary and the rest is in the form of dividends which you can vary depending on your situation & needs.
Is it complex to manage? Depends on the jurisdiction; some are more evolved than others. In the UK I find it super easy and while I can bitch all day about the amount of tax I'm paying, at least the documentation is quite clear and they make it super easy to manage everything. I do have an accountant but at this point it's mostly for advice and "just in case" than anything else - day to day is handled by FreeAgent and I just have to make sure the data is entered properly and the software takes care of the rest.
Hang on... what is it that makes "having to deal with autistic colleagues and managers" so bad that it's the only example reason you give for going freelance?
Every client is a manager, but often they don't have those skills (and... they probably shouldn't have to). So, either you need to become a manager, convince them to, or bring someone else on to do it and ... you'll end up with a small team of folks. Bam - you now have to deal with a variety of communication styles.
Try dealing with a client who wants integration with a third party system, then tells you the data is wrong based on data they see in their own internal tool that they won't give you access to ("you might screw it up"). "The customer is always right..." except when they're not.
> they want you to work on their project, while on the other, they want to save as much money as possible.
So... don't charge hourly? Or time-based? Flat rate problem/project estimation is another way to go, but ... I've found many clients don't actually want to think that way, because you end up having to say 'no' to almost any change in the scope of an engagement. And you end up spending almost as much time trying to scope out changes and agree to new terms as you would just working on the problem.
I've been freelancing for 9 years (with a 1-year interruption last year as a regular employee, but I managed to escape that), starting with small projects for small customers, but very quickly moving on to larger projects for larger customers that pay better. My second client (a 4-person company) stiffed me for about $600, which lead me to avoid such small companies, and I've never had any payment problems since moving on to bigger clients.
There's usually a recruiter in between, which partly sucks, because they have their own margin, but I can imagine it may also have played a role in making my payment more reliable. Those recruiters also find my projects for me, so I barely do any acquisition of my own. I guess I could do more, but this works well enough for me.
(I have no problem working with autistic people; I come from a family that's probably riddled with high-functioning autists (though only one was ever diagnosed), and at work I've noticed I'm pretty good at translating for people who struggle to express their technical ideas.)
What I do is quite simple: make sure my CV is on LinkedIn and similar places, make sure it ends up in the databases of recruitment agencies. Then, when they see a freelance opportunity for which they think I'd be a good fit, they call or mail me, and if I'm available, we discuss it, and if I'm interested, they send my CV to the client. If the client is interested, I talk to the client. If we agree, I sign a contract with the recruiter, they sign a contract with the client, and I work for the client but bill my hours to the recruiter. Recruiter gets their cut.
I could probably cut out the recruiter's margin if I was able and willing to do their work, but that's a lot of work, and I'd rather focus on programming.
Using autism as a negative word is as bad as being a racist.
The discussion around using "autistic" as slang for someone with communication problems is a problem because it can be taken literally or as slang. And without knowing you, I can't be sure which way you meant it, especially in an industry where there are MANY autistic people.
So my suggestion is to avoid "bad words" that can be taken literally because without knowing you personally, I can't be SURE how you MEANT it. And my experiences with people throwing around "autistic" could be SIGNIFICANTLY less light-hearted than yours.
TL;DR: My suggestion is to stick to "bad words" that people can't be born with.
You also need to handle administration of the business or outsource those tasks.
Regardless of who is putting in this effort, your business needs to pay for it (your time or the time someone else puts into it.)
Add to that, self-employment taxes, insurance, sick leave, vacation leave, equipment, office, utilities, etc. Anything you aren't charging for, you're subsidizing.
That's ABC stuff.
I don't like the word freelancing, because people take the label with a bunch of assumptions, which may not be correct. The language "the most important thing" is also troublesome because it may put you in the wrong frame.
The reality is that running a business is a common complex thing. It's like relationships, many people are in them, but being such a common part of life doesn't make them easier to figure out. Society gives you basic scaffolding, which you need to use or not use as basic building blocks. Come to the problem with an empty cup and start building from scratch. And then it still isn't easy, as many people get caught up in details which isn't necessarily giving back the same return on the end result. My heuristic is to start with the envisioned end-result, work backwards and then build a plan going forwards again. The entire time, you have an eye on that end-result and asking if what you are doing is serving that end-point. And then, as Tyson said, "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." But a plan is better than no plan.
There's no "the most important thing." It's more complex than that. You have to approach a complex problem with agility to shift frames. Be creative. Be curious. Ask questions. Do research. Answer the questions. Every article about "this is how you do <insert complex thing> is missing massive amounts of detail.
Also note, there is a goldmine of articles on making money on building software in HN. Do a search. If you stop at this thread, you're seriously missing out.
And further reading on detail in life...
http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
ETA: This is more about the mindset than the nuts and bolts. There are tons of golden posts here on the nuts and bolts. Do a search and see what pops up with the most votes and comments.
https://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant/
Because I have to pick up a phone. Phones are scary.
Suddenly you have someone telling you what you told them and starts wondering: did I really promise that?
(Written doesn't prevent people from trying that trick, as one particulariy brilliant but not very pleasant guy tried to tell me: "yes, <my name> that is what you wrote [in the mail] but not what you meant." However, in these cases I have a written record and I am confindent with myselves and that nasty person can bugger off.)
Not saying one should never talk to people on the phone but when one are stressed out and stretched out thin it is not high on my wishlist.
1. Take pen and paper
2. Write a brief script how to start the call. Just sufficient amount of notes that you have a clear and concise agenda
3. During call take notes
4. If you don't understand something, repeat for the other party what they've said. Not in a way that it can be understood you agree with them as this can become a really problem with business dicussions, but using phrasing as "Can I repeat what you said so I am clear on this. According to you..."
5. At the end of the call, if there are topics that should be handled by you or the other party, review what was agreed topic by topic.
I generally find people appreciate this structured approach in calls. At least it reduces most of the anxiety from my part to minimum.
Kinda like how snakes are protected in Australia and it’s illegal to kill them unless you or your family or such are in immediate danger from a snake, which basically means if you see a snake you can kill it.
"Hey XYZ, it was such a pleasure speaking with you today. I'm going to shoot ya an email in a bit just to follow-up with everything we discussed. Have a great day!"
Or - if that scares you still - just shoot them an email anyway to follow-up and recap without preluding. It gives them the opportunity to change/add/whatever in-text, and they can't say you said something differently because you can point to the email and say - no, we said this (And you didn't correct me).
That way you still have a written record to refer to.
I want to drop my car off for a service in Ballarat when I head down to Melbourne later this week, but that takes ringing them to make a booking. I should have done this in the middle of last week, when I planned to go down. All it takes is ringing their number, saying “can I book my car in for a service, drop off on the 13ᵗʰ or 14ᵗʰ, collection on the 15ᵗʰ”. For some reason that I can’t express, I haven’t made that phone call, and it’s probably too late now. I guess that DPF light will just continue flashing for a while longer.
I could go on and on. It’s quite ridiculous how much trouble I have caused myself (and others, sometimes) just because I don’t like making phone calls. I’ve delayed things that would benefit me for years in a couple of cases. Receiving phone calls isn’t my favourite, either. I’m not crash hot with email or letters either, but phones and text messages are significantly worse.
Phone call quality used to be fairly terrible, and I think that helped make it more of an ordeal too. That excuse is mostly gone now.
If you don’t mind, or like, phones, you might be surprised just how many people are quite averse to making phone calls, some to the point of hating it with the passion of perhaps not a thousand suns, but at least a brown dwarf or two. Five or six of my seven siblings are in much the same boat as me, and my parents don’t like phones either. A couple of my siblings, and multiple other people I’ve talked with, find they more or less forget what they were going to talk about as soon as the call connects, and so it becomes an ordeal where they have to write a detailed list of what they want to talk about before dialing, or else their mind is just blank.
But there is yet hope for me: I’m setting myself up as the local IT guy in my rural area, in significant part to force myself to deal with people more. Computers are easy, they do what I tell them to do, and I’m even pretty good at telling them the right thing to do; but people are what actually matter in life. I’m waiting for the return of Jesus and the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth, and I don’t think we’ll need software then. Well, a bloke rang me yesterday, I answered, and today I did my first job, and even got paid straight away.
If anyone has any questions about anything let me know. The post is meant to be a getting started guide. Beyond answering questions here I'd be happy to follow up with additional posts about specific topics if there's interest.
I never really payed attention to quantifying these types of stats because I think as an individual your sample size is going to be too small to get meaningful data out of it. In my mind it's always a numbers game where the only thing that matters is if I land a gig or not.
I tweak things based on individual calls and kind of use my gut to guide me. It's not the most scientific thing but I don't think personal sales with a small'ish sample size is going to be purely scientific. So much of it is dependent on reading the other person in real-time and adjusting as you go.
When in doubt honesty and less "hard sale" tactics have worked well.
Anywhere from $100 to $200 an hour generally but I don't always stick to that.
There's a lot of things to think about. For example having a relationship with a high value trades person (plumber, doctor, lawyer, etc.) has an immense amount of long term value. That doesn't mean you need to drastically cut your rates, but it's something to think about when evaluating how much to charge.
For smaller more common local businesses where it's mostly trading time for money (as opposed to raw materials), I don't mind cutting rates by a lot because it's mutually beneficial for both of us. For example, if a haircutter wants a basic site, instead of charging them $500 to throw up a WP site in a day I might offer to do the site for something substantially less (let's say $150).
I won't bring it up directly that I'm cutting them a massive deal but if you word it around how you want to help a local business and you generally like the person they'll often offer you a deal on their end like free haircuts for life. To me that's more beneficial than a few hundred bucks up front. Not just from a greedy position of expecting something better later, but I've found having a wider network of friends or contacts proves to be useful time and time again.
If you are a product person, i recommend slowing down, think about stuff and dedicate yourself to the parts of your work and the relationships you find meaningful. It pays less, at least in the short term, but it is quite nice to feel true to yourself.
- Passive marketing just won't work early on. That means spending time on your website, buying Google Ads etc will likely only be dead-ends until you've established yourself. (The exception might be writing niche content about some industry if you happen to know one well).
- I've used all of the freelancing platforms- Toptal, Upwork etc. You can make good money but you probably won't grow your business. Your objective if you're trying to grow a business is to scale up, and these platforms mandate that you're the one who has to do the work. I know there are Upwork firms, but I think they're worthless. Oh and Thumbtack is a scam.
- The Meetup angle didn't necessarily work for me, but I've learned that going to non-developer meetups are more fruitful, if you're willing to learn about an industry.
- The low hanging fruit in 2022 for finding clients is probably investing 15 minutes a day into building a Linkedin network (trivial and you don't need to pick up a phone :)). That means growing your connections, and learning to search for people looking for a developer for X, Y, Z, filtering out full-time hires etc.
- Actually the lowest hanging fruit is referral business, so when you get your first clients do a great job and send them emails every few months reminding them to put you in touch with anyone they know.
- When a client asks you to do something extra always say no. Always. If they're a great client, do something extra that they didn't ask for. This sounds insane, but the second you do submit to doing an extra request, a client will subconsciously discount your work and time and take it for granted. It almost never wins kudos, almost always wins more requests. I've seen this happen 35+ times. When you do something they didn't ask for, they tend to be more appreciative and touched.
- The following are essential business processes you should set up if you want to grow: task management (Github issues for me, make sure to adopt a task format with predictable attributes whatever you use), communication (Slack, invite my clients to a dedicated channel), CRM (I use Hubspot which is free for just CRM), and a project cycle.
- By project cycle I mean a contract where you're cash-flow positive, i.e. charge hourly deposits up front as much as possible, as well as defined expectations. What happens when the project finishes? How do you prevent scope creep?
- PayPal invoices are nice but they were my biggest expense, 3% of my revenue! Do ACH if possible, or Wire Transfer if the fixed fee is less than the PayPal cost. I even set up a consulting business for invoicing just because this is such a big issue [1]. But don't optimize this until it's worthwhile.
Feel free to get in touch if anyone needs any help getting established. My email is my HN username +3@gmail.com
[1] https://receivable.dev
Having got agreement at the executive level, it often gets tried on anyway, but the very first day it's late I start letting people know, and consuming their time, and reiterating reasons why its setup to pay. I follow the chain of people to get actual contact to the accounts paying person and build a personal relationship with them, as an individual they have a commitment to paying rather than just another bill on the stack. An individual who will ring them for a person plea, plus consume their time, if they don't pay as agreed.
This reminds them it's an issue and that my work continuing relies on them paying, as they agreed. I do this politely, but clearly, and conscientiously. I find this significantly increases my chances of getting paid properly.
The critical time for this is when the first, and perhaps second bills are paid. Once they are trained that yours is a bill to to pay without games, it tends to become smooth sailing.
Also, in the case where it is delayed - stop working. This is critical. If you work when they are not paying as agreed you're undermining your main leverage and will possibly have big problems.
Be polite, always, yet clear and firm about the agreements made, and be ready to walk away and find new work if necessary. Usually late payments will be resolved in days to a week and if it's taking longer then put your effort to finding new work.
Now that almost all dev work is going to be remote friendly, The only advantage to freelancing that I can see is the flexibility to work less than 40 hour weeks, or take more time off than vacation time you're allotted.
That freedom is purchased with a lot of stress and uncertainty, and may not actually result in that much freedom if you're semi-actively always looking for leads.
Ultimately I found the type of work companies go to freelancers for is terribly uninteresting most of the time.
Oh, there's a few more reasons: taxes (paid in arrears, after expenses), carry your own insurance/benefits (can work really well if you are young & healthy), business can own property, corporate veil, separate business finance from personal, have more than one client, etc...
> Ultimately I found the type of work companies go to freelancers for is terribly uninteresting most of the time.
Sometimes. Other times it can be better.
Most employers aren't passing through the whole premium. With my current company, we're covering 85% of the premium for our employees, so they see some token amount out of their paychecks, but the actual premium is a lot bigger than $50/month.
It's hard to beat HC insurance from a big employer. When you have to buy your own, it can work out as you usually can get a higher hourly rate than an employee by 25-30%. You also avoid double deductibles when your employer changes the plan changes mid-year. You also avoid COBRA if you quit or are fired.
Being a developer is too cushy a job full-time.
I’ve given up on ever pursuing freelancing because I realized I actually didn’t want to be self-employed, I just wanted to work from home and be in control of my time.
Where are these low stress remote jobs making six figures? Asking for a friend.
Most folks I know in FAANG/equivalent are not that stressed once you give up the race for promotions and accolades.
When you want more income, pick up a second job that is also similar. You should easily clear a quarter million dollars or more a year this way, and all you’re doing is writing code and going to some meetings. Easy.
Good for you. I spend a lot of time on /r/freelance and I've identified this as the main reason most freelancers have trouble and just flat out don't like it. They really just don't like running a small business. It's essentially impossible to thrive as a freelancer unless you accept (actually embrace!) this.
I've been doing contract work exclusively for the past 9 years now and this is exactly why I continue with contract arrangements. If I could find a "permanent" position with flexibility like this I would likely consider transitioning away from contract work.