I love being a freelancer/contractor. I will probably not work full-time ever again, unless I have a direct interest in the company. Its important in life to be able to make your own decisions and not feel pressured by work. Lets face it, full-time work sucks, you cannot take a holiday when you want without approval, you feel bad when you are sick and you feel the hierarchical pressure and you yield less money because you get perks and a social safety net.
But I dont want any of that. I'll pay my sick leave, my computer and my phone. Just give me the cash.
I've been a contractor now for 3 years, essentially providing a service and issuing invoices to clients. Luckily for me, I've only had 2 clients in this period of time, because both contracts were ongoing on large scale projects.
I have no rights, my contracts don't pay holiday, or sick leave, but I charge a very high fee per day, more than every developer I know who works as a standard full-time employee.
The result is a much higher income, and I have saved more money in 3 years than most people I know.
Additionally, I'm not actually managing these projects, they have in-house product designers and owners for this, so basically I'm just there to build and maintain the thing, have meeting with other developers, and give a demo of updates.
My advice to you is: - To try to find ongoing work/projects rather than lots of smaller ones. It saves the headache of negotiating and finding clients. - Stay away from freelancing websites. You will be taken advantage of and get crumbs for jobs. - Under all circumstances, do not take upon any Wordpress websites, unless you are happy being at the bottom of the barrel for your services. - Don't work for friends, unless you both are very established in your professions. - If you are a web developer, specialize and only use the latest tech that you actually want to use. Don't take on legacy crap projects. - Unless you are given the task of managing the project, do not quote. Charge per day. - If they offer you a desk space to work on-site, be aware that you will be pulled into a standard working office culture, maybe you like this, maybe you don't.
Enjoy the freedom!
from Hacker News - New Comments: "WordPress" http://bit.ly/2TKq6YD
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