What I love about freelancing is how unpredictable it is. Clients can (and will) call you whenever they want. You’ll be forced to realize that you underestimated a project and you are personally eating the cost. One day you’ll have 1 project to work on, the next day you’ll have 5. Sometimes a client “forgets” to pay on time. When you need to crush it and work 8am to 10pm for days on end to keep your clients happy, you do what you gotta do.
While there are plenty of good reasons to freelance, I hardly see the above as something to love. The post reads like a bit of a sales pitch (and perhaps that is the intent) that makes freelancing seem wholly superior to conventional full-time employment.
Good point — I think the sales-feel came more from the emotion behind it when I first wrote it.
I didn't intend to say everyone should do it for an entire career, but that it's something important to try at least once because of how much you learn in a short period of time.
1 & 2 seem like top reasons NOT to freelance -- stress & worrying about where your money is going to come from. But I guess it depends on how much money you'd like and how many clients you're getting.
My main gripe about freelancing is that it seems like the only reliable way to get a livable wage (or at least a wage on par with full-time devs) is by convincing some sort of startup or other tech company to hire you for a few months. Meaning that it's very difficult to multiple revenue streams that pay out similarly, and you end up being more or less a full-time dev who happens to change jobs more often than a longer term hire. This is just my experience though, I'm curious to see if others have similar impressions.
I think there are some good points made in this post that apply to business-related activities that developers often remain woefully ignorant about. Freelancing definitely makes you reset your expectations a bit more, whether you work as a full time employee or not.
However, there are a couple of important aspects of professional growth that freelancers can miss out on:
1) Long term ownership of a product/service. Your approach and outlook to writing code changes if you know you have to own/maintain it for a long time. You'll be more thoughtful in your decisions, more mindful of system/customer/team impact, and be critical of the latest, hot technology on HN. All good things, I believe.
2) Team dynamics and leadership, especially within larger teams. Freelancers often work solo, and there's something to be said about learning to work in the scope of a team, both as a contributor and as a leader. While plenty of freelancers can assemble teams and tackle large problems, they often acquire these skills working for a firm at some point in their careers. If you go too early into freelancing before learning these skills, you may never break out of being a one-man band.
5. Freelancing Forces You to Keep Up to Date
"By contrast, I know some design shops in my area that are still using Photoshop and Dreamweaver to build HTML-based websites on GoDaddy. Know when they opened their shop? When Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and GoDaddy were still cool. That’s not acceptable, and young whippersnappers in the area are on the creeping in with their fancy new WordPress installations, scripting skills, and jQuery, and grabbing new business. The moral? Learn or die.
And some of those whippersnappers are going to be rolling on the same technology stack 10 years from now."
I couldn't disagree with that sentiment more. I'm a developer who works full time at an agency and freelances on the side when I feel like it. I know a lot of developers my age (mid-late twenties) that have only really ever freelanced full time and never worked in a company 9-5 and I can say the one noticeable difference between us is the skill set.
being surrounded by better developers than I has forced me to learn new things in a way that striking out on my own would never do. Sure, necessity is the mother of invention, and if you're running your own business, you'll have to learn things to keep the lights on, but you miss out on all the mentorship and guidance working with a team of more experienced people gives you.
I've worked at around 4 agencies in my career thus far, and have never seen or heard of an agency that fits the description in your hyperbolic example. In fact, I tend to think it more closely resembles a one-man freelance dev shop.
Would it be cowardly for me to go ahead and say agencies are an exception?
I worked at an agency (HUGE in Brooklyn), and was very close to what freelancing is in regard to learning.
It's a steady paycheck, but you're always working on different project, and they're usually fairly cutting edge.
Being surrounded by awesome developers is important too, but you can get that in a co-working space, attending meetups, being part of and contributing to some open-source community, or just hanging out with your developer friends.
I agree that meetups, open source and friends can help with mentorship, but being forced to solve problems in a group is a lot more effective than casual encounters and meetups.
That said, it probably depends on the type of person you are. If you're super outgoing and involved, freelancing full-time is probably similar to working at an agency in that regard, but if that's true it sort works against the point of your post.
1 Major reason that most developers shouldn't freelance full time.
It isn't a business that you are willing to commit to. Why should anyone put the time and effort into starting a business with the intention of later dumping it? Save yourself that step and don't freelance at all. Sure, some may love it and stick with it, but not every developer should freelance.
All you would likely accomplish is jack up your income for X months. Take client work off the market from someone else who will end up inheriting your project anyways because you quit freelancing after you check it off your bucket-list.
There are cases when it's easy to jump in and out of freelancing and it makes a good stop-gap for your employment. You have contacts in the industry who need a quick hand. You acquired deep knowledge in something that fits well with short consulting stints. Generally this person is probably in the position that your bullet points don't really apply.
Freelancing fits certain people's (like the author's apparently) personality perfectly.
Others, like myself, have had enough years of dealing with customers directly and prefer internal positions where I mainly just deal with the CEO and my own team.
While there are plenty of good reasons to freelance, I hardly see the above as something to love. The post reads like a bit of a sales pitch (and perhaps that is the intent) that makes freelancing seem wholly superior to conventional full-time employment.