[thelist] OT - How to work freelance on a global scale.

Zeljko Dakic mlist at dakic.com
Mon Oct 24 15:03:05 CDT 2005


Hi,

regarding this freelancing thing Volkan asked. I want to share my 
experiences but without quoting and point by point replying.

You know, income can improve or slide, I think it should improve 
otherwise it wouldn't make much sense to do it. Also here in the US 
there is issue of health insurance which is quite an issue (which is why 
you should have more money then less for freelancing).

There are many advantages of freelancing, you get to work on what you 
want, you get to do complete life-cycle as oposed of tiny fractions of 
projects. Some people who work in large corporations just can't imagine 
how it would look like to work on full life cycle for example or they 
just can't write docs or get requirements, or plan project schedules.

As for social life, I think it is definitely better as freelancer, I 
don't know who came up with that notion that you somehow alone and 
excluded, as far as I can tell, it is oposite of that. For start you get 
to meet all the guys who are in charge, CEO's, CTO's etc. Coming from 
freelance to corporate, it is weird that you don't have those guys on 
your cellphone to call them when you need them. So you will have more 
fun talking to people who are interested in project you do, who have 
ideas and are passionate about them, as oposed for task in corporation 
which you are not sure people are overly interested in.

Then, there are fellow developers and other freelancers with whom you 
will probably want to network and hang out so you can include them on 
your projects. Most of the time, you get to choose your friends as 
oposed to have them imposed by who is sitting in cubicle/office near you.

Just so you wouldn't dump your obviously good corporate job after this, 
there are advantages of those as well, you get structure and stability, 
if you don't feel like working you might get away with it without dire 
financial consequences. You get at your disposal greater resources, I 
don't think I would ever work with Oracle if it was up to me as 
freelancer, I would always find better use of money, Crystal Reports and 
Cold Fusion as well. I think you get the picture. Also project might be 
bigger in corporations, you don't have to worry about every dollar, but 
can focus on task.

You can always freelance from your workplace and see how will things go 
from there.

All best,
Zeljko Dakic





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