Notes freelancer: how to stop being afraid and start working for yourself

Hello! The last few years I've been freelancing on Upwork (formerly oDesk) and finally decided to share my experience and observations with the Habrasoobshchestvo in a small series of articles. I would like to start from afar: who, in my opinion, should consider freelancing as the main type of its activity + I would like to make out the main “frightening” factors that prevent many people from deciding. Who cares about freelancing and Upwork in particular - welcome under cat.

For whom and why?

To begin with, let's see who this may all be interesting at all and try to answer the simple and reasonable question “do I need it?”.

The easiest way is if you have already thought about freelancing as the main way to make money and an alternative to traditional work. Some office workers are not satisfied with the salary in the current position, others are tired of the rhythm of life from “9 to 5 from Monday to Friday,” someone is just an introvert who has a hard time in long contact with people. The reasons for all may have their own, but in general, most of them share one thing - the feeling that something is wrong and something needs to be changed. As for me, by the end of the second year of work in my first company, I lost all motivation to go there 5 times a week and everything went so far that I began to seriously think about changing my profession. Fortunately, the decision to quit and start working independently helped put everything in its place, and I finally became convinced that I was doing exactly what I should do. Just in the wrong place and in the wrong format. So the advice for all those who have doubts in this case is simple - try, freelancing can be exactly what you were looking for.

If you already have an office job that is absolutely comfortable and there are no doubts and disturbing thoughts about it, in principle - well, I think you have little reason to look towards freelancing. If you feel yourself in your place working in a company, then it’s probably your element and an abrupt change of course can only hurt. Indeed, why change something that works? The main thing is to be honest with yourself in assessing the current state of affairs.
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Another category of developers who, in my opinion, should not be in a hurry with the decision to plunge headlong into freelancing - these are beginners with no experience, students, young and green specialists. In most cases, for you, as a developer, a year of work in a company may be more useful and productive for several years in freelancing. First, many companies have special internship programs aimed precisely at quickly obtaining the necessary practical knowledge. Secondly, you can devote yourself and your time only to improving the skills of a programmer, without being distracted by learning the intricacies of working with the same Upwork, searching for clients and other less important things. Thirdly, you will get a real idea of ​​how this whole “kitchen” works from the inside: how programmers work, how they interact with each other, with managers, designers, this is really valuable experience that should not be neglected. And fourthly, having at least a minimal amount of practical knowledge and a couple of jobs in a portfolio, starting a freelance will be much easier in most cases. Thus, the transition to freelancing as the next step in its development may be more natural and painless than a clean start from scratch.

What if it doesn't work out? Dispel the main myths and concerns.

Suppose you still feel an irresistible desire to become a freelancer, but there are still too many “buts” that prevent you from taking the last step. I will try to make out the main points that I came across myself or my freelance acquaintances. I am sure at least some of the following points bother you:

• Freelance is unstable, I have a family / loan / mortgage / rental housing, I can not take risks. Fair concern, but where are there no risks? Decisions without risks, as they say, lead to boring and predictable results. Truth be told, there is a chance that you will be in a less risky position in a year or two of freelancing, having, say, a pumped profile on Upwork or a well-established client base, than having completed the same period in organization X (until or Facebook, of course). Any organization can unexpectedly be liquidated, and its employees reduced or simply dismissed. Unfortunately, this is not a hypothetical possibility and one cannot be insured from such situations even working in a reputable and well-established company. Not so long ago, this happened to several of my former colleagues, with whom, unilaterally and without special ceremonies, said goodbye through a letter to the post office “Hello! You fell under reduction. ”. People overboard with such a company are far more vulnerable than an independent developer who has lost one or two clients. Why do I think so? The main reason is that it will still be easier and faster to find a new project on freelancing. At least, because you hardly have to complete full-fledged interviews for each position of interest, there will be less bureaucracy and delays in the process and having 15 completed projects in the portfolio and a lot of positive feedback on Upwork few people will ask to write a bubble sort during the interview process. Nevertheless, it’s worth it to prepare for the transition to “free bread”: for example, to save some money in reserve and find customers even before leaving the current job, no one can forbid you to talk before leaving. Whether to advertise this fact to colleagues and authorities is up to you.
  
  
• I will not be able to find a job and will have to return to the office. Finding your very first order can be really quite difficult, especially if we are talking about Upwork: a period can go for weeks and even, in extreme cases, months. The situation may be aggravated by an insufficient level of skills and / or lack of living examples of your work, i.e. empty portfolio. Nevertheless, this is still a surmountable obstacle; in extreme cases, you will have to tighten up your skills or take up a low paid contract for the first positive feedback and a completed project that will fall into your profile’s piggy bank and serve as an item in your portfolio. I went through this process in 2-3 weeks and already my second contract lasted for about a year and brought me a lot of profit, including making my profile much more attractive due to hours worked during Upwork. Several of my friends overcame the same path and as a result no one remained offended by the situation that someone as a result did not find work in practice, I haven’t yet met. We live in the digital era, remote work is becoming normal even in much more nosy and conservative areas than software development, so I’m not particularly worried about this.
  
  
• I don't know English well enough. Fairly, first of all, for Upwork or any other foreign exchange. Generally speaking, if you really want, then you can find clients and Russian-speaking, even on these foreign exchanges (I had several contracts with Russian clients on Upwork). Nevertheless, it is not necessary to deprive yourself of most of the opportunities and vacancies due to language problems, so if everything is really bad with English, then it is worthwhile to pull it up one way or another. In the ideal case - right while communicating with a foreign client in the framework of the current project: even after several months of active correspondence, you can make good progress in the level of possession, the main thing is for the person to understand you, perfect pronunciation and grammar in 9 out of 10 cases is not required and most often Clients understand that you communicate in a language that is not native to you and are loyal to this. Moreover, many clients themselves may know English worse than yours. In addition, knowledge of English has not harmed anyone (especially the programmer!) And the best incentive to force myself to finally pull it up is simply not to be invented. I started with the “standard” set - the lessons at school and university, most of which, of course, was ignored. Nevertheless, this was enough to find the first orders and in a couple of years to tighten written possession to a more or less acceptable and non-confusing level.
  
  
• I work in a company and I am afraid to quit ... because I am afraid that I will disappoint the company, colleagues / I am afraid that the boss will scold me, and in general, quitting is bad! Especially relevant point for those who work in their first company and before the process of dismissal is not faced. As for me, there is nothing terrible in it, it is an absolutely natural and normal procedure, both from the bureaucratic and purely human side. You have already contributed to the development of the company and have devoted a considerable part of your time and energy to it in the past few months or even years. The employer, in turn, kindly provided you with money in exchange for your services, both parties fulfilled part of their transaction in full. According to the law, as a last resort, you may be asked to work out the required 2 weeks from the time of the application if everything goes to official office or, orally, they will be asked to complete their work and complete the project, for example. Most managers are sympathetic to this process and most often the parties disagree on a good note. We have a large turnover in the industry, so most likely, and especially, no one will be dissuaded from leaving you, since the process of replacing the outgoing employees with new ones has been established. If the authorities are hindering the dismissal process - well, here is another proof that the decision to leave the company was correct. In the end, you have one life and only you have the right to decide what to do with it.
  
  
• I will not be able to work normally from home. Really, who will make me keep the schedule? And how can you work at all when the new season of your favorite TV series is released or is it such a wonderful weather outside? Jokes, but these questions are not enough for anyone to settle down by themselves and can become a real problem. Unfortunately, giving universal advice here will not work, a lot depends only on yourself and your personal qualities. Try to allocate a separate room for work, which will become your home office in which no one will distract you. Do not want to work at home? Look for a cafe or coworking nearby, it can be a good alternative (or addition) to work from home. Think over your schedule, which part will work in it, and which part - personal life. In general, try to prepare yourself in advance for the fact that you are on a new path of development, leading to high responsibility, proactivity and self-organization. Somewhere it will not be easy, but the result of this process will not take long and will positively affect both your professional skills and other areas of your life. I also recommend reading the famous REMOTE book from 37signals, perhaps you will find in it something useful for yourself.
  
  
• What if my skills (technology stack, programming language) are not in demand for freelancing? If you work with websites or mobile applications, then you have nothing to worry about, some things in these areas are more in demand, some less, the average rate can also vary, but you will find work in one way or another. I think this is true for designers. Regarding the desktop, system and low-level programming and other more highly specialized things - it is already more difficult here, I recommend examining the demand before making turning decisions. Upwork, for example, doesn’t have many such vacancies against the background of web and mobile development.

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For today, all, I will be glad to any feedback. If the topic turns out to be interesting for the community, then in subsequent articles I will try to move on to more practical things, share, so to speak, experiences (how to fill out a profile, recommendations for writing a cover letter, and much more).

Thanks for reading :) I will try in the near future to publish the following article on Habré and in my newly created blog.

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UPD: I will add, perhaps, an explanation for a somewhat provocative headline that caused outrage among some commentators. So, what I personally mean by "work for myself."

1) Working legally, you design yourself as an individual entrepreneur - an individual entrepreneur, which already partly hints at some differences in comparison with employment in the office.

2) You do not have a direct manager and relations of the type “boss-subordinate”. Ideally, you build partnerships with your customers, rather than trying to be in any form of subordination.

3) Working in freelancing, you work for yourself in the sense that you develop your own profile and portfolio. Here is a simple example: all projects in the development of which you took part as part of your position in the company belong, obviously, to the company and its client, not you. I'm not sure about the subtleties of legal issues, but I heard a version that the development right does not remain with the contractor, but is listed with the organization that hired him. But this is all boring, let's take another example: my friend left the same company that was engaged in outsourcing (websites in the first place). By his naivety, he published the projects he worked for at the company in his Upwork portfolio. A few days later his former manager contacted him and hinted that it was not worth doing that and projects should be removed. Quite by accident in the clause of the agreement there appeared a corresponding clause confirming the validity of his request. So it goes. Thus, having worked for several years in such a company, a person in fact has no projects in the portfolio, all of his work is wholly and entirely owned by the organization in which he worked.

4) You are deprived of nonsense from the category “all for the benefit of the company”: let's work on weekends for the benefit of the company, let's work hard and work without salary in difficult times for the company, let's write an article in the company blog for the benefit of the company. Who needs this hypocrisy? Everyone works for his or her own personal needs and goals, working for yourself you do not need to hide it.

5) You and only you are responsible for your successes and failures. You will report for your failure, but thanks for your success, too, you, first of all, receive from the client, not your organization.