Why did you quit to freelance? I have a daughter (turning 4 this month) and I wanted to work from home and have a more flexible schedule. I applied for a few companies that offered remote work, but the schedules weren't that flexible (they all seemed to have core hours, except WordPress, which was a top contender). I also love to travel...my wife and I average 6 weeks of vacation and a dozen or more countries per year, and that has been a problem at every company for me so far. She is a registered nurse, so she can easily get a month off at a time.

I work for a company (Surge) that guarantees 40 hours a week, though I regularly exceed that, either through clients who don't mind overtime, or when clients overlap. The team is distributed, and the schedules are completely flexible (I spent a month at our condo in the Philippines in February, and was able to put in work despite the time difference).

If I had a time machine, I would go back and do this sooner.

EDIT: If you want me to pass along your resume to Surge, email me (contact info in profile)

>She is a registered nurse, so she can easily get a month off at a time

Tangential, but...a friend of mine is an RN in an ICU who works nights (how he copes with the long hours is beyond me). He's struggled to get a single week off, much less an entire month without quarrel. Turnover is high, they're shortstaffed, etc. What is different about your wife's hospital (maybe there's less pressure and more nurses available in other sections of a hospital)?

She works for Kaiser in the DOU (direct observation unit, ICU stepdown). To get a calendar month off she schedules it almost a year in advance. 2 weeks off she can do with a month notice. A week off usually only requires switching a day or two with another nurse since she only works 3 days a week.

Do her 3 days = 72 hours?

I've known a few medicos/1st responders, including a brother, who do this(take a month/week off, etc). It sounds enviable to most until you see/hear/experience what their 24 hour shift often entails.

If you have the experience, contacts and social skills (very underestimated by many professionals in our field) you can make much more as a freelancer/contractor.

I'm now self employed for 4 years and I earn 6x as much as I earned in my last job. (though I believe I was underpaid in my last job)

I'm sure many people would be interested to learn more details about your current gig. How much are you making now? How did you get clients initially? What sorts of development do you do now?

>How did you get clients initially?

He said it, contacts and social skills.

One other way is referrals but you generally need to have a few clients before that starts happening.

> "contacts and social skills"

I'm curious too, because that's what everyone says, but they stop there. It's always:

1. Have contacts and social skills 2. ??? 3. Make 6X as a freelancer!

Let's say I'm starting with contacts and social skills. And a mortgage and a full-time job that lets me pay it. Any good books or blog posts that describe what's in step 2?

(I'm a contractor, not a freelancer)

Step 2 - make sure you have enough money put away to last for at least six months with no work.

Step 2.5 - put some stuff on github, publish your cv, prepare to talk to and turn down an absolute ton of agents who will try to talk you into totally inappropriate work.

Step 2.75 - find a decent project to join, work your ass off getting up to speed and contributing fast. Build a reputation.

Step 3.1 - goto 1

The agent thing is a constant in contracting. They'll tell you "you're dreaming, you'll never find the money you're asking". They'll tell you "you need to be able to move around the country for work". They'll tell you "there's nothig contract based around anywhere right now, you need to look at my permanent roles". Some will even tell you you're awesome amd perfect, and then you'll never hear from them again.

But then a good one eventually comes along.... and gets you a well paying contract in a broken team doing something pointless. But hey, the money's good and you're only there for a few months so what does it matter?

The reason it always seems to stop at step one is because the experience feels like a natural consequence of those two factors. A step two would be something like "exercise those social skills with your contacts" and that seems redundant. 'social skills' encompasses discussing professional situations and (unfortunately or not) being a person your 'contacts' are attracted to and comfortable with extending opportunity to.

Just keep in contact with your network and make sure they're aware that you're freelancing and what sort of projects you do. I know it sounds simplistic, but the hard part is building a network. Once you have it, they do most of the work for you, especially if you keep them abreast and happy (ex. reciprocal referrals).

How does freelancing income compare to working as a senior engineer at a big corp ($300k total comp if you include bonuses, benefits and subsidized health insurance)?

I have done both. It's all highly dependent on your situation, but for me freelancing is higher income (~400k vs ~250k at bigcorp), much more autonomy (I can work wherever I like, subcontract out the tedious things, etc), but also much more stress. I worked considerably less at bigcorp but in the end I couldn't get over the whole having to come into the office and look busy thing.

I personally value the autonomy over almost anything else -- I can live in a low cost-of-living city with my wife for half the year, go skiing/mountain biking over lunch, and overall spend more time among the people I care about. But that does come with all the stress of building a client base, chasing down payment, explaining to non-technical people why their ideas aren't feasible and I can't build Siri in 3 weeks, etc.

I've been doing contract work for the last 6 years. In the markets I'm in Dallas and Chicago for my skill set (18 years) i'm finding it easy to find jobs at $125/hr but not much more than that. Even at that number I get lots of "thanks but no thanks." My most recent project, Apache Kafka and Spark, is only $115/hr. Which is close to $250k/yr but not any where near $400k/yr. I'm wondering where you're finding clients willing to pay this much and what type of work are you doing?

patio11 has a lot of articles and comments about charging by the week. From your comment, that sounds like how you'd make the leap; you get a lot more autonomy as well.

Your personal time is worth more than any number of $$$. You can't buy back your time after you've traded it for cash. Make sure you enjoy life while you have it.

Edit: My point is that freelance work income may not compare, but the income may not be the reason for moving to freelance. The op did not explain why he moved to freelance, but I can think of some great reasons to do so.

As a senior engineer at a big corp, I feel like I have lot more free time available to me than if I were a freelancer. I don't have to worry about business details, contracts, hell, really even deadlines. In order to contract out for a comparable amount of money I think I'd have to spend a lot more time and deal with a lot more stress. Plus, you don't get paid vacation as a freelancer, whereas I get as much paid vacation as I'm apt to use.

vacations, one of the worst parts of freelancing - it's not the price of it (usually flight tickets + some cash on the spot, all manageable), but the income lost while having fun that hurts bad. combine it with some mortgage, and self-pressure to just work leaves you missing some nice experiences in life (while having some extra cash too)

Yeah, I'll be honest, I'm not the best at taking vacations. I've never used all my vacation time at any of my jobs, and have always gotten paid out handsomely for the excess upon leaving. Of course, once I actually do get out on a vacation, I inevitably enjoy it, but there's so much inertia in planning one that I do it infrequently. It really is a big hassle.

If I didn't have paid vacation days, I doubt that I'd ever take one. They'd simply be way too expensive. It's one thing to use paid vacation days, another thing entirely to give up over a week's worth of income. I don't think I could do it.

This is great advice, but not really practical with conventional American lifestyles. It's possible once you save enough and get the basics completely paid off, so that you can minimize your expenses to < 1k per month, but it's usually not an option for your average worker. I believe making it an option is a crucial social issue for our time.

That's senior engineer at an elite big corp in one of two or three locations in the US. It's a pretty rare (relatively speaking) position to be in.

Locations with high costs of living too.

In my experience they're pretty close, assuming you're excelling in both.

Top independent freelance software developers can make $300k if they work hard and have a good network, as can top big corp engineers. Of course, neither is easy to achieve and the metrics are different. (Freelancers are valued on their results, big corps hire on pedigree and games.)

Out of curiosity, do you work remotely, locally or travel? I have considered consulting, but the local market outside of the Bay Area would be limiting.

I do not want to give away too much personal information but I mostly work remotely. (I meet with my clients once every 2 months or so) The only exceptions are heavily regulated corporations like banks that require everyone to work from within their office for security reasons. (to prevent information leaks)

A question for any consultants who work 100% remotely: how do you compete with workers in countries with extremely low costs of living?

I work remotely. It's very simple - you position yourself and your skillset in such a way that you cannot be commoditized.

There are two essential skills required to manage your own freelancing or consulting practice. The first is the core competency for which you bill (software development, sales conversions, security auditing, etc.). The second is the ability to inspire confidence in your clients that you are capable of using that competency to solve a business problem. Perception matters a great deal in business relationships and framing yourself as an equal who will leverage a unique mix of skills to contribute value is very important.

'patio11 has spoken about this a lot, and his writings helped me get to ~$300k per year as a consultant.

High five!

To be honest I've never been in a situation where there was any such competition. I'm sure it happens on the margins but when you factor in time zone inconvenience, language and cultural barriers it isn't so easy to commoditize consulting. Also good people from anywhere in the world tend to migrate to a few places where this work is done. They don't always stay hanging out somewhere cheap. And good people aren't cheap even if they live in a low cost location. The market price for such people is driven by demanding vs supply rather than the cost of their apartment.

probably more money, and more time.

people get what they ask for. when you make nearly 200k working for someone else you quickly start to realize what you are actually worth in the open economy compared to someone who is trying to imprison you professionally.