I'd say the opposite especially if you're thinking of the higher rates. While it can vary from project to project in general customer ready to pay decent rates to contractors usually expects more skills, experience, independence, teamwork, soft skills etc. While not always it's often like a team of mercenaries that you still need to have an idea how to make best use of them and lead in the right way.

You need contacts/referrals to start. If you don't have those, you're going to end up getting very low-paid shit work for shit people.

Nearly half of my contracts have been former employers, or companies where a former manager/coworker was and got me an interview. The rest have been referrals from those companies. Cold outreach or inbound is a small minority (<10% for sure).

as for how to start there are also contracting companies like eg Toptal with decent amount of projects from variety of companies from startups to enterprises and you're setting your own rate - probably not above the median but still good enough to start.

It’s all over the map.

Sometimes you’ll just be a pair of hands and left alone to deliver your your piece.

Sometimes you’ll basically be a “disguised employee” with all of the same politics and team dynamics.

Sometimes you’ll be bought in as the experienced pair of hands to fix a problem and need to get deep into the team dynamics.

Generally, contractors are a little more lonesome than permanent employees, but it’s dependent on the project.

After a few decades as a technologist (across different roles from web dev. to tech lead to project/product mgr to architect, etc.)...now, the only thing i want to do is: "...be a pair of hands and left alone to deliver your your piece..." and "...be bought in as the experienced pair of hands to fix a problem..." And, nothing else. :-)

Well, could be. You do need to be self-driven, and also be able to see the bigger picture so you actually help your clients.

I think some distance is helpful, too. Some clients can be really dysfunctional in the sense that they will spend all day talking about things in meetings, and never do anything about it, probably because they're not comfortable bringing about the changes. That's why they hired you. You're the change agent.

But communication is important. There's no boss to set the expectations or clear up misunderstandings for you, you need to do that yourself, carefully. If you think you'll find it difficult to bother explaining things to people, then you probably need to contract on something where you can communicate through a version control system.

I’m an accountant, not developer, but in my case I found freelancing much preferable to working on a team.

I don’t think I’m “bad” at working on a team, in that my team members would be happy to have me on the team, but I personally found it stressful to navigate multiple bosses depending on the project, having to rely on junior teammates that I would not have picked to hire, etc. I am much happier working with clients where I get to decide how the work gets done. Even though I still interface and meet with lots of people, it’s different and much more comfortable!