The Other Kind of Freelancer

Wikipedia defines a freelancer as:

A freelancer or freelance worker is a person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any one employer.

If I say I'm a freelance web developer, chances are you just got an idea in your head that's not accurate. I used to think that the misconception was tied to the term "freelance". However, I encounter the same misunderstanding when I use the term "independent" and several other descriptors. Basically, I think it comes down to most people only knowing about the one kind of "freelance". And, it just so happens that I'm the other kind.

The kind you're probably thinking of is more of a "retail" freelancer. If you go searching for sites related to freelancing, you'll find mostly stuff related to this kind of freelancer: web designers, web developers, photographers, writers, etc.

• They all generally spend their time going out and finding clients, bidding on projects, performing the work and repeating the process.
• As a general rule, "retail" freelancers deal directly with the client that wants the work done.
• They usually do the work in their own space.

What I do is something I've been calling "wholesale" freelance software development. See, many of my projects are for a client who has a client of their own. Much of the work is hourly. Most of it is done on site in a cubicle. I usually find work through recruiters instead of starting out by talking to the client directly.

Lots of things are the same between the 2 kinds. I still own my own company and am my own employee. I only get paid when I work and have to manage my own vacation and health care, etc.

However, lots of the things that retail freelancers spend a lot of time giving advice on don't really apply to me much. For instance, I've seen lots of articles about setting your billable rate as a freelancer. They often deal with the time you have to spend getting work and I've seen more than one talk about having 20 or 25 hours of billable work in a week and that rates should take that into account.

Most of the wholesale freelancers that I know put in 40 hours of billable work in a week and maybe an hour or 2 of non-billable stuff (like invoicing, accounting, etc.) in *some* weeks. My contracts tend to run about 6 months or so and are often renewed after that. When a contract actually ends, there's usually about 2 weeks of calls with recruiters, a couple of onsite interviews with the end clients, a day or 2 of negotiation and contract paperwork and then very little non-billable stuff until the contract is over.

That cycle is a great compromise for me. I don't have to spend half of my time doing marketing and pitching for work. Just a couple of weeks (and even that only an hour or 2 each of those days) talking to recruiters and doing a bit of paperwork. The rest of the time is solving technical problems and a little bit of business.

I get the benefits of being my own boss. My interactions with project managers and clients are less oriented to subordination and more toward partnership. I get to completely manage my finances and deduct things like computing equipment, my DSL, cellphone, mileage, etc. I can take money from consulting revenue and invest it into this site or other projects I want to have built.

And, most of all, I think that I really like the fact that, compared to an employee situation, wholesale freelance work lays all of the economic realities of the situation bare. There's no over valuation of things like free soft drinks (that are worth, what $10 a week?) or health care. Rather than hoping for a review every year, I have contracts that expire and need to be renewed.

There's a lot more to the whole thing, but I just wanted to share a glimpse of the world that I inhabit between full-time salaried employee and retail freelance. The longer I work as an independent consultant in a wholesale kind of role, the more I'm convinced that it's a great way to work.

And, with something like 10 million Americans working as independent contractors at this point, this trend is not small and I am not alone.