Too many people expect me to work for free lately...

A client who I freelance for just asked if they could invest in one of my side projects.

This is the best day of my programming career 😊

Client: I dont want you to rush. Okay?
Me: Okay sir.
Client: But I need it tomorrow.

Whaaaaaaat????

Freelance programmers

I hired myself :)

Freelance design client starter kit

Was scared to take up freelance work because i was scared of bad clients.

Finally took one today, client is not a total arse and knows exactly what she wants me to do, down to details.

MFW.

Client's expectations VS Client's budget

Leave a job for a much better job and the old job hires you freelance to do your old job. Feels dirty, but good.

This is a true story
I am a freelance developer, i recently had this conversation with my client:
Client: Add multi language option to my website
Me: Ok, I need for it 3-5 days
Client: Why?
Me: I need to create multi language system, this
website is built from scratch without using any
framework
Client: No need to built it, Just enabled it i need it fast
Me: Sir there is no such thing to enable features that
does not exit
Client: Listen me, I need this feature today, enable it
and we are done.

Me: Thats not how it works..
Client: I know how it works, i have hacking certificate

I designed a logo for a family member's business with the expectation that I would receive payment once the work was completed. I wasn't expecting a lot, I only really do freelance work for software but I know my way around Illustrator. I'm not one to charge family anywhere near full price and I felt no contract was needed. We were back and fourth for a little bit, getting the logo to his liking. Silly me during all of this didn't watermark any of the images I was sending (didn't think I'd have to, you know... Family) and a little while later he's gone and ordered shirts with the logo on it without paying or even contacting me. When I confronted him about it, he pulls out the whole "No contract was made" bullshit. It's ridiculous how arrogant people can be, I was asking for $50. I put a good 15 hours into it with all the alterations he wanted. 15 hours I could have spent on actual clients.

TLDR; Designed a logo for a family member without a contract, he decided not to pay.

To all young freelancers in low-income countries: I want to share my experience, of 6 years working for a piss-poor country, and 6 years working in freelance, and then emigrating. Here's what you should watch out for, and what to expect:

My first salary was barely 1.5$ per hour. I lived in a piss-poor country that taught me a lot (like why it's piss-poor).
The main thing to note when you're a developer in such a country, is that you're being fucked. Your employer might scream at you and tell you how bad you are, while barely paying you. That is you ... being ... fucked. Gain some confidence with the help of friends and family, and a great effort from yourself, look at what freelance gigs you can find, and ditch anything related to jobs in your country.

Being a somewhat able developer, but with modest experience, I started my freelance gigs for 5$ per hour. Because I was lazy, and freelance gigs weren't exactly being thrown at me, I was making 100$ per week, AFTER the companies I worked for appreciated what I did and offered themselves to up my pay to 12$ per hour. Yep. I was lazy. You will likely get lazy in freelance too, so be prepared for this.

My luck changed when one of my clients became a full-time employer, at 15$ per hour, with a well organized team where I actually worked for 40 hours per week (I had already amassed 8 years of experience...). For people in first world countries that will seem laughable, but in my country I was king of the hill, getting paid more than government CEOs that ended up in the news as the "most well paid".

That was the top of the pyramid for international indie freelance, as I would later find out.
I didn't do stuff that was very difficult. In fact, I felt like my abilities were rotting while I worked there. I had to change something. So I started looking for better offers. I contacted many companies that were looking for a senior developer, and the interviews went well, and all was fine, except for my salary demands. I was asking for 25$ per hour. Nobody was willing to pay more than 15$ per hour. That's because of my competition - tons of developers in cheap-to-live countries that had the same, or more to offer, for the same rates. Globalization.

So I moved to Germany. As soon as I was legally able to work, I was hunted down by everybody. I was told that it takes a month to pass the whole hiring process in Germany. My experience demonstrated that 2-5 days is enough to get a signed contract with "Please start ASAP".
There is freelance in Germany as well. And in the US. And everywhere else. A "special" kind of freelance, where you have to reside locally. The rates that this freelance goes for is much, much higher than international freelance. I'd say that 100€ per hour is ok-ish. Some people (newbies, or foreigners who don't speak the language well) get less, around 60 or so. Smart experienced locals get around 150-200 or even more.

It's all there. Companies want good developers to solve their business problems with IT solutions, and they'll beg you to take their money if you can deliver that.

So code!
Learn!
Accummulate experience!
Screw the scumbags that screw you for 1-2$ per hour!
Anyone able to write something more than "Hello World!" deserves more.

Do the climb! There's literally room for everybody up there! There is so much to do, that I feel like there will never be too many developers.

Thank you for bearing with my long story. I hope it will help you make it shorter and more pleasant for you.

You know your idea was shit when you ask a freelance dev to make it for you, get denied and then see your idea being ranted about on devrant...

"My cousin said he can do it for less. But I like you so blah blah"

Why don't you go your fucking cousin then. Stop wasting my time.

I made an automatization bot for a big company from my town (freelance). Today I had to shut it down because I've been waiting 3 weeks for my payment (they only had 5 days after finishing development to pay)

Fuck the fucking client, fuck this fucking shit

Just landed my first freelance project 😁🎉

My family thinks I'm unemployed (I mostly freelance) and that I will soon suffer from starvation, even though I am making more money than most of my peers with stable jobs.

I was 12 years old and it was my first freelance.

I was taking a Web Designer course and my teacher offered me an “opportunity”. He asked me to develop a search engine for a real estate website.

I did it pretty quickly with PHP and MySQL. The amount offered was U$ 20.00 (yeah, I know, it sucks, but it was a good chance to earn experience).

3 months went by, it was the last week of the course and he still hadn’t payed me yet!

End of story: my dad and a couple friends went to the school and had a conversation with him. They said things like: man, you shouldn’t ruin a kid’s dream for twenty dollars. I’m sure he only payed me because he was scared haha

I'm a freelance iOS developer / UI designer and working on a pet related startup. I deal with lot of pets. My parents thinks that I'm full-time dog care taker.

Any code I make for clients is under a strict license unless specified otherwise. It's a straight forward license pretty much stating that they can't sell it or claim it as their own. I've had a few clients break that license but one stood out. I had made a piece of software that cost her over $2,500 due to the amount of hours that went into it. The transaction went along smoothly so there was nothing to be alarmed about. She came back for more work about 6 months later and I decided to do some checking up on her to see how her business was going. Immediately smack bang on the home page was my software being sold for $30/month. Needless to say I was outraged. She said there was no talk of a license which I responded with pulling out the contract that she signed where it explained that signing the contract meant she was in agreement with the specified license. 2 months after this started, I'm being awarded any profits made from said software along with her closing down the website. As much of a bitch as she was, it wasn't worth my time trying to get more out of her.

Yup,
it's my first time that I get paid with Bitcoin on a freelance project.

It feels good :D

!rant

So, I lost my job a couple of weeks ago, and on a whim I decided to post an ad on a classifieds website advertising websites done cheap. Next thing I know I'm making money doing something I love as opposed to dealing with assholes at a checkout counter. I know the freelance life has its ups and downs but I'm happy!

Never begin a freelance project without a down-payment -.- 240+ hours in, an eager sounding client, no response for weeks now! What a waste.

So I took on a fairly big project and poured my heart and soul into it, was the biggest thing I did yet. I kept on sending beta's to the customer after each change for review! Kept on insisting that they review it, the answer was always "this looks amazing keep doing what you're doing"! After I finished and pushed everything to production.

They didn't use it for nearly 6 months! And then out of the blue they call me saying that half of the app is wrong.. WTF? Where was this information during testing! I informed them that the changes would take some time since I need to do migrations and change the whole database schema.

In which they replied "but you already finished it once won't changing things make it easier? We shouldn't pay for your mistakes"
I don't know how I handled that but they should be thankful they were half way across the country 😠😠😠😠

I started this new freelance project where I am building some android libraries for the client. Anyways, during meeting I was about to present my results and suddenly backend seemed to be down. I looked into the round "are your servers down?"
Team Lead: "Yeah our cto, also our only backend dev, is developing a new feature."
Me: "Okay but why is production down?",
Team Lead: "Ah dont worry we always test on production. We have a pretty solid hardware, we will even upgrade it soon!"
Me:"... How about you just separate your stage environments and have a develop environment?"
Client: "see, this is where our strength is. We dont need a develop stage we have very strong hardware and our backend is fully in PHP"

Thanks God I'm a freelancer

I'm a freelance web developer and I'm only 16 years old, coding since 5 years! Go for your goals, you can do it!

When will people understand that you can't get quality software made for $5 by some random from Fiverr? Just as I'm about to confirm a quick Freelance job they tell me they've found someone on Fiverr that will do it for a fraction of the amount. It's happening more and more. Don't get me wrong, I'm still getting plenty of work but I see it as a bit of an insult. Comparing the quality of work I do with someone who pumps out 5 programs an hour.

And yes, I do realise there are people on Fiverr that do care about their work, there just doesn't seem to be many of them.

So I look the code of a client from my freelance job... And may I know what the hell is this?

I was getting a freelancer job to do some backend work for a company in India that is working for a huge company in Saudi Arabia.

The customer in india was my primary contact, I wasn't allowed to talk to the guys in Saudi Arabia. My contact, we'll call him Aman, asks if i can do frontend too. I decline. Now what follows were 4 weeks of backend work during which Aman called me 10-15 times per day via skype to ask me how I was progressing, and if "insert spec here" was already done. He even called me in the middle of the night, well aware of the different time zones.

But in the end all the work is done, Aman is happy. I request payment.

Aman: We can't pay you yet, you didn't do the frontend!
Me: I'm not doing frontend.
Aman: It's just a few simple changes and then we're done.
Me: Gnnn, fuck it, what do you need?
Aman: Our customer would like the frontend to look better.
Me: Ok, so what exactly should look better?
Aman: All of it.
Me: Do you have any specs?
Aman: No just make it look more modern.
Me: So you want me to rework the whole frontend? That's not just a few simple changes...
Aman: How long would you need?
Me: I actually don't do that kind of work.
Aman: We pay you double your hourly rate if you do this and finish it fast.

(This is were I should have just said no... but the greed...)

Me: Ok, but it will take me about 3 weeks to do that.
Aman: OK.
Me: Do you have any preferences as to how it should look?
Aman: No, just surprise us.

(After this sentence I really should have gotten the hell out of Dodge)

After working 3 weeks changing over 20.000 lines of CSS and most of the HTML I present Aman with the changes.

Aman: No our customer doesn't like the changes. Can you make a different version?
Me: What doesn't he like, any specifics, coloring, styling of lists or the buttons?
Aman: He doesn't like the whole thing. Please make us another version.
Me: Ok, you are the customer, but it would really help if you give me some pointers as to how it should look like.
Aman: Just do your best.
Me: ..., ok, that's helpful.

2 weeks later...

Aman: No our customer liked the version before better. But could you make it look more modern.
Me: *Bangs head against wall repeatedly*
Me: What do you mean by modern?
Aman: It should look more modern, as a whole.
Me: Ok, I get that, but could you give me an example?
Aman: Sends me a screenshot of the overview screen with all the elements encircled and modern written beside them.

1 week later...

Aman: The customer has decided, he likes the original version best. Can you undo all the changes?
Me: Sure but that'll take like 1 hour.
Aman: Oh by the way we were asked by accounting why the price for this project was so high?
Me: *hugh* *gnn* what?
Aman: Well at the beginning, you estimated the backend and frontend work to be done in 4 weeks.
Me: The frontend was never part of the original estimate.
Aman: Can you do anything concerning your hourly rate, so that we can get back to the original pricing.
Me: *make a mental note to never work with an intermediary company in india again and cancels the job requesting the due payment*

Luckily I got paid the full amount but not before having another 10 Skype call with Aman...

Fuck yeah I love Thursdays! Deployments went well in the office, freelance clients are satisfied as well and I am drunk with my wife... what more can a dev(ranter) ask for?!

made my first dollar(actually $4) on internet.
got a gig on fiverr.

client wanted his joomla website to be unresponsive so website looks same on all devices.

never touched joomla.
it took ne 2.5 hours but actual work was only 10-15 minutes.

yippiiiieee.....😀😀😇😇

This big multi-million consulting company hired me as freelance. They did it in a hurry, because "the project already started, it is a very important client (a bank) and we need your expertise by YESTERDAY".

In the first THREE WEEKS I had meetings with their own project managers, their client's project managers, techies, sales people. No one was able to tell me what do I have to do, but:

1 - they asked me for very detailed estimates plus a release plan
2 - f**k your estimates, we need this BY JANUARY 16th

So recently completed my first overworked and underpaid freelance job, I'm like totally a developer now right

Got a request on a freelance site, was about modding a game.
I've answered thinking "easy money", then he reveals it's for a console, that it's not "hacked" so I couldn't run any third-party script.
I've tried to kindly explain the situation and he seemed having understood.

Few minutes ago I checked my inboxes and I got a bad review on that freelance platform, of course from him. 👌

As seen at one hotel in Dublin: "Don't stay in your bed unless you know how to make money in your bed".
Looks like I'm OK to stay in my bed because I'm a freelancer.

for any freelance work I do my prices double for you if you offer to pay me through acknowledgement from your Instagram page

When you have to complete your freelance project deadline by tomorrow ⏰

When you're a freelance web developer with 3 years of experience and they be teaching you basics of programming in college

When you take on a freelance job on the side and life decides kick you into busy af mode.

I got my first freelance Web Developer job!!! I was beginning to think it would never happen!

Me and inspector quackers off travelling south East Asia! Any tips on freelance programming for travellers?

When the client thinks "freelance" means "working for free" and refuses to pay

In a military district.

I sometimes accept freelance jobs. Don't ask me how I found this one. (or how they found me)

If only I had enough freelance work to quit my job and dictate my own hours. working hours would be 18:00 to 5:00.

Am I the only one that does not even consider a freelance job if the description has bad/poor English and/or is written in all caps?

meanwhile...

Finally my dream freelance project!!!! I will be re-designing and Then developing an Ecomm site for an organization that supports marijuana legalization. Oh those beautiful pictures will be my pleasure to slice up and implement. Lol

Just picked up some freelance work because someone recognized my dev rant shirt.

Devrant has become a cabal.

When you take a freelance project for some extra money and realize the last thing you want to do after work is work

When you find the most incredible jacket ever in a vintage shop but don't have enough $$$. So you spend the next week doing freelance projects on the side of your day job, clocking as little as 1.5 hrs sleep some nights, only to find said jacket gone when you return TT_TT

<rant>
Freelance employers should learn that a "full stack" developer does not equal "fully proficient and experienced in everything code and comp. related". ESPECIALLY if the job pays less than 6£ an hour.
</rant>

Sacrificed my Diwali and made a website for my first client and did not get any payment.
I was new and less confident.

Well this is my freelance horror story.

Now I fucking demand money from client UPFRONT.

I sat poolside on a tropical island today and worked on a project. I could get use to this freelance lifestyle.

I've been offered some freelance work.
The marketing guy in me says I can do it in 1 month. The technical guy in me knows I'm bullshitting.

All I want for Christmas is...a client who knows what they're doing.

In an age of GitHub and cloud computing, how can a freelance dev using their own laptop be classed as a security risk?

These crude rules laid down by corporate IT depts just make companies look silly.

Freelance web devs:

How do you handle pricing? By page or by hour? What's your rates?

Employer: Need a freelancer to die for me

Freelancer: I'm a professional dier

Got my first successful freelance job done today!
Was a very basic website but...I still got paid and I feel good about it. Seriously thinking about making a decent web app that can help me nail more customers.

I beg your f**king pardon?

So my wife got laid off from her job aaaaaaand that puts me back again in the hunt for freelance bs to cover up her income until she finds something decent........dis is gon suck bad man.....

Few weeks passed, and I as a freelancer without job all I did was seek for one and couldn't find anything.

Now I'm overwhelmed with all the work and interviews I got in the past weeks xD

Never balanced...
No work at all, or too much work.

I don't know what's worse for a freelance dev:

1) Dealing with customers

2) Dealing with the IRS

Freelance:

Me: I'm done with the major bugs. Can I do the minor bugs tomorrow?
PM: can you hang on just a moment? Can you pls remove the ...
Me: I'll try. I'm experiencing brain dysfunction right now.
PM: Oh? Hahaha! Just a minor tweak tho. Teeheehee.
Me: (fudge)

I shall single handedly increase the market price of freelance labor by going full on suicide squad.

My freelance horror story just happened a few weeks ago. Programming final project was due and a classmate payed me to make his project. It was something very simple so I was able to make mine and his different and functional. Grades went up yesterday; he got an A and I got a B+ 🙃 #wk86

I freelanced for a company where I had to make an iOS app. The person who I was in contact with was a software engineer of that company. When i was asked to send them the final project code after publishing the app, the person was like email the project even after giving them the option of uploading to a private repo and sending link. It’s seemed like the software engineer didn’t know what GitHub was like how is that possible.

I got my first appointment with my first freelance client today as I'm trying to earn some money on the side. She contacted me after the guy before me hasn't delivered in more than 2 months.

Her: So how much do you think its gonna cost me.

Me: Well the minimum rate for a site like this is like €1000. But since you are my first client, I'm willing to do it for €700.

Her: The guy before you only charged €250...

Me: I'm sorry I can't do that. I might get to 500 if I cut some corners, but I can't make any promises.
Inner me: Look where you're 250 has got you... You haven't seen anything in return...

Her: Proceeds to whine about how it's still waaay to much ... And how she will get me more clients etc. (Yeah right...)

I quit my job 1 year ago about and am working freelance now. next step is make tutorial vids then once I get that solid it's on to my startup which is in the data analytics field.

just got paid for my first upwork task. feels really good. some clients are absolutely amazing! ^_^

"I am a freelance web develope-"

"CAN YOU HACK FACEBOOK ACCOUNT?"

Not behing payed after software is complete...
Whanted to go freelance when I was 20, got a 'real job ' and stopped programming for years...

No pay no work. New motto!!

Always on the lookout for freelance projects but can't even make a website for dad's business.

alert("Disappointing Son");

My freelance horror story is that I don't work freelance, but rather for a corporation where I am a faceless entity known as asset.

Why do so many beginners gave this retarded notion that freelancing is easy? Little shits really expect to read one HTML tutorial and start making money off the internet?

The most unrealistic deadline I got was the project must complete within 16 hours.

Setting: Freelance
Did I accept this? No
Client budget: 10 usd
What is the project? A iOS app which is the a combination of all LLM into one, like a clone of Poe. The API key must use my own because client refused to pay. I negotiate about the project, explain to him why this project, deadline and the budget is not aligned He said " Now everything can be done by using AI, why are yoh cheating me, i will report you" ( I was like report what?) I rejected the gig, then day's later my email junk folder is occupied with racist content and insulting me.

So yea. This is the whole story. This project is doable, just a wrapper. I don't mind if client will pay for all the API , the pay and dealings is logical.

Where to look for an UI/UX person?

Backstory: I currently work at a small startup. So far our website is just a bootstrap theme, slaped together by myself, so you could say, it's far from optimal. Especially on mobile devices.

Where would you guys look for a UI/UX person? Probably on a freelance basis. Did you have good expiriences in the past with a particular site/service?

Okay. So I have a long weekend though starting tomorrow and can't mountain trek this weekend.

What to do?

a. Spam easiest freelance jobs
b. Chill
c. What's your bet?

I got freelance contact for this simple static website.

Now the client is having a brainstorm and started giving more and more requests for features...

Slowly it's going to be not worth it...

All I want in life is to finish this damned freelance project 😤

You really start to question your choices in life when you can't get hired or get paid freelance work, so you apply to help (for free) on Catchafire... and get rejected.

Dear, developers
For any freelance project you want to embrace, you should have a written agreement by both parties signed ( clients and you ).
Some client's forget almost anything ....
I'm talking from experience, please be guided....

Freelance client calls freaking out because she needed the website changes done by yesterday morning because she had some huge meeting with potential investors....

I feel bad but I don't, she never told me anything about needing it done by Sunday morning.

This is exactly why I hate freelance work. Lack of communication and then they blame you

I love working from home. I finally feel I'm making progress and not just extinguishing fires and doing tech support for colleagues.

Maybe I should move to freelance work after this is over...

Idiot: Hello, Sam gave me yo #, I need avery small database system, how much wd it cost.
Me: I can't giv u a price without knowing features of the system in details.
Idiot: letme send u a list of the features.
Me: ok
Idiot: Budget issues, Payroll, Reporting, capabilities, Purchasings,Projects/Awards, Trainings ,Input query, Fixed, assets, Central invoicing, General ledger, Accounts, payable, Accounts receivable.
Me: you managing a financial institution?
Idiot: no, its a university project.
Me: well am sory bt I can't help you guys, I dnt do campus projects.

Life of a freelancer:

Freelance platforms are technologically advanced form of slave trade

Client assumes the position of lord and we the slave as soon as he hires us 😑

As a freelance web developer, should I develop my own website to market myself?

Is it ethical to charge a client for the runtime of a computation? I.e. cpu time?

I usually don't, since it doesn't cost me anything to leave my machine running overnight. But a few of my friends told me that I should.

More context:
I do sometimes freelance work for professors as an RA. At times you need to leave a script running for like +5 hours. During which I just either procrastinate or go to the gym or sleep. The energy cost for computer running is barely a dollar.

I get charged by the hour per work in my timesheet, or sometime for a negotiate price which is also usually computed by the estimated work time it would take.

How to get the rest of the content you need to finish a freelance website...

Invoice them. They'll respond faster than a cat can lick its own ass with its tongue already on the hole.

Did some freelance work off the books and now the guy is threatening to sue me .. nice

Looking for some advice
Does anyone do freelance work on the side? If so how did you get the work? Whats it like freelancing?
I'm looking to try and earn some extra cash

Submitted my first proposal for a freelance gig and didn't win the bid but I don't feel bad about it. Asked for feedback and it turns out I lost because the dev who they chose had a recommendation from someone the CTO (decision maker) highly respected. He loved my proposal and appreciated my efforts on it and my bid was marginally lower than the dev they chose.

Overall it was a positive experience and I may have established a good report with the CTO in the process.

Reasons I'm glad I'm out of freelance:

I want you to rebuild my website but you need to do it here in front of me so if it breaks later, I can fix it.

still unemployed,

closing peanut freelance contracts here and there,

totally burnt out.

God save my soul.

!rant

Freelance web developers: please talk about yourselves.

How much experience did you have at the beginning?
How did you get started and was it much work to get set up?
How do you find a constant stream of clients?
Do you make a living wage just from your freelance work?

Any other information you'd like to share is appreciated.

I worked a few times for free until the client decided he doesn't need anymore that product so he doesn't need to pay me.
From that moment i started to ask for advance payments, but a lot of times I calculated incorrectly the real price of my work miscalculating the number of hours it will take, ending working for less than 3€ per hour...

I love freelancing, but I'm really bad at evaluating my work.

Anyone got interviewed by an 18 year old kid for a freelance project... like is he planning on paying me from his allowance or what

I want to program everyday for a whole year because I want to use the programming knowledge that I learned and use it in ways that will make me think outside the box. Hopefully, I can grab freelance work as a Web Developer, which has been in high demand these past few years.

I'll be documenting the process on my YouTube channel, which I'll share when I publish the first video.

I will NOT procrastinate... I WILL DO THIS!!

About to start my first ever freelance job. The problem is I think I've overestimated myself and under quoted for the project.

Hoping for the best and I'm any case, this will be a good experience in terms of learning about the freelance world right?

When you want to resign to your full time job but you are having difficulty on making decision.

Reasons to resign:
1. They are giving tasks that are not related to web development such as data entry.

2. I can't see a good future ahead on this company. It feels like it doesn't have a goal to grow. The boss is not focusing on this line and instead she is focusing on her other businesses. The boss also has admitted that she can only give 20% of her time. We don't have new projects and challenging tasks.

3. 4 months have been passed and still we haven't receive the yearly salary increase. It should be effected on February.

Reasons to stay:
1. No salary deduction if you are late or didn't complete 9 hours / day. Sometimes I just work for 7 or 8 hours a day.

2. Office is just 30 mins away from my house.

3. When I don't have a task, I usually do my freelance project at the office secretly. So even though there are no challenging tasks at the office, my freelance project helps a lot.

4. You can play games with your friends when you feel exhausted or you don't have assigned tasks.

I recently received an offer from my remote part-time job to work full time 8-10 hours a day and the salary is twice higher compare to current one.

I lost a client today 😞.
One of the fundamental reasons freelance sucks major balls.

So how does one become a freelance programmer? I'm thinking of becoming a hobo drifter, but I would like to keep my car.

Not realizing i signed up to be freelance until the first paycheck

Never include freelance as a budget source in daily expenses. Think of it as a reward only! Now, plans are cancelled T_T

WOO an entire ecommerce freelance job. That should help with the CV padding!

In getting a remote job, go to a lot of online job boards. Filter their feed for remote work or work from anywhere. Get the RSS feed (if they don't have it, make one yourself), and add them to your RSS reader, like Feedly.

Do the following daily:
Go through the feed, study the job post ad, apply for the job as per their instructions. Archive those you don't have an interest in and those that you have applied. Repeat.

This also applies for hunting freelance contacts too.

Best site(s) to look for freelance coding jobs?

My first freelance dev job thing, turned out alright. For the first year though, the dev job thing became a tech support thing. Oh the horror.

Client pays deposit for website, client disappears into thin air. This will be fun

Someone just asked me to rewrite their application and lower the time of generating 200 000 html files from over an hour to a few minutes
.
.
Why the fuck would u need 200 thousand html files wtf is wrong with you

Sunday is for the freelance

~~ 2020 exp.
Best: Got my highest paid freelance project.
Worst: My highest paid freelance project gave me the highest burnout of my life.

when the boss puts a job on upwork with 1 line description

context: I'm sort of a self-deprecating guy and I really don't look for validation.

So, i decided to fuck it. I tried to provide the best decisions in terms of money-wise/biz-wise but apparently this guys rather choose what he believes is best for the code... (he knows shit of coding and that's coming from someone who is not a software engineer but rather a physicist who happens to code).
So, now i let him make all decisions. no opinion from me. a few things are going to shit because of him... fuck it. i had it. as long as I get paid. fuck him.

this is probably common... sorry for the rant.

I'm starting a freelance project and the guy who is working on the backend refuses to use git because all the files sync to his computer from the server

why is everybody posting about wordpress & php?
fuck my life
fuck php
fuck $300 freelance wordpress websites

I had a dream freelance job recently. It was a lot of a fun and I really wanted to continue to work there.

However it started to become apparent my manager was a mess. He would often turn up hungover and couldn’t follow conversation. When asked about docs he said he wouldn’t keep any documentation “so no one could take over”. The whole attitude and professionalism was awful.

Some days on release he (and another member of the team) would turn up to work four hours late as they’d been out the night before. I would absorb all of the impact. Technically I felt he was quite significantly junior than myself. Management saw, directors saw, no one did anything.

To cut a long story short - I raised it with HR, I was told unless I raised an “official grievance” nothing would be done. I asked if I could move - I was met with a shrug “we don’t know”

I eventually reached a point where I felt my only real power is to walk away.

I now have no confidence in HR at all. I don’t think I’ll ever involve or raise anything with them again. 😔

Okay, had a freelance JavaScript gig (with Three.js 3d lib). Usually I put the code on github so I have easier time switching between Desktop and laptop during work, unless I have to sign an NDA or something. Today at 5 AM I got mail from freelancing site support that client reported me for having code on public repo (but it's not like it is a proprietary software, it's based on threejs editor). I made repo private and went to sleep. Later I'm reading through messages, guy was cursing me, threatend to sue me etc. Ended up dropping the client. Did I do something really unprofessional? Unless I'm told not to, I want to show my code and I don't believe in not showing it by default. What do you guys think?

Describe one instance when you thought, "Fuck this shit, I'm done with this client". Preferably when the client came up with stupid/impossible requirements

I quit my freelance job to spend more time with my family, I feel great for doing it!

I always promise myself that I won't take any freelance projects during that specific semester because I need to study for college and already have projects to do.

I always fail and get stressed out later with the amount of things that somehow I got involved with and delivery dates are always close.

I feel such a sadomasochist when I accept this freelance projects and hate myself for doing it.

The promise for fast/simple projects (that always becomes complex later) and the quick $$ get me.

Freelance client wanted additions to a website I made( which I had already given them a 50% discount, due to being friends with my boss....) sent them a SoW and they complain because the cost...

Where is the best place to pick up freelance work that actually pays a realistic amount?

I’ve been on sites like o-desk where there are folks looking for pretty big jobs and they have a budget of $100.

How to become a freelance web developer?

Fuck, is it worth learning PHP and WordPress to actually get freelance jobs? Everything I find is in fucking WordPress and I just need to make some fucking money

How do you guys know how much to ask for freelance work? I'm always scared to ask too much and lose a client

For all freelance Devs out here.
How do you get clients ?

Because am planning to begin with freelancing but am afraid that i won't be able to get any clients.

A potential client wants me to fix a critical bug on their app. She wants us to book a call so she can explain the issue to me.

Because so many clients have wasted my time in the past, I want to charge her some $$$ for the call. However, if the gig goes through, it’ll be deducted from her bill.

Does this make any sense?

Service's like freelance and people per hour are a farce. It's just a constant race to the bottom price-wise.

'Yeah sure I can make you a blog website in 24 hours for £5'

!rant

As a company director that’s just starting out down my freelance journey, I still find it so scary taking money out of the business, even though I know I have the money to replace it.

The spectre of getting my taxes wrong even though I’ve got established accountants looking out for me is insane.

On Holiday break from work, and get a morning email to do some freelancing. Yeah, sure i !will do it today.

When your meeting was supposed to be on Wednesday but it got rescheduled three times and now when everyone agreed to meet, two days later, one lead guy didn't show up. Fuck this shit. I'm going freelance.

Client Of The Day : Hi, I would like to have a website. I went to an agency but are too expensive for me. Can you do me this website for less than €150 ($170) ?
Me : -_-

So, question. What is your minimum for a freelance assignment ?

in the freelance marketplaces, some people write, "Need a freelance developer for SMALL TASK". who the hell defines those tasks as SMALL task? if you knew this is a SMALL task, why don't you just do it yourself? if its so small, why don't you just ignore it? if its a small task, why don't you just spend five-ten minutes of your "precious" time to learn how to fix it?
& then when it comes to paying, they say, "My budget is 5$, because its a small task"
Seriously? in 5$ my electricity bill wouldn't be covered.
& Then comes to the marketplace commission! Most of the times, its about 20%
So, I get 4$
Then it comes to the bank tax and blah blah!
So, now I get around 2$ or 3$
Now, I don't know whom should I kill first -_-
The clients or the marketplace owner or the government or the bank owner or myself :}

I wanna rant about a freelance job but I can't. Tell me your freelancing horror stories instead :D

I am so excited just after getting a job with a startup company and also received my first freelance gig only thing is I'm in my final year of college so amount of work is staggering but never been as excited to have so much work to do and help expand my skills and looking forward to ranting more which is most important

There's a senior dev at work who deflects and delays every project while working on his own freelance jobs most of the day. Fortunately, my performance is not tied to his.

Hero, or villain?

Could a freelance dev let me know how they find clients? Not just the ones from sites online and such, but the good clients, 3-4 month projects, proper prices?

When working as a full-time developer
TGIF!, Its already 6 hours? YES!

Working freelance or on your side-project
TFIG?! What TGIF. This feature took 6 hours? FML.

Not a rant but sort of a rant.

Getting REAL fucking tired of the corporate rat race.

Thought Bubble ...

{If I quit this stupid job I could do freelance sites}

Then I realized that I have no idea what skill set it takes to be a freelance developer. I only know my one little corner. Once I commit my code it goes off down the assembly line for others to worry about testing, deployment, hosting, security and other things I have no idea about.

So tell me freelancers, is the grass greener? What additonal skills do you have to have the us enterprise folks would have no idea about?

Or are you making huge bucks where you overcharge for Wix sites that do not suck?

I am freelance, fullstack, and there are days, like today, that I get up, and I spend hours in front of the screen and I can not do anything, practically boring and without a bit of motivation to do anything, I could defecate while I'm sitting, not It would affect me in nothing .....

Hey everyone,

When I was in college, I used to wish to do some freelancing work to earn some amount.
But I never did it due to lack of experience and knowledge.

Now, I've been working in a Small IT company for one year and I'm confident enough that I can do it.

I'm interested in making APIs as a freelancer.
I've few doubts here,
Once the API is developed is it a freelancer's job to deploy it in some cloud instance or they just need to share the code?
If the client wants the freelancer to deploy it on their behalf then do the freelancer have to create his account for example in AWS for deployment?

Also, Do freelancers have to set up and maintain all the DB for the APIs?

Was freelance artist for 10 years.

Decided it would be easier to learn to program than to get clients to pay.

Do you earn a lot more if you're working freelance instead of beeing a bootlicker?

It's a shame how you as a freelance web developer complete a project and hand it over to client and you check it over and over and you never find the client use the project.

It hurts my feelings really really bad.

sometimes I miss working in a team as a freelance dev, more opportunities for personal growth IMO

Aspiring freelance/junior web dev here, I'm familiar with WSGI (using Flask), some PHP, Apache, JSON, and Vanilla JS. What other technologies should I be learning to make myself more marketable?

I want to freelance when I'm not doing my full time job. To those that are freelancers, how should I get started? What is your experience? How do you guys get customers?

Completed A project for my freelance job , just realized that Most of the code are php?

I am going to go freelance (starting a company and will be my own first employee) at the end of the month.

Was wondering what software some of you, who are also freelancers, are using to manage everything.

Quotes, invoices, jobcards, etc.

The bank through which I will be registering the company appears to offer some sort of online service for that purpose, but I have not seen it yet.

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

When a university student approaches you, to do their coursework for them! 😡😓

Many of you commented on my previous rant regarding my first ever freelance gig that I would definitely be back with even more to rant... here I am.

What was supposedly a 1 to 1.5 month long project became one that is stretching beyond 3, if lucky, else 4 months long. Requirements and scope evolving more complex and with variations more intense than pokemon evolutions.

I fucked up. I signed a contract that nobody would have. I didn't plan or protect my ass enough to prevent such shit from happening. I severely underestimated and hence under quoted. This is one of the nightmare situations a freelancer could be in (in my opinion). I mean it could only get better... Right? I'm preparing myself for one hell of a payment at the end of the project. Brace yourself, payment is hopefully coming as fast as the number of seasons it took for winter to come in GoT.

On the bright side, I'm currently working on a new project with a client that is indeed much much better than this first. I mean he is a nice person and communications thus far has been nothing short of great.

I guess it's good to start with your expectations rock bottom, that way nothing else can be worse, I hope.

does anybody of you do freelance work and outsource it to upwork/fiverr and living the sweet nothing to do life (except talking to the customer and writing briefings)?

Finding work that first freelance gig is pain in the ass.

What genre of developer are you?

Mobile?
Game?
Web application?

Fore , I'm a Mobile developer(freelance) , and a backend developer (Full time Job)

How do I get clients as a freelance web developer?

So on Friday I completed my last day of full time employment to break out into the world of freelance. Sunday night my PSU decides life is too hard and cooks itself... Is this a sign of things to come?

AMAZON PRIME ALL THE THINGS!

I don't know how to freelance, how to passive income, I completely rely on my slave wage then transform it to USD to preserve it's value.

Wish I had another way.

This is why I sometimes hate freelance work. You do the stuff and when it's time to pay, ducking clients come up with stories

That moment after clients giving u half money for their project. After giving them ur contacts, they send Facebook request.!! 👊👊

Just wanted to share with you that I just finished my first ever mission as a freelance !

After a lot of information gathering and administrative cumbersome tasks to become a freelancer and a student at the same time, I have finally managed to acquire my first client and complete my first mission !

Excited to see what’s will come next !

so, I have a full time job, and I like it a lot, but I want to make a bit of extra money on the side. where do I start going about finding freelance gigs that are mostly relatively small in scale? I don't have enough free time to take on large scale jobs right now, and mostly I'd just like to build my portfolio/reputation so that I can eventually move into freelance several years in the future.

So, is your company looking for a Python / Devops Engineer ?

I would love a freelance project too,
want to work freely without someone constantly over my shoulder for a while.

i'm unhappy with my freelance project. should i quit? (Bad design, bad pay) And i dont needed but i say yes. I know its my error but im unhappy.

Web Freelancers of DevRant:
How did you start getting clients and deal with shitty things like the client dragging things out forever.

Also, do you use a contract you found online or did you make your own? What do you think is most important to include in a contract?

Cheers!

I have been working as a freelancer for a little while now. I recently started using upwork. The first job that I got on upwork was titled: “help me”, the bio explained that it was with node.js. Later, during the interview, the client mentioned that it was 30+ hours a week. I was kind of confused. I had no idea what I was getting into. A little bit down the road, he provided me with the project. This is when I almost wanted to jump off a cliff. The code was organised as if it was a c or c++ app and I couldn’t follow anything. The guy thought that “pass by reference” was a thing in JS. I cried. Granted, with objects, there are some reference exceptions, but generally passed by value. The code is like spaghetti... I still have 2 months left on the contract. It’s awful.

I hate websites like upwork and freelancer, its impossible to outbid the other applicants while maintaining a price that makes the work worth the trouble. Yet without them its impossible to find clients who are willing to pay $1k for anything no matter how big of a project it is, they keep looking for $200 solutions. Hows a developer supposed to raise some cash for a house and shit like that.

freelance devs:

do you experiment with new technology on your client projects (and do you bill (some of) the extra time?) or on your own time (meant for learning)?

Flexible working conditions e.g. office/remote/freelance/consulting

Pose a question to the students and check devRant as they come up with an answer ..which happens to fix that bug on a freelance project you're doing..
<schemes>

when the clients puts a job on upwork but has a 1 line description.

When you work as a freelance and your client compare your price with their programmer salary.

Wondering where people find good paid coding gigs(like freelance or contacts)
Debated it instead of trying to go into a company but all I see is like code me an aimbot or farm bot for a game

Guys, I'm a developer on my own time. I've worked as a Junior Engineer in American Express while still obtaining my bachelor's degree in my second year of college. However I had to quit because full time work and school was not possible. Anyways, I still program and develop websites on my own time, however I just cannot seem to get my first freelance client for technology projects anywhere. Where do I start? How do I do this?

Finished my first freelance web project today. Spent 11 hours coding it. Another 10 hours trying to get it to work on the browser.

Finished my job, now making a WordPress theme for a freelance project.. Ahhhh.. A good horror and a cold beer awaits me this evening..

Not using any kind of cvs or ticketing system when I worked freelance during my college years.

Then again I didn't know they existed.

Do you also write long detailed emails to clients when working freelance / distance that your clients ignore and keep asking questions or inquiring things that are already answered in that email?

Sometimes I have to ask for the same thing three times in order to get an answer

Opinion question: When is one prepared to freelance?

Your freelance client wants you to build a Microsoft Teams clone, how much are you charging and how long would it take you?

Do any experienced developers have tips on beginning to freelance. I normally get sub-contracted work for back-end gigs, however I'd like to start landing fullstack clients of my own.

All advice welcomed!

Once a week because I’m studying Web Development. Once a month because I’m a fulltime freelance designer.

Sup there is there any freelancer here ? And is it worth it ?

My dumb effin ass signed a contract as a service provider.
I can't just change jobs now.

In that sense, it's better to be an employee rather than a contractor/freelance.

Should have read it man

Let's say you had just received a freelance project, tell me more how you give the client a valid price

Freelance web devs: where can I find some examples of industry standard pricing?

My partner has an opportunity to design a site for a newspaper she writes for, but has never done this before and doesn’t know what to quote...

This has probably been asked before here - but how does a developer leave a day job to start working freelance full time?

I've worked on projects in my own time on and off during the short 4 or 5 years of my career so far and I've always considered doing it, but how do people make that jump? How do you start working for yourself and how do you secure clients?

A friend of mine wants to pay me to make a site for her. Freelance work, it's shit but I like money. The problem is I already have school, internship project and another client's project. I wanna make the site for her but I can't because I'm to busy ;-;

So I said to her she could make one on wix. I feel kinda bad because I wanted to help her, she's a good friend. I hope she doesn't think I don't care...

I'm a full time lead developer, but I want a extra challenges etc. Does anyone know a good site etc, which you can do a few hours freelance or group projects​?

I am working on a freelance project for a software dev startup. The api service endpoints given to me is so full errors that you can boldly say it's zero percent tested and you'll be correct. The project was meant to last for a week but now it's going to a month due to the errors I have encountered while working with the given API service, so more like a back and forth wait for an update kind of thing. I am close to done building the client but yes they cannot test my last update because someone updated the login endpoint which now returns 500 internal server error. I really want to vent out my frustration to this company without loosing them to the project but honestly i don't know how to do it.

Edit: Just for a side note, about the relationship this client is my former company.

The ability to land freelance jobs which pay a realistic amount for the work..
Why? Because I'm officially in Vietnam babey!!!!!

For the U.S. users, does it feel weird if you do freelance work and it's another country outsourcing to the U.S.?

well, I'm free now. In case you need a freelance software developer with experience in Python, Go and React living overseas drop me a message :)

Reading those freelancing stories, I wonder: how did you guys got your first freelance?