This was my first freelancer project. Just dropped out of school, i think i was 17. No money, no proper hardware, i had a very old laptop & stolen wifi from our neighbor. I lived in a very small room at my mom’s flat, she wanted me out as soon as i turn 18. At the time my plan was to work on freelancer stuff and make my own games. “It will be fine, fuck school, who needs school? 😂“ I haven’t really finished anything back then, so i only had a few wip hobby projects to show ppl as my references. I saw a freelancer job posting. The task was to make a simple quiz game for mobile, it paid 350$. Back then that was a lot of money for me so i took it. I met the client, he said “2-3 week tops, i send you everything, you do the code” Cool. I finally had a “job”😃. The 2-3 weeks turned into a 8 month blur of all-nighting and just implement one more thing and its finished. I did not really have any experience on how to deal with clients and i really needed this project to finally have something on my porfolio. I motivated myself with “if i can finish this i can finish anything”. I think the story of my most definitive all-nighting was 3 months into the development. I finally got everything from the client so it was like just put it together and its done. The client wanted 300 levels, beeing a noob i was i started making all the 300 unity scenes by hand, aligning the pictures, the ui, testing each level, making adjustments to the code, etc.. after a really long night and a fuckton of caffeine i was done. I sent it to the client at around 9 am and gone to sleep. When i woke up i checked my emails to saw this: Cool! But can we do hints? (wich needed a fuckton of rework of my code) I think i had my first mental breakdown while working on the project. After that he wanted more modifications and because i made every level by hand i had to remake all of them like 10 times 😂
But in the end it turned out positive, he really helped me to start my carrier, we became sord of friends and the project gave me a lot of confidence and experience on how to deal with stuff when shit goes wrong because everything that can go wrong in a project gone wrong. It was the most valuable developer lesson. Plus it sounds so cool to say “i was born in development hell, b*tch!”🕶
I attached a pic of the laptop i worked on 😂
Thanks for reading 😃

Me : Here is your website. So, when can I expect my pay.😊
Client (wants to skip the pay ) : Site is not loading first fix this we can discuss later.
Me : Please conncet to internet and reload. 😒😎

Truestory 🍻

Freelance programmers

>22 year old college student
>Apply for a QA internship
>Interview goes well,they see I have plenty of experience and doubt it's real
>Hard questions are thrown
>Answer them and they admit the position is for manual testing

I honestly don't care I need the money, plus manual testing doesn't usually strain me.

>A week goes by
>A month goes by
>Call them
>...Sorry we were looking for someone with less technical and dev experience.

My fucking face when I don't have a title, still overqualified, fighting with WordPress devs on freelancer.

Non-dev friend : hey I've got a cool idea, we'll create a site where people can post jobs and people can bid for it. We'll name it freelance.com. We gon be rich!!!!..

Me: okay....

Friend: so you in?

Me: No.

Friend: It's really easy, just build it like you built that website you did the other day (talking a landing page he saw me do in a week). In 2 weeks, we'll be millionaires. You'll do all the programming stuff, so you get 30% of the money, I'm the idea guy so I get the other 70%. About that, you in now?

Me: have you heard of odesk, freelancer, jobberman.

Friend: no... Does a freelance site exist.

Me: boy, it's 2016.

Friend: I just thought of it few minutes ago and my other friends thought it was a great idea.

Me: 🙈🙈🙈🙈😶🔫🔫🔫

If you are a freelancer don't trust the client.

NEVER!

Problems of Freelancer

Freelancer: Hey your app is​ ready.
Client : Can you add this ?
Freelancer: Sure, When am I getting payment.
Client: As soon as this gets done.

Next Day...

Freelancer: Hey your app is​ ready.
Client : Thanks. This looks good if there is this feature. Can you help me with that?
Freelancer: Sure, When am I getting payment.
Client: As soon as this gets done

Next Day..
Client : Blah Blah Blah
Freelancer: Sure, When am I getting payment

Frustration at peaks!!!

So far this basically describes my experience as a freelancer.

This motherfucker tried to fuck me!

Ok, here's the full story.
I applied for a quick job as freelancer. He told me I just had to implement stripe payment gateway. After finishing that he asked to save the user data from payment to the database, too. I added that. All the way he wanted me to work on his ugly project on a rotten server through cpanel. But I refused instead I uploaded a showcase environment on my own server.
After he tested my code and all was working as expected he again tried to make me implement the code right away into his retarded project before payment. When I mentioned that he has to pay me first he started bitching that he won't pay in advance.

At this point I left that fucker. Knowing that my feeling was right and this bitch never had the intention to pay for my work. He just wanted to steel my code.

Fuck you. I hope you get eaten in your bed by very hungry slugs one day. Like this one guy here on devrant.

Freelancing be like

I'm a freelancer, what about you

*creates a freelancer account on some website.
*builds portfolio and gets things running.
*meets his first client.

Client: Hello. so your profile says you are an experienced full stack developer. You are just the kind of person i've been looking for.

Me: Yep.

Client: Okay I have a project for you. I am looking at developing a simple website that has a few functions and the budget is 100$.

Me: Okay smooth. Hit me with the descriptions.

Client: it's going to be a dating website. Once a user signs up; the website would automatically take control of the user's media devices in his/her home; automatically playing something romantic. You get me?

Me: Em... Idk about that it seems a bit...

Client: it can be done! Develop the algorithm.

Me: Em... Ok.

Client: Well, next the website uses some complex sorting algorithm and sorts existing members based on their past real life relationships. It puts the best people above the messy ones.

Me: o.0

*client goes on with his bullshit in like another 10 lines of messages.

Me: -_-

Client: so what do you think? How soon can you begin and how soon can we be done?

Me: Do you also want a "butt scratcher" feature? Like a hand pops out of the monitor and asks to scratch the user's anus?

*client leaves the chat.

Me: Oh. I guess he a thing against family guy.

Agency: "Why don't you do more free work for us? When you do that we can give you better jobs for money?"

Me: "so if I do free work for you, I get to do paid work as a reward? ..you know that I am a freelancer, not your employee, don't you?"

*agencysulking*

Ok, so, to every pieces of shit out there that got a "revolutionary idea that will change the way we look at things" and who asks you to code it :

Fuck you, you sons of a cunt

No, i won't make your app on 3 different platforms for free, i'll make you pay for every platform you wanker, i'm a freelancer, i need money.

No, making database is not something that a little business cunt like you can handle, you don't even know what sql means

And fuck no, I won't make that shit in 2 weeks just because your peabrain thinks that it'll make mad dosh and that "It MusT bE eAsy to Do!!111", "a dating app but with a twist" won't work you gobeshit

If you want me to work on this shit, you give me money, specs and shit, you handle the rest, if it doesn't make money, it'll be your problem. I'm not your employee you wanker

Fuck y'all

HOOBA PORKRIND!!! PEEPEEENESS!!! HIAAAA!!

Whenever the clients try to lowball my price.

Client: hey are you home yet.
Me: no. I won't be for another hour.
Client: so who's logged into your PlayStation account?
Me: ....

I thought there was no worse freelancer site than fiverr.

*insert "Boy you were wrong" here*

freelancer.com

No. Just No.

- Limited to 8 bids as a free account
- You get 1 bid back every 90 FUCKING HOURS
- CLIENTS ARE EVEN MORE RETARDED THAN ON FIVERR
- HALF OF PEOPLE WANT YOU TO SELL YOUR UPWORK ACCOUNT TO THEM
- 5€ FOR 2000 WORDS OF TRANSLATION? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? END YOURSELF PLEASE
- "Design a custom social network (video chat, chat, forum, shop and payment gateway) quick!!!" for 100€, within one day.

What the fuck.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

When working as a freelancer

Here is the equivalent of every single mid sized "php" project listed on freelancer now:

I'd like a custom designed electric car.
Budget: $750.

And in 1999:

I need a literal pile of dog poop.
Budget: $10,000

I was going out with this really nice girl, funny, independent, with a knack for entrepreneurship... and eventually she found out I was a developer and she needed a freelancer... and that's how she became a client instead of a date.

Client: Hi there, we worked together I few months ago and loved what you created for us! We have another job and would like to see if you are available?

Me (1h later): Sure! Let me know more details about this new project.

Client (15min later): Oh, sorry, since you took so long to respond, we've decided to choose another freelancer. Thank you anyways!!

Me: ...

Freelancer got some really interesting project these days

Client (not for the first time): Your work sucks. I had to have this email formatting re-done before I sent it out.

Me: *sees that the email sent matches the work I did exactly with no changes*

Client (months later): I need you to do maintenance on my website.

Me: *does quick maintenance for free but sends update on status of work done and amount left in retainer agreement*

Client: You're too expensive! You started working with me for $X/hr, then you went up to $Y/hr and now you're all the way up to $Z/hr! You're not worth that!

Me: *fires client by refunding the remainder of retainer and sends client a list of local, cheaper providers*

Client: But now I don't have anyone to maintain my website until I find a new provider! Why have you done this to me? Waaaahhhhh!

Me (in the most professional language I can muster): Because you're a biotch and I'm tired of your verbal abuse. Maybe try not to be such a dbag to that next provider, mmm'kay?

It would be fun to answer "myself", but I'm a terrible boss.

As a freelancer you're also helpdesk, finance and marketing of your own little company, and I'm horrible at those things.

My current boss lets me boss myself within the company, while I still get to enjoy the luxuries of company life — completely shielded from annoying questions, with a stable predictable income.

I do believe that's the optimal structure: Hire people who can manage themselves, and have a drive to improve the company with minimal oversight.

Don't have true "bosses" at all, just some people who are good at bridging communication gaps between the islands of self-reliant teams.

My brother made a PC game for his game dev class.

You are a hamster with a hammer
- acorns drop and u crack them for points
- you have to avoid rolling logs and eagles that swoop down
- the game gets faster

Dad: I just played the game, I think it has potential like Angry Birds, can you convert it to Android?

Me: no and no
Dad: why and why?
Me: **facepalm and takes a deep breath**

Explains why very simply and that I'm not a game dev... And if he thinks it's that good, go pay for a freelancer...

Upwork:
"Hey freelancer, sorry we can't let you join this website made for freelancers like you as there are too many freelancers like you on this site made for freelancers like you"

Register on freelancer.com

Sees a job offer with 0 bid.

Clicks to make a bid...

....

74 bids.

Someone with a verified payment account actually typed this.

Best current career choice:
Quit to become a Freelancer.

OH BOY did I sleep bad directly after that decision - no contracts, no sales running.

Oh BOY do I now 2 days later sleep like a dam relaxed, happy baby :) - My network for the win!

The days before handing in my resignation I really looked forward to just leaving, but the actual task again was scary. Why? Cause until then future for me was bound to income, job=stable income = happy me, happy wife, happy child.

Now? Just 4 days later, If all goes to plan I'm already overbooked twice. Truth told!: Couldn't have done it without the network that I built over the years where I was employed. Let's see how this works out :)

I stand up with a huge smile each morning: Just a great feeling!

Time to change my skills from PHP developer to AI researcher, Blockchain engineer and grab some thousand dollars deal on Freelancer

Fixed this guy's code and he spent the whole day thanking and explaining to me how sad and depressed the bug had left him. I felt really sorry for the poor dude. Lol.

Client: I want you to build me a website.
Then makes an order on freelancing website.

Me: Okay, Sir. Can you send me your specifications, please?

No reply.

2 days later

Me: Hello, sir....are you still interested?

A week later
Me: Sir.

Me: Sir.....

No reply

2 Weeks later
Me: Sir......

No reply

Client: Oh, sorry.(Then gives some lame excuse) Okay I will send you the specifications.

Me: It's Okay. Waiting for it.

A week later
Me: Sir, you forgot to send me your specifications.

No response.

#Life of a freelancer.....No stability or security or decent clients.

I reached a point where I'll be happily working as the kid who serves coffee and tea to random strangers and not work at a company, as a freelancer OR WITH FUCKING HUMANS!

I'm out !!

As a freelancer, I outsource every bit of work to other countries with cheaper labor and charge the client like a rollercoaster

The life of a freelancer:

Work is "just one more episode on Netflix" away...

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

"Could you quick make my website responsive?"

..sure, just let me press the responsive button on your website.

My most ridiculous meeting was a meeting that I couldn't attend.

When I was working as a freelancer my companies CEO and me were invited by a client from another country (6 hours flight & hotel).
The meeting was scheduled for the day after our arrival.

After breakfast the CEO told me he would pick me up at the hotel lobby at 2pm. I waited for some hours, but he didn't come.
Later that day he told me that he met with the client already at 10am.

I am sure he told me the wrong time, because he was afraid that the client would try to headhunt me.

When your boss removed you from the team because he found a better developer that can deliver a task faster than you. Then after a week, he asked you for help and if you want to work for him again because the developer that he replaced to your position can't solve their problem.

So we are a development company, we have some remote coders.

This one is very good coding BUT

Sometimes he disappears and then comes back with an history, the other day he said his grandpa was about to die of cancer so he had to go to see him.

Three days ago, he had to finish a landing page manager, in React. just a form and unzip (nodejs server side) the files... It was not so difficult.

He said was going to finish later that day.

Then he disappeared, for 3 days!

And i got a message from him on facebook saying he got robbed and he was going to rent a laptop to continue working.

Then i asked if he had any progress on the code before that happened. and he started sending
me screenshots of the code , but in one screenshot i was able to see a part of the desktop background. Checked on the history of files @ Slack and that was his background lol.

Please guys , don't do these kind of things.
If he had told me that he needed to study or something i would have understood him

Now i feel i cant trust him anymore.

Moral: Lies/attitudes like these one can have a big negative effect on your life and you will miss some big opportunities!

I work as a freelancer on *****.com also I have published a theme on theme***.com
Yesterday a indian client message
Client: wii you be able to help me to install a wp theme and customize it to my liking?
Me: sure why not, send me the link to that theme.
Client: here's the link (link to my theme)
Me: (oh i will make money from both side :D ) do yoy bought a license ?
Client: (shocked) who need license , download it from *****.com
Me: (crying in background)

That would be the time when i got fired from my last job. Hosting company, it had lots of good stuff and bonusses, coworkers were great, i was doing really important stuff when suddenly, i got fired and replaced... 'You have a too strong personality, sometimes you're just too outspoken'... At hearing those words, i felt very sad. Took a few bottles of champagne from the fridge at work (they had those apparently a year already, nobody touched them)... I left the building, together with two coworkers who became friends, drank the two bottles of champagne... i was crying... Because i got smacked in the face due to my personality. Admitted i am an extravert, and i do dare to talk back when it's needed, always polite, but ensuring i was not agreeing. Still i did my job pretty well. I was practically the only one that was multi-lingual!

After that i became a freelancer. It was a good start, a lesser good intermission, but next month i am starting at a goverment department for long term, so future is looking good.

1 - Please hack his/her facebook account for me.

2 - (at home) I used to block wifi access by mac filtering and if there's legit server down and wifi isn't working, everyone blames me.

(I am freelancer and mostly work from home)

3 - almost all of my relatives think I don't work.

4 - I am first choice for everyone's phone, PC and hardware repair.

This one is classic

GET A REAL JOB, you need to go out in the field for work.

The freelancer...
We are looking for someone to design a logo with no less than 2 years Javascript, 10 years Intel IO low level engineering in assembly, 2 months pascal, 14 weeks of HTML5, 17.23567 years of ASCII C, and you must have a half pint of strawberry ice cream in your freezer. $20.00 firm.

Work: there is little work for our freelancer we're getting rid of him at the end of the year
Me: are you sure, that will put a lot of work on my schedule.
Work: I'm sure you can handle it
*two weeks later*
Work: have you finished feature xyz yet
Me: nope had a server crash today so pushed it back
Work: why didn't you get "free lancers name here" to do it for you
Me: I could of if you didn't fire him, he could of also done the other features you want too
Work: ah ok

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.

A company called me for a job interview for my internship. As they saw my LinkedIn, they said I had a great skill set built up as I was studying Software Engineering and working aside as a freelancer.

After a short talk they mentioned my international business management (IBMS) minor that I have taken and criticized me that I took a wrong path of my career, told me to rethink my position of my studies and said they will not take me into consideration for the position.

That left me puzzled. Like what was the reason of that call, just to criticize my decisions?

Can't remember the company name that called me here in The Netherlands.

"HTML, CSS or Java Freelancer needed"
Interesting combo

One time I applied for a contract position for a company and get an email the next day asking for an interview two days later which I accept and attend. They want someone to convert their website from Wix to WordPress while keeping the same look, I would have about a month to do it (then after that create an e-commerce page). So far I can do that. They email me 2 hours after the interview asking for a 2nd interview on the following Monday which I accept and attend. There I meet one of the founders (I guess) and he really asks me about SEO and what keyword tool I use (they didn't ask about seo keywords in the job posting or at the 1st interview) then he tells me that the website needs to be converted over in 4 days (instead of the 1 month I was told 2 days earlier). Then he asks what I quote. I gave him a number (less than $10,000) and he looked at me like I had 3 heads, I then said I needed some time to come up with a quote. He said no problem, email the guy who 1st interviewed you the quote before the end of the day and if we like it you will start tomorrow.

I then went to a nearby restaurant and thought it over then made up an email telling him that I wouldn't take on the project. There were so many red flags, and the fact that they want it done in 4 days would have meant working at least 12 hour days. A couple of hours later I emailed them to say no, they didn't reply and their website is still on Wix today.

If something needs to be done quickly then know it's going to cost you (and tell someone your budget in the 1st interview).

NO FUCKING WAY YOU ARE GONNA PAY SOMEONE THE EQUIVALENT OF TWO MONTHS WHAT I MAKE TO DO SOMETHING I CAN DO IN A FUCKING WEEKEND BECAUSE "I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO ALREADY AND COMPANY STUPID POLICY DOESN'T ALLOW EMPLOYEES TO BE CONTRACTED AS FREELANCER ON THEIR SPARE TIME!!
HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT TO MY FACE YOU STUPID COCK SUCKER! I BET YOU CANT EVEN SUCK A FUCKING DICK PROPERLY STUPID FUCK!!!!!!!

OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!
HOW CAN SOMEONE BE A FREELANCER/WEB DEV AND TYPE SO FUCKING SLOW AND HAVE TROUBLE WITH FUCKING LETTERS ALL THE TIME?!

I'm gonna push this mother fucker so hard that he will learn not to "lie" in an interview never again and become a fucking dev.

What's the shittiest IT company you seen ?

I'll tell one i know - it had the shittiest web site I've ever seen, they built Android app that "enables users to pray to God" , a basic shitty app with pictures of Hindu gods and a button labelled "Perform e-pooja" Also the app description said "Share the app with friends and family" to receive free Gods blessing.

Really dude?! How low can you go?...have some basic ethics!

P.S: This company came to our institution with job offers and my teacher asked why i didn't attend their interview.

No thanks, I'd rather start as freelancer and work on building my own company than wasting my life in such retarded company.

Worst experience was my first job after study. They told me at the interview that the job has very low travel activity... "we are doing most of the projects in-house...just traveling to the customer now and then for kick offs or when the software has to be trained"

A half year later I had to travel every fucking week to the customer. Fixing shitty code from a freelancer who never worked in a team, in a language I've never used before (they told me the first day at the customer). Don't get me wrong, I love learning new stuff but this project and architecture was a totally fucked up mess. Flew every monday to the customer (had to get up at 4am monday morning to get the flight) and friday back. Quit the job after living 3 months from a fucking suitcase.

We worked with that freelancer some time ago. Most talented coder I've ever known. Coding for only 3 years, and only 1 technology, but technical thinking already up to par with my own 15+ years of experience. Very rude but to the point. We loved it - "one of us". We hired that asshole for different remote projects over 20 times in 3 years. We send spec, answer questions, collaborate on chat, review work on svn, add tickets, get solutions. After about a year working like that we had minor issue with finance that revealed our prized freelancer is a chick.

Changed nothing.

A moment of silence to those working on multiple clients with multiple deadlines at the same time but still got time here.

Got a client who Always delays payment (~2weeks) and is rude and ignores me after I deliver. As a freelancer and Student I rely on the money and on my time. So I will deliver tomorrow the next project, guy promised he will pay on monday, but I count with weeks again. I have developed a locking mechanism so I can lock the whole Software from my Cloud in case he wont pay on time. What do you guys think?

I fucking hate it to work for clients ... also i fucking hate it not to have any clients to work for.

Looking for job opportunities, one grabbed my attention and I decided to apply. First, I had to fill a form with 40 questions, explaining and justifying development processes, best practices and overall knowledge. Ok, no problem. Form submitted, and I see a step 2. Now I have to build a single page site from scratch, and send another form with code, link, and more justifications regarding development. After that, my application will be sent.

Then I found this observation, saying the position was for a freelancer, that will receive work occasionally. Not a full time position as I thought.

Sometimes cleaning bathrooms sounds a better option.

My hero.... This motherfucker client actually asked for an e-commerce affiliate website made by german devs for under 40€.

(Disclaimer: This rant is satire and only here to feed an algorithm by @PrivateGER)

This FUCKING fuck company where I had my fucking shit internship - just fucking asked me to freaking work for another project and fucking baiting me with a shitty damn payment for my little shit project I had (and still fucking work on today) while I had this damn internship. This idiot wants me to fucking waste my free time besides FUCKING SCHOOL (doing my absolute nonsense uselessfuck Abitur) and my lovely PASSIONATE GAME PROJECT with shit damn HTML-ing and CSS-ing and good damn JS-ing - for a SHITHEAD-200€ JOB. This bastard wants me to register my ass as a "Kleingewerbe" (dunno english therm but it's a small similar for to being freelancer) probably to enslave me or USE me as a cheapass worker. I'll call this dude today and politely tell him to FUCK OFF!!

(Nothing against the company, they're freaking cool! The dude too)

WTF freelancer, just won a design contest and it’s so fucking hard to withdraw the money to my bank account.

“There is some invalid bank details in your withdraw request, please confirm with your bank”

I never withdraw money before so i have to wait 15 days for my first withdrawal for each withdrawal methods.

The first method (express withdrawal with no fees) was failed because the bank details issue, talk with the cs and they told me to confirm to my bank, confirmed and tried again (only 1 or 2 days waiting time) but still failed, been trying this 3 times.

Trying the second method a.k.a wire transfer, i have confirmed the bank about what details are required to receive money from overseas first so i can prevent some stupid errors.

Wait another 15 days and ...

STILL FAILED WITH SAME PROBLEM

FUCK

This is the first time i regret when i won something.

ＦＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵＵ

Hi guys! This is my first rant, please be easy on me.

This is for all who always rant about how horible old codes on existing systems are, compared to what new tech they knew and how better they are as programmers compared to the seniors in the team and how they could have done it better... im getting an impression that it's either your a newbie on a corporate world or a freelancer that has not worked well with a system whos been there for ages... first, most of us devs thinks that they can do better than the previous ones, it is a never ending curse for us proud race but as time goes we would also regret our decision..2nd: cost.. migrating a battle-tested / fully functional system to a new tech would take time and money including training, which the management wont agree unless of course you do it for free.. 3rd: standards.. the company has built a pretty solid standards that changing to a new tech would affect it..there are so many more reasons that the only thing we can do is accept our fate.. coding is fun until the system grows to become an abomination that even its creator regret doing it... it's not our fault, blame the marketting guys! :D
Thank you for reading!

Employer: Need a freelancer to die for me

Freelancer: I'm a professional dier

Very small project like the Youtube. 30$ should suffice.

How does GDPR affect you as a freelancer in mobile/web development?

I'm asking because I eventually plan on freelancing but I have no clue how to deal with these stuff.

You know the worst thing about being a freelancer? You're expected to wear every fucking hat and you don't get normal hours.

Over the past few days I have been working with a client of a client attampting to fix his server. He's running CentOS on VMWare and somehow ended up breaking the system.

Upon inspection there was no way to fix his system remotely. It wouldn't even boot in recovery mode. So we've been attempting to recover his data so that we can reinstall CentOS and not have to start completely from scratch.

So for the past 3 days straight I have been remotely logging in to a Debian Live CD and manually sending folders to a FTP server of his. He has somewhere close to 30 sites on this server, and upwards of 1 million files in total.

Yesterday either the system freaked out or he did something, but the entire fucking system stopped responding which forced me to reboot it, reinsert the live CD, reinstall evertything, and re-mount his broken systems drives.

Here we are 3 days in, we're still not done, and I'm getting slightly pissy because if you don't know Linux well enough to fix this shit yourself, you shouldn't be acting as your own sysadmin for 30+ sites.

Also, backups are a thing right? VMWare also has snapshots. I know the extra storage isn't cheap, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying soemone like me $35/hr to go and fix all of your shitty mistakes.

(the meeting)

I've had a non-IT world colleague ask me to build a website, I asked if it's a static website like resume etc with no database & stuff. I quoted $1000 if that's the case since that's minimal maintenance
He goes he needs a simple website, like eBay to sell his products. Also need features like Amazon, integration of various payments. And this and that.

For $1000 !!

I felt good that he thinks I can make an e-commerce site but f¢k that thinking man.. I told him to hire a freelancer and told him about few sites.

Maybe we'll see a thousand dollar e-commerce site, haha I only hope the payments part is secure 😂😂 I ain't buying anything anyways. I'm 99 % sure nobody's gonna do it and next time we talk, he's gonna be like 1000 and a 50 haha

1 year and a half ago, I quit the job where I spent almost 6 years; My first job after that was as a freelancer for certain company here in colombia, but after sometime I learned that freelancing for local companies is not well payed at all, so I decided to try to work with toptal(a pre-vetted freelancer platform)

So the process included a first interview with a HR person, it was a british lady that mopped the floor with me(she wasn't rude at all but I felt horrible) 'cuz I couldn't speak english good enough, and then I was rejected... Some time down the line I created a rant for anyone that were willing to speak sometime to practice english conversations. @jesustricks and @orhun answered and in fact I got to speak with them.

@amyshackles spoke with me too, I reached her out over linkedin 😊

Just wanted to say thank you, finally I got a job offer with a nearshore company, you helped me a lot there, speaking with you people gave confidence and more knowledge. Again thank you, love you guys.

PS: you don't have to love me back

The thought of becoming a freelancer.

Guess who got fucking fired. They want someone more experienced. Well fuck off. Its no wonder why there are no front end developers in your company. Now until the end of this month I have to find some job because of bills.. Going to try freelancer and check a couple of companies in my area. Any tips on how to get a freelance job?

General approach : I'm wasting my time by just sitting in front of computer all day. Since I'm freelancer, almost all of my work can be done at one place. They think, I should get a REAL job.

When they need help with tech : I'm the guy who knows everything about tech and can fix their mobile, printer, toaster, washing machine and nuclear warfare.

When it comes to admiring what I do, I'm just a useless piece of shit but, when they need technical assistance I'm their lord and savior!!

Well. I'm running out of money. Time to get new clients. Merry Christmas everyone.

Why people like thit still exists!!!
#Ffffdddddduuuuuuuucccckkkkk

when you realise it may work

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.

As d freelancer, this is reality.
Sorce: @designershumor on IG

As a freelancer I get side requests from bigger development companies from time to time that don't have the time or capacity to deal with it themselves.

So usually the employees are pretty friendly but they do not like to read any of the documentation I send with the code. They call me up with stupid questions that are usually answered in the documentation.

I had sent them everything they had requested last Thursday so they called me on Friday to ask the usual stupid question. However, this time I had beforehand decided to have some fun! I told them I had to leave for the weekend and to call me back on Monday. Of course they called me during the weekend, but I didn't answer. So they called me today.

What I had done before handing it all in was I had named the methods that I wrote illogically, while stating and explaining the whole situation in the documentation extra clearly.

So I answered the call today and the first thing they did was apologize. Since I didn't answer their calls during the weekend they finally realized that the best way to go is reading the documentation instead of calling me all the time. They were freaked out at first because they thought there was something completely wrong with the code and they had to tell their client that the deadline had to be pushed back.

We are all good now :)

Friend asked to create a small website. I didnt ask for an upfront pay because I trusted him. Finished the website and sent him an invoice.

We're now strangers.

He didn't pay

I am getting depressed every time I open freelancer.

I've been lurking around this place for months now and never found a reason to make an account. Well, now I just did.

I was browsing freelancer.com looking for projects and I found one. Guy wants a website for booking seats, with a shopping cart and whatever. At the end, he mentions the only restrictions are we can't use ajax and json.

I made a bid explaining that the very site he was on(the freelancer website) made more then 25 ajax requests when loading a page, and that most if not all of them were transferring data in json.

I'm wondering what do they need that many requests for, but that's already another issue.

Now I'm curious to see if he answers back

The Last Rodeo

Hi dear ranters. I've been a dev since I was 12, that makes 18 freakin years. Although I love my job and being someone who not only consumes but also produces, I am a bit grown tired of the industry.

About 6 years ago I cut ties from the last agency I worked with to become a freelancer. I ignited many projects, helped many of my customers (still helping most of them) to realize their goals. But I've come to realize that my country doesn't like old school laborers like myself (for some reasons I would explain if asked).

So I've been thinking: what would I do if I wasn't doing this job? What would you do for living if you were to stop being a developer? Let's have a chat.

A few weeks ago a client came to us asking for edits on their site. They had a developer in their office but they fired him a few days prior. After some looking at the piece of garbage they called a website I told my supervisors that it was built in Adobe Muse and from what I could find in a few quick searches it's shit and I didn't want to learn to use a shit tool. Apparently as a company we decided to hire a freelancer to handle this despite the fact that we didn't build the site and the client isn't paying for maintenance so I'm not sure why it's our fault.

Fast forward to today:
I've been in the office for 19 hours straight trying to learn how to use Muse and fix the client's site because somehow the freelancer managed to delete the mobile version of the site. When I ask my supervisors why I'm fixing and supporting a site we didn't build and don't have experience working in and the response is: we're presenting the client with a $50k proposal and we need all the good graces we can get.

Unless I'm gonna see some of the commission it doesn't really matter what we charge for the site, I make the same whether it's a free site or a $100k site.

a client today wanted a specialized high performance, extremely stable, stock management software for pharmaceutical products, he also wants the software distributed, cross platform, and expect the delivery to be in a week or so, oh and did i mention that he also wants it to have an extremely good looking ui,
he got offended that i said you can only have one or two of those things not all of them,
for context, I'm just a freelancer not a big company and doing what he wants is impossible for me, also it was a billion ages since i worked on anything desktop related, web is all I'm diving into lately

I find it amusing to scroll through lists of available freelancer jobs and see who has the most illegal and/or absurd request

The freelancer web dev life:
Add a 5 line styletag. Get 50 bux.

Had a look on freelancer, motherfuckers want websites and apps built for $25 haha. Surely they mean per hour!

The more I go through devRant the more I think I wanna work alone... or with a small group of devs I know 😐 (as in, freelancer or something. Not in a company)

Yaaay, I received my last payroll with extras. Now to pay all stuff to start as a freelancer!

This is a big step for me and I wanted to share it with you

Let's go!

I don't want to sound ethnocentric but is anyone else annoyed by having to correct the spelling of variable, class, table name, and other code after it was built overseas? I'm in a third round of combing consecutively deeper into the code to ferret out these misspellings so they don't go into production. Is it too much to ask that the freelancer who says he speaks and writes native English not then turn that work over to a subcontractor who clearly does not?

We founded a 3 man startup.
I am on holiday for two weeks and my mates paid 50k to someone so he programs a prototype app without any specifications. They told him about what the app should display without any mockups or images via Skype. Returned Monday, found out about it, and on the following Monday we will see the current status..
Oh boy, dog help me. I expect a clickdummy made with Adobesomething, and we paid 50k for that. Why didn't they wait for 2 weeks?!

So just got email from my potential investors - saying they are not interested. This is my second major failure this year.... I spent my every dim on developing the prototype.
Now I am dead broke and unemployed.
I have sent 10 job applications - gotten no reply.
Open Freelancer account (fiveer, upwork, guru).
Yet no gig.
I am slowly going into depression.
Please can someone help me and give me a damn gig or job.
I still believe in my entrepreneurship pursuit but right now, with zero money to do anything, I just want a job damn.

I've had a client for 3 months now and they still haven't paid ($100 just for the site) and are surprised at the monthly cost (they wanted site hosting and maintenance which comes out to $75/month) and I want to fire them without burning bridges since the main person is a friend.

Hey! I will start as a freelancer in a few days and i want to know what tools do you use in your each day, to manage tasks, time trackings and that sort of things? And if you give some advice will be appreciated, thanks!

Freelancer/coworker: "Why don't you just use source tree instead of git in the command line?"... me: *face palm*

My first freelance project - happened to be with the worst client. They didnt wanna pay more than $500 and also had no clue what they want, so each time i present something they request additional features or changing the ones implemented. In the end i kept the half downpayment for my time and bailed without deploying or anything. I introduced them to another freelancer to take the project and never went near them again.

To clarify, it was not my first project/ just my first time dealing with clients for projects instead of doing them at work. Ever since then i have a strict no dealing with clients directly policy.

As student in Belgium in computer science I finally become a freelancer !! I am now officially a developer who get paid for his job :D

There was this motherfucker searching a dev to build a vue component on freelancer.

I applied. 🙄

Then he started to ask me out about Upwork. How he wants to use my account through TeamViewer. And how he will pay me for this monthly.

Why am I magnetic to idiots and scammers? Can some one please Avada Kedavra all idiots? I will pay you monthly. I swear.

Well, being a British freelancer just became a thing of the past!

"_rootAccess, you need to stop letting 'freelancer' beat you to the office. You set the standard."

-my boss
missing the irony that he's telling me this after showing up 30m late... -_-

This moment when you have to reject dream projects as a freelancer. Other projects came early and will pay more and longer. :'(

I need a twin!

Step 1: Become a freelancer
Step 2: Enjoy working
Step 3: Get annoyed by doing all the backoffce
Step 4: Get hired instead
Step 5: Work hard
Step 6: Boss notices your talent
Step 7: Boss founds startup with you
Step 8: Repeat Step2 until you have to repeat Step4

My worst legacy code experience was when I worked as a freelancer and got a tiny job to improve a VBA module in some Excel file for a very big company. So what's worse than VBA? Having to change parts of VBA code that was passed around to other freelancers before like the cheapest dockside whore. After meddling in there for about half an hour I felt like all those cheap ass punter, so I decided to write the whole thing from scratch. What a relief, after 3 hours I was very proud of the thing and it looked clean and well maintained again so I let it back on the streets. 😉
To the coder who comes after me: Please treat her (the code) nice or I will burry you alive in dog poop and burn the whole thing!

Sometimes, I ponder whether I am jobless or freelancer without work .

How do you set a price for an hour of your time?
This week I made a project that took me 14 hours in a row to finish it and they paid me 25$.
Being honest I consider that project would have taken them at least 40-50 hours ?

How much money would you have asked them?

How in the fuck do you start getting clients as a freelancer? Do I just throw stuff on my GitHub and pray someone hits me up on Fiverr? Upwork won't accept my account and it's been fucking four months of me trying. I took to becoming a full-time designer to push our startup's products to completion but a fucking failure over there too everytime.

Everything is a fucking shitfest and I'm just whining at this point but I needed to take this off of my fucking chest. A good fucking day to you too.

Working as a freelancer I have to hand in a monthly timesheet. I was told to print it out three times and sign them. A photocopied signature would not be acceptable.
After one year I found out that the manager signs one of the sheets, throws the other two away and makes two copies of the signed one.
I asked him why I have to give him three sheets then.
He answered: I don't know either.

Now the fun fact: the next copier is a 2min walk from his office

I'm in a situation here, I had an idea for an app and I started coding it. Since I'm a front end developer I find it not amusing to do the backend part. I then started to share the idea and such with good classmate (not a coder). I then made him join me on this adventure. After a lot of coding he said he wanted to contribute with something since I'm coding all day and he's not. Then we agreed freelancing the back end part.

Some time later we got a pretty good deal on some Indians doing the whole app. I thought to myself "this feels kinda good!" so we went on with the freelancer.

Days went to months and we finally got the app back. I did a mistake of paying him all the milestones without testing the app in its wholeness, later finding out that one part of the login system didn't work. That lead to a deeper debug to find out that the core function of the app was commented out.. I then wrote the freelancer back with minimal and slow response.

Now the deadline of the app is like in 2 months. If not we miss a whole year.

My classmate knows about this and he's the one who played for the freelancing. Now we have talked about me doing the whole backend myself.

The only issue I have now is that I feel like he's just sitting home doing nothing other than flashing money around and me busting my ass of writing code that I really am not good at. (basically learning more than coding)

But he played a lot of money for this.. So I feel kinda bad for him.

Rip life.

I got my last job more or less by luck.
The freelancer platform I was active on, had once an offer for 100.- if you find a parttime webdev for some small business.
I was looking for this kind of job anyways to finance my parttime study so I wrote back.
15 minutes later, their boss called me and wanted to meet me for an interview.

3 days later, at the interview, we talked roughly 10 minutes about my experience and then it was all about the upcoming project and at the end, about when I want to start and what I want as my salary.
Needless to say I got the job and the best: Also the 100.- 😎

Never decided to change company so fast.

- i am a freelancer but I have working hours
- i am a freelancer but I can only be absent 21 (unpaid) days/year including sick days
- starting hour is x... Time x-1 "let's have standup right now!"

I am leaning more and more towards the idea that most corporates don't care about the revenues, they just try to make everyone miserable

I'll code for free if you'd give me your mum's contact.

For being a student and working as freelancer you need to be pro googler, otherwise you'll fail in both.

Agree?

So I'm a freelancer celebrating my second year at this one client (yes, times are good). When I first got to my current (not customer-facing) project, lots of "externals" (other freelancers) had come and gone, "internals" had been assigned and reassigned to and from this project and nobody knew exactly what was in the (angularjs) codebase.

One of my first
"quick win" assignments was to see if load times could be reduced. After some looking around it turned out someone had used moment.js (with locales, 67k gzipped) for some feature that had since been abandoned... and then accidentally dropped it into the source folder, checked it into source control (svn!), from whence it was happily packaged by the CI job and released every month.

Removing it reduced the pre-render javascript by about 40%. (also yes, that said "nobody knew exactly what was in the client-side codebase")

So, there was this guy where i worked, who was doing some freelancing.

He asked me to do some front-end stuff for him and i said ok.

After some gigs, my boss found out about him working as a freelancer and got really pissed, because, according to him, it was forbidden by company policies (though i never saw it on contract).

After that, the boss started talking to me about shit that the guy did on the past, like stealing, liying about been sick for months, bad mouth the entire company to others companys, etc. Some really bad shit.

End of the story, the company fired that guy, threatened to do the same to me, made me go on record about that shit in court, and that fucking motherfucker didnt even payd me for my last work.

I hope he rot in hell, fucking piece of shit.

Sorry for the long text, but (today) i find it as amusing story.

The first thing I do when I go to the office is to make my bed.
-just freelancer stuff

Hello guys im observing since some time your rants.
Here are people which are quite experienced.

I want to start as Freelancer in Germany, mostly for Web development.
All of my Customers are looking for a neat looking, responsive and fast Website.

What should I use and what Templates​/framework I could take as a blueprint for the future websites.

Any suggest are welcome!

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 😑

When there are employers that assign you a "test" (low payment) to prove your skills and after you successfully deliver it, he wants to "test" you on another assignment...

Exam questions so boring i had to go with the first option just to have some fun.

Don't you hate those startup clients who just don't understand "please give us all your requirements as early as possible" and keep making revisions even after product is released? *cries in the corner*

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?

A short bittersweet story.

Ever since I quit my previous job a couple of months and started working as a freelancer, I haven't felt the need to visit devRant.

Everything that's rant worthy is essentially my fault.

You get what you pay for

When I was freelancing and still studying 60 hrs a week.
~20 hrs. bread-and-butter job
~20 hrs. for University
~20 hrs. writing a full-stack application for a startup

I did that for about 3 months, afterwards I luckily had no classes left.
Only, the thesis is still open. But on the other hand, the freelance work for the startup was a pretty good reference for scoring an actual, well-paid position which made me leave my old job as well as freelancing.

Now I work roughly 40 hours a week with nearly as much freedom as a freelancer but less paperwork.

was jobless for some time but in those days I was seeing this smoking-hot mulata friend of a cousin. After several visits and "movie days" I asked her out for dinner which, to my surprise because I'm a nobody, she accepted.

we went out and eat some tacos in her favorite soda around the corner. And we went out a second time IIRC.

needless to say, the money that paid that modest dinner with such amazona was earned working as a freelancer in PeoplePerHour doing junior-level stuff in Python, I learned the language during my four last years in high school.

ah, how I miss that girl 🤷‍♂️.

Freelancing is modern slavery...

Al this greedy fuckers searching for the cheapest tool for their super urgent project.
Even if you write you consider the payment on the expenditure you fucking snail will still debate on it cause you consider your time more valuable. You consider my life isn't worth your money. You want a service but don't want to pay for it.

This get all for fucking free mentality is what ruins this planet.

My Biggest dev. fear.
Hire a freelancer/partner to share your work load and he might start developing whole project parallaly himself

The agency I own built a WordPress plugin for a client using a freelancer developer. The client, out of ambivalence, withheld information that would have drastically changed the design of the plugin, but by the time we found out it was much to late to start over. The developer moved overseas in the middle of it all and from then on was not very responsive to communications about the project which delayed things by months. I tried to find a replacement developer but nobody else had experience with the third-party API. The live version of the API ended up not being able to support what we were trying to get it to do with the plugin even though the test version of the API was fine and the vendor was unhelpful. And because we spent so much time and money on the plugin, we weren’t able to even begin on another part of the project. The client complained of over $30,000 in lost revenue due to these issues. Complete fail all around. I’m never doing another custom software project again. It’s all just website design from here.

Signed up on Freelancer as a soft engg. graduate with quite a lot of projects in Android and web services. A guy inboxes me regarding an applied bid and once everything's clear and mutually agreed upon with, he presents me with this one God damn question - "how many years of experience have you got?"
With truth said, all I get in response is, "looking for people with more exp. thanks for your time".
Yeah I'm sure he was born with 5+ y experience right off the bat. 😠

Just found this great JQuery selector in a bit of code a freelancer wrote:

var showErrorFor = $('[name="newPass"]').attr('name')

Now that I work from home as a freelancer, my favourite way to get through a tough day is:

1. Scream internally
2. Realise I’m getting over-stressed
3. Roll myself a blunt
4. Smoke said blunt
5. Dick about on YouTube / internet for a while
6. Make myself a drink (tea etc)
7. Come back and work the problem with a better perspective and fresh eyes.

People who have personal experience,

What's the best place to do micro-jobs for like $10-$50 that I can do as a freelancer in like an hour? Is Fiverr a good place?

Is it me or freelancing jobs at Freelancer are incredibly vague.

Jobs titled "build me a website" with descriptions like "I need an expert dev to work on a python website".

How the hell can you put a price and time to it?!
Am I missing something here? I'm totally new at this and it's kinda baffling.

Anyone else find they work better between the hours of say 10am - 2am rather than the "normal office hours" of 9am - 5pm?
The problem is if I start later then the people who I work with are so absorbed in their work that I don't receive a reply to my email.

I think some of my co-workers see me as real life human version of Google search engine.

Hope they would understand that just because I'm little bit more up to date in tech knowledge and an accidental Google nerd doesn't make me a know it all..

But i understand their tendency to trust my recommendation over their googling skills

They want me to find

1- best freelancing website
2- best platform or service for someone who wants to do online teaching

Results that I'm aware of:

1- freelancer, guru, upwork
2- YouTube, udemy, Pluralsight, skillshare, thinkific

Any other recommendations?

working as a freelancer,. one thing my family should learn is that,. no one should ever disturb a programmer on full concentration.

Anybody use Toggl?

I would frown on this in a business environment as far too intrusive... but for a freelancer I wonder if it could help me track my tasks/use/hours more easily.

Because that is one part of freelance that sucks.

When you decide to create a startup and then look for someone on freelancer.com to create your Million Dollar product with a budget of 750-1500

Why is it so hard to find a designer/front-end dev partner and/or freelancer that can make mobile specific designs!?

Story time... (Not long though)

My current employment status is quite strange. Basically I'm a freelancer. My former boss asked me to throw a half paid job and include three days worth of work for free just because it would be convenient.

When I told him no way - he was very uppset and offended and told me how disappointed he was.

Lesson learned: If you work for free and offer to "help" someone out, it will mostly lead to more queries for free of charge gigs. Don't do it like I did. Fuck that shit, thanks for appreciating my effort.

My ideal job is something that I don't consider a job. I would enjoy to be a freelancer and work on my side projects every once in a while.

[Definition] Freelancer Programmer: Programmer who don't like to be programed.

freelancer

I’m terminally short of cash.

I can pay the mortgage and everything else, but I’d like a bit more for a rainy day fund.

My question is, how do you get into doing some freelance work?

I’ve looked on places like Freelancer, but it seems to be full of people offering £100 for a fully working amazon clone etc.

I think I have made a big mistake. I posted a freelancer project to a FB group. I was trying to be very careful and vet people closely so there would be less chance of fraud. The guy I gave the work, and a deposit, to was either very, very, very good at constructing a bulletproof social media profile con game or he's just too busy to get back to me on a status report I asked for two days ago. :(

Boss hired a freelancer to work on a new reporting dashboard. Freelancer also built a backed. Boss wants me to work on fixing that backend. I check out the DB first only to find plaintext passwords. I threw up a little.

Those working as freelancer, how many times has a potential client told you that if you do this job for cheap he would refer you in his business circle and you would for sure get atleast X projects in next quarter ?

Bad part of working as a freelancer who builds things from scratch.
.
.
.
There will be always a other guy quoting to the same projects far less by using WordPress and your clients never gets the difference between them 😑

As a new freelancer I didn't have much clients , so I paired with a web designer +10 years exp. who work with me as a pm and that was a bad decision.
Although I am a back-end dev , half of the projects were frontend/WordPress theme (less price than back-end projecrs) - so 30% of the projects were cancelled .
sometimes I receive project's which have requirement, like magento, I don't know anything about ,
I tried to push myself but I burned out after six month.
he deals with clients, partner with other companies ,and I don't know anything about the terms.
at the end I was like an employee without any benefits from his company .
moreover I get my money after 45 day!!!
and not all my money .
this is a project I work for another company through him
A requirement for mobile back-end server was integrating with parse and that was my first time working with Facebook parse so ....
after two weeks ..
we received email from parse that they'll shutdown their service after a year .

so we moved to Amazon sns again my first time working with aws .
at the end I can't charge for extra money but my pm became a gold partner for that company .
the only thing that made me hold is that I need some high quality projects for my c.v.
-----------
he didn't show on hangout because I need my money .
this will be my last project with him.
wow I write too much ... I feel better now .😥

"We're gonna use React Native for our project."

Me:"If that's your decision, then I would decline your offer."

After few weeks...

"Are you vacant for this kind of job? We'll be switching to Flutter".

----
I don't know what happened. I worked for him as a freelancer using VueJS for their project. and he insisted to use React Native to make that web into mobile. I declined his offer. Now he wants to work with me again using Flutter.

I hate UpWork and Freelancer.com fees and policies about the privacy (or lack) for your projects. But I grudgingly admit they offer protections against fraud. If you're a freelancer, or if you employ freelancers, and do so without the fraud protections of these types of services, how do you guard against being taken advantage of by clients or freelancers? I mean, anyone can write and sign contracts but in the end they're just paper promises not worth anything if the people you're working with or for are "dogs on the Internet" who can simply disappear.

I am currently a freelancer and I get most of my work from forums and existing clients. I never had any success at those freelancing websites which basically devalue the developers.

How does it work for you? How do you get your work?

Being a freelancer is not only coding. Mostly (for me at least) it's mailing until you mail your client: "I'm done for today."

FUCK!!!

Working 40 hours per week while doing freelancer stuff and now a fking masters degree due september this year. How do you guys manage it? I dont know if I could do it all... Fuck it

So it’s feast or famine as a freelancer. I went from just a couple active clients to three new clients and four new proposals to write for new prospects. Discovering the limits of my productivity and brainpower at the moment.

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.

I once had a Pakistani client on Freelancer who offered me almost 300$ just for a static two-page website.

I agreed,and later found out it was for a Ponzi scheme.

Running my own business is not going well. Hasnt for years now. Previous dev jobs were also just nightmares. I feel like i cant cut it as a freelancer, or as a full time dev. I do enjoy programming but my resume is crap and my worthwhile portfolio items are basically all locked down under NDAs or ambiguous accountability. I cant prove im even worth hiring and im almost too old to be considered for any junior role. Not that i think i could handle it. So im considering finding a new career and keeping coding as my hobby. But first i have to decide what to do about my remaining client. Which is fine because... i dont even know what i could do for a full time job now. Ugh, im so profoundly discouraged i dont even want to try and think about this anymore.
The weekly rant topic indirectly applies here but since its a bunch of self pity i decided it would be best to not tag it such...

I have decided to leave my fucking corporate job because of nonsense going on with the management fuckers. a high throughout distributed system with multiple components interacting together was asked to deliver in 2 fucking days starting from scratch.
I am asking for some tips regarding freelancer or remote job work. How do you guys find clients ? From where do I start ? I feel lost

what are some good freelancer websites for devs outside the us?

!rant

So, when I was young, I wanted to be a freelancing nomad. You know, live the live, work remote and travel.

But I didn't have the bones to pursue that. After 10 years of struggling as a normal "programmer", I did a little of everything. I did normal boring "erp maintenance" in C#, Oracle and some legacy stuff called Visual WEB GUI , which was fun, but required a full 9,5 hours work day, 8:00 am to 6:30pm, and the bosses where squares, and I was young and wanted to try something out of the corporate world.

Then I did some work for a newly funded consulting company that used python, Django, and postgresql, but the bosses promised a lot and delivered none, (I was supposed to work backend and have frontend support, which I did not have, and that hurt my productivity and bosses instead of looking at what they promised but did not deliver, they just discounted my salary 3 months in a row, so Bye bye MFs!!

Then I did some remote work for some guys, that, I managed to sustain for a whole year, the pay was good, the stack was simple, just node.js and pug templates, that gig was good, but communication with the bosses was hard, and eventually things started to get hard for them and me, and we had to say farewell to each other, I miss those guys. This is the only time I remember having fun working, I could work whenever I wanted, I only had to reach the weekly goals, and then my time was mine, I could work from home in the odd hours, or rent a chair in a co working space if I wanted to socialize.

Then fate got me one big gig with a multinational company, and I could hire some people, but I delegated too much and was asking too little of myself, and that project eventually died because I did not know how to negotiate.

So, I quit the whole entrepreneur idea, and got a public job at my University, I was a public employee with all the perks, but none of the fun, I just had to clock-in, work, and clock-out. That experience led me to discover a lot of myself, I worked as a public employee for a year and a half, and in that time, I discovered more about myself than what I learnt in 27 years of previous life experience.

Then, I grew bored of that life, and wanted some action, and I found more than enough fun in a VC funded startup ran by young narcissists that did not have a clue of what they were doing, I helped them organize themselves into "closing stuff", you know, finish the things you say you have finished. Just to give you an idea of what it was like before I got there, the were working for 3 months already on this project, they had on paper 50% of the system done and working, when I tried to use the app, I couldn't even sign-up without hacking some database commands, (this was supposedly done). So I spent a month there teaching these guys how to finish stuff, they got, Sign Up, (their sign up was a mess, it is one of those KYC rich things, that financial apps have), Login, and some core functionality working in a month, while in the previous 4 months they only did parallel work, writing endpoints that were not tried, and an app that did not communicate with the backend. But the bosses weren't happy with me, because I told them time and time again that we were not going to reach the goal they needed to reach to keep receiving funds from the investors, and I had to quit before it became a mayhem of toxic employer/employee relationship.

So now I decided to re-engage with life, I have funds to survive about a month and half, I have a good line of credit in case I need some more funds, and the time of the world.

So wish me luck!!! And I'll be posting often, because I would like opinions, hear from people with similar life experiences and share anecdotes.

Next post, it's going to be about how I discovered taskwarrior, and how implemented my first weekend following some of the aspects of GTD to do all my housekeeping chores, because, I think that organizing myself will be key to survive as a freelancer nomad.

I was working as freelancer while doing my bachelor degree and then got hired. I'll say that help bigger company to trust and pay you more. But nothing about skills.

How to pass yourself off as a Web Developer.

Download Wordpress.
Install theme.
Install plugins.
Activate plugins.
Customize theme.
Email client: "Done, invoice attached."
Receive sum of $10,000.

Client from hell (if you've read my past rants) came back asking for information that he had provided me months ago.

I'm not your Google Mr client from hell, search it up yourself.

That's what I said, only in my mind though.

Unfortunately, I went to be his Google. Am I too kind? Should I just reply with a nicely worded "I don't know".

Any tips for keep motivation as freelancer? Any advice is good

Is there anyone who works full-time remotely for a company which is based in some other country?
Not as a freelancer but as a proper employee.

It's so goddamn hard to get work on freelancer, upwork, people per hour sites when you're just starting, how are you meant to get your foot in the door when nobody fives you chance!

No racist but most of the self-claimed expert freelance programmers from India really pissed me off! Their resume has one common pattern, many of them are expert in more than 5 languages.

Hey, freelancer programmers, web developers, etc. I need your help. I’m writing a “Mother of All Blogs” post about why clients should a) pay you for your work and b) expect to pay you your asking rate. I’m trying to make the argument more forcefully that you get what you pay for with this work and that when you cheap out you only hurt your business bottom line. So, what are your experiences (positive and negative) or points that you would make to a potential client, who wants you to work super cheap or even for free, that you find are irrefutable about this topic? I want to include as many as I can! Thanks.

Cure for Imposter Syndrome:

Go try to find a freelancer for a project, for something like "adding OAuth to existing .net web API 2 and angular.ja project" and many many developers respond. You will be shocked at how little they know, they say they understand the job but are clearly incompetent.

Best job security ever. Also, just suck it up and do it yourself 😆

when a web agency contacts an other web agency to outsource between 10% and 100% of the work (asking for estimates), and that web agency then asks you how complex it would be...
and you're the only programmer in the story...
and you're a freelancer.

Is it worth having a personal site/portfolio if you aren’t a freelancer?

I asked on LinkedIn and the response was that personal websites are a bit 90s.

I am, slowly, making a github pages site, and I know no one is really going to be interested in my thoughts on certain topics etc, but I felt it would be a bit more attractive than just a link to my github account.

Do employers care about portfolios/github accounts etc? Or are the only interested in CVs and certificates?

If it’s the latter how do you demonstrate your skills, especially if all of your work is proprietary?

Hi devs,

I started to work as a freelancer just a year ago. I'm still a CS student. I develop apps.

I wanted to ask that if I develop an app for an individual, and they pay me. Does that mean, he can have my source code?

Or the source code has to be sold separately?

As a freelancer
Difficult to talk about payments ..
..
.
.

#relations and friends...

So here's what I'm putting up with for the last 6 months, clients..

A client proposed to me a project he had in mind. Project is pretty solid, could have a bright future. Since they didn't have the money to spend, we agreed on a % of the income they will earn from the project. So, let's say I get 20% of the income in exchange for building the application. I didn't receive any down payment or payment of any kind.

Just for info, project is a Web application/portal and it is ~80% done at the moment. Client provided a logo and a wireframe/ideas/pictures how he sees the project. I built everything, from DB to Frontend. Also, project is completely custom made, no CMS or anything. Project will make profit by subscription base, every user of the project pays.

For various reasons, we did not yet sign a contract. So, what is my issue...

Client sent me his proposal of the contract, said it's solid stuff, just sign it. In the contract, it stated that he owns the application in full, can sell it, etc. and I get % of the price. There were also other sneaky parts about me having all the responsibility but owning nothing. I naturally declined and took a lawyer to construct a normal contract.

My proposal was/is, I own the application(source code) in full. They are obligated to pay the monthly percentage and can use the application normally and make profit. At any time, application can be bought by the client if they pay for the development. So, basically, they are getting the application to use "for free" with no initial payment/investment. And this is a long term deal, they can use is as this as long as they want. Also, if they go bankrupt at any time, no penalty or payment is needed, the risk is mine.

The client refused and what he claims is the following...

His share in the project is 80%, mine is 20%. If project is to be sold, I get 20% of the price. So, meaning, if we go to production tomorrow, if I want to buy his share, I have to buy 80% of the application I built entirely. Also he is convinced that by "telling me" what to built he's owning everything. In his words, he dictated me the notes and I'm just playing the violin.

I am having trouble explaining to him that he is getting the application to use and make profit basically for free and cannot and does not own the source code unless he buys it off. We are going in circles, I send him the contract to review, he changes it and returns it back. Also, he removes the parts where it is clearly states what he provided and what was done by me.

So, we kind off agreed on the authorship but in the case we break the contract he wants to be able to use the application for 3 more years.

Was anyone here in a similar situation? How do you handle this kind of situations?

The most bizzarro thing I have seen my client do is, whip out his keyboard, open his ERP - DOS Software and remove his pajamas and walks me through every feature for some module he wants to add.

My question, why a DOS Software for ERP in 2018?!

I have two potential client meetings next week. The first one now knows she needs a website (but I have no clue what her budget is), I think she wants me to host the site as well as do site maintenance. The second potential client I'm working using the barter system (but I think she will end up owing me some money at the end). We will see how they both go.

I was studying a lot the last year, i learned a lot about Machine Learning/Deep Learning, Data Gathering, Data Analysis, ETL, Model Architecture Design, Training, Fine Tuning, Backend Development, DataBases, API Development, ORMs, Rest, GraphQL, OAuth, CI/CD, Docker, Deployment to Production environments like Heroku, Git and more stuff i dont remember while writing this. I built and keep adding stuff to my Github Portafolio.

Im not able to get a job. I started looking for jobs as Data Scientists, no response never. I take a look at freelancer sites, nothing seems to fit my skills. And when there is a minimal fit, they always want a Full Stack Web Developer, i dont know Frontend Development, i dont like do it.

Dont know what to do or how to land any job.

My options aeems to be:

1.Learn Frontend Dev and work as Full Stack in underpaying freelance jobs

2.Keep applying to Remote-Only startups, but they still wants people with 3+ years of experience.

i cant work in my city, here are not any company startup hiring no one, we are 30 years in the past here.

What you do in my place?

Question for all Dev..
I recently apply for a front-end dev and I got rejected. I than apply to many other jobs offer for the same position and got rejected. This is really putting me down and disencouraging me to continue (but I know it shouldn't) I just want to know if anyone else went through or is going through the same thing and how did you find the strength to stay positive. How many times did you get rejected before actually finding a job? And how many times people have told you no? This goes for freelancer and business.

What are some of the worst problems, faced by you, as a freelancer?