
The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time - aarghh
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/the-freelance-surge-is-the-industrial-revolution-of-our-time/244229/
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mattchew
Freelancing is great! It's flexible! It's win-win! But what freelancers
really, really need is more oversight, regulation, and goodies from
Washington.

Permit me to doubt it.

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mgkimsal
One of the big aspects that often gets overlooked in any discussion about
freelancing is the notion of having a cash cushion. One of the comments on the
article stressed that we may be moving towards a new culture of
frugality/austerity as a byproduct of more people needing to keep cash
reserves to deal with the up/down cycle of freelance income. It's a transition
that took me a bit of time to make personally, but I'm glad I did it.

off-topic a bit: What's a little odd to me is how much small/medium businesses
rely on credit for payroll. I've got a friend at a small business, and they
have a credit line they use for payroll every 2 weeks, and they've been
worried that their credit line would be reduced, meaning they'd have to lay
people off. I've asked around and some other companies do this as well. Is
this practice really widespread, or just the few I spoke with?

gentle plug: the indieconf conference for web freelancers can help you adjust
to this new industrial revolution :) <http://indieconf.com>

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justincormack
It is a worrying sign if they pay wages on credit. Payment to small businesses
is erratic generally, and it gives no scope to grow. When I was in this type
of business we kept 3 months costs in the bank at all times.

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bluedanieru
I thought most businesses financed payroll with periodic short-term loans? If
you can be 100% sure you'll get the credit it's better to put that money to
work than have it lying around.

(Then one day the credit dries up and you're hosed, I'm not commenting on the
wisdom of the strategy but my understanding was it is standard practice.)

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justincormack
If you have regular income and outgoings, and large efficiencies to scale that
could make sense, mostly done through factoring, ie credit against invoices,
so secured lending. It is less sensible in businesses with more variable cash
flows and nothing much to secure borrowing against.

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wazoox
Hum. This remind me of the case of a big delivery company a few years ago in
France. Basically, all delivery guys were supposedly "freelance contractors"
with the big company. Of course all wasn't so rosy in real life because it was
just an astute scheme to circumvent employment laws such as maximum hours of
work per day or week, minimum wages, unions, etc.

The delivery guys sued en masse and got their contract re-qualified as
salaried employees proper.

I'd be wary that actually the "freelance revolution" may be another big jump
backwards to the 19th century for workers marketed as a "freedom gain".

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alexqgb
This happens a lot in the media business, which relies quite substantially on
actual freelancers, who tend to be high-priced writers, directors, designers,
composers, editors, and so on - many with their own agents.

That large pool of legitimate freelance labor has provided media companies
with the cover needed to pass of their regular staff jobs as something other
than permanent employment. The cynical (read: accurate) term used by people
stuck in these spots is 'permalancing'.

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wallflower
I remember a friend from high school who worked as a Production Assistant (PA)
in LA. Among other tidbits I heard, like driving across the city for Christina
Aguilera's lunch, was the fact that every fourteen days (or maybe it was ten?)
most of the entire production staff was fired en masse and then rehired the
next day. Otherwise, according to union rules, they had to become part of the
union.

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bluedanieru
How could that possibly even work? Was it really just 'you're fired... okay
you're hired', or was there a day in between, or what? If the union and the
employees had any sense at all they would have called bullshit on that.

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swombat
The article looking good, if a bit fluffy, until it turned into an obvious
advertisement for the author's upcoming political
manifesto/book/whatchamacallit.

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mgkimsal
One might have thought that, except she posted a couple things around the same
time last year, then nothing for almost a year. I got to thinking that perhaps
she/they just put out stuff in September :)

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palves
Although not mentioned in the article, I wonder what will be the role of
companies in this freelance world...

If companies are only ever changing groups of freelancers properly gathered to
accomplished certain tasks, what will differentiate them? The ability to
recruit and pay the most talented freelancers? I'm not sure that will work out
on the long run.

As someone already mentioned, many companies are already facing erosion of
employee loyalty but not the most successful ones. I 'd argue that those
companies that are market leaders don't suffer so much from that problem
(mostly) because they are able to instill a set of values and principles
across their workforce and this is very hard (maybe impossible) to achieve
with freelancers, who easily come and go and are probably much more
emotionally detached from their current employer.

I actually believe in this freelancer world, but I also believe there has to
be a reinvention of the way companies work in which setting the right balance
between culture/brand identity and decentralization/individualism will be
critical.

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lachlanj
Funny, i've been meaning to finish a blog post on this exact same topic. I
actually think the freelance revolution will be a reversing of the industrial
revolution.

The industrial and neolithic revolutions brought the masses together to form
towns and then large cities, where as I believe with the increase of
freelancing and e-jobs, along with better remote working environments, people
will start to question the high cost of living within a large city.

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tomjen3
I am not so sure about that, since there is significant social advantages to
living in a city.

Though it will properly cut down on the amount of commuting people will have
to do.

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lachlanj
Not that I am disagreeing but would you mind mentioning the social advantages
that you are talking about?

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tomjen3
Face to face conversations
[[http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/0...](http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/why_facetoface_.html)],
bars, theaters, museums, entertainment parks, turist attractions, easy
shopping posibilities, etc.

There are many advantages to clustering together that electronics and
increased communication simply cannot replace yet (and I doubt it ever will,
even video calling feels "phony" somehow).

~~~
lachlanj
I'm sorry but I lived an extremely rural town for 10 years with <20k people
and all of these thing were available. I'm not convinced these are exclusive
to cities.

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tomjen3
Where my grandparents live there is nothing, no school, no shops no bus stop,
only a comunity center and a part time church.

20k is a town. 100 people is nothing.

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abhaga
I was explaining exactly this phenomenon to a friend, couple of days back. I
see this trend inherently tied in with the increasing availability of self-
learning resources by virtue of internet and initiatives like OCW, p2pu and
others. This makes it possible to break out of the academic mold in which the
undergrad/grad degrees put you. This also makes it possible/easier to keep the
skills up to date in your chosen field.

I don't know how industrial revolution felt like to those who lived through
it, but I am seeing more and more people around me jumping the ship everyday.

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dundas
I fundamentally agree with this article. I think there are two factors at play
here 1) Modularization of everything we purchase. Freelancers/contractors give
business flexibility to scale up or down as they need to. 2) A continuation of
the erosion of loyalty to a corporation.

Our parents generation spent 10-20 years at a job. Our generation spends 2-5
max.

In my view this is great especially for the US because it means that more
people get paid for the value they create as opposed to wasting a company's
time/money by clocking in from 9-5 and just waiting for Friday to roll around.

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mgkimsal
"Our parents generation spent 10-20 years at a job. Our generation spends 2-5
max."

I wonder if in some ways we're getting just as much done in those 5 years vs
the 20 earlier generations spent. Perhaps there's a set amount of work at
which people tend to move on (or get laid off) and we're just reaching it
faster?

Far-fetched, I know, but still crossed my mind.

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timedoctor
I would say one thing that they miss is the equalization of opportunities
between countries. Right now if you are born in the US you have 10 times
higher income than if you are born in the Philippines (for equal abilities).
In the future, it will get closer to 1 to 1.

Income of highly skilled people in low wage countries will go up and income of
low skilled people in the US who are working in areas where low wage countries
can compete will go down.

Great that my new business idea is completely built around this trend.

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tomjen3
Actually it is properly closer to the industrial derevolution because it (and
this going to sound marxists but really isn't what they envisioned) it put the
tools of production back in to the hands of the workers.

A programmer working on a webapp has all the tools he needs (or may easily get
them, often for free) to do the development on his computer. He has to ask
nobody for permission and need not (even if he chooses to do so) work for
somebody else.

Yes you still need hosting and coffee but those things are commodities (heck
coffee is traded on the Chicago mercantile exchange) and the skilled tradesmen
of the old needed copper, wood and tools too.

Interestingly enough this also means that the equalization between skilled and
unskilled labor which the industrial revolution brought (the unskilled labors
never had it better, compared to their contemporaries, than during and after
the industrial revolution) has ended -- a person can no longer come out of
school, work at the assembly line and expect a good solid middle-class job. At
the same time those who take the time (and have the opportunity) to educate
themselves can expect to make a pretty good life.

Some part of me feel a little sad that those big machines don't matter as much
as they used to, but the rest of me is very happy they don't. I much prefer
working with computers to standing in a factory.

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lachlanj
Let's not forget that the industrial revolution was all about mass production.
Read about adam smith and his essay on mass production of the pin for more
details. I don't see this freelance revolution as anything close to mass
production. Quite the opposite actually.

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tomjen3
Take any well read blog. It is properly read by more people than have
newspaper subscriptions.

The computer is one of the best mass production devices since the steam engine
was invented.

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mathattack
There definitely seems to be two things going on:

\- Every year it gets easier to start a new business.

\- Every year big companies provide less job security.

Combine this, and there is a move to free agency.

This is great for people who can find a way to get paid for differentiated
skills. It is awful for commodity skills.

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tomjen3
Honestly this is nothing new. Selling commodities of any kind has alwas sucked
unless you can do it at scale (which is basically impossible when the limiting
input is ones time).

For a short time industrialization meant that the least skilled could produce
as much as the most skilled, but as pg argued that was as special case of a
special situation. I know of no case where it has happened before or after,
anywere.

If you only have commodity skills, the best thing you can do is to go down to
the nearest community college.

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pmb
No benefits or job security is an industrial revolution? For the companies,
maybe...

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hackermom
The downside is that this comes with a growingly prevalent risk. An individual
is more likely to be a successful actor in sabotage and espionage, and harder
to put trust on, than an established company. As this "gig economy" grows, I
anticipate that freelancing individuals will to a greater and greater extent
be approached with offers as well as deployed on purpose for this kind of
work, as a form of incidental spy. That said, being a freelancer myself, I
definitely see more than just the negative aspects of the freelancing
revolution.

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bluedanieru
It remains to be seen whether this evens the playing field between employer
and employee or not. I suspect not. It is certainly a great way to get out of
health care costs, etc., although to be fair a lot of regular jobs don't pay
that sort of thing anymore either.

This doesn't seem to be leading toward a more organized workforce with regard
to compensation. That's probably not a good thing. There seems to be some
opportunity here though for an enabling technology to work that out, but I
don't know what it would be yet.

