

Why I Hate Freelancers - reazalun
http://arronlock.com/business/why-i-hate-freelancers

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netcan
I think he is ignoring a (perhaps difficult) piece of reality. The lines have
blurred of late between professional & amateur in all sorts of fields. The
knowledge & abilities can be gained gradually & the tools are inexpensive.

There is no threshold where one becomes a professional designer, programmer
etc. The neighbour's kid may be able to design your logo, install your
shopping cart, etc. Some of them even do it well. Many do not.

A lot of the time the business owner hiring doesn't care too much about
quality, isn't willing to pay for it or can't tell the difference. Making
things worse is that a lot of the time the quality is not actually different
or is equal to a lower tier of professionals making the price gap between
medium & higher quality very high.

Look at it this way. Architects are largely shielded from this kind of mess.
Legalities aside, people want pros & builders & engineers will probably refuse
to work with amateurs. Interior designers may have the potential to add as
much or more to a given project, but they will usually be excluded. You or
your wife or boyfriend (or both) or your kid will have a crack at it. The guy
at the furniture store will give you advice. Your accountant thinks that looks
nice over there.

Now interior designers can lament the fact that you don't know the slightest
thing about creating spaces, positioning, making use of light & all those
things. You've made all the textbook errors. You're not utilising the building
you paid so much to have designed. You made the most basic mistakes.

But this is the nature of the game when amateurs get to play. Graphic
designers (& to a certain extent programmers) have moved from being architects
(& lawyers & dentists) to being interior designers, caterers & piano teachers

That doesn't mean the profession disappers. But it means you have a certain
market imbalance that follows. The bottom tier of service is no longer really
needed.

1\. The mechanic who used to get his card designed by the cheapest or closest
guy gets his grandmother to do it free. He doesn't care what paper she uses.
He may be wrong to do so, but tuff.

2\. There are lots of people who are on the border of 'professional' that
enter the market. Either in their skill or in their attitude. They can enter
with this approach since entry barriers are pretty much $0. Usually they go by
the title freelancer. Since you have this influx now competing with the
previous cheap guys, for a market that is now smaller, prices drop.

Sprinkle in bidding sites & globalisation of labour, stir. Prices dropping,
guys in slipknot tshirts bidding at under minimum wage & fighting for
business. Not fun for the previously professional freelancer.

The answer of course is to go higher market. You may cater your own party
yourself, but you're not expecting the queen of Belgium to. You know that $30
a martini bar got a professional interior designer in. Their prices are
probably unaffected by any drop in the price of starting a business in their
sector.

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kaens
The trick is to do a killer job for a decent client on a non-trivial problem.

Then you're set.

Finding a decent client can be hard if you're going through sites like elancer
or guru - but they're there. There are even ones with nice, interesting
projects. Ones that are willing to pay you a much better rate once you've been
in communication with them for a while.

It's an uphill battle, but if you produce quality work, and can explain the
methods you use, you will be viewed as just as much of a "professional" as the
"big boys". Once you have that bit of word-of-mouth and good reviews /
feedback, you pretty much have your pick of work, although you may not be
rolling in the dough.

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davidw
It's a problem of information asymmetry:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry>

There are various solutions to those kinds of problems, including signaling
(expensively demonstrating that you're worth it), some kind of screening
service, that for a fee will aid buyers in choosing who is really worth it,
things like guarantees, and so on.

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mixmax
I think it's more a question of positioning yourself and getting the right
customers. I have several friends that are freelancers, doing both design and
code, and they charge between $100 and $190 an hour. Like everything else in
life you just have to work for it.

------
delano
If you're arguing against the use of a certain word, don't start off with a
justification of why _you_ use it. Just don't use the word.

Also, it's not a difficult problem. The term is "consultant".

~~~
netcan
He's not arguing that he hates the term in a & of itself.

He's arguing against the ugly baggage it's picked up.

------
tocomment
So the solution is that these neighbors kids should be charging a lot more.
Why would they do anything for $20?

~~~
lacker
Why not? They aren't trying to make a living off it. Some people are happy
just to see their work used in the real world, and that's okay.

------
jodrellblank
Summary: "Inferior so called 'designers' charge less than me and still get
business. I hate that. They're spoiling everything."

~~~
tptacek
Your "summary" appears to be literally the opposite of the point the article
makes.

~~~
jodrellblank
Then I've completely misinterpreted the article.

Let me go back and reread it: The author hates the term freelancer because
it's used by: 1) people who do work that isn't up to the author's standards
(snobbery - it's obviously basically acceptable as people will pay for it, and
there is no fixed line between "design" and "not") 2) People who charge little
or nothing for their "work" (author doesn't want to identify with a group that
has a low-cost low-quality image) 2) people who don't act like an expensive
professional (whinge - they're not as good as the author, they are spoiling
the image of "freelancers") 3) people who use software the author doesn't
think much of use it (snobbery - what does it matter if they use a "common"
publishing program?) 4) The above groups, doing low quality work for a low
price in a messy fashion, are only wannabe's (unlike the author).

I get the same feeling and summary at a second and third rereading. Summary:
people are spoiling things for the author by doing worse work than him at
unbeatably cheap prices.

~~~
tptacek
Dude, the author of the article is a freelancer. He just doesn't like the
connotations of the term "freelancer".

