
Ask HN: Freelance or Full-time? - html5web
I&#x27;m full-time Web Developer at NYC digital agency. Currently I&#x27;m making $55K, but tired of the agency environment. Is it worth to become freelancer?
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mikeuxinnuendo
Based on your portfolio, I would suggest seeking some design training if you
seek to freelance - as a front-end developer you should be owning the latest
design standards such as proper content spacing, font combos that compliment,
simple colour palettes, interaction animations & loaders, etc etc etc - none
of which I see in your portfolio. You really need to impress and to also learn
to sell yourself as a freelancer (you know, fake it til you make it, all
that).

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kaizensoze
I think the first step is to realize how much NYC digital agencies charge and
how much they're taking advantage of you at $55K. The agency environment is
also the most demanding in that there is always an endless queue of projects
to be done and the developers are interchangeable with a hot swapping of
projects being quite common in which projects are just shuffled around between
developers requiring you to quickly pick things up and become familiar with
the codebase in order to fix bugs handed off to you.

On the other hand, finding a next gig as freelance can be a royal pain in the
ass unless you have a lot of connections, but if you do, having a queue of
projects and working remotely is the ideal situation imo as long as you
maintain a decent social life.

For full-time, you can just pick something either based on the size of the
company or what they do.

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issa
Without knowing any details aside from what you provided, it sounds like you
are being seriously underpaid.

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YuriNiyazov
From one native of Uzbekistan to another: you are massively underpaid. You
could make 80k easily

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saluki
y, sounds like you are underpaid but depends on your skill set and what you're
working on. I'm in the midwest and that's probably avg. web developer position
around here but would expect NYC jobs to pay 2x that due to the cost of
living.

Freelance/Consultant is lots of work keeping the pipeline full finding good
clients.

If you haven't already I would work on leveling up your skills learning full
stack web application development (Rails or Laravel) the rate/fees are better
($50 to $100+/hr) if you enjoy that kind of work the projects are more
interesting too.

Keep leveling up.

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Gustomaximus
Why not try for yourself on the side? Set up a bizo and see about getting some
moonlighting jobs happening. If you find you're getting work you can chase
more. If you realise your not up for the hustle of client chasing and dealing
with them in general, look for option 3.

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partisan
What is your skillset besides HTML?

Edit: Based on your website, it appears you are based in Uzbekistan. Is that
correct? If so, what is the typical rate for Uzbeks at the same skillset and
experience?

