As someone who spent several years as a solo freelancer/consultant, sometimes offshore, sometimes onshore.
The main reason this type of work is drying up, in my experience, is that there is too much free money flowing around. Why deal with a temporary worker when you can afford to hire them full-time and have them sit in your office?
Furthermore, full-time engineers add a lot more to your valuation than freelancers and consultants do. A client once told me that adding a consultant to their "full-time" force increases the company's valuation by $100,000, but a proper full-time engineer adds $1,000,000 to the valuation.
I'm not sure why, but if I had to guess I'd say it's a combination of a company showing clear signs of growth (more employees == growth), and the lower churn because of 4 year vesting plans.
It's because there's at least one person on-board the company who understands the technical underpinnings, and has incentives that (usually) align with shareholders -- versus consultants whose bottom-line is never entirely dependent on the success of your company.
> Why deal with a temporary worker when you can afford to hire them full-time and have them sit in your office?
Because after paying his taxes and his cost of living, this full-time person makes way less than the guy doing the same job from the Ukraine. Therefore, everybody with just even half a brain will do the math and will not be available for sitting in his office. They'll put up their own office on some sunny beach in Guatemala and log in from there. Don't tell me it is not true, because that is what I have been doing for the last 10 years.
Oh I know it's true. I did it for years. But then I hit a glass ceiling when I wanted to charge SF rates, but do the independent thing. Nobody wanted to pay for that.
So now I'm sitting in a SF company, charging SF rates, and building my positive signals so that I can eventually go back to the independent thing and keep charging SF rates.
The main reason this type of work is drying up, in my experience, is that there is too much free money flowing around. Why deal with a temporary worker when you can afford to hire them full-time and have them sit in your office?
Furthermore, full-time engineers add a lot more to your valuation than freelancers and consultants do. A client once told me that adding a consultant to their "full-time" force increases the company's valuation by $100,000, but a proper full-time engineer adds $1,000,000 to the valuation.
I'm not sure why, but if I had to guess I'd say it's a combination of a company showing clear signs of growth (more employees == growth), and the lower churn because of 4 year vesting plans.