Monday, April 19, 2010

Freelancing

While the other posts have been about the development of arithma, this post is about the development of arithma.

The latest and most prevalent fact about me is simply that I am freelancing as a developer and more so as a solution provider. It has been about 6 months of ups and downs... an emotional, and stressful roller-coaster. A lot of people enjoy these, and a lot of people end up with a yellow face and with lots of goo on the ground (when it comes to roller coasters, am personally more on the goo-side).

Yet in real life, the gut is strong, and to answer the question in my head: "So how was life for you, punk?"... I'd simply have to say: "It was such a ride! Again."... I prefer this answer to "Well it was really safe, I felt comfortable". Hardly "yay".


For a more objective comparison between being employed, and starting up, here's a [hardly exhaustive] list of some things I'd like you to know:
  • Don't expect to become rich right away
  • Don't expect to make more financially than by being employed right away
  • Don't expect to work less than when being employed
  • Expect a lot more to learn than just being pigeon holed into your tasks while employed
  • Expect a lot more freedom in what you're able to work on and explore
  • Expect a lot more satisfaction and attachment to the products you are working on
  • Expect a lot more tense relation with your work
  • Expect a lot more ability to work on the techniques you deliver your own work, and ability to set your schedule experimentally, and being able to actually achieve an improvement (rather than being dictated to a scrawl in updates to higher management and overhead)
  • Expect to have a whole more lot of fun
This is simply a fun game, but not for the faint of heart.
I encourage everyone able to start up, to do so... There's a lot more to life than sitting behind a desk and waiting for a paycheck.

5 comments:

  1. I really liked this blog post. Being a freelancer is definitely not an easy task. It has its good and bad sides. To me, being free when working on a project rather than being obliged to follow strict guidelines is worth going the roller-coaster you talked about.

    Regards,
    Kassem

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  2. Nice post. But does it apply yo Lebanese freelancing?

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  3. @Kareem:
    I am in Freelancing in Lebanon

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  4. Very interesting article and I liked the points you mentioned, I usually don't like to follow norms, and orders especially if they are wrong, I just cant execute a task or project that I am not convinced in or I know before hand that it wont work as the "management" is "planning". I had this problem last summer were the manager was so stubborn about doing what he is ordering and not even taking the ideas of the employees into consideration, other employees conformed to the orders and went with what he told them, I didn't so I left. From that day, I made up my mind that one day I will become a freelancer, but before I will experiment with other firms to see if the condition is the same.

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  5. "There's a lot more to life than sitting behind a desk and waiting for a paycheck"- best part :)

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