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A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that full-time employment – while comfortable – isn’t necessarily any safer than freelancing.  Someone else decides your fate, and you have no control.  You can have a cushy paycheck today, and tomorrow be pulled into a solemn meeting with HR before finding yourself confused that you suddenly need to revamp your resume.  What’s worse?  You could be doing a good job, and still lose your primary source of income due to market conditions, changes in company direction, or mismanagement.

But First, a Personal Story About “Time Management” and Losing Your Job to an Inexperienced Manager

A few years ago, I worked at a successful startup company and everything was great.  About 6 months into the job, I had some health problems and had to take a couple of weeks off.  When I came back, they treated me with kid gloves for a few weeks and I literally had nothing to do.  I was expected to be at work, but was not allowed to do anything!  Finally, they slowly started to increase my workload.  And then they increased it a little more.  And a little more.  And then they increased it faster, and faster, and a few months later I found myself drowning in work and questioning my ability to execute.  I started getting to work before anyone else and leaving hours after the last person on my team went home.  When my manager found out that I rarely left the office before 7pm, she was shocked – and immediately assumed that the reason was poor “time management” skills.  Stressed and overwhelmed, I took her feedback and advice and made some improvements that helped.

Suddenly, I received a spike in new work.  And then another big spike of new work.  I told my manager that, with the timing of the new responsibilities my schedule had been booked solid for the following week and I couldn’t accommodate any new cases.  She responded by telling me to start coming in earlier, and on Monday morning I came into work (early) to find she had dumped I started falling behind and I started to doubt my abilities until one night I had had enough.  I dived into our team’s system and pulled a bunch of reports about my productivity, my team’s productivity, and the same data for other teams in the company with similar jobs.  I found that I had been doing far more than any other person on my team.  I also created a table that calculated – based on my employer’s expectations – how much time it would take to complete all of the work I had been assigned in that time period.  I proved that it was mathematically impossible to complete everything I needed to complete, and prepared to bring this data into my next 1-on-1 meeting with my manager.

I walked into that 1-on-1 to find my manager, the head of my department, and the head of HR waiting to relieve me of my laptop and offer me a deal: two weeks pay to go away and never say anything bad about the company.  I respectfully declined (never cared for gag orders) and offered to show them the data I had put together.  They weren’t interested, which I suppose makes sense; They had already made their decision and drawn up the paperwork.  Their reasoning for letting me go?  Poor time management (ha!), not informing my manager that I needed support (did that), and ultimately falling behind.  Funny ol’ world, ain’t it?

Read on to learn about more reasons why – despite needing to find your own work – you’re safer as a freelancer than a full-time employee.

No Corporate Policies to Worry About

A few years back, I had a job that required you to clock in and out on a computer at the start and end of your shifts (as well as lunch breaks).  I worked a Monday-Friday 8am-5pm schedule and worked my tail off, often staying late to make sure the job was done well.  One day a manager (not my direct supervisor) called me into his office to give me an attendance warning, stating that I had come in 3-4 minutes late several times over the course of a month and – while I hadn’t gone over the 5-minute “grace period” at the beginning of my shift – I had exhibited a pattern of behavior that earned an attendance warning that would prevent me from being promoted for the next 6 months.

…What?  Never mind that I thanklessly worked overtime for the good of the customers and the company, or that I was going above and beyond my job description to train new employees, current employees, and coach current employees during their day-to-day responsibilities.  But hey, a policy is a policy.

No corporate attendance policies for you!  You casually stroll into your office when you’re good and ready to work.  10am?  12pm?  In your penguin-themed pajamas?  No problem.  All that matters is the result and the delivery date, so as long as you deliver the goods you’re all set.

Freelancers Can Fire Their Customers

If you’re an employee, it is likely that you’re working in a culture of “the customer is always right.”  Happily, that’s a lie.  Some customers are wrong, some are entitled, and some are just assholes.  Most are fine, if not good or great.  But a small minority are assholes.  If you’re an employee, you’re stuck working with those customers unless you can pass them off to someone else or they do something really, really wrong.

Freelancers can choose to avoid working with crazy people or disrespectful people.  If someone messes with you or your businesses, you can choose to never speak with them again.  Boom.

And I know what you’re thinking: You can’t fire a customer in the middle of the contract.  True, if you have a solid contract in place (of course you’re using a contract, right?) you can’t just drop it on a whim because you feel like it.  However, you can write terms and conditions for early termination of your contract to avoid a bad situation.  Primary reasons for you to terminate a contract early might include:

  • Client fails to pay on time, or at all;
  • The client fails to provide the necessary information or materials to complete the contract;
  • Impossibility – the contract becomes impossible to complete due to natural disaster, loss/theft of irreplacable property required to get the job done, or a vital team member (you, for example) gets injured and cannot physically complete the project.

While you could be brave and write in an “asshole” clause in your contract, allowing you to end the contract if the other person is an asshole, I wouldn’t recommend anything like that.  However, assholes will usually be difficult about payment and/or providing materials in a timely manner so you can hold them to those contractual obligations to get out if you need to.

Freelancers Can Say ‘No’ to a Project

An employee has to do whatever work is placed in front of them.  Not you, lofty freelancer – you can turn away work when it suites you.  If you’re struggling to make ends meet, that may sound like crazy-talk to you right now.  A stable freelancer, however, can pick and choose their projects based on their interests, career goals, and lifestyle.  Some reasons you may consider turning down a project include…

Project Deadline

Some developers don’t hire a composer until very late in the development process, creating an unnecessarily-short timeframe for you to create the audio assets for the final product.  This is a project management failure that is not your fault or responsibility, and it is entirely avoidable in most cases.  Unless it’s financially in your best interest to accept such a project, you can choose to avoid the madness of a two-week timeline and move on to the next opportunity.

Time Off or a Vacation

If you’re managing your year really well and have a steady workload or multiple income streams, you can decide to not work for a couple of weeks.  This is especially nice around the holidays; An employee is subject to their corporate work calendar and vacation policies.  Seniority can mean the difference between spending Thanksgiving or Christmas with your family or missing out, as employees who have been around longer will often have their vacation requests prioritized over newer employees.  Depending on the industry, even veteran employees could find themselves stuck working up until the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas, making travel possible… but miserable.  I worked in retail for a few years, and the holiday season was an all-hands-on-deck affair.  Until my family moved up to New England, I was missing Thanksgiving and driving halfway down the coast on Christmas Eve – only to turn around a couple of days later.  No fun.

No Go-to-Market Plan

For indie developers, it’s important to know a bit about their team and launch strategy before committing yourself to the project.  Having too many games in your portfolio that have failed to launch can look bad, so vetting your clients a bit can be a healthy habit.

Preventing Burn-Out

An employee has to get the job done, regardless of how much work is dumped on them.  Most employers do not consider things like morale and workplace satisfaction beyond the surface, leaving their employees vulnerable to burn-out.  An employee who is suffering from burn-out will not perform as well, and poor performance can endanger their job.

You, on the other hand, can hit the brakes when you’re approaching your limits to avoid over-extending yourself or running yourself into the ground.  You saucy devil, you.

Contracts Protect You AND Your Customer

If you actually read most employment contracts, they usually provide some basic niceties (like compensation) to the employee wrapped in a glorified threat that – at any time for any reason – you could be thrown out on your ass.  The fun part is that most contracts ignore the state laws in which they operate.  Since the law obviously supersedes any contract lingo you might come across, the language usually does more to misinform and confuse an employee than protect them (intentionally or not).

When you write your own contract, hire a lawyer to draft/proofread your contract, or engage in a freelancing contract created by a client, you can usually negotiate or request changes to most language therein.  Most employers won’t be down for making edits.

Freelancers Can Set Their Price

And now we come to the most fun part.  Freelancers can set their own prices to ensure that they’re being paid fairly for their time, skill level, and services rendered.  Employees can sometimes negotiate their wages or salary, but rarely find themselves with enough leverage to negotiate well.  Freelancers, on the other hand, have the autonomy to decide how much they’re willing to accept for their services before entering the conversation, and can turn down a project with inadequate budget (or a client with unrealistic expectations).  While the super-successful of the game audio world can command a comfortable sum for their contributions, any freelancer has the power to demand that their effort is fairly compensated.  By setting a minimum rate, we avoid feeling undervalued and the folks who can’t (or won’t) pay fairly for a high-value quality service can take a hike.

More Effort = More Results

This is my favorite.  A freelancer is more in control of their destiny than a full-time employee, and – unless there is an exceptional situation (what’s up, economic crash of 2008?) – you can rely on a simple formula.  IF you know what you’re doing and focus your energies appropriately…

More effort = More results

If you know how to find clients, and you need clients, you can hustle and find yourself some clients.  If you know how to pump out a few minutes of finished music every day, you can take on more projects.  Unless you deliberately waste your own time, you should not find yourself spinning your wheels on unimportant tasks.  Office managers and employees LOVE unimportant tasks, and will go to great lengths to fill every 9-5 work day with enough work fidgets to pass the time without actually moving the needle on their bottom line.

What’s your favorite thing about being a freelancer?  Add it to the comments below!

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