Hello the awesome Hashnode community! 👋

I am Oleg, an ex-Facebook software engineer who's now helping fellows devs in building better careers and using coding for a bigger cause.

This is one of the first notes on career and my path that I hope you find useful!

Introduction

In the beginning of my career, I took an unexpected turn and became a freelance web developer. Freelancing sucked me in for the next 3 years, dozens of clients and 100+ completed projects.

But as a junior developer, did it bring me "control" and "freedom" or played out as a professional suicide?

Starting as a freelancer

Of course, I started having no name and zero clients.

To attract the first one, I literally offered to craft an HTML template FOR FREE. It worked, and in a matter of days, I had my first freelance project completed, a satisfied client, and some attention from a few prospects.

I also spoke to my ex-colleagues to find out if someone needed client-side web development services, and it turned out there were some clients for what I could offer.

Stabilized income

Fast forward a year, and I am a freelancer with a somewhat established reputation and good reviews, and multiple clients pre-booking me for months ahead.

Was I happy back then? Did I start earning more than an office job would pay me as a junior developer? Did I take control over my working hours and projects I took on? Did I become free?

Well, not really.

As I started earning more, I began setting financial and personal goals: start renting on my own, buy nicer clothes and things, a laptop, a bicycle, a car. Did I need these things? Not all of them. But I wanted to live a good life.

How do you earn more as a freelancer?

To keep up with my ambitious plans, I had to earn more. And there’s only two ways of earning more when you’re trading your time:

1. Work more, work harder
2. Raise your hourly rate

As a beginner programmer in 2008, I was offered about $400 for a junior C++ developer position. It sounded pretty cool and fun but for bureaucratic reasons, I didn’t get this job. But as a freelance web developer with about a year-long experience, I was making $800-1,000 a month on average. Twice that!

I already had a portfolio of projects, but they weren’t convincing enough to attract the best paying clients. Neither did I have enough experience to pull off complex projects. So, I couldn’t really raise my hourly rate.

What was left to make me earn 2x of a decent junior salary? Right. I decided to work harder.

Meet the vicious circle of freelancing

So to earn more, I needed to take on more projects. My clients and I wanted predictable timelines. And what is the most predictable in software development? Only things you’ve done many times before.

Furthermore, I didn’t have enough skills and reputation to work on technically complex, challenging and more expensive projects. So I took on more projects comprising mundane, repetitive work I knew exactly how to do.

Of course, I tried to come up with different processes and templates to speed up the work, make it less repetitive, improve and maintain high quality. I learnt how to speak to the clients, did some upselling to the existing ones. This made my practice a bit more fun.

But at its heart, the work was ludicrously dull. And since I was too busy to learn something new, I couldn’t really take on more interesting work. My freelance income was the only thing I lived off of, and it was paying fairly well.

So I kept grinding, and the vicious circle of freelancing had soon closed up.

The burnout

As a freelancer, there’s no working hours. No caring manager to advise you to take PTO, and no paid time off at all. Nobody cares about you, and the only thing that matters to your clients is the result. Preferably delivered YESTERDAY.

Socialization

Working as a freelancer naturally means sitting in front of a computer for extended periods of time. In fact, the more I wanted to earn, the longer I would sit still pushing buttons.

This led me to having almost zero social interactions. As a fairly introverted person, I didn’t immediately realize the danger of the situation. I felt great on my own, I was used to staying at the computer.

What happens when you do a lot of mundane work for an extended period of time AND mostly stay alone? You burn out.

Effects the burnout had on me

I had barely started my career and didn't know anything about burnout back then! It felt the following way: I started losing interest in my work. The only thing I resorted to was the decent work ethics. I kept my word, was honest and fair with the clients, stuff like that.

The rest went straight to hell. I tried to keep the quality of deliverables high but it was increasingly hard to do. My daily routine deteriorated to sleeping during the day and procrastinating at night. I became deadly tired of the boring things I was doing but didn’t see any way out of it.

And of course, my income had plummeted to only about $500 per month as a result of my inability to work hard and long enough.

Fixing freelancing

Fortunately, I was offered a full-time developer position at a product-led company and accepted it. This is a whole different story, but it pulled me from the pit I dug myself into during the 3 years of freelancing.

Had I not done so, would it be possible to fix the freelancing? I believe so, yes. I would start from two things:

1. Save as much as possible
2. Introduce a mandatory "circuit-breaker" into the vicious feedback loop

Save as much as possible

The first thing that kept me working more and ultimately led to the burnout, was the need for money. It is inevitable to need money, but spending everything you make isn’t.

So I’d start saving up as much as I could. Ideally at least 25% of my monthly expenses each month, but aiming at 50% would be even better.

Having enough savings as a freelancer means at least the following:

• You can pass on uninteresting projects
• You may take extended breaks

Ultimately, money buys you time, and having time for yourself means a lot.

The circuit-breaker: take compulsory breaks

The second thing that ruined my freelancing was the fact that I never stopped working. I remember going on a vacation and literally working from the hotel when I was supposed to get rest.

What made me not put the work on pause? The money. And perhaps some fears of losing clients or so. But first and foremost, no savings.

To break free from the vicious circle of freelance, freelancers need compulsory resting time. During this time, you should:

• Rest and recharge
• Reflect on the experience
• Update portfolio, write articles about the past projects to attract better clients
• Learn something new

Ideally, I’d work for 2-3 months and then have a 1-month break.

Conclusion

When you search for "freelancer image", you usually see a happy person sitting at the clean desk in front of a modern laptop. This is what freelancing can and probably should be like!

But if approached naively and eagerly, it can lead to:

• stale skills
• professional identity crisis
• a disastrous burnout as a result.

Developers in the beginning of their career must be especially susceptible to this as they naturally don’t have enough skills, reputation and connections, or savings to take a sustainable approach to freelancing.

Be mindful. Save enough money each month and take time off at least once a quarter. Use this time wisely to recharge, reflect on the past experiences, and level up your game.

Have you experienced anything like that? Will be happy to discuss in the comments!

And if you liked the article, follow me on Twitter for more content about tech career, coding and using your skills for a greater cause. See you around!