Questions tagged [freelancing]

Questions for professional programmers who are often contracted out for various positions rather than being part of a company.

A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is somebody who is self-employed and is not committed to a particular employer long term. These workers are often represented by a company or an agency that resells their labor and that of others to its clients with or without project management and labor contributed by its regular employees. Others are completely independent. 'Independent contractor" would be the term used in a higher register of English.

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My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

Working as a freelancer, I often see strange requests from my customers, some of which can negatively affect my daily work¹, and others trying to set some sort of control. I usually encounter those things during preliminary negotiations, so it's…
Arseni Mourzenko
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Demonstrate bad code to client?

A client has asked me to do a redesign of their website, an ASP.NET Webforms application that was developed by another consultant. It seemed like a relatively straightforward job, but after looking at the code, it's clear that's not the case. This…
jtiger
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How should I charge for programming things which take two minutes to fix?

I am really confused with this. I believe that the more I am getting experience, the more I am becoming an expert at finding mistakes and fixing them quickly. Now my boss got website from a programmer who does very very bad coding. Now he sends the…
user824981
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How should I determine my rates for writing custom software?

For a custom software that will likely take a year or more to develop, how would I go about determining what to charge as a consultant? I'm having a hard time coming up with a number, and searches online are providing vastly different numbers…
Carson Myers
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Why are more programmers not freelance these days?

Leaving the whole pie to only a few of them, amplifying the huge differences between the two status. Pay is a (huge) one, not having to do overtime is another. I leave the question open to hopefully get many great answers on all the different…
user2567
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How to improve relationships between consultants and staff programmers

I have been a consultant for a small software consulting firm for quite some time now. Our normal business model is not staff augmentation, but such that we find clients who need assistance in building a solution of some kind and then send in a…
Catchops
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"Kill switch" in customer hosted environments, to protect payment?

I have a difficult client. Every bill is argued and debated over, and each email is parsed with a lawyers eye (because he's a lawyer), looking for a way to avoid paying for something. No amount of generosity on my part is ever reciprocated. The…
Sam Grunion
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How do freelancer web developers manage web hosting for customers?

I have built a number of websites for friends, family, etc. and I have put them all on a single shared web hosting account. Now that they are built, I want to get out of business of supporting them and paying for them (my friends are reimbursing me…
leora
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Contract Billing - How would you handle 'learning time'?

So you take a contract where you have solid experience with 75% of the technology necessary. How do you handle your time to learn the other 25%? Work it into the billing time? Expose the 25% in the contract as 'research'? Do the learning on my…
codeyoung
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Where to find clients?

My main area: web development. Of course, I don't expect anybody give away their 'gold mine' or whatever but I am struggling to see where I should be advertising my services. I have one other developer I work with and we have a lot of happy clients…
Damien Roche
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Who should pay for fixes/bugs?

So I just started freelancing both in desktop/web development and this client who already accepted my work, and payed me keeps coming back at me each time he finds a bug etc. And I have found myself spending more time than I thought fixing them for…
Agush
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Why do companies tell me they want me as an in-house employee, not as a contractor?

Context I am looking for work as a contractor in my field of expertise and would prefer to earn less money and have less benefits working as a short-term contractor. The problem: Companies say I need to be an in-house employee for intellectual…
b_dev
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Contractor - Acceptable Payment Terms?

I'm wondering whether or not I've done the right thing as a contractor. Basically I'm in to my 3rd month, and my current client messed up the payment in the first month, and I just found out that they are again late in paying me for my 2nd month. It…
Martin Blore
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A client wants us to screen work machines for pornography. Is it possible?

A long-time client has asked us to help screen their work machines for pornography. They're worried about liability if sensitive materials were found. Their main concerns (for obvious reasons) are video, audio, and image files. If possible, they'd…
Scant Roger
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What advice would you give to someone going freelance?

I'm trying to get out of the Corporate game and go indie. I've always prided myself on being a jack of all trades so I think it suits me. If you're a freelancer or independent, what's the best advice you could give me as I start down this road?
James
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