The Hidden Costs of Going Freelance

snydeq writes: IT pros lend firsthand advice on the challenges of going solo in Bob Violino's report on the hidden costs of going freelance in IT. 'The life of an independent IT contractor sounds attractive enough: the freedom to choose clients, the freedom to set your schedule, and the freedom to set your pay rate while banging out code on the beach. But all of this freedom comes at a cost. Sure, heady times for some skill sets may make IT freelancing a seller's market, but striking out on your own comes with hurdles. The more you're aware of the challenges and what you need to do to address them, the better your chance of success as an IT freelancer.'

Comments

Re:IT workers shouldn't freelance

[AK Marc]

And I've had programmers take down a 1000+ user network by "testing" by turning on a test network, where it mimicked the real environment, down to the IP addresses and such. Of course, they didn't tell anyone else in IT what they were doing, and they had admin access to the networking gear because the CIO was ex-programmer and programmers are the best IT workers.

Of course, when the calls were rolling in that the network was down, I got in trouble for unplugging their test gear. Programmers are best when contractors. They roll in, give you buggy code, and wander off. You don't have to keep them on the payroll.