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Ask HN: Transitioning to Freelancing with a Neurological Condition?

by BoxOfRain·5y ago·4 comments·view on hn ↗

Hi all,

For various reasons, I've been considering a transition from full-time salaried employment to freelancing. My current situation is:

* I'm a backend web developer in the UK with three year's experience plus university. I've primarily spent my time written web server software in Kotlin and Java, although I'm comfortable writing software professionally in a couple of other languages including Python and Rust. I know enough SQL to get by but I'm far from an expert in the subject and I know my way around nix servers comfortably. I've also done a fair amount with AWS.

I have a neurological condition that flares up unpredictably with a frequency of anything from around three to six months. This condition is poorly understood and cannot be controlled or mitigated with any known medical intervention; while I can mostly tolerate the chronic symptoms these acute episodes cannot be averted. For this reason I find working in lockstep to a traditional 9-6 schedule very stressful for obvious reasons, and permanent WFH is not an option in my current role. Freelancing sounds an ideal way to work around this problem as I'd be setting my own hours rather than working to somebody else's schedule, meaning I'd be able to fit work around my condition rather than forcing myself to work through episodes which frankly is already leading to burnout. This neurological condition also precludes me doing UI-related work for the most part as my visual perception often differs quite strongly from the norm.

* I have experience with the formalities of running a limited company, as I've had a side project going with a couple of others which for various reasons I won't bore you with made sense to register as a limited company in the UK rather than the other possible legal configurations. While this is obviously very different from living off your own limited company, I'm at least aware of what's required to keep Companies House and HMRC happy. I'd likely be running my freelance business from the UK too, I know there's more tax-efficient jurisdictions to set up in but I'd rather stick to what I know at first!

* For reasons I've made in another post, I'm intending to move onto a liveaboard sailing boat in the future rather than renting or buying a house. While it's orthagonal to my main issue of dealing with a neurological condition, freelancing at least on the surface appears to lend itself much better to such a lifestyle as full-time 9-6 employment is incompatible with long ocean crossings which are a long-term ambition for me. It goes without saying that such work would have to be full-time remote.

Given this background, I'd really appreciate advice from anyone else who's made the transition from traditional employment to freelance work generally, or suffered with a neurological condition as a software developer and attempted to mitigate it in this way. I'd particularly appreciate recommendations for agencies which would be a good fit for the kind of work I have in mind.

Cheers in advance!

4 comments

Success as a freelancer comes down to two attributes:

1. Marketable skills

2. Finding and keeping customers

It has little to nothing to do with formalities of company formation or the appearance of having a business. I don’t know about the UK specifically but most freelancers I know operate as sole proprietors, which has almost no formalities or government paperwork required. Formalities are a distraction so do the minimum necessary to get to making money.

Your customers may or may not know about your medical condition or other personal issues, and they may or may not care. Ultimately customers care about results, and not having to manage you day-to-day. You can’t make your personal issues or choices their problem or they will find someone else.

Back to (1) and (2)… Marketable skills come mainly from experience, and may or may not equal technical skills. Lots of people can write Java code or set up a server on AWS. Those are not problems businesses have, even if presented in those terms. Businesses have problems like “web site too slow and crashes” or “we’re losing customers” or “shipping costs are too high.” If you can effectively address business problems (which may require technical skills) you will have customers. If you try to market a list of technical buzzwords you won’t. Sifting through Upwork and Fiverr all day long and sending out lowball proposals is not successful freelancing.

Finding customers requires initiative and works best through word of mouth (reputation and track record) and contacts (referrals). Leverage those. Many freelancers start by contracting back to their f/t employer and then branching out. Keeping customers is a simple function of (a) good communication and (b) delivering what you promise.

I’ve freelanced for over a decade, traveled around the world while doing that, and I have more work than ever, from solid long-term customers. I have some articles on my web site typicalprogrammer.com about freelancing, free, no ads, no sign up. Good luck.

My first take is that a full time job is a secure gig for a person who has problems like you have and that you're trading a 9-6 schedule for working 24 hours a day.

If your condition flares up and you can't work what are your clients going to do?

Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I could have been, it's time flexibility that I'm after more than anything. I'd prefer my day-to-day schedule to be in my hands rather than my boss's because that way I can much better optimise my work stack for what fits my current neurological status. I'm rarely completely out for the count, but there's periods where I find one category of task much easier than another and I'd prefer to work in a way that optimises for this. I'd also like to have more flexibility in the kinds of projects I can take on, because some are much worse affected than others.

I'd also be able to reduce almost all of the stress that comes from the presenteeism and having to act more emotionally invested in someone else's dreams than I am in reality. It's not that I want to do less work overall, it's that I want to transition to short bursts of intense work on a more flexible schedule rather than a Sisyphean grind of moderate work, with longer breaks in between because I believe that can be better scheduled around my circumstances.

Maybe.

Freelancing can mean 'two years with no work' and then 'two years of work in two months'. That is, the flexibility might all go to your clients and not to you.

In the case of a real employer you might be able to get accommodation for a disability.