In the previous blog I talked about the pros of freelancing. This one will focus on the cons. When we think of freelancing, a lot of us assume (incorrectly) it to be a dream job. Which in fact isn’t true and I’ll try to explain a few reasons why –

#1 First Project – Finding a first client or job would be the biggest and most time consuming hurdle any freelancer faces. Doesn’t matter if you 2 years of experience or 10. Landing the first project would be equally difficult with a new freelancer profile. Your best bet here is a client you already know or have worked with in the past, or someone can refer you.

#2 Competition – Now this can vary on how well you create your portfolio, website and profile but let me tell you I am a “Top Rated Plus” freelancer on Upwork, which means I represent top 3% of freelancers out there. And still when getting a new project isn’t as easy as you would imagine. As for competition, I myself needed a website built so I posted a job. How many offers did I receive? 25 in the first 5 minutes !!!!! It got to the point I had to make the job invisible as I just couldn’t go through all those offers. I cannot begin to imagine how many offers one receives in 1 day. You can do the math and imagine the competition.

#3 Boredom – Working from home sounds fun and all, but try doing it for 3 years – specially if you live alone. You cannot travel full time, trust me I tried. If you’re into instagram influencers they would tell you to be happy with yourself and other things they’ve read in a book that they themselves do not follow in reality. But the truth is, after a while freelancing and working from home does get boring. Working hybrid is the new way !!

#4 Short term projects – Unless you’re lucky and are working with an organisation which has a long term or multiple projects, you’ll find yourself constantly looking for a new project. Which can be a pain due to reasons mentioned in #2.

There are a couple others like you have to do your own taxes, as someone who lives in Canada I pay almost double the taxes as a self employed person.

I still like freelancing, I am grateful for it as it taught me a lot of things and took me to a lot of places, had a lot of challenges that wouldn’t make me the developer I am today. But everyone should know the other side of freelancing as well. As we all know – grass is not always greener on the other side.