How To Kill A Freelancer

Nowadays there are several solutions for freelancing like eLance and oDesk. This guy here takes you on a mini tiny drive through them. Web sites like these are a great aid to freelancing as you may know or could imagine. But there is another kind of organisms that grow on an ecosystem like that...

Some of the benefits of freelancing

First I would like to go through some of the benefits of freelancing, without the purpose of in depth analysis - rather an enumeration for the purpose of this article:

1. Drive your own schedule.
    Decide, on various scale, from hours within a day to vacations throughout the year      when will you work
2. Control the balance of work time vs. other time.
    Depending on how much money you need at the moment you can decide how much time to work and how much time to invest in, say, other business, personal development, love and connectedness, entertainment, etc.
3. Work from home.
   Control your work environment completely. Not waste time on transit. Be close and available to other very important matters or people, like babies for instance.
4. Be the owner of your work.
   What you create is part of your portfolio also. In companies you are usually not allowed to show any code as it is their strict property. This may also have severe implications on creativity.
5. Choose and negotiate your tasks and clients.
   Be involved on a very real level. Be part of. Make decisions. Choose what you like as tasks or clients.
6. Do various tasks.
   This depends on projects being rather short. And the variety is a benefit for those who appreciate it. (as matter of fact freelancing all together is a benefit for those who appreciate it) Also the feeling that you have accomplished a lot of things vs. being overspecialized on a company project.
7. Earn more.
  Usually (perhaps after some popularity/experience growth period) you earn more by freelancing.

What is interesting is meeting most of this simultaneously and this is the true benefit of freelancer, some kid of a meta-benefit.

Of course these could be met while employed in a company but much less likely for that to happen and the sum of them is even less likely to happen.

Now there are drawbacks too, some of which:
1. Not handling big projects that imply many team members. Some better organizing is required for this and usually companies (small companies!) are better at that
2. Not having a stable source of income
3. Not having a discipline imposed on you (for those who need it)
4. Not having mates around you available virtually anytime from who to learn.

But as you can see, except for #1 and #2 drawbacks the rest are less likely to be applicable to the mature individual.


The fungus

OK, so there are quite a lot of reasons to be a freelancer, the most important being a kind of meta-reason: a way of life. And here the "fungus" enters the scene. I met the fungus (I will not mention its name as any kind of publicity is good publicity) on oDesk but I heard there are quite some of these around on most freelancing online platforms. What the fungus does is virtually downgrade you back to employed state, with the sole benefit of working from home.
So here are some guys that said to themselves: "Let's act as a middle layer. Provide virtually nothing, while taking the best from the contractors (freelancers) as well from the clients". How is that accomplished? Well you are being hired online, remotely. And that's just about all of it actually - you are reverted to the previous employed state, with the sole benefit of working remote. :)
I will not analyze their business which is a legitimate business of course. I will rather break it down from a freelancer point of view:

1. Drive your on schedule.
   This is almost gone since you are now a full time employee, and will have to report to a manager, mates, etc
2. Control the balance of work time vs. other time.
   Gone, baby, gone.
3. Work from home.
   Mainly the only remaining benefit.
4. Be the owner of your work.
   Now this is the part that really pissed me off. The "fungus" I met required you to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement only to enter the test phase. We will be returning to that NDA over and over again. For this here point it said that basically all your creation was the property of the "fungus". Not you! Not the client that needed the work done!
5. Choose and negotiate your tasks and clients.
   Gone, bay, gone! You have no control on your tasks anymore. Neither on your clients. Moreover, the NDA mentioned that for 12 months you could not make any deals to any of their clients (clients you know from seeing the "fungus documents" and work procedures, etc but it is very hard to demonstrate that you did not "heard" of that specific client from them and, if under interpretation, the NDA is written completely in their advantage)
6. Do various tasks.
   Could be very well gone since you cannot control what to work on and since you becoming good at "something" will make them keep you there.
7. Earn more.
   Gone, bay, gone. You are in the same position as being employed. The profit negotiation is in their advantage not yours. You are more or less locked in.

And if we take into consideration that the sum of the  above benefits are what gives you the meta-benefit of freelancing we can see how one can kill a freelancer, or put it more accurately: how may a freelancer commit suicide. (because of the 12 moths clause even trying it a little may bring death)

Now if those benefits are not important for you, then perhaps you don't really want to be a freelancer (self employed) and employed in a company could fit you better. Of course if working from home is the only thing you desire (mother with baby for example) than this may be your niche, but usually even companies could give such an offer in this case. And this fungus business is not aimed for a little niche! It is aimed for a takeover more or less, a broad slice of the "freelance" market.

Look what I'll do: Since I haven't signed the NDA I will show it to you. I'll cover up the  company name just in case, but leaving the alias since it is not even their trademark  - I have found others that claim they claimed it :)

NDA page 2. click to enlarge

NDA page 1. click to enlarge

Besides the ownership hijacking even for your own inventions produced before working for them, but used in their (clients) benefit afterwards, you can also see some very serious threats to being a freelancer.

- pt 4 virtually blocking you form new deals (you don't even know who the clients are prior to signing this, and their number can grow higher and higher as you stay with the fungus)

- pt 12. practically allows them to change the agreement afterwards.

- pt 9. This one I like a lot: It says that you agree with all of their rules and policies prior to seeing them. If not, then they can fire you immediately and you get to eat water for 12 months because of pt 4. This is so weird that they make sure to stress it out so you will not whine about it afterwards :)

If you have legal problems with them you have to go to Texas - now that will give some serious blow to your "working from home" won't it? you'll get to spend so much time and money on this that you would wish you were employed and going to office on a regular basis.

And you get this for all eternity. (except pt 4, but hey! if they decide to use pt 12...)

Trivia:

- You can also see a bug in their form - so you sign it without seeing it all.

- Of course I have mailed them for clarifications; especially at pt 9 where it's clear they should provide you with more documents prior to signing.

To no avail. After waiting 24h for an answer (the time span they gave me for deciding) I had to decide for "no". Then they answered saying they decided for "no" :))

This happened after passing some tests so time wasting is also involved here. The secondary reason for letting you all know about it by writing this. (The first reason is to save freelancing as an idea; more than some of each freelancer individual time)

Conclusion

If I want to be a freelancer, I will not let my self be fed to such fungus. I'd rather go to a fine restaurant so I will eat some great mushrooms instead.