Adrian Guy Crook

This infographic on Freshbooks (the same company I use for my accounting software) sheds a ton of insight into why people become freelancers and more. The image below is only a part of it - click through to see the whole infographic.

The graphic posted me to comment on freelancing from my own perspective of having been a game consultant for 4 years now. Here’s that comment:

So… I am a videogame designer/strategist who started freelancing for more control over my own schedule (I have four kids). I love the lifestyle and wouldn’t go back to full time work unless I absolutely had to, but here are the caveats:

• I work more, and harder, than I ever did as an employee. Merely “showing up” isn’t an option. I’ve never written more documents than I have to as a consultant.
• While I don’t commute, I travel far more often than ever before. I spend about 25-30% of the year on the road (i.e. hundreds or thousands of miles away from home).
• The “no chance of layoffs” comment is a bit of a misnomer. As a freelancer, I have an equal chance of being cut, but I spread that risk across multiple clients.

Provided you experience even a modicum of success, being a freelancer is a trap. Due to tax deductions, you have to earn less (gross) to net the same or even better than you would working full time. And once you get used to being paid (reasonably well) for every hour you work, it seems preposterous to go back to a salary that gives Company X complete control over your time.

The other exceptional benefit to being freelance is multiple projects, multiple clients gives you multiple opportunities to learn and hone your skillset. Full time employment can be very insular: in core game development at least, you focus on the project you’re making for 1-2 years, to the exclusion of everything else. So you (largely) ignore broader industry trends and better career opportunities in favor of a laser focus on your game’s genre and how to improve your product. Then, 2 years later, you poke your head up, see how the landscape has changed and try to remember what you did 2 years ago to kick off that project and how you’d do it differently. It’s a fool’s errand. Many people I talk to in core game development are light years behind the broader tech industry as a result.

I have lots more I could say about consulting, but while it has its ups and downs, it’s enabled me to live a far more engaging life than if I were chained to a desk.