Old Tin Roof

A little bit of me, and everything else

Freelance or Freelancer?

I’ve been read­ing a few free­lancer blogs for a cou­ple of years, and although I’ve found much of their advice use­ful, it seems like a lot of their posts are focused on the stay-at-home free­lancer that is try­ing to build up a decent list of reg­u­lar client.  There doesn’t seem to be much for the con­tract free­lancer that works in slightly longer term roles at a clients offices.

In the IT sup­port world, the sep­a­ra­tion is more appar­ent — you’re either a com­pany try­ing to gain mul­ti­ple clients and grow your busi­ness, or you’re a con­trac­tor that moves from role to role (usually).

I guess I’d like to pass on some of my expe­ri­ence as an IT sup­port con­trac­tor, a stay at home free­lancer, an employer of free­lancers (in a per­ma­nent man­age­ment role) and now a con­tract free­lancer in web devel­op­ment myself.

It’s all about your pro­fes­sional attitude

When I was employ­ing free­lancers on a reg­u­lar basis, I was often shocked at some of their atti­tudes (and some­times their apti­tude) when they arrived at the stu­dio.  Over a few years I met a range of scruffy, unin­ter­ested, half asleep devel­op­ers that were more inter­ested in putting their per­sonal view across (or play­ing online games) than get­ting some work done. Of course I also got to work with some folks that were awe­some, switched on and made their pres­ence missed when their time on a project was over.

Add some value

There are some key things you can do to make your­self valu­able to a team, and make a pos­i­tive impact on the peo­ple you work with:

Keep­ing positive

It’s not about being the most hyper and cheery per­son in the room (that can get very old, very quickly).  It’s more about keep­ing pos­i­tive about any task that you’re set, and being pos­i­tive that you can help get things done in the right way. This means that you’ve got to know your stuff, and can be con­fi­dent that if you don’t know the answer to a prob­lem, you can use your skills to work it out.  The wrong way to deal with dull tasks is to argue, or even sulk about it (wor­ry­ingly, I’ve seen this more than once).

Being awake and alert

This may be obvi­ous to most peo­ple, but turn­ing up to a free­lance gig yawn­ing, not pay­ing atten­tion, or being dis­tracted by other things is a sure fire way to annoy the per­son who is employ­ing you.  You’re there because they need your skills, and they are likely to get frus­trated with some­one who acts like they’re just another ‘bum on a seat’.

Remem­ber you’re there to help

If you’ve seen a clients prob­lem or issue hap­pen before, and you can con­tribute in a mean­ing­ful way, then make sure you do so (but remem­ber to be tact­ful).  If you see some team mem­bers going through the ringer try­ing to fix an issue that you can solve, and you stay quiet, but let them know after they’ve fixed it, you’re not going to win any friends.

Make sure your skills are bet­ter than average

As a free­lancer you need be at the top of your game. No excuses. If your skills don’t jus­tify your wages, why should some­one employ you?  Don’t be a big head tho, another way to lose friends is to try and tell every­one you know every­thing.  If you do know a lot more than the peo­ple around you, then intro­duce your knowl­edge gen­tly.  No one likes to be made to feel like they don’t know what theyr’re doing. And remem­ber to soak up your envi­ron­ment like a sponge: if you get the chance to work in a new method­ol­ogy, or tech­nol­ogy, then learn as much as you can about it while you’re there.

Be sen­si­tive to other people

This is some­thing that came up very recently on a con­tract for me, but remem­ber that how you see the world is not nec­es­sar­ily the way that every­one else does. Try to be aware that phrases you use might not fit in with the com­pany envi­ron­ment (I’m not talk­ing about swear­ing here), and with­out fail be ready to admit that you might be wrong and apol­o­gise where necessary.

Don’t men­tion the money

It goes with­out say­ing, but you should never talk about your rate, or the money you earn each year. It’s bor­ing for a start, but it can also unset­tle peo­ple who might oth­er­wise be happy with their job, and pos­si­bly make them resent you. Free­lanc­ing isn’t a pop­u­lar­ity con­test, but it helps if the peo­ple you work with enjoy work­ing with you.

I’m sure there’s a few more things that I’ve for­got­ten, but hope­fully this will help some­one out.

Are white cars the new cool kid?

I remem­ber that when I was a kid, I hardly saw any white cars on the road.  And when I did they were beaten up old rust buck­ets spew­ing out power sta­tion style smoke out the back.

Just recently I wan­dered past the BMW garage on Park Lane, and spot­ted a beau­ti­ful M3 coupe in gleam­ing white.  I’ve since seen the same model in var­i­ous colours, but none seem to show off the lines and shapes in the car’s design as well as the white ver­sion. Maybe its the shad­ing caused by the sweep­ing lines down the sides, or the way the hump in the mid­dle of the bon­net hints at the power below, but it really is stand­ing out as a beau­ti­ful car.

BMW M3 Coupe in White

Even BMW are using the white model in their adver­tis­ing and pro­mo­tional material.

Another stun­ning white car is the Audi A5, just as visu­ally appeal­ing as the BMW, and for the same rea­sons: the lines seem to be accen­tu­ated by the colour.

Even white used cars seem to be just as pop­u­lar as other colours these days — Auto­quake, labeled as the UK’s largest online used car retailer, found that searches on their site for white cars were almost equal to red, grey and blue (5% com­pared to 6.6%, 5.7% and 5.3% respec­tively).  How­ever Black and sil­ver are still the lead­ers (at 65.9% and 11.5% respectively).

As far back as 2008 car mak­ers were start­ing to see the dif­fer­ences in sales of white cars — appar­ently sales of white cars increased by more than 60% the pre­vi­ous year.

All the stats are inter­est­ing, but I think from a visual point of view cur­rent car design really suits a coat of white.

Having a voice and remembering to use it

This is the third incar­na­tion of oldtinroof.com in the past cou­ple of years, and although the focus has changed over that time, one thing has stayed cur­rent: I’ve not really used it as a plat­form to get my view across, it’s just been a sta­tic port­fo­lio of old work.

Over the years I’ve coached clients and worked with mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ists to help them improve their online pres­ence by show­ing their skills and help poten­tial clients under­stand them by writ­ing fresh con­tent as often as pos­si­ble.  Well, I think it’s about time I prac­ticed what I preach.

Excuses, excuses, excuses

Excuses are some­times rea­sons, so I guess I can put my lack of out­put to a num­ber of them:

  • I’ve got plenty of expe­ri­ence but used to find it dif­fi­cult to artic­u­late my thoughts.
  • I was wor­ried that I’d say some­thing that could be con­strued in the wrong way (and I’ve never enjoyed confrontation).
  • There are so many voices out there online that I really respect that I didn’t think I had any­thing to add.
  • Keep­ing a con­sis­tent level of con­tent com­ing is a ter­ri­fy­ing prospect!

Wow, look­ing at that list it sounds a lot like what I hear from other peo­ple about why they shouldn’t write online.

So, what’s changed?

Over the past few months I’ve spent a fair amount of time explain­ing my work, and my deci­sions to col­leagues and friends, and have found that I actu­ally have some strong opin­ions on sub­jects that I keep to myself.

I’ve also realised that the rea­sons (excuses) for not writ­ing were fairly rub­bish, and due to a num­ber of changes in my life over the past few years (a post or two about that later), I now have the tools to deal with these and any other fears.

Based on these changes, I’m unlikely to worry about stick­ing to a reg­u­lar post­ing sched­ule, but I’ll be try­ing to keep up a stream of thoughts about tech­nol­ogy, the web, design, music, film, and cre­ativ­ity — all the sub­jects I’ve found my voice for.