Should You Live The Freelance Life?

With the modern trend towards specialization, many companies aren’t offering full time jobs to their employees anymore. It’s often more cost efficient for them to just go with whoever they need for particular jobs without having a commitment to keep them on if they don’t need them after that job is completed. This is often seen as a movement towards increased efficiency. But the result of all of this is that many people are now turning to a freelance approach to making money.  Instead of having one particular company you work for, a freelancer can work for several companies at once on particular jobs. Here are a few advantages and disadvantages to going freelance.

Disadvantage-Reliability

One problem with freelancers is that most of the jobs you have are temporary. Finding a job that’s consistent and that will keep going for more than a month or two is something of a holy grail in the freelance community.  Even though you have more jobs, many of them can go under at any time, and if this happens to you all at once than it can be a serious problem. Freelancers also have the issue of being perpetually underemployed as a result.

Disadvantage- Planning Woes

Those people who are with one company throughout most of their career can rely on slowly moving up the ranks within that company and growing their skills and income as a result. Freelancers don’t have this luxury, and they have to be constantly thinking about that next job, and where the next paycheck is coming from.

Advantage- Flexibility

One serious advantage to the freelance life is that you aren’t dependent on one employer. Most people are in a bind when they are fired from their job, or when they are let go for some other reason. But a freelancer that’s approaching the situation correctly will have several different jobs. Having one job come to a close will be no problem since you can just focus on your many other jobs. It allows you to be very flexible and adaptable to a changing world.

Advantage- Conferencing Tech

One thing that makes all of this possible is technology involving group video conferencing.  This is because video conferencing is so adaptable. If you go with more traditional ways of working with others such as trying to meet all in one place, then you tend to have a never ending series of headaches. Flying people into one location is expensive after all, and travel time is wasted time if it’s not necessary. Examples of programs you can use for this include Google Hangout, Skype, and so on. Many companies are turning to more reliable and secure services for their conferencing than the free ones though. This is because paid subscriptions often have more support, and more features.
For those who love the freelance life, it’s because they feel like citizens of the future, and people who are totally in control of their own destinies. But it may very well not be for everyone.