Making the switch

So here I am. Day one of my new career as a professional freelancer in software development. Since I finished university with a degree in Software Engineering a little more than two years ago, I jumped from big companies to smaller ones, each new experience helping me understand the different dynamics of the workplace.

In the past few weeks, I started thinking more about what I wanted out of my career and one thing struck me as the basis of all : passion. I truly am passionate about technologies and software engineering and so far I have not been able to find the proper work environment to truly nurture this passion. All those 9 to 5 schedules, grey cubicles environment, political agendas and big bureaucraty got me thinking there must be a better way. And since the best way to find the proper environment in which to work is to build it yourself, only two options remained : Start a company of my own or work as an independent freelancer.

I considered the first option, starting my own company, but didn’t feel the timing was right. Being successful with a startup takes a few winning conditions like finding the right partners to work with, a good idea and potential clients. I figured that all the pieces of the puzzle might fall into place later on in my career for a startup opportunity but until then the safer more pragmatic choice would be to start off as a freelancer.

Until I get enough workload from clients to work full time, I set myself a few objectives for the weeks to come :

• Start a technical blog (I guess I can check this one off the list just now!) and write on a regular basis
• Develop my professional network by attending conferences, meeting with old colleagues and schoolmates
• Participate in an open source project
• Learn a new programming language, most probably Ruby on Rails. I’ll blog more about this later.
• Further my knowledge in software developement and Java (reading Better, Faster, Lighter Java and The Pragmatic Programmer the moment)

Needless to say my main objective right now is to find enough good clients to make a living. This might prove harder than I first thought. I’m putting a lot of energy into this and reading everything I find on the web about finding freelance contracts, pricing and marketing. This should be the subject of my next blog article.