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fjDue to tax and employment laws, employers needing freelance or contracting work will not just hire someone, they will only work with other companies. This is why there is a blooming market in the UK for ready-made companies you can buy and install yourself as president and earn through dividends and such stuff -- basically buying an administrative product. For a few hundred quid more you can even have one made with the name you come up with. You need one extra person to be a board member, and stationary and business cards with the company name, and a yearly tax aountant. This looked all too complicated to me.
There are also body-shops here, companies that 'hire' freelancers in 'permanent' positions. Basically when you contract out, the company that gives you work to do contracts with the body-shop company for yourservices at the fee you negotiate, and you yourself do the work, fill in a time-sheet, submit it to the body-shop, they harge the client, take a small cut, and pass the rest on to you, also taking care of all taxes and accounting and doing the tax magic for your business expenses when you submit receipts. These body-shops are called 'Umbrella companies' here. The one I chose on recommendation of the headhunter I work with is called The Parasol Group. I expect that name for an Umbrella company took three weeks of intense brainstorming. (I also keep wondering whether Parasol only has above-ground labs to create monster zombie cats and viruses that turn you into the picture of health and where Milla Jovovich comes in every time I think about this.)
Why am I boring y'all with this? Because I wanted to mark the occasion of me submitting my first time sheet. Ever, I have really never contracted on a daily rate. In fact, it's been over a decade since I've freelanced, and that just-out-of-school gig was all set prices for end results. The work was at a small mobile research and interaction consultancy, where we decided to start me out contracting until we all knew how we felt about each-other. I am very positive and would like to work with them again, and the three directors with whom I spent the week in a small office said the same. I think my technical background with my very specific design skills an complement their available skill set very well. Unfortunately their actual client is being wishy-washy for the project I was on is being unsure, so I cannot do any more work until feedback comes back for what I have done now. Ok, we'll just continue with me being called in when they need me at my day rate.
I learned all kinds of lingo like 'strategic designer' for this field usability consulting, which should allow me to position myself and communicate to other people locally in this business even better. They also got an idea what it means to work with me in that, always professionally, I will voice my opinion and recommendations about what is going on about projects in the room. And that when you hire me, you get someone who has a constant stream of 5 or so RSS feeds open to follow tech trends and products in the mobile space. You want 3 paragraphs on Google's Android technical capabilities, or how it compares in the market to other SDKs? 45 minutes please, I just need to do 20 minutes of research to confirm what I already know and have proper sources at the end of the document.
But yeah, first week of nice salary, and now a few days off. I could get used to this.
There are also body-shops here, companies that 'hire' freelancers in 'permanent' positions. Basically when you contract out, the company that gives you work to do contracts with the body-shop company for yourservices at the fee you negotiate, and you yourself do the work, fill in a time-sheet, submit it to the body-shop, they harge the client, take a small cut, and pass the rest on to you, also taking care of all taxes and accounting and doing the tax magic for your business expenses when you submit receipts. These body-shops are called 'Umbrella companies' here. The one I chose on recommendation of the headhunter I work with is called The Parasol Group. I expect that name for an Umbrella company took three weeks of intense brainstorming. (I also keep wondering whether Parasol only has above-ground labs to create monster zombie cats and viruses that turn you into the picture of health and where Milla Jovovich comes in every time I think about this.)
Why am I boring y'all with this? Because I wanted to mark the occasion of me submitting my first time sheet. Ever, I have really never contracted on a daily rate. In fact, it's been over a decade since I've freelanced, and that just-out-of-school gig was all set prices for end results. The work was at a small mobile research and interaction consultancy, where we decided to start me out contracting until we all knew how we felt about each-other. I am very positive and would like to work with them again, and the three directors with whom I spent the week in a small office said the same. I think my technical background with my very specific design skills an complement their available skill set very well. Unfortunately their actual client is being wishy-washy for the project I was on is being unsure, so I cannot do any more work until feedback comes back for what I have done now. Ok, we'll just continue with me being called in when they need me at my day rate.
I learned all kinds of lingo like 'strategic designer' for this field usability consulting, which should allow me to position myself and communicate to other people locally in this business even better. They also got an idea what it means to work with me in that, always professionally, I will voice my opinion and recommendations about what is going on about projects in the room. And that when you hire me, you get someone who has a constant stream of 5 or so RSS feeds open to follow tech trends and products in the mobile space. You want 3 paragraphs on Google's Android technical capabilities, or how it compares in the market to other SDKs? 45 minutes please, I just need to do 20 minutes of research to confirm what I already know and have proper sources at the end of the document.
But yeah, first week of nice salary, and now a few days off. I could get used to this.
