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Comment by fastbeef | Hacker News Reader

Are consultant brokers/agent only a thing in the Nordic countries? I started my own consultancy firm last year and just sent my profile to a bunch of brokers. They all got in touch and presented assignments they had. I selected one, went on 1 interview (!!) and bam - six month assignment. The broker gets 10% of what I make. It’s super convenient and saves me a bunch of stress and time hunting assignments so the 10% is really worth it.

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Aren't these just 'recruiters'?

Also, I'm not sure if a 6 month assignment counts as freelance :D I think he is looking for something to fill the hours, not a new job.

Are you sure it's only 10%? The markup in the US is generally much higher, pegging the expectations quite high even though you're receiving a fraction of that.

10% seems quite a lot, I'm wondering if your hour rate is so high that the 10% doesn't matter.

If you think about opportunity cost, it might not be as much as you think. Sometimes there’s a fee for getting to the next stage quicker than doing it yourself. You’ll have to decide if the fee is worth it.

I've seen anywhere between 5-20% working as a freelancer/consultant in London. This is partly why I think clients are keen to respond to cold emails about work - it can save them a lot of money compared to using recruitment agents.

If you're a lone consultant, you likely spend more than 10% of your hours on "selling" your services, recruiting clients, etc. Especially since not every pitch works out. If you can get all of your sales&marketing and much of your scope negotiation done by someone else, that's worth 10% of the project cost because that's 10% of the project effort.

I make 110€ an Hour, so the agent gets around 1500€ from me each month.

However, a lot of the assignments are available ONLY through agents. So the alternative to 90% with an agent is not 100%, it’s 0%

Can you list a few of these brokers?

Hays, Gulp.de, Computerfutures, Darwin Recruitment, Montash (not an endorsement, just the ones I could think of right now)

remote friendly?

No. But it's slowly getting better. Every once in a while someone posts a "100% remote" contract. Usually it's full-time on-site. Sometimes a few days a week "home office".

Working through these kind of agencies is not freelancing in the sense OP is looking for. It's working as a temporary employee (still with more freedom and paid overtime :).

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