Fractional Jobs – Job Board for Fractional Work
fractionaljobs.io
fractionaljobs.io
> extract the most valuable 10 hours/week ...
> ... don’t pay payroll taxes, don’t pay bonuses, and don’t need to offer benefits
How they define a "fractional" is almost 1:1 the definition of false self-employment, which is illegal in many parts of Europe, as it fulfils all criteria of normal employment without any of the security for the employee and circumvention of paying for social safety.
We're still paying taxes, the only difference is that the client isn't paying for it, and maybe there is a bit of a discount for starters.
As a fractional/freelancer, I enjoy the freedom and mutual expectation that I'm in this for the money and for the short term. (In my case it gives me the resources to bootstrap my own product company).
In NL the regulations for false self-employment (enforcement kicks in January 1st) is primarily aimed at low-wage jobs like meal delivery etc. High paid professionals with multiple clients per week (like most fractionals are) are not the target.
Yes, that's also what used to be the common knowledge in Germany. However (according to my tax advisor), the tax office here has gotten increasingly agressive and are now also targeting high paying jobs like physicians and software engineers more and more.
> We're still paying taxes, the only difference is that the client isn't paying for it
Yes, that's also how you in Germany would optimally protect yourself against fallout from false self-employment (= backpay of evaded social security payment), but even in that case your customers can be fined for engaging in false self-employment, which will likely kill that customer relationship. One practice against that I've seen is to have a clause in the contract where you as the freelancer guarantee that you also spend X time with other clients, which should give the customer a shield of plausible deniability, but I haven't heard any experience reports whether that holds up in an audit. The most bullet-proof method seems to be to have at least one employee that you pay minimum social security for (e.g. working student or family member), but that's not trivially cheap.
I see my own services as very different. You call me when you need short-term & part-time help to solve a problem or bootstrap something within your own company. Doing that in a long-term salaried position would not make sense.
Curious to see what will happen over the next years!
omg, brilliant idea! Since we are not paying enough already.
I spoke to an accountant about this and he was very clear about it that having one employer is a problem. He said the new rules were there to make it less easy for employers to work around pension, taxes, and social security. According to him it was not about low versus high wages. So he would disagree with your first sentence and the first half of your second sentence. The last part is correct. Individuals with multiple clients (3-5 different clients per year at minimum) will not get into trouble.
How can the client not be paying for it somehow?
I've recently heard some people are paying tips to the collectors company who while paying minimum monthly payment to the debt. How progressive!
* How does Fractional Jobs (the company) get paid? (For example, do they only get paid to list an ad?)
* Is Fractional Jobs involved at all, after initial contact between contractor and client is made? (For example, do FJ charge either parties a finder's fee or contract fee, or take an ongoing cut, or place restrictions on the relationship?)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qmx3RKPfDgqF9ivBJF6C3vwX...
> The Referral Fee Experiment
> For this job, we charge a 10% referral fee if you are hired by the company.
> * 10% of revenue earned per month
> * Paid every month, capped at 6 months
> ** Note: this referral fee only applies to jobs where the referral fee is mentioned at the top of the job description. If the referral fee is not mentioned, it means there is no referral fee for that job.
> How It Works
> * We’ll calculate the expected monthly revenue from your contract
> * 10% of that revenue is the referral fee
> * We’ll charge you that referral fee for the first 6 months of the contract
> * You’ll pay the referral fee AFTER you’re paid by the client
Is this typical, or a direction you want to go?
My concerns:
1. The means of enforcing that could get messy. (What do people have to sign? What if the company decides to outright hire the person? What are the reporting requirements? What's the headache if breaking off the engagement?)
2. As a consultant, I'd not be thrilled to pay anyone 10% off the top of gross revenue. Unless it's a matchmaker that really added value that made all the difference. (Not just happened to be a middleperson in making the connection through their site, rather than any number of other places it could've happened. Traditionally, a deep-pocketed employer who can't be bothered to find people itself would pay the random sourcers/recruiters.)
We are not involved at all after the contract is signed. We believe in independent fractional hiring vs. a middleman. Therefore, we don't take any % from the fractional or the company, aside from the referral fee mentioned above. No restrictions on relationship, do as y'all please.
I used to do fractional work myself, and I designed this structure with myself in mind, if that makes sense.
To avoid disappointment 2-3 months into the engagement, my #1 recommendation is to have a very specific and well written statement of work that you mutually agree on so that it’s perfectly clear what your expectations of them are.
When our fractionals didn’t work out, it was always because we had expectations that the fractional wasn’t able to live up to. And in hindsight, simply spelling out the work in a SOW would have avoided the misalignment.
In general, there are a lot of fractionals who don’t like to roll their sleeves up to do real work. IME most fractionals could simply be described as “paid advisors”. For our company, when we’ve had fractionals not work out it was always because the fractional simply didn’t want to do anything other than join meetings and advise.
Again, all solvable by simply having a clear SOW and making sure mutual expectations are clearly communicated.
It’s extremely tempting to just engage a fractional because it’s easy and quick, especially when you’re desperate to get someone in the door. Don’t make that mistake and take your time.
The Advisor tier is essentially exactly what you describe. I join meetings and advise for up to 10 hours / month and then have an hourly rate after that. It's most appealing for companies who essentially want to make sure they aren't steering down a path that's going to lead to a lot of pain later on. CEO's who are looking to bounce ideas off of somebody to help refine them, etc. This is also month to month.
The next tier is up to 30 hours / month with a slightly discounted hourly rate for more, minimum 2 months. The final is up to 70 hours / month with a greatly discounted hourly rate for more, minimum 3 months.
I started doing this to set clear expectations with clients as well after having a client frustrated with me at the 10 hours / month rate when he wanted me to run his entire dev and operations team without going over the baseline hours. That wasn't clear until after I started and the engagement didn't last long.
Clear expectations work much better and I really like the work that I do. I get to work with execs, product, devs, operations, support, QA. I get to put together a clear picture of what is working and what isn't. Map out potential solutions. Coach people at different levels on implementations without being disruptive. Mob with dev teams around performance or architectural needs. Teach technical people how to put things in terms that the non-technical folks they work with will understand.
It's very rewarding work and the flexibility has been good for my family during our current phase of life.
Thanks for assuring me that such thing is possible :) - i mean, there are those who would pay for it.
have fun
If you have a senior engineer that can flex into that role and that's good enough for you, then great. We help a couple companies a month hire Fractional CTOs though for the reasons I stated above. When it works, it can work exceptionally well but its NOT right for every use case.
LMK if you're interested and the best way to contact you (or you can reach me at tc at fractionaljobs dot io)
You can click the "Hire Fractional" button on the website to book a time with me.
FWIW you're describing a great use case for a fCTO.
- [Fractional], only 17 jobs listed. We thought your commitment would at least match our own. Indeed has 20k+ jobs.
- Indeed opportunity 1, what is your status?
- Unresponsive company.
- And opportunity 2?
- Fake role.
- And you, opportunity 3?
- Underpaying role
- Fractional roles, what is your status?
- Aoo, Aoo, Aoo.
- See, Indeed. We did bring more actual roles to the table.
(Allegedly, but 17 real roles is better than 20k fake or unresponsive ones).
Bottom line, these are the 17 we think are the best fits for our fractional community of 10,000+.
Does that make sense?
I've been doing software for about a decade now. But I'm still (relatively) young. I do feel I have good breadth though and could provide value to a fledgling company to move in the right direction.
If anyone has questions about Fractional Jobs, fractional work, etc. lmk and I'll do my best to answer all of them.
Cf. https://blog.domenic.me/hacktoberfest/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643894
And other nuances, like Engineering will also capture Security roles too.