Comment by BozeWolf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BozeWolf | Hacker News Reader

Im sorry to say: this is a piece of rubbish. Lots of open doors.. and lots of bold statements. Im sure this only made it to HN because the headline contains a large figure. And thats what the author intended to do.

"Yes, you can work in your underwear, wake up at 11:00pm and drink beer all day if you want to.

But you shouldn’t."

YES YOU SHOULD. But not every day and only at the right moments. It depends on what you think of what is important. What is worth more to you. Your undies, or a pay check.

Trust your gut feeling and do networking. And if your gut feeling sucks and you think you are bad at networking... know how to deal with it or stop freelancing. You cannot apply a 'guide' like this to yourself. There are many many examples of successful (=happy?) people who do not apply this guide to their selves. Like me. I'm quite successful and happy! And do work in my underwear sometimes. And like to go kitesurfing in the middle of the week (and work my ass off in the weekend if necessary). I can make more money if I want to, but I dont. I prefer having fun, broaden my mind and sure do enjoy the freedom of being a freelancer!

Author here - new to HackerNews, so forgive me if I stink of "n00b".

You are absolutely right in that your freelance experience might differ from mine - and I did try to say at the end of the piece that money is just one factor. If you can operate well on a job and work in your underwear (and not feel like a sub-human after 3 days), power to you - DO IT!

There's room for disagreement and I'm not trying to run anyone else's freelance life - just share what's worked for me.

These are MY lessons. They're not meant to be absolutes for anybody. I couldn't have dreamed this would wind up on Hacker News - I wrote it for my (small) community and I'm thrilled to see it get traction, but I didn't try to game any system and get on here.

Joel: don't listen to that post. Your blog is golden advice.

Welcome to HN - where the trolls are loud and proud...

I don't necessarily think this is accurate. I've observed a strong and useful pattern here where posts are deconstructed in the comments in a logical fashion which I believe is, and should be seen as constructive.

Even if you come down strongly on one side or the other of a topic, it's a good discipline to look for logical weaknesses, edge cases and other potential holes in any given argument.

HN is great for this because for any given post you can typically find well thought out rebuttals which may or may not sway your opinion, but will in many cases be instructive in the very least.

Of course, the other option is to simply attack the commenter directly and fail to learn anything at all.

Love the piece Joel - keep publishing more like it!

Interesting how you said money was the goal but then when you get the success there's always someone doing better...even though you might have a fat bank account.

Thanks, article is great! :-)

I agree completely. Honing that gut instinct and learning to market (as painful as it can be) seem to be the biggest things involved. I find that compared to a day job, one of the best things about freelancing is that if there's the sort of issue that would make me want to stay indoors and idle all day, I can actually spend that day working it out and get back on the horse the next day rather than spinning my wheels in an office all week.

Judging by some of your comments, I may have walked right by you on the strand with my wife a couple weeks ago. That was only made possible by understanding my priorities, even when giving myself permission to follow them can be scary.

I liked the "giving myself permission" part of your comment. It feels the same to me too haha. I guess the freedom I wrote about does not feel like freedom somehow. So everybody can bash my comment now ;)

Absolutely - the post wasn't meant to say "money over everything". One of the big reasons I'm freelancing is for the freedom and flexibility that comes with it.

But I still treat it like a job. A job I can take vacations from, or a hiatus from, or whatever - but still something that takes some discipline to succeed at.

I never intended it to sound like freelancing should be un-fun slave labor. That would entirely miss the point.

I was more agreeing with the parent comment than disagreeing with you. Money, marketing, and discipline probably should be bigger parts of my life (definitely in the case of marketing). Getting to see your thoughts and that front has contributed to the gears turning there, and I already sent the article to some of my copywriting/editing freelance friends.

Your entire rebuttal consists of one infrequent exception to just one of OP's statements, which was not meant to be absolute anyway.

I second your words. Me, being freelancer for years, on my own and doing also for more then a year work in office showed only that I am way more productive in my own environment, on my own schedule. I don't chase money, but life, and having good life makes me more happy, thus more productive and then again company benefits more from me, so more money and success for them too.

Irresponsible person and/or unhappy worker will be less productive no matter where he works but I do think that remote work is the future if we want to have a sustainable life and don't have a new age slavery that is dominating in today's capitalism.

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