Freelancing in Frankfurt
I’ve never been an employee (except the time as part time student at the F.S.D. and F.A.Z). And I hope I never have to (fingers crossed)! Being a freelancer and/or self employed is very important to me and my personal freedom. After I graduated from the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (also known as FH-Frankfurt) with my M. Sc. in computer science I spend another six month at the IT department of the F.A.Z (first and second level support, classical student job I would say ^^).
I needed this extra time to figure out what I wanted to do.
Looking back now it was clear that I’d become a freelancer and be self employed I think: as a pupil during school time I repaired computers here and there for some extra cash and as a student I was already creating websites for different clients. Some networking later after I had graduated, Markus Tacker made an intro to a company for my first freelance gig in 2013. Kudos for this! This was the start! :) So since then I’m freelancing in Frankfurt with some little pauses here and there.
I would like to share with you my personal experience freelancing as a web developer for nearly four years in this beautiful city.
The good
The nice thing about Frankfurt is that it has a lot of projects for freelancers to offer (sure Berlin has even more, but I don’t live in Berlin :p). The variety of projects is huge. Starting from more conservative projects at the big banks in the financial district, to more creative ones at one of the web agencies around the Bahnhofsviertel or the Hanauer-Landstraße. You can also choose a startup for an even more creative and young environment, but perhaps more stressful. Last but not least there are still a couple of big cooperates you can join. So you’ve plenty to choose from.
The other cool thing is that it actually didn’t take me that much time to find the next freelancing gig.
It took me always like a week or two to find my next freelancing project. Obviously because of the fact that there are so much projects out there.
Another great thing is that Frankfurt is small, so this means the next project can’t be that far away actually. You can easily reach your client by public transportation or by bike. In addition to that you get to work with young, motivated and creative people, from all over the globe.
So plenty of reasons to choose from starting your freelancing career in Frankfurt am Main :).
The bad
Here is the thing I don’t like. Frankfurt is considered being a city where the money is. A lot of banks, big cooperates and nowadays bigger investments for startups. But still, you always have to negotiate about the hourly rate (perhaps this is default style, anyhow I don’t like it ^^).
There will be always these comments or questions like ‘is this your last price?’ or ‘what can we do with the price?’
This comes up before you start the project, but it can also come up during the project (so happened to me). It happens when working together with headhunters as well as when you are directly in contact with potential clients. So I’ve a 100% ratio here. But to be honest, I still don’t get why this has to be like this. Ok when working with headhunters, I can see somehow the point: they want to make (more) money, too. But to the companies out there: please stop this, freelancers usually are of high quality and can perform from 0 to 100 in no time. As well they bring along not only the technical experience but also the experience from working in different environments, companies and teams.
And there is the thing with payment in general -_-. I started with a 30 day of payment goal at the beginning (I was naive :D). After a couple of months I switched to immediate payment (anyhow no client pays immediately, lol). So clients often delay the payment, but why should a company pay freelancers later than their normal employees? Still not understandable for me. So here is my tip for you:
Use the shortest possible payment goal, because you will get paid late anyhow
…what an irony…lol.
The ugly
The ugly part (and this is the worst for me personally) is, that companies want you to sit at their office…aaaaall day long -_-. Hey companies this is not freelancing and you know it!!! And it’s the year 2017: co working spaces all over the place, flexible working times, remote work, and so on. It happened at nearly every project I was in. After a certain amount of time, after a certain trust was established between you as a freelancer and the client you can PERHAPS work A BIT remotely. But this usually takes some time…more than I expected.
This is not why I became a freelancer, sitting all day in your building.
Think also about the lack of motivation and level of frustration the freelancer has when you force him to be in your office, all day long.
Worse is that even the project advertisements (from companies or headhunters) on the usual platforms contain the description that the project is 100% on-site. This is even not legal in Germany (see here for further read on what I mean). Stop asking for illegal things guys. Please. Thx in advance! :)
Conclusion
Freelancing as a coder in Frankfurt can be pretty cool: a lot of interesting projects and companies. If you can do good in the price range and get a cool project you’re going to have a good time. To the companies: please get more familiar with what it means to work together with freelancers, considering aspects such as fair hourly rates, flexible working hours and remote work.
