Learning to code with the sole purpose of freelancing

Hi everyone!
I have been coding for 2 months on and off and I’m finding it interesting . I worked in a corporation for 6 months(finance related) and quit because the job was crushing my soul. I don’t want to work for a big corporation ever again. I just wanted to ask if there are people like me who are learning to code with the only objective of doing freelancing (or maybe to work remotely). It feels like everyone who is learning to code is trying to get a job. Also is it required to gain some experience in a corporation or a startup (maybe 1 or 2 years) before freelancing?

PS - I’m 22

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Hi @shardashikhar welcome to the FCC forums!

Freelancing is an option, but I don’t believe it should be most peoples first option. Generally freelancing consists of the following:

  1. Find freelance jobs
  2. Compete for the job against other freelancers
  3. Manage your own work with clients once you get the job
  4. Do the job
  5. Manage the financials, hand-off and or maintenance after the job is complete.

If you just work for some company you usually only have to deal with #4, and maybe one of the other ones. If your freelancing you have to manage everything. So not only will you have to make sure you do a good job and know what your doing, but you also have to more or less manage all the other stuff related to just getting the job. There is also a lot more risk involved in freelancing as your essentially running your own business.

Freelancing is good for some people and basically impossible for others. Depending on your financial situation, like where you live, you could make due with rates that are “low”. If you live in an expensive part of the world you will have to charge very high rates to do the same job someone living in a cheaper part of the world would charge. This can make freelancing almost impossible unless you can justify such high rates.

If you have 0 experience I recommend getting it from somewhere before freelancing. There is to much risk involved if you try to jump directly into freelancing as not only are you learning, but your learning on someone else’s dime and that’s once you get a job, which is hard if you have 0 experience.


I recommend continuing to learn and look at normal jobs available as they are less risky and will allow you to get some stability and experience without worrying about all the other aspects. After you gain some experience I recommend evaluating if you could try freelancing on the side and see how it goes, this way if it doesn’t work out you can always stick non-freelance jobs, or commit further if it works for you.

Good luck, keep learning!

2 Likes

@bradtaniguchi
Thanks for the reply and yes it seems freelancing is much more work than traditional 9-5. I think I should make up my mind to learning and getting a job first.