
<p>When pursuing a career with <strong>code</strong>, there are a many options for all the things, leading to decisions you have to make. Including what code languages you will learn, how deeply you&#8217;ll learn them, how you will use them, and what applications you will use.</p>



<p>One of these decisions is whether to go down a full time freelance model, or look for a full time paid role. There is a lot of great content out there for freelancers / contractors.</p>



<p>Check out Sam&#8217;s recent post on <strong><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://blog.sycamore.design/freelancing-tech-industry" target="_blank">Succeeding as a Freelancer.</a></strong> and other posts on his <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/tanoaksam" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, he has been my main source of inspiration when I think about freelance in any tech capacity.</p>



<h2>How I Made My Decision</h2>



<p>My decision came after years of failing to successfully and consistently pay rent. I had tried for a few years to be nothing but freelance and a mix of quality of life improvements as well as rising living costs in California turned it into a hustle I <strong>was not</strong> enjoying. I decided to take on a hybrid (do both) approach, as long as the full time role covered my bills. That was 12 years ago, and haven&#8217;t been solely freelancing since.</p>



<p>My rock bottom came when I was getting eviction notices, and threatened with small claims because a bad project was beginning to get real sour. I needed more consistency to pay for the necessities, and to avoid taking projects just for the money.</p>



<h2>Deciding to Get Hired</h2>



<p>Going full time doesn&#8217;t have to be a nightmare, but it takes time.</p>



<p>You will need to define what key ingredients are needed to make you a successful employee, and what does a company need to offer you to help in that process. </p>



<p><strong>Freedom of Schedule</strong> / <strong>Flex Time</strong> &#8211; This is a huge one for many of us. We want to be able to do what we find ourselves needing to do, without the burden of needing to behind a desk 9am to 5pm every single day. You may think this isn&#8217;t possible when you are hired, but that isn&#8217;t the case everywhere. 2020 has taught us all that we can work from home and we can work around our schedule.</p>



<p><strong>Work Passion</strong> &#8211; It is easier to find projects to excite you when you are working on your own thing, or are excited about your stream of clients.  </p>



<p><strong>Management</strong> &#8211; This is another hard one, are able to effectively work when knowing someone is &#8220;managing&#8221; you?</p>



<p>I&#8217;m more of a free spirit mentality. I never liked the daily grind 9-5, clock in, clock out. Some personalities thrive in a scheduled environment, with lists of tasks to complete. I am not one of those people. I&#8217;m a collaborator and team leader. I work best by myself when there are things I need to learn, and collaboratively to put the pieces together.</p>



<h2>Where to Work</h2>



<p>When are freelance full time, the more you learn the more you can create niches for yourself. For example, maybe you find yourself with an ability to handle SEO</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I wrote an article about my favorite topic<br><br>Why WordPress is the best platform for SEO 🙌<a href="https://t.co/x0QyhGaBqe">https://t.co/x0QyhGaBqe</a></p>&mdash; Nat Miletic | natmiletic.eth (@natmiletic) <a href="https://twitter.com/natmiletic/status/1401541230715019266?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div><figcaption>A WordPress SEO freelancer</figcaption></figure>



<p>The same thing happens on the full time side. A &#8220;job&#8221; can be a lot of things, and that stems from where you work. Where do you want to work? What does that company do? Does it really make a difference if you just want a job? YES.</p>



<p>Within WordPress the 2 types of companies that are usually hiring. Agencies, and Product based companies. Each has its own merits, and each takes a unique personality type to thrive.</p>



<h3>Working for a WordPress Agency</h3>



<p>There are many <strong>benefits</strong> to working at an agency. The main advantages of working for almost any WordPress agency include learning, lack of code boredom, &amp; networking.</p>



<h4>Learning</h4>



<p><strong>Learning</strong> is the biggest advantage (imho) of working for a WordPress agency. I have worked for 3 agencies in my career, and each one has allowed me to learn a lot, very quickly. I just finished working a few months at <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://10up.com" data-type="URL" data-id="https://10up.com" target="_blank">10up</a>, and I got quickly learn some new fantastic ways of coding headless WordPress. Since most likely you&#8217;ll end up being moved from project to project, each one will have unique implementations that require thought, research, and execution. There is never a dull moment as even the simple feature requests can turn into larger one-off builds. </p>



<p><strong>Caveat</strong>: Working for larger agencies can put yourself into a situation where you end up working on internal products or projects. These are great for helping build a better service offering.</p>



<h4>Code Boredom</h4>



<p>If you are the type of person that cannot stand staring at the same code day in and day out, an agency is going to be a better fit. While you may get put onto a larger build that spans months, most likely you will also be put on other projects. While I mention the drawbacks of this <strong>task switching</strong>, overall it means there is always something new (or &#8220;something else&#8221;) to work on. </p>



<h4>Networking</h4>



<p>You can <strong>network</strong> at any job you go to. However there is nothing quite like networking within agency. Some of the smartest people I&#8217;ve met in the WordPress realm now work for an agency helping build better service offerings. When I joined <strong>10UP</strong>, I knew almost no one there, but<span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span> slowly got to meet and enjoy talking code with some, which led me into new directions in my own learning. </p>



<p>Just like any role, networking can help you gain traction in your career, but also help you with your current wants / needs. When I told my director at 10UP I wanted to work on some more learning material, we started talking about JavaScript documentation &amp; tutorials to make for the whole company. That was exciting.</p>



<h4>The Grind</h4>



<p>Ultimately the issue I personally have with working for an agency is nothing new, and the reason I left every agency I worked for. I am not a good &#8220;first-time coder&#8221;. That is to say, when a feature request comes up, and there is no code that meets the requirements, I will need to code something from scratch, and the more challenging it is, the less quality my first pass will take.</p>



<p>This isn&#8217;t true of everyone, and something I wish to work on, but my mind focuses more on the deadline, and wants to get something <strong>working</strong> out the door by it, rather than the <strong>best</strong> thing out the door. It comes from a &#8220;something working is better than nothing&#8221; mindset. I can sell a duct tape together solution, I can&#8217;t sell broken. This doesn&#8217;t work so well in agencies when deadlines are a constant. There is always something needing to be done and never enough time to do it. No matter how much scope, discovery, planning, there are always <strong>gotchas</strong> you will never know about, til you do.</p>



<p>Working for any agency means you need to be able to deliver code, that can be approved during review, and ideally its the right code on the first pass. </p>



<h4>Time Tracking</h4>



<p>This isn&#8217;t unique to WordPress agencies, however in my experience always the most apparent. Since at the end of the day, all your time will be billed, it needs to be tracked. Some agencies do this better than others. At 10UP for example, they have overhead time which can be used to track meeting times outside of projects, or admin time. Nothing is lost, and there is a bucket for everything.</p>



<p>As a second note here, I want to add <strong>time management</strong>. This isn&#8217;t  necessarily a drawback, but if you are not good at managing time, and being firm with it, it can be an issue. For example, I have a problem where I work on whatever is <strong>loudest</strong>, and where I can help the most. I will jump when someone asks for help on project I have a lot of experience on, even when timing wise that is not a smart decision. My leads told me to respond with a timing when I can respond, however I find myself constantly in the rabbit hole before I even think about if I should jump in.</p>



<h4>Task Switching</h4>



<p>Again, this isn&#8217;t a unique disadvantage to WordPress agencies, but you will get a lot more of it. <strong>Task switching</strong> is moving between one task to another, or worse, from one project to another. </p>



<p>I have an insanely difficult time with this. What may take someone a few minutes of mental switching, my mind takes forever to jump and be efficient, and the more of these I need to do the worse it gets.</p>



<h3>Working for a WordPress Product</h3>



<p>Working for a product, whether it is a plugin or a SaaS, has its similarities, but there are some key differences I find easier and better for how I work.</p>



<h4>Code Iteration</h4>



<p>Unlike working for an agency, the mentality that something needs to be <strong>the best</strong> it can be, first pass, doesn&#8217;t really exist. It exists, but to an extent that you know you can come back and patch / update it later.</p>



<p><strong>Tech Debt</strong> will always exist anywhere, however being able to come back to a piece of functionality later can be planned into a product&#8217;s lifecycle, while it may not be to when building a WordPress website for a client. </p>



<p>I love and prefer code iteration. I like getting something working, testing it with real world users, then figuring out what I can do to improve it. Improvements can range from adding some basic unit / integration tests, or whole new features. </p>



<h4>Learning Deeply</h4>



<p>When working for an agency, you learn a lot, quickly. However, unless required you end up learning just enough to execute and deliver. When working on a product, you can take a deeper dive into technologies to get better understanding of how it works to better the product.</p>



<p>I first learned <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://nextjs.org/" data-type="URL" data-id="https://nextjs.org/" target="_blank">NextJS</a> to build our next iteration of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://biztender.io/" data-type="URL" data-id="https://biztender.io/" target="_blank">BizTender</a> and got really into the weeds. I did not need to know things like <strong>/api</strong> was an awesome <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://nextjs.org/docs/api-routes/introduction" data-type="URL" data-id="https://nextjs.org/docs/api-routes/introduction" target="_blank">built in routing feature</a>. However in working with how I could make the next platform better, I researched and learned. While working at <strong>10UP</strong> I worked on a few NextJS projects, 1 included AMP support. The documentation shows full support, but wasn&#8217;t until we implemented (based on docs) did we see it isn&#8217;t actually <strong>fully</strong> <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://github.com/vercel/next.js/issues/7121#issuecomment-487329715" data-type="URL" data-id="https://github.com/vercel/next.js/issues/7121#issuecomment-487329715" target="_blank">supported</a>. So learning how to workaround that for a site needing AMP support was a &#8220;fun&#8221; challenge.</p>



<p>In the end, we got AMP supported through a mix of suggestions and trial &amp; error. Was it the best? Maybe not, but due to tight deadlines, it would have to do. I look forward to spending more time with this now, and hopefully learning the <strong>best</strong> solve for AMP in NextJS for a site like that one.</p>



<h2>A Job Isn&#8217;t For Everyone</h2>



<p>At the end of the day, you will need to make that hard choice between freelance / contracting and a full time role. It is a decision I&#8217;ve flip flopped on my entire career, as I&#8217;ve always enjoyed having a stream of client work on the side of my full time role. </p>



<p>What I enjoy the most is paying my mortgage, paying for groceries, and having health insurance for myself and my family covered. For primarily these reasons, I keep on the job career path. I will forever have ideas and want to work on other projects, and enjoy the freedom to do so because my &#8220;basic&#8221; life expenses are covered.</p>


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