#freelance
I recently had a chat with my friend BK about his experience with outsourcing portions of his freelance work. a few things he said stood out to me, & that’s what I’ll highlight.
background
the candidate of discussion was “developer gets a job, developer doesn’t want to do design work, or developer doesn’t want to do some frontend work” - and those are the portions of the project the developer would be interested in outsourcing.
worth pointing out - we don’t freelance fulltime. that fact alone will change the approach quite a great deal.
disclaimer: we had this chat after I had another bad experience with outsourcing work, as a result of that, what I highlight may mostly have the undertone of warning.
use it sparingly
Generally I freelance in my spare time and I don’t want to flood that with managing people on top of doing the work. I rarely do it cause I don’t have enough time cause it rarely saves any time, infact it may end up increasing the time you spend on the project cause now you have to review all the work, coordinate all the people etc
use it to cover your shortfalls
So I usually outsource for very specific reasons, like if I know someone who’s good at a think and would likely do it faster and more efficiently than me
get them on a separate contract with the client
If I’m taking on a project that will need someone to exclusively work on design or copy for example. I prefer for that person to have their own contract with the client so that I’m not directly responsible for work that I don’t have control over.
this 👆 is what made me write this note. you’re much better off getting your client on a separate contract with the person you outsource specific work to, this relieves you of the people management aspect of it, & means you don’t answer to the client for someone else’s work, deadlines & processes. less coordination to do
the client will always be looking to you for answers so the other guy has all the benefits without the responsibility. you’re doing people management without being paid for it