To introduce myself

University of 985, majoring in software engineering graduated in 2010, gave up the postgraduate entrance examination. Through the school recruitment, successfully entered a large foreign enterprise

I stayed for 5 years. From a grassroots engineer at the beginning to a director of research and development, it was difficult for me to be promoted further from the organizational structure of the department at that time. My immediate leader had worked in the company for 10 years, and I could not match him in terms of technical ability and management ability.

On November 2, 2015, I really started my freelance career

Today I’ve been freelancing for 636 days. I’m a techie, but I’m not an otaku. I’m a bit of a maverick. I like to enjoy life by myself.

So when the small editor found me for an interview, there is no doubt that I was happy mixed with a lot of little sadness

That’s why I’ve always been obsessed with writing code, right

My father was the vice principal of the county high school, and my mother was an ordinary housewife. Until I went to college, everything about me never got rid of the family arrangement

Maybe because of this, my personality is a little rebellious.

In my junior year, I helped the school develop the educational administration management system with my teacher. In my senior year, I also participated in some projects that my teacher helped my friends. In my senior year, I helped an outsourcing company share projects with my roommates. At the time of graduation, I still had a deposit of RMB 2 million and many classmates around me were preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination. At the same time, I passed the school admission of a large foreign company by relying on my previous project achievements

However, after graduation, I only focus on one company and devote myself to one job. I held my first job for five years

When you feel that you are not fully acquainted with this society, quit naked! You might think I’m crazy

Now I think I am glad to have stepped into a field that I like and deserve to pay for

I never regret the choices I’ve made

Why do you choose freelancing

Although happy company work is not too tired, but for a long time the same environment, familiar with the familiar faces, can not avoid the flattery routine, really tired; Looking at my career in the next few decades of my life, it seems that there is only one immutable way — to be a leader, lead subordinates, and maybe be a manager if I am lucky. Obviously, I have already been a leader, and I have had a deep understanding of these rules and mechanisms. Further down, my annual salary will rise to 400 to 5 million yuan, or even more. Relative workload and responsibilities can also overwhelm you.

The pursuit of money will never be enough for human beings. For me, it is enough to spend. Compared with the ritualistic working life with a fixed amount of dead salary, I hope to allocate more free time and space to myself. Than account, we’ll work 24 hours a day, normal working hours according to the nine to six, with an hour overtime, means that every 10 hours in the company, with the misty morning rush-hour gridlock is serious, a lot of people every day to cross the better part of a city, it again 2 hours drive back and forth, plane again go to sleep eight hours, eat in 1 hour, You only have 3 hours of your own time in the day, Monday through Friday, and so on and so forth. How precious is that little time in the day?

Whenever I think of these problems, my heart is very afraid, worried that time flies too fast, my pace is too slow, my pace can not follow the pace of time, I keep trying and trying, but the time is gone; I am afraid that when I am too old to move, when I look back on the past, there is indeed a blank in my memory. When I am most energetic, I devote all my time to work. I like code codes,

I want to write based on my own preferences, like thinking, reading, traveling, I want to leave more time to do what I like to do.

With this in mind, two years ago, I quit my job and began to plan my next step in life.

What is freelance life like

Although I am a freelancer now, I get rid of the shackles of punching in the morning and evening, and I don’t have to travel between my company and home every day. When it comes to doing projects, I still feel a little less free.

Let’s start with unfreedom.

In order to ensure the basic livelihood requirements, in addition to their own will not do things, will do according to customer requirements.

Verify the sentence “Party A abused me thousands of times, I treat Party A as the first love”

A customer demand changes three times, each time after the function implementation is put forward, a few months to make the system can’t belong to me the name of (also signed a confidentiality agreement) for life, with an online education organization cooperation last year, developing an App for them, and work is completed, after the payment, the party a sudden guest to apply for a refund through the cloud, and that are not satisfied with my work, Yunwalke investigated this matter in detail. I provided the screenshots of all the dialogues between the two sides as evidence, and explained the incident from beginning to end. Finally, it was successfully solved.

A lot of developers have experienced this. Some people get through it and even if they survive it, some people can’t go back to work. According to my experience in the past few years, in the period of customer resource accumulation, everyone is the same, and no transaction can be achieved overnight, especially for a free group like us that is separated from the organization. If we want to maintain a group of high-quality customers, we only rely on public praise and results.

Didn’t last too long, this process is also vary from person to person, I may have 1 year time, can stabilize the customer base, mastered the stable resources, through the industry style, personal life and the work time to recuperate plan, it’s not difficult to adapt to this pattern, there is a premise, but its own technological capabilities must meet.

When you find more and more projects, you basically don’t have to worry about the subsequent livelihood, which is just like the phenomenon of “the rich get richer”, the rich get richer, the lucky people get luckier, a good reputation, by word of mouth by customers, quality projects will naturally come to you, this is true.

Over time, clients will become friends.

Now let’s do something a little more free.

Freelancers have plenty of time, the richness of their life and spare time is many times higher than that of working for others, and they rarely feel that time passes too fast.

24 hours a day under my own control, not only can give full play to the work initiative and efficiency, but also enjoy leisure time; There is no rush hour in the morning and evening, no need to clock in, and no need to worry about asking for leave. I keep a good mood for a long time.

Many freelancers, in order to ensure that they do not backslide, do not work regularly and uncontrolled, resulting in themselves too immersed in the present, and neglect to socialize, this behavior is recommended to appropriate control.

Do several projects at the same time, want to be able to make a breakthrough in a variety of technical fields, will indeed overdraw a relatively large health index. Fortunately, the workload can be self-adjusted appropriately, and the rest should be taken when the load is too large, which is not conducive to long-term work efficiency and output.

Driven by ourselves and demanders, we upgrade and transform again and again, and gradually achieve more and greater breakthroughs.

Freelancers have erratic income, but they also reduce their expenses. Although go to work has stable salary, but the expenditure is bigger, every day 9~10 hours of energy input, long internal consumption, tired when still cannot get moderate relax, come down for a long time to compare, the input/output of office worker is actually under free working gens.

To quickly adapt to freelancing, do a lot of pre-planning

First of all, the glass heart is not desirable, once set foot on this road, it is likely to be suspected by parents and friends, by the next door Lao Wang laughed at “this child is not normal” and so on, in China, this pressure is quite big.

Second, you have to have super discipline, physical and mental capacity to match. The health of a freelancer is very important. Ernest Hemingway said, “Regular living and good money are the guarantees of writing.” You have to be careful with alcohol and tobacco, especially with sleep. Then, you have to get into the habit of constantly consuming information. The body and mind are always ready to continue working and not to be lazy.

Third, the ability to be productive and ready to work is essential, so you’ll have to fight procrastination all your life. It’s hard, anyone can work at a high speed, but many people get bored when they work for a long time, so it’s a matter of constant knowledge intake, practice and self-adjustment.

Fourth, peace of mind. This is actually the hardest one. As a freelancer in China, it’s easy to encounter all kinds of frustrations, incomprehension, communication barriers, and unreasonable and unreliable demands. Therefore, as far as possible not too haggle over small money, big joint stable and lasting cooperation is the most important.

The last

For me, freelancing is also a kind of special profession, just like you do in the company technology, products, design, etc., can do to their own career planning, freelancers, too, are also constantly thinking about your career trajectory and the development direction, life can’t always stand still, only by constantly challenge themselves, can find a lot of unexpected yourself.