On life as an independent contractor right now

This post was published on November 1, 2024

Before I start: I’m writing this both to clear my head and to vent / rant a little, but also in response to people both from the Netherlands and from abroad who have shown interest in working as an independent contractor over here.

As Google Analytics tell me only a small portion of the visitors on my site live in the Netherlands, most of you will probably not have heard about this, but there has been a lot of turmoil in the last couple of months around freelancing / independent contracting over here.

It’s a long story, but what it basically comes down to is this:

• there are a lot of low-wage freelancers (think takeaway delivery drivers) that based on the work they do should be an employee of the companies they work for, but these companies hiring them do not want to pay the additional taxes and social security fees associated with having these people on the payroll
• the government sees a (legitimate) risk here and wants to start enforcing existing legislation again, fining these companies for missed taxes and social security fees
• the same government can not, or does not want to, differentiate between these low-wage ‘forced’ freelancers and high-wage independent contractors and engineers like myself, basically saying ‘if you do work that looks like the work that is being done by employees, you should be an employee’
• companies hiring high-wage consultants and engineers are getting anxious and are putting hiring them on pause
• high-wage consultants and engineers are seeing opportunities for new projects disappear as companies stop hiring them

It is an interesting time to be an independent contractor in IT over here, that’s for sure. The fact that there’s no clarity on what is and what is no longer allowed, and under what conditions you can continue working as an independent contractor, definitely does not help.

In my network, but also on different websites and forums that I frequent, some people are getting pretty anxious about the whole situation, because they just want to do their work and get paid for it, without having to be forced back into permanent employment. And that’s understandable, because like myself, they’ve gotten used to the freedom of deciding what they want to work on and whom they want to work with and for. Oh, and the higher, sometimes much higher, income you get to enjoy as an independent contractor probably also plays a big role here.

I myself started freelancing in 2014, which means I’m celebrating 10 years of being independent this year. In those 10 years, finding new projects has never been very hard. Not for me, but from what I hear, this was true for freelancers in our field in general. There has always been a big demand for specialists in software testing and software development, and posting a couple of LinkedIn messages to let people know you’re available again after a project finished used to be enough to get offers for new projects coming in.

It has been easy, which is great. It has also made people lazy. It definitely made me lazy. Why spend a lot of time networking, building / refining / advertising your services and working on your ‘personal brand’ when the work came your way anyway?

Now that the times seem to be changing, at least temporarily, a lot of independent contractors find they’ve essentially painted themselves into a corner. In many cases, there are more people looking for new projects than there are projects to be filled, and as a result, people feel they’re ‘forced’ to accept lower rates, longer commutes, or less interesting projects. Some of them even feel they’re forced to go back to permanent employment, and have accepted offers to go back to being an employee.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. I can’t see myself going back to being an employee anywhere, but everybody is different. What does annoy me occasionally is the almost fatalistic attitude some of these freelancers seem to adopt. It’s always someone else’s fault, government is making it impossible for us to keep on working the way we do and enjoy the lifestyle we’ve grown accustomed to, that kind of talk.

What annoys me even more is the companies that are starting to prey on these people, tempting them to ‘come work for them’ like vultures. They offer ‘all the flexibility of being an independent contractor, but without the insecurity’. When you look at their offer, most of these equate to nothing more than going back into permanent employment, with some degree of flexible pay, but they disguise it very cleverly. What they don’t mention is that a) they do take a cut of your income and b) you lose out on all the tax benefits of being an independent contractor. Again, there’s nothing wrong with being a permanent employee, but this kind of behaviour I really don’t appreciate.

So, what to do? What am I going to do from now on, now that work isn’t magically thrown my way anymore?

The good news is there are still plenty of ways to make a good living as an independent contractor over here.

The bad news is that it takes more work, often hard work, and more time to maintain the independent contractor lifestyle.

The following things might not work for everyone, but they have worked for me so far.

Work on different types of projects

At the start of this year I made the decision to stop working on projects where I was an engineer in a development team, because I didn’t enjoy it anymore. Looking back with the current situation in mind, this was a great move, albeit one made for reasons other than those I talk about in this blog post. These days, I’m only working on part-time projects, and these projects are typically one of two types:

• the project where I bring in specific, highly specialized experience, for example on contract testing, and where I help development teams and often the entire organization to improve their ways of working
• the project where I mentor a small group of testers and help them on their way on their test automation journey

Because the work I do is completely different from what the permanent employees do, because it has a very well-defined objective and start and end date, and because I bring in knowledge and experience that is not present in the company, there are no legislative challenges or issues here.

Focus on my training services

I’ve been a technical trainer for quite a few years now, and coming into a company as a trainer for a day, or even multiple days, has been and is still a significant part of the work I do. Here, too, there are no issues as what I do doesn’t even remotely look like what a regular employee does. I’m definitely going to keep working on further expanding my training offerings, maintaining existing clients and of course finding new ones.

Work with clients outside the Netherlands

The third action I’ve taken to deal with the changes over here is to focus on finding clients outside the Netherlands. Sure, it takes a lot of work and time getting your name out there, getting introductions, meeting with people, building a rapport, but so far it’s going pretty well for me. I’ve landed a pretty big contract providing SDET bootcamp training courses for a client in the US, as well as several smaller projects combining training and consulting with clients in multiple European countries.

And because these companies do not have to comply with Dutch law, none of the issues I mentioned at the start of this blog post apply. Plus, I get to meet and work with people from all over the world, which is really interesting. Sure, the paperwork is a little more challenging sometimes, but by now, I’m used to it and can figure it out without too much problem. Oh, and those pesky time zones sometime pose a bit of a challenge, but that, too, can be worked out with some flexibility.

So, these are the things I’ll keep spending my time on. Training, consulting, mentoring, for companies around the world. Sounds like a plan. If you think your team or company could benefit from bringing in someone like me for a couple of days, or a couple of hours per week for a longer period of time, let’s talk.

And for those of you looking to do something similar, be it starting as an independent contractor in the Netherlands or looking to diversify your service offerings, I’m more than happy to have a chat and see if I can help out. Just keep in mind that these challenges I wrote about here exist.

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