Ask HN: Will self-employment sink my resume?

[webappsecperson]

Hi all,

I'm currently at a job that, like many posters plumbing the well of Ask HN for wisdom, I'm less than excited about. I exist in a limbo between developer and marketer, but usually write more than I code, and about subjects that don't interest me at that. I like my coworkers alright, but have been thinking more and more of going my own way. Although I'm a junior dev, there's really no one to learn from as no one in our IT department can code (all great people, just not much for me there) and the rest of our work (that I don't do) is contracted out to remote workers.

Right now I'm blessed to have insanely low expenses - a product of sharing an apartment in one of the cheaper neighborhoods of Austin and driving a beater. That, combined with some savings and what I know I can reliably pull freelancing, mean I'm more than confident I could cover all my expenses for the next 6+ months (if not indefinitely). I have tons of ideas, both for development and more writing/journalistic projects and have already started to draw a small monthly income for some of my work.

My question, for all the HR people and tech recruiters out there: Will this sink my employability long-term? Although I think it's bullshit, I could see some future recruiter looking at my resume and thinking I'm too much of a bleeding-heart, anti-establishment type (which wouldn't be far off) and not worth the risk. Truthfully, the greater autonomy is why it appeals to me so much.

And if I do get dinged, is there anything I could do to lessen the pain? I'm active on Github and plan to OS some of my projects. What else can I do? I blog and try to do all that jazz when I can.

[basseq]

I'm probably not the best person to answer this question, but I do some experienced hiring into technology and business fields, and a fair amount of recruiting overall. YMMV.

Two main points:

1. Don't worry about your resume too much. You're probably not going to get your next "real" job off your resume alone, so your accomplishments, projects, relationships are going to be more important anyway.

2. As in any position, you have to clearly and concisely show what you did and the impact you had. That's almost easier to do as a freelanced because you did it all. There's value in that: it's just at a different scale than a larger business. I'd wonder if doing something simple like incorporating your freelance business (so it shows up as "Buzzword Consulting" and not "Self-Employed" on your resume) might yield a stronger emotional response. ("He owned a business!")

[webappsecperson]

Thank you especially for that second point. I've only been thinking about incorporating from a financial perspective (from what I can tell, it seems to be clearly worth it if you're in a product business handling money, but maybe less so if you're just a freelancer).

I hadn't thought about it as looking better, and more polished, from an HR-point of view. Great insight.

[cat9]

Hands up, real quick, everyone who would NOT like to hire a reasonably competent developer, who actually understands what marketing is asking for, and is capable of coming up with a satisfactory solution & deploying that solution in time for it to actually help with the goal marketing needed it for.

You might end up bouncing off a few more HR firewalls, but those are mostly not the places you would be happy working anyway. Your goal in finding new gigs is mostly to bypass HR until they've been given an instruction to walk you through your hiring paperwork.

[jspiral]

hiring manager here. Someone who is successful as a freelancer for several years with demonstrable accomplishments always catches my attention.

the details of what projects you took, and why matters a lot though.

For example, don't be the freelancer who ends up doing a bunch of drupal customization and payment gateway integration if you want to be a developer in the future. Do projects that are going to make sense in a portfolio.

[S4M]

I'm not the most qualified to answer, but let's say you do freelance for a while, then decide to look for a job again and you see that your resume plays against you. Then, could you say that you were employed in a consulting firm and mention all the contracts you did? That would still be the truth, the only thing you don't mention is that you were the owner of that consulting firm.

[Warewolf-ESB]

If you are contributing to OS projects like you say you are, and managing to do a variety of freelance work for an extended period of time (min 1 year) it looks good. I would not recommend freelancing for a few months then trying work - it could make you look a bit lame. But if you can sustain it and show all your activity on GitHub it can work in your favor. Good luck!