Freelance vs. employment: what’s the difference?
More often than not, these two statuses — freelancer and employee — are pitted against each other, their advantages/disadvantages, two different lifestyles. Of course, the context may vary depending on your line of work, but I will share with you my experience over the years, from a designer point of view.
At the beginning of my career, very conventionally, I started out as an employee (under the famous French permanent contract — the “CDI”), but very rapidly, I did some freelance work as well, and, 8 months later, I took the leap of becoming a full-time freelancer. It lasted for 7 years, time flew by and at the same time, it feels like no time has passed. And it’s been 11 months since I changed, once again, my way of working. With this hindsight, I will try and share my experience and offer a comparison between freelancing and employment.
In this article, I will outline the advantages and disadvantages of both statuses that I have identified through my personal experience. Let’s dive into this topic together.
My timeline, my XP
- Classic early career as employee (CDI), following my apprenticeship
- Employment (CDI) + freelancing with the approval of my Head of Design back then
- My schedule was becoming impossible → a choice had to be made → go freelance full time!
- Fun projects, meeting new people, entrepreneurship (which is different from being a freelancer!)
- After a while, I fell back into a vicious circle, money begets money, time is precious
- In the meantime, I had several leads to be employed again, for various very ambitious projects, but nothing that quite matched with my desires/context: project type, organisation, company maturity on the topic of remote work or freedom given to employees
- Need for a change of pace, of environment, of interaction
- 8 years later, the planets align, I find a project which matches with my desires and ambition, the setting I needed, the opportunity to explore and perform (even though all my friends were like, “Give it 4 months, then you’ll snap and quit.)
- Here I am today, writing these few lines
For you to grasp the whole picture, designer was a professional reorientation for me, so I felt the need to be “efficient.” The apprenticeship was a great opportunity, the reassurance of going to school while at the same time getting hands-on experience in a company, and most importantly, starting to build my network. I knew that designer was the right fit for me thanks to Nicolas Catherin, Senior UX, which I met during my apprenticeship. He was able to connect the dots and draw a logical line between my previous studies and my training in web and design. It was clear and obvious, user experience was a fun field in which I was bound to flourish!
Very quickly I enjoyed this work, with its rhythm and excitement. I had the opportunity to create, to test various models and ways of doing things. I am learning a lot, I am meeting talented designers keen to share their wisdom with me and help me level-up fast! And that’s how I embarked on the freelancing journey working on my very first projects.
The WTF statements I often hear about freelancing and employment
Freelancing is freedom, you can choose your own hours
- No, you have clients and deadlines. Of course, you can organise your own time if you work alone, but it is not the case if you work with a team — unless you work in different time zones perhaps.
- Yes, you choose your workload and how you organise yourself.
As a freelancer, you can take holidays whenever you want
- Yes, but you pay for your holidays out of your own pocket, there is no such thing as paid leave when freelance!
- In order to take some holidays as freelance, one must learn not to work during that time, otherwise, you’ll never be able to disconnect and properly rest.
Freelancers earn so much more money
- Yes and no. You invoice your clients based on time spent working for them. You can thus multiply clients and projects, but beware, time is a limited resource and the amount of paperwork must not be neglected!
As a freelancer, you are often alone
- Yes and no, as designers, it’s actually quite rare. I have personally always worked as part of a team, very rarely on my own — and if so, only on very specific scopes.
When you are employed, your job is safe
- Yes and no, look at Twitter the the moment ;) Let’s say that it is more difficult to lose your job overnight.
As an employee, you are less able to explore
- That’s the impression I got when working with teams where others were employed, yes. You are so focused on your daily tasks that I feel like you lose some of that spare time to explore other subjects.
Obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages to both statuses, which are important to take into account depending on your own personal situation. But, no matter what people say, one is not better than the other. You have to try out different options and see what works for you. Don’t depend too much on other people’s experience, everyone is different.
My two cents
After a few years as a freelancer, I started having the following questions/concerns:
- What work-life balance do I want? Clearly, up to that point, I was more on a balance of 80% work and 20% personal life. Sure, I had the (in)famous “freedom” of being a freelancer, but very quickly, I was absorbed in a sort of project frenzy, characterised by FOMO, not wanting to miss out on all the super cool projects I came across, so… I accumulated projects, subjects and interlocutors, often across different time zones. It’s no secret that my balance was completely off… I had to revert back to a 50/50 balance, because after having experienced this very intense rhythm, I wanted to be able to slow down, take my time and focus more on quality rather than quantity. Spoiler alert: this is not the last time you’ll hear read me talk about the 70%-30% balance, I will write about it someday!
- I kept hearing about all these “adult decisions”, ring a bell? Owning a home, having kids, etc. It was impossible for me to even think about those things. Even with 3 years’ worth of balance sheets, it is very difficult to get a bank onboard for a loan as a freelancer, and given my workload, starting a family seemed impossible. All these topics became taboo, and I just kept them out of my mind.
- Administrative formalities, a real burden? A big yes. And the fact that I never really took an interest in it didn’t help. We are often faced with institutions that do not fully understand our status and its particularities, and a slow and ageing bureaucracy here in France.
👎 Getting a loan to buy a house? Ouch.
👎 Renting? Ouch. Special thanks to the French “Garantie des Loyers Impayés” — an insurance which protects the landlord from non-payment of rent.
👎 The tax services when you change your status (from “auto-entrepreneur” to “SASU”). Ouch.
👎 Managing your cash flow, balance sheet, expenses… Ouch, ouch, ouch! - Taking on too many projects? Sure, I only have myself to blame for that. But I find it hard to say no when I come across a cool project, and I have been very lucky to work on very niche subjects and technologically innovative projects. Quickly, I realised that I lacked focus and that my approach was somewhat too superficial, I would only scratch the surface. I needed to find the project or the company in which I could fully invest myself and finally integrate a team in the long run.
- Short vs. long term? In the same vein, I felt the need to address a subject in its entirety and in-depth regarding strategy issues, user experience with a data approach, branding and user research. And not only on a limited scope or short time period.
- Freelance designer or all-rounder? As a freelancer, you are the expert, the worker, the salesperson, the support service, etc. Being a freelancer has been very educational for me and it has allowed me to acquire a solid foundation. The people, the projects, the opportunities, moments of stress and successes have enabled me to work at a different rhythm and to progress faster.
All these questions (and their answers) have led me to choose employment in 2021, and that’s still where I am today. It just goes to show that you can go from one to the other. Nothing is permanent in life. You can be freelance one day and employed the next, the main driver, in the end, is the project. In the current market (touch wood), as designers, we have the luxury to be able to choose our projects, the people that we want to work with, but also the work environment we want and the freedom we wish to have.
I’m stating the obvious here, but I really think that a happy employee will be more productive than one who feels restricted. We must find the best balance to meet everyone’s needs, the clients’, the employers’ and your own. Find a common ground.
To conclude
To conclude, I would say that being freelance or employed, it all depends on the way you approach your work and the way you organise yourself. The real questions to ask oneself are: how can your work make you happy? What work schedule do you want for yourself? How to make time to work alone and as a team? How to give more visibility to your work and communicate efficiently?
Whatever the legal framework, freelance or employed, taking into account your own constraints, you have to find your own way of functioning and shape your own work environment around this. Of course, when you are employed, there is an organisation that is already in place, but through flexibility, communication and synchronicity, it is possible to find a good equilibrium.
For me personally, freelance is synonymous with freedom, choosing your own schedule, clients, being more proactive than if you were employed perhaps. But in the end, the two are not so different. With proper organisation and coordination, you can choose when you work and organise time to work as a team. The written word and asynchronous communication allow us to provide feedback and visibility, without having a meeting about it. A hybrid model is for me, the best solution.
💡 For example: I prefer to work early in the morning, compared to my colleagues. I always set aside time during common working hours to have time for workshops or spending time with each other. Then, I like to end the work day a bit earlier, to do physical exercise and breathe some fresh air 😇
A few tips for freelancers and employed workers:
- Too many meetings? Use appropriate tools, write to each other and document your work.
- Constraining work hours? Apparently, we are really efficient for 3 or 4 hours at maximum, so the idea is to find common work slots during that time. The rest depends on your own organisation and goals.
- Want to move around? Of course, I am talking about our digital jobs. We are lucky enough to be able to work remotely, we don’t need to be together all the time. For me, the best balance is to be able to work from wherever you want, while making sure you have common meetings to share moments together (work-related but also fun time ;) ).
💙 Be honest about what you want and need, and start a dialog about your expectations. The more you communicate, the more you will attract what you really want, whatever the legal framework associated with it.
