career.fork()
career.fork()
How To Thrive As A Freelance Developer
About the Book
Written from scratch and packed with advice from real-world experiences, career.fork() is a hit-the-ground-running guide for developers wanting to be their own boss.
This 130-page title combines author Steve Jalim's experience as a respected, trusted independent developer (and many years before that as a freelance journalist) with relevant advice drawn from his professional network of smart fellow hackers.
What people are saying about it
"I learned something on every page" @pete_naish
"Fantastic book; read this a year after starting and it still has some great tips to abide by" DM
"This is a well-written book packed with priceless information for those intending to make a career as a freelance developer. I wished I paid more for it!" KM
"Marvelous book. Light read, full of useful info. Heartily recommended for everyone who is thinking about freelancing or has already taken the leap." ST
"A really interesting book about freelancing. Recommended if you're thinking about it." @pyriku
"Really impressive. I wish I'd had it when I first started freelancing." @prydie
"For anyone thinking about doing the freelance thing, check out this gem of a book" @madteckhead
What's in it?
It covers a heap of key topics: from striking out on your own to keeping clients happy; from managing your finances to winning new work; from avoiding bad gigs to perfecting your work/life balance and lots, lots more.
About the Author
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Release Notes
-
Life as a freelance dev: are you really sure?
- Why being freelance is great
- Why being freelance is awful
-
Set your sights: what kind of indie operator will you be?
- Choose the kind of work you want to be doing
- What’s in a name? Freelancer vs contractor vs consultant
- Being a specialist vs being a generalist
-
The skills you’ll need
- Starting from scratch as a freelancer
-
Practicalities
- Picking a business entity
- Picking a business name
- Tools of the trade
- Where to work
- Working on-site with a client
-
Getting Started
- “How do I find clients?”
- Micro-lecture: Don’t poach clients
- When to say yes to new work
- When to say no to new work
- How much should I charge?
- By the day or by the hour?
- Producing an estimate for a project
- Getting estimates “right”
-
Oiling the wheels
- Five PM tips to keep things running smoothly
- Five PM tips to keep clients happy
- Five PM tips to keep yourself sane
- Five PM tips which don’t fall into the lists above, but are definitely worth remembering
- Five tips for working alongside staffers as a freelancer
- Tips for time management and tracking
- Tips for arranging your next booking
- Tips for backups and data security
- Tips for when you’re sick
- Tips for managing time off
- Tips for when things go bad
-
Money matters
- Managing your finances
- Good invoices
- Taxes
- Surviving quiet patches
-
Legal
- Contracts
- Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)
- Intellectual property
- Insurance and liability
- Data protection
-
Challenges
- Working alone after working in a team
- Dealing with tricky clients
- Improving as an independent developer
- Striking a good work/life balance
- Afterword
- Thank you
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$11,966,149writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
OpenIntro Statistics
David Diez, Christopher Barr, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and OpenIntroA complete foundation for Statistics, also serving as a foundation for Data Science.
Leanpub revenue supports OpenIntro (US-based nonprofit) so we can provide free desk copies to teachers interested in using OpenIntro Statistics in the classroom and expand the project to support free textbooks in other subjects.
More resources: openintro.org.
- #2
Linear Algebra
Elira Curri and Tanush ShaskaAnswers to selected problems included.
- #3
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
- #4
Modern IT Automation with PowerShell
The DevOps Collective, Inc. and Michael ZanattaA PowerShell Textbook written by the community for the community!
- #5
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
- #6
R Programming for Data Science
Roger D. PengThis book brings the fundamentals of R programming to you, using the same material developed as part of the industry-leading Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization. The skills taught in this book will lay the foundation for you to begin your journey learning data science. Printed copies of this book are available through Lulu.
- #7
The Rails 7 Way
Obie Fernandez, Lucas Dohmen, and Tom Henrik AadlandThe Rails™ 7 Way is the comprehensive, authoritative reference guide for professionals delivering production-quality code using modern Ruby on Rails. It illuminates the entire Rails 7 API, its most powerful idioms, design approaches, and libraries. Building on the previous editions, this edition has been heavily refactored and updated.
- #8
Mastering STM32 - Second Edition
Carmine NovielloWith more than 1200 microcontrollers, STM32 is probably the most complete ARM Cortex-M platform on the market. This book aims to be the most complete guide around introducing the reader to this exciting MCU portfolio from ST Microelectronics and its official CubeHAL and STM32CubeIDE development environment.
- #9
node-opcua by example
Etienne RossignonGet the best out of node-opcua through a set of documented examples by the author himself that will allow you to create stunning OPCUA Servers or Clients.
- #10
A Guide To The Future Of Hospitals
Dr. Bertalan MeskoFor centuries, scientists have been trying to envision the future of hospitals. Following the recent shift towards digital health technologies, in part precipitated by COVID-19, it is natural for one to wonder how these developments will impact hospitals. What can we expect from them in the future? Will there be hospitals at all in a decade’s time?
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #2
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #3
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #5
Practical FP in Scala + Functional event-driven architecture
2 Books
Practical FP in Scala (A hands-on approach) & Functional event-driven architecture, aka FEDA, (Powered by Scala 3), together as a bundle! The content of PFP in Scala is a requirement to understand FEDA so why not take advantage of this bundle!? - #6
All the Books of The Medical Futurist
6 Books
We put together the most popular books from The Medical Futurist to provide a clear picture about the major trends shaping the future of medicine and healthcare. Digital health technologies, artificial intelligence, the future of 20 medical specialties, big pharma, data privacy, digital health investments and how technology giants such as Amazon... - #8
Statistics - All Lee Baker's Books
10 Books
This bundle includes all of the statistics books that Lee Baker has published at LeanPub 13 Statistics Books*1 PlaceNo Hassle! All in both epub and mobi formats - perfect for all devices and screen sizes. --------------------------------------------------------- *The book listed as Getting Started With Statistics is a bundle of 4 books...
