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.
The current version available is v1.0, with the continuing plan that relevant feedback and new content will be worked in over time. And because this is Leanpub, when you buy v1.0, you'll get those updates for free. So if you're reading the book and feel like there's some more detail you want it to contain, ask Steve and he'll happily look into it.
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 45-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 45 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$10,884,695writing, 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), EPUB (for phones and tablets) and MOBI (for 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
Functional event-driven architecture: Powered by Scala 3
Gabriel VolpeExplore the event-driven architecture (EDA) in a purely functional way, mainly powered by Fs2 streams in Scala 3!
Leverage your functional programming skills by designing and writing stateless microservices that scale, powered by stateful message brokers.
- #2
Book of Monads
Alejandro Serrano MenaIn functional programming, at the heart of input/output, failure, state, logic, and much more, lies a powerful abstraction called monad. This book provides a journey from the very first concepts, to the myriad of monads available to programmers, down to the categorical foundations.
- #3
Functional Programming Made Easier
Charles ScalfaniA Functional Programming book from beginner to advanced without skipping a single step along the way.
In my 40 years of programming, I've felt that programming books always let me down, especially Functional Programming books. So, I wrote the book I wish I had 5 years ago.
Functional Programming will never be easy, but it can be easier.
- #4
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.
- #5
Practical FP in Scala: A hands-on approach
Gabriel VolpeA practical book aimed for those familiar with functional programming in Scala who are yet not confident about architecting an application from scratch.
Together, we will develop a purely functional application using the best libraries in the Cats ecosystem, while learning about design patterns and best practices.
- #6
Introducing EventStorming
Alberto BrandoliniThe deepest tutorial and explanation about EventStorming, straight from the inventor.
- #7
入門 日本語自然言語処理
Masato Hagiwara and Paul O'Leary McCann日本語テキストを処理したい全てのプログラマ・エンジニアの方へ。分かち書きなどの基本から、自然言語生成などの最新の話題までをカバー。動かして学べるコードや、参照文献も付いています。言語学や機械学習の知識が無くても問題ありません。
- #8
Stratospheric
Tom Hombergs, Björn Wilmsmann, and Philip RiecksFrom Zero to Production with Spring Boot and AWS. All you need to know to get a Spring Boot application into production with AWS. No previous AWS knowledge required.
Go to stratospheric.dev for a tour of the contents.
- #9
C++20
Rainer GrimmC++20 is the next big C++ standard after C++11. As C++11 did it, C++20 changes the way we program modern C++. This change is, in particular, due to the big four of C++20: ranges, coroutines, concepts, and modules.
- #10
Building Virtual Machine Labs: A Hands-on Guide (Second Edition)
Tony RobinsonThe premise of this book is to provide students a hands-on, go-to resource for building a secure, customizable lab environment in order to enable their own specific pursuits.
Top Bundles
- #1
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... - #2
Modern C++ Collection
3 Books
Get All about Modern C++C++ Standard Library, including C++20Concurrency with Modern C++, including C++20C++20Each book has about 200 complete code examples. Updates are included. When I update one of the books, you immediately get the updated bundle. You can expect significant updates to each new C++ standard (C++23, C++26, .. ) and also... - #3
Software Architecture for Developers: Volumes 1 & 2 - Technical leadership and communication
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... - #4
The Indie Python Extravaganza
5 Books
The Indie Python Extravaganza! A collection of books that will help you to improve your knowledge of the Python programming language one page at a time. Join four indie authors in a journey from the basics of Python to the structure of production-ready systems, going through the core features of the language, some intermediate projects and a... - #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... - #7
Abandon Your Job - Leaving the Rat Race with Python
8 Books
Now, get all the great Python and Freelancing books from finxter.com in one single bundle!Coffee Break Python - All Python BasicsCoffee Break Python Workbook - Practice the basics of PythonCoffee Break Python Mastery Workouts - Practice advanced Python conceptsCoffee Break Python Slicing - All about SlicingCoffee Break Python NumPy - Get started... - #9
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...
