Is freelancing really the future or should I jump to these options while they're there?
I'm a 40 year old designer (with dev experience) who has been freelancing in the UK full time for 20 years.
Like many people in my field, it feels the industry is at a cross roads, which had coincided for me with the big 4-0 birthday, and becoming a further. So naturally I'm questioning my next steps.
The big question I have is how the future of work will look; I see several articles talking about the future looking like lots of small gigs and freelance style arrangements, with the breakdown of traditional roles.
So this makes me think is it best to lean into my current freelancer setup, which has been a reliable source of revenue for 20 years, but where I am starting to see bottom feeding and AI affect the market, or do I lean into a permanent role while they are still around as such.
I have previous worked as a contractor, mostly for government (interaction designer), but finding these roles becoming more and more unreliable, with even the best folks around seeing huge dry spells.
I see three options in front of me:
- Keep freelancing
- Get a permanent government job and hope they are more stable and sloer to react to market tech etc (I have previously contracted with government, and while contracting right now seems too slow to bank on, I hopefully have a decent change of landing a designer role there).
- Get a permanent private sector job - more of these about, can be higher paying but more volatile. Biggest fear is slowing down freelance funnel and having to inevetibaly drop several clients to then be left with nothing if i get mad redundant. The fear might be real that with every Claude update announcement do I have a safe seat in the company still? At least freelancing i control my destiny to a degree and have more options.
Curious what folks think. Thanks so much.
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