#Freelancing Posts

Freelancer identity theft happens all the time. In fact, someone’s likely had their identity stolen as you read these words. Let’s hope it wasn’t you.

In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Relja Damnjanovic shares his story about freelancer identity theft and offers lessons for freelancers, who don’t want to learn things the hard way.

Freelancers work flexible hours, but this convenience comes at a price: They have to manage their time better than on-site professionals. However, it also means they’re free to optimize their routine and achieve exceptional efficiency.

In this post, software engineer Dmitry Ryazantsev will guide you through the ins and outs of personal time management, leaving little to chance. What good are great rates if you waste hours each week?

Synchronizing productivity for interdependent team tasks can be a hassle even in the best traditional workplace environments. Add in the inherent challenges of a remote team, and the hassle becomes two-fold. But it doesn’t have to be.

Toptal’s Technical Editor Kate Scheer takes us along on her journey to inspire timely content from her remote authors, and her communication recommendations cross into other realms of remote work.

Any time you’re physically out of the office or working with someone who isn’t next to you, you’re working remotely. At Toptal, working remotely is a productive and efficient reality that we evangelize to our clients, while practicing what we preach.

In this article, Toptal COO Breanden Beneschott shares great tactics in operating highly collaborative remote teams.

It’s astounding how few business owners properly account for the real cost of their labor. This article presents tried and true methods – including an online calculator – for calculating the real cost of your employees and consultants, enabling you to perform a sound financial analysis when faced with the “employee vs. consultant” dilemma.

As Co-Founder and COO, Breanden Beneschott has been effectively running Toptal, a venture-funded company growing hundreds of percent year over year, while traveling across the globe. Breanden shares his tips and experiences as a successful traveling engineer and entrepreneur, including his perspective on the benefits of this new lifestyle.

Beyond its beauty, in recent years Córdoba has been enjoying a rapidly growing reputation as a technology center, one that may soon rival Buenos Aires as Argentina’s main technology hub. Last month, Toptal coordinated and hosted a highly successful and well-attended JavaScript Technical Conference in Córdoba, Argentina. Read about how the event came together and the vibrant network of software developers in and around Córdoba.

With an 80% increase in the remote workforce from 2005 to 2012, there must be more to the picture than meets the eye. This post pulls the rug out from under 5 of the most prevalent myths about remote workers, with a specific focus on the software development industry.

Effective interviewing and hiring is as much of an art as it is a science. Nonetheless, approaches and methodologies do exist for evaluating the more subtle dimensions of a software developer’s skills and abilities. When used collectively, these techniques yield a highly effective screening process with a proven track record of success. That process is what this post is all about.

As a veteran telecommuter through multiple jobs in my career, I have witnessed and experienced the many joys of being a remote worker. As for the horror stories, I have more than a few I could tell. With a bit of artistic inclination and a talent for mathematics, I also have a fascination with patterns: design patterns, architectural patterns, behavioral patterns, social patterns, weather patterns—all sorts of patterns!

When I first encountered anti-patterns, I discovered a trove of wisdom I wish I had known before I had learned the hard way. Anti-patterns are recognizable repeated patterns that contribute significantly to failure. For example, the manager that keeps interrupting the employee in order to see if the employee is getting any work done is engaging in an anti-pattern that serves to prevent the employee from getting any work done!

Based on my own experiences and experiences of friends and co-workers, I am assembling descriptions of anti-patterns related to telecommuting.

Congratulations, you’re an independent developer. From beginnings working maybe as a tester you’ve progressed to a team developer, then a senior developer, and now you’ve made another leap, the biggest of them all, to working directly with clients.

But where the other transitions were linear, this last one was exponential. While in the past you got your marching orders from an employer that worked with clients or was itself in the software business, now all those responsibilities that were once distributed between expert-testing, program management, etc., are all yours. And now you’re working with clients who are not in the software business; they’re in another business that needs a piece of software, and they don’t have a clear and precise vision of what they want from you. This is a far greater challenge than it appears.

At Toptal, we’re always looking for the best freelancers around. But what makes a freelancer truly great? Luis Martinho, one of our top developers, is beloved by his clients — so we sat down with him to talk about freelancing, technologies, and paying your taxes.

Starting a new remote gig, be it a contract project or a full-time job, can be a little intimidating if you’re used to going into an office day after day.

But this style of employment is growing in popularity, with some very notable companies lending it their endorsements.

I’ve worked remotely for years now on projects of various scales and durations. With this post, I hope to enumerate some of the best practices that I’ve picked up for working in a variety of situations. The advice here ranges from specific recommendations for software and hardware, to tips for hitting your team’s deadlines.

These days, I’m living in the great city of San Francisco. I’ve got a job that I love, and one that I’ve dreamt of having for a long time. Everything seems easy now, but it wasn’t always like this.