Freelance

>If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's a well known phrase, but as we know, most of the human technological progress was made by people who decided to fix what isn’t broken. Especially in the software industry one could argue that most of what we do is fixing what isn’t broken. Fixing functionality, improving the UI, improving speed and memory efficiency, adding features: these are all activities for which it is easy to see if they are worth doing, and then we argue for or against spending our time on them. However, there is an activity, which for the most part falls into a gray area: refactoring, and especially large scale refactoring.

If you're an experienced developer, you've probably progressed from being a humble tester to a senior developer, and if you're a freelancer, you've made another leap, perhaps the biggest of them all, when you started working with clients directly. Some clients aren't in the software business; they're in an entirely different industry 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, and here's what you can do to improve client communication and project documentation.

Female engineers are valuable at Toptal. This is a piece about how we stand up for their rights and value them for their skills and talent.

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.

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.