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Proposal: Self Employed and Freelance Workers

The company that I work for uses independent contractors for a number of different projects. I often have questions about contracts, expectations, communication, etc. as a business person working with someone who's self employed. Would those types of questions be appropriate for this site?

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  • This may just be an indication of how little I know, but doesn't taking work as freelance imply that you are doing work as an IC? Or are your asking about the other side, the entity that will be hiring said Freelance/IC? – Timbermar Mar 7 '13 at 14:04
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I totally agree. Actually I think this proposal should be renamed to something in the value of

Freelancing, self-employed & Independents MARKET

So it includes a whole community that deals with independent collaborators on a daily basis.

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  • 1
    Could this include consulting agencies and design firms? – Banath Jan 29 '13 at 4:38
  • Well yeah, as long as it focuses on how agencies/firms and freelancers deal with each-other. – JorgeArtware Jun 12 '13 at 17:59
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Definitely, we could just call it 'Freelancing'. A lot of freelancers have to sub-contract as well so this would be helpful.

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Wikipedia defines freelancer as:

A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is somebody who is self-employed and is not committed to a particular employer long term. These workers are sometimes represented by a company or an agency that resells their labor and that of others to its clients with or without project management and labor contributed by its regular employees. Others are completely independent. "Independent contractor" would be the term used in a higher register of English.

By the given topic, the site would not be excluding independent consultants, independent contractors, or other titles that basically describe the same thing. Nor would it by definition exclude questions that revolve around these types of roles in general.

Your question seems to speak more to questions that fall within the topic as stated, but may need to be evaluated during the private beta period in order to determine if they do in fact work well on the site. For instance, "Programmers" is an extremely broad topic, yet our site for Programmers specifically asks that questions revolve around theoretical software development problems, not career issues or paths one might choose in their academic pursuits.

I'd say that this is a topic issue that should be discussed, but it's better discussed during the private beta period, while the content of the site FAQ is fleshed out. In fact, granular topic related discussions are of the seven essential meta questions every beta should ask specifically to address concerns such as this.

I don't feel that it's an issue in moving the site to the private beta phase at the end of the commitment period, but more of a meta question that should be raised once that happens.

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