However, I have also found that working with freelancers also has its pitfalls. Mainly, you will inevitably find favorites because of the quality of their work and your ability to work together, but as they are not “yours”, you can’t guarantee their availability. Also, freelancers usually cost more than employees per hour.

I’m interested to hear how this business model continues to work out for you. It helps that you’ve worn all of the hats at one time, so you at least know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

One day we’ll be able to pay that talented project manager closer to what he’s worth – his weight in gold.

But I’ve learned that life is too short, and in order to put more focus on the things I’m the most passionate about (e.g. design), then I needed to distribute some of those responsibilities to others. The key for me has been finding the right mix of other freelancers that I can trust and respect and love to work with.

And like you mention, having someone play the role of PM is a must if the project has any chance of being fun! And depending on the size of the project I’ve seen it work where someone does double-duty, for example a front end developer who’s also the PM. But obviously as projects grow in size this doesn’t work out too well. :-)

The client has no technical knowledge, the code has no tests and the project is quickly descending into chaos and disorder, to the point where I seriously regret taking it on in the first place.

It doesn’t help that the client keeps changing their mind about what they want so any idea of a clear spec has gone out of the window. No one wants/has time to take responsibility for turning a random and confusing list of requirements into clearly defined tasks so we’re all just muddling along without any leadership.

It’s inefficient, frustrating and rather depressing to the point that, for the first time since I started freelancing, I dread coming into the office :(