Freelance engineer explains the pros and cons of self-employment

• Rose Almond is a fully self-employed freelance engineer after resigning from her office job in 2015.
• Almond shared the positive aspects, and challenges, of this career move.
• There can be quiet work periods, but she likes the flexibility of picking projects and when to work.

Rose Almond was over her 9-to-5 job as a mechanical engineer.

“It was not a good place to be for a young female engineer,” she told Business Insider. “It didn’t really suit me being in the office environment.”

Plus, Almond said working a nights-and-weekends side hustle of freelance gigs was exhausting. So she quit her day job in 2015.

Now, she gets to choose her own schedule and which projects she works on.

“I knew something had to give,” she said.

Almond lives in Canada and is fully self-employed as a freelance product design engineer. She said a lot of her work still falls under mechanical engineering. Almond didn’t decide to become a self-employed freelancer lightly. To help prepare, Almond said she ensured she “had enough cash in my business to survive paying my bills” for a couple of months.

“Then I approached my employer to ask to switch to part-time hours so that I could ease softly into the freelance side,” she added. “Honestly, I wasn’t being utilized to the best of my ability, and I could have kept the same pace of work in half the time anyway, but they refused to even consider it. They got my resignation the same day.”

For others hoping to identify when to make this lifestyle move, Almond said a main part of it comes down to recognizing both your strengths and weaknesses.

“Freelancing gives flexibility in scheduling your time, but comes with a responsibility for time management and a need to be able to self-motivate — even on the days it’s hard to get going,” she said. “Everyone has their own level of acceptable risk, which should be considered carefully in terms of financials, healthcare, and any other benefits that might be traded in.”

Earning money through the freelance platform Fiverr

Since joining Fiverr in the summer of 2014, Almond has made around $288,000 through this freelance platform. This includes around a year of side work while still employed at her previous job. She has also done freelance work through Upwork.

In 2021, she made around $65,400 through Fiverr. Almond credits that partly to people looking to freelancers more amid the pandemic. Last year, her Fiverr earnings were nearly $36,000, based on documentation shared with Business Insider. Her total revenue from her self-employed work in 2023 was around 65,400 Canadian dollars, or over $47,500.

Almond offers product designs and creates concept sketches for clients. She said she helps clients “create the products that they’re going to be able to sell.” Based on her Fiverr profile, basic hand sketches for a product concept cost $750. Prices increase to $1,000 for digital sketches with color and $1,250 for 3D mockups. Those prices differ though if the delivery time is shortened. She also has prices listed for designing a client’s product for 3D printing and prototyping.

“It’s really fun to see the products actually getting launched and hitting the market,” she said.

The pros and cons of working as a freelancer

Almond said choosing her own hours is a major upside; she likes working at night.

Location flexibility is another positive. Almond said she has completed projects while traveling. She also has done some work, such as answering people’s questions, while waiting for school pickup.

“I love that the focus is firmly on the quality of what you deliver, not something arbitrary like your location,” she said.

Almond has found flexibility in deciding the projects to work on another pro to being a freelancer.

“That wasn’t so much there at the beginning because at the beginning it was, kind of, you take what you can get,” she said. “And now that I’m more established, I’m able to choose what I want to spend my time on a little bit more.”

There are also pros specifically with being a freelancer as a parent, Almond has found. She has two young children. She said this type of work gives her flexibility with their schedules as needed and to take care of them if they are sick.

She said that flexibility would be tough if she were still working as a mechanical engineer for an employer.

“Honestly, a lot of the office culture, it isn’t fair to women in the workforce,” Almond said.

There can be some negatives that come with being a self-employed freelancer. Almond has found that “the lack of face-to-face interaction” that comes with freelance work can sometimes get lonely.

Another con is the workflow “isn’t always smooth,” she said.

“Some weeks or even months, it might be really quiet. There’s not much going on,” Almond said. “And then, suddenly, on one day, you get five different orders from different people that you’ve quoted for the last six months, and they all want everything done tomorrow.”

She said managing client expectations, communications, and personalities can also be hard, “especially in a field where outcomes are not always linear and perfectly predictable,” and “there’s no buffer via management.”

“I’ve definitely gotten better at setting clear guidelines and boundaries over the years,” she added and noted this has helped with customer relations.

Almond is ready to explore working on her own products amid freelance gigs

Almond’s advice for other parents hoping to take a chance on freelance work is to keep trying at this kind of work.

“Definitely don’t expect it to be all at once,” she said. “It does take a little bit of time to kind of ramp up, especially on platforms like Fiverr that have really grown, and they’ve got more people offering services now. But just keep working at it, and it will happen eventually.”

Something she wished she had known before entering the freelance world is to “make sure you know your own value.”

“It’s very easy in a competitive environment like freelancing to offer your services too low,” she said. “And sometimes it’s better to hold out for the people who really will value you because they’re going to come in with a better attitude, and that makes for a better working relationship.”

Freelance work has now given Almond a chance to explore another work goal.

“The flexibility of the hours working with clients is letting me explore some of my own personal projects on the side, so I’m really excited to try and get some of my own products launched within the next few months and year.”

Have you resigned from a job to freelance? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.