There are different standpoints towards coworkers and working methods in each of these three situations – when freelancing, being employed full time and running your own show.

Home Office vs. Office

You’ll find that freelancers are mostly people who are independent, but also they don’t like to be controlled by the strains of working hours and/or an employer. Most of the time they don’t even consider clients to be their employers – which is a bit of a shocker, but it happens. The truth is that every client that pays for your services is your employer – he may not be your permanent employer – but an employer over a short period of time nonetheless. When working with freelancers you’ll notice they like their space, and that in 99.9% of the cases work from home, and often that is not negotiable. Also it is often that a freelancer will refuse any kind of other type of contact with the employer other than im or email. There is nothing wrong with that, I’m all for ditching all meetings and focusing on your work 100%, don’t get me wrong, I hate meetings and I think they are a waste of time. But sometimes collaboration can be so much more productive if it is done together, face to face and the results will reflect that. Collaborative work is something that shouldn’t be put aside as a “no-no”.

Working in the office takes it’s toll as well. It often takes away your privacy, not all people can work with other people breathing down their necks – myself included. There is always something going on, people rushing by, talking, distracting you – but, however if you can overcome that you will most likely be able to enjoy two separate lives – your professional life separated from your personal life, because you are separating them when you leave the office contrary to working from home and your work always being in front of you (more-less).

Being Your Own Boss – In A Home-Office – Working With People Who Work From Their Home-Offices

Me personally – I work from a home office that is Superawesome’s headquarters (that and the bar with free WiFi across the street), and people that I collaborate with all work from home and are in some cases from different cities. However, our team has proven to be a good one so far – the communication is good (there is not too much of it – no one is overcommunicating – nor is anyone left in the dark) and that’s a very important thing in my opinion. If you have good internal communication within the company – you can afford people who will work from their home-offices, it’s as simple as that. If the communication is bad – forget about it, workflow will suffer, deadlines will be broken and clients won’t be happy and they will take their business elsewhere.

However – client-company communication is another story, no matter how good your internal communication is – if the client can’t communicate their needs to you well enough you got a problem on your hands and it’s a matter of days before you realize you have a project from hell on your hands. As soon as you sense that a client can’t verbalize (put in words actually) their requests, and if you are not in a position even to arrange meetings with them – jump ship. Seriously, it will most likely end up a bad experience for both parties so it is for the best to stop before either one of you takes any damage.

I am super-stoked that I have such responsible and professional people by my side that I can rely on, and that I know I can just send an email and be sure it will be read and acted on as soon as possible. We all try to have understanding to each-other’s responsibilities and workloads, but also we do our best to organize our work-days to our best so we get the most out of each one.