One might define freelance or freelancer as:

a person who works as a writer, designer, performer, or the like, selling work or services by the hour, day, job, etc., rather than working on a regular salary basis for one employer.

I have a few reasons why, at least for the past few years, I’ve chosen to act as a freelancer, instead of going out and “getting a real job” – as they like to call it.

Here are my many and varied reasons for choosing to freelance, not necessarily with any in-depth discussion, but surface level reasons.

1. I haven’t found any companies (yet) that I’d like to be an employee of. I find that most companies underpay and under-appreciate their employees (especially software developers), and if I was going to work as an employee of a company, I want my work to be appreciated, and I want to be paid a fair wage.
2. A lot of companies favor people based on seniority instead of skill.
3. As a freelancer (at least when the getting is good), you can choose to work on whatever projects are most interesting, keeping the work varied, and hopefully fresh. This is rarely the case when working as an employee.
4. Tax breaks. I don’t know how the world works where you live, but in Canada – you get SCREWED for taxes if you’re an employee. If you freelance, or run your own business, you can legitimately save $1000’s of dollars a year that would otherwise go to poorly planned government projects, or 2010 Olympic Games.
5. I work best when I want to work, not 9am to 5pm. I’m often up early, starting work around 7 or 8am. I like to play video games for an hour in the afternoon around 3pm. I like to take a break when my wife gets home from work so we can have a coffee together, and then do a couple hour of work in the evening. As an employee – you can pretty much forget it (there are a few companies who don’t care when / how / where you work, but not many).
6. I like working with lots of different companies, solving different kinds of problems, and meeting different kinds of people. This is pretty much a given as a freelancer, and pretty much never-gonna-happen working as an employee of a specific company. Again, there are exceptions, but I’m speaking in general terms.

Freelancing isn’t for everyone (and it’s not always roses and candy canes), but these are a few of my many reasons for choosing it, at least at this point in my career.

When the perfect company comes around, offering me the perfect job, or when the economy goes to crap (probably related to some kinda sub-prime mortgage hoopla), maybe I’ll change my tune.