Hi Sam,
Great question, hope I can do it justice!
I *was* a UK-based UX consultant but in May 2008 I upped sticks with my other
half. There were a number of reasons, but certainly future prospects and
availability of work were two of them.
At the risk of sounding a bit big-headed in a oh, I know the market sort of
way, I think it would be better (and probably far more interesting) in 2009 to
be working (regardless of status) for orgs that:
a) Recognise that UX has a proven business advantage (of course this should
apply to all orgs, but for many the truth of it has yet to filter through to
the decisionmakers upstairs and sometimes it can be hard to prove that
advantage) so that might include online banking (but can the banks employ folks
right now?), education, business apps and so on;
b) Have project budgets signed off beyond 2009 - you wouldn't always know that
upfront, of course, but you could take an educated guess whilst bearing in mind
that nothing's ever written in stone;
c) Have specialist or 'niche' requirements - here's where domain or microdomain
expertise will probably always be essential (the deity of forms that is
Caroline Jarrett pops up here regularly and I doubt someone of her calibre
*ever* has dry spells - sorry, Caroline ;-D);
d) (for England at least) Based in London, the M4 corridor or perhaps Brighton.
This isn't to suggest that other places don't have work, but in Leeds for
example - which I think of as being fairly representative of the rest of
England - there's a lot of low-hourly-rate, short-term work in which the client
thinks it wants a designer when what it really wanted was an Information
Architect or a generalist UX professional;
e) Take on permanent members of staff. This is a personal point of view
informed by the knowledge that no job is 100% safe, of course, but it's a fact
that there are simply less headaches and heartaches involved in being made
redundant than there are in winding up a limited company, a partnership or even
one of those umbrella thingies if the time should ever come that you're
(whisper) unemployed;
f) Are academic institutions doing research, but that's not for everyone.
I don't believe, in the UK at least, that headcount trimming equates to a boon
for freelancers. For me it's more like a warning. UX people are easy targets
because for most orgs they're not considered business critical in the way that
someone like a Unix Administrator might be. At times like these are becoming,
orgs are starting to think about what is necessary and what is not necessary.
It's horses for courses really. The last two years for me were very successful
but I wouldn't be in a hurry to repeat the experience.
I ran a limited company during that time. Ultimately it served its purpose
because we set ourselves a goal when we started and it gave us a life choice
that might not have materialised in the same way had we been permanent
employees of some other org.
In short, we achieved our goal and we even surprised ourselves with our
success, but what you tend to gain in material terms and *occasionally* work of
better quality, you have to be prepared to lose in spare time and probably some
personal and professional development. If you're not doing so well, for
example, you can't afford training (always expensive). On the flipside, if you
*are* doing really well, you're too busy taking the work while it's there and
you don't have time to be going off and doing training!
If you're in it for the long term, you have to try to pace yourself and balance
your needs. Certainly the UK government does not make it easy for you to go it
alone - that's another irritation and it deserves a post of its own (it's also
off-topic). As I'm suggesting here, going freelance only really starts to 'pay'
for itself in the long term and in the present climate you'd want to be
securing reliable sources of work. These are not especially common, even in
boom times.
I've heard it said a thousand times ad nauseam but it makes perfect sense: if
it was easy everyone would be doing it. If I chose to go freelance again now, I
would do so for life reasons - if I had a mortgage and kids, I would stay
permanent out of a strong sense of responsibility; if I had a general lack of
patience, a small rented flat, very few outgoings and no real debts, or if I
was in big demand for my own and not market reasons, I might be persuaded to go
freelance. But probably not, because the average day's work ends up working out
pretty much the same whatever your status.
So your question to this list is well considered but understandably
work-centric. That's because this is a UX list and you're quite right to put it
the way you did - we are all UX professionals, not life counsellors. However,
if you're thinking of going freelance, I'd recommend that your choices in terms
of work status would be best informed by personal considerations moreso than
professional
