Insurance is pretty straightforward for those in the salaried world. But when you go off on your own, how does it work? What kinds of insurance do you need to think about, and how do you obtain them?

Link of the week:

This is something near and dear to the heart of any freelancer. The time has come and you've decided you need to raise your rates. How do you tell your clients about it, and how do you manage this process of rate raising in general?

Link of the week:

How To Test Proxies

Anyone who has hung out their shingle to freelance has likely encountered the so-called "feast or famine" cycle. What is this, why is it suboptimal, how do you get out of it, and how long does it take to get out?

Link of the week:

Sick time is pretty straightforward for employees. But how does this work when you go off on your own as a freelancer? How do freelancers handle it when they get sick?

Link Picks

• Check out Tricentis Tosca: Intelligent test automation

You're thinking of starting a business or a freelance practice. Should you name the business and website after yourself, or should you create a separate brand for it?

Links of the week:

What Makes a Good Enterprise Release Manager?

Understanding Playwright Selectors: A Guide

Microservice tools: The top 10 for monitoring and testing

Apex Triggers in Salesforce: A Beginner’s Guide

Learn Data integrity

Android emulator vs. real device testing: Key differences

Android testing: An easy introduction with examples

If you're working on significant projects in parallel for multiple clients, you might find yourself mentally "thrashing," or struggling with the context switching between the different projects. How do you handle that?

Links of the week:

Get started with GitHub Actions

Test Environments: Why You Need Them and How to Set It Up

Playwright and GitHub Actions: Getting Started

How to Call Batch Apex in Salesforce, the Quick and Easy Way

Learn Regression testing

People toss around the terms "freelancer" and "consultant" a lot -- often interchangeably. But what does each really mean, and what's the difference?

Link picks: 

• Learn to create a Kubernetes cluster in AWS

Is it a problem for you, as a freelancer, to have just one or two large clients? The short, easy answer is "yes," but I've got a much more detailed explanation in this episode.

Links of the week:

Get started with Kafka and Docker in 20 minutes

Data Compliance: A Detailed Guide for IT Leaders

Web Scraping in JavaScript: A Guide

You may have heard the term "retainer" as a modifier to describe a kind of consultant. What is a retainer, exactly, and how does it work? Join us to learn more.

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* I couldn't actually find where Jonathan Stark talked about the stages of problem solving. Happy to update with a link if someone knows where that is. In the meantime, here's a link to his site: https://jonathanstark.com/

Picks:

• Learn about data pipelines

You'll hear a lot of conventional wisdom that anyone with a business should do content marketing. Is that right, and, if so, what do you need and how should you get started doing it?

Picks:

• Learn what a production environment is