The harbingers of the destruction of the freelancer market wanted by the political caste?
A sudden rethinking on the executive floors?
The desire to get back the "good old days" where the mid-level manager could rush down the hallways and control all his flock, and then at least have a sense of relevance?
I don't know; I guess it all comes together to create this mixed bag situation.
For us freelancers, who hold up the flag in almost all development projects and at least ensure a bit of progress, it´s desolate. Project acquisition is becoming increasingly difficult, and the providers who supposedly support us freelancers are also facing headwinds. If the freelancer is then rented with employee leasing, more cash remains in the own pocket.
What defense options do freelancers have? In and of themselves none.
And most employees - and I include all the board members, CEOs, managing directors, etc. of corporations and large companies; because they lack an important characteristic of entrepreneurship, namely the entrepreneurial risk - cannot imagine that someone is voluntarily self-employed, that someone likes to work as a freelancer. In the case of top managers, this is usually compounded by the fact that they like to exercise power, and it doesn't fit in at all with their view of the world and their own striving for power if an independent freelancer doesn't have to put up with everything. You would think that we would be further along in 2023, but unfortunately this is not the case.
Okay, now everyone will howl again and deny, if they are honest with themselves they have to agree with me. Sorry, would wish that I am wrong, but unfortunately I do not see it.
Freelancers are hired for projects and as such a project has a start date and an end date (otherwise it wouldn't be a project). So the termination is already predefined and when an employee, firmly entrenched in his world of permanent employment, learns that a freelancer is leaving, they react with oh god oh god, someone has been terminated, oh geez oh geez. This is what we have always been taught by our forefathers. That the freelancer is looking forward to a new project, a new environment, a new challenge is unimaginable.
So also here incomprehension and doubt that this can be right. But I can't construct a reproach out of it, because the "normal" employee only knows his world. And sometimes I have the feeling or suspicion that also a due portion envy comes in addition. Why is it so easy for him to do his thing independently and I, poor sausage, have to spend my time here in this juggernaut? That's how it seems to me sometimes.
The European Union is currently preparing a regulation that will massively restrict freelancing. Under the guise that we have to protect the many exploited parcel delivery people, the deliberate lack of differentiation will make it impossible for high-end freelancers, for example from the IT sector, to stay self-employed. First Nahles, then Heil - both SPD - work massively on it - for years - and now what was discarded in Germany some time ago is brought back through the European door. But then this applies to the whole of Europe, so sitting on the beach in Portugal with your laptop and working from there is no longer possible. No support is to be expected from the Greens; and the FDP lets itself be paid by big industry anyway, which in turn has no interest in independent, self-thinking employees. The Union parties are also in favor of this path, of course, as they are also paid by industry.
Sorry for this gloomy outlook.
