[jbattle]

I can't imagine the pain of having to assemble a team of freelancers every three-nine months for the next iteration on some product/project. Unless the freelancers are utterly interchangeable, which is a pretty awful vision (people think they are cogs now?). When you want to organize a team you'd spend 25% of your time just assembling a team. The freelancers themselves would also spend tons of time waiting for a team to be ready to go. Probably the norm would be for freelancers to have multiple projects going at a time, so any project would only get some percentage of each individual's time & attention, requiring larger teams or slower cycles, each of which requiring more overhead on communications and coordination.

The obvious alternative is to maintain a group of people that have developed a good working relationship together for a longer period of time. Of course people would come and go occasionally due to other opportunities & changing needs for skills. But wait - that sounds an awful lot like what we already have.

[dugmartin]

That sounds exactly like a movie production. I'm sure they have figured out how to bring teams back together for sequels.

[jbattle]

Movies take years to produce. At least from what I've seen, people switch jobs every 3-6 years. So not much different really. I agree that the 25+ year tenure at a company is by and large gone for good.

[c1u]

All good critiques of freelancing today. "Freelancing" in 2043 will be very different.

Of course no one knows the future (maybe lifetime union jobs will be back in 30 years?) but I just feel this is the way the wind is blowing. But then again maybe it's just where I'm standing.