[glenbo]

5. Freelancing Forces You to Keep Up to Date "By contrast, I know some design shops in my area that are still using Photoshop and Dreamweaver to build HTML-based websites on GoDaddy. Know when they opened their shop? When Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and GoDaddy were still cool. That’s not acceptable, and young whippersnappers in the area are on the creeping in with their fancy new WordPress installations, scripting skills, and jQuery, and grabbing new business. The moral? Learn or die.

And some of those whippersnappers are going to be rolling on the same technology stack 10 years from now."

I couldn't disagree with that sentiment more. I'm a developer who works full time at an agency and freelances on the side when I feel like it. I know a lot of developers my age (mid-late twenties) that have only really ever freelanced full time and never worked in a company 9-5 and I can say the one noticeable difference between us is the skill set.

being surrounded by better developers than I has forced me to learn new things in a way that striking out on my own would never do. Sure, necessity is the mother of invention, and if you're running your own business, you'll have to learn things to keep the lights on, but you miss out on all the mentorship and guidance working with a team of more experienced people gives you.

I've worked at around 4 agencies in my career thus far, and have never seen or heard of an agency that fits the description in your hyperbolic example. In fact, I tend to think it more closely resembles a one-man freelance dev shop.

Just my thoughts.

[katzgrau]

Would it be cowardly for me to go ahead and say agencies are an exception?

I worked at an agency (HUGE in Brooklyn), and was very close to what freelancing is in regard to learning.

It's a steady paycheck, but you're always working on different project, and they're usually fairly cutting edge.

Being surrounded by awesome developers is important too, but you can get that in a co-working space, attending meetups, being part of and contributing to some open-source community, or just hanging out with your developer friends.

[glenbo]

I agree that meetups, open source and friends can help with mentorship, but being forced to solve problems in a group is a lot more effective than casual encounters and meetups.

That said, it probably depends on the type of person you are. If you're super outgoing and involved, freelancing full-time is probably similar to working at an agency in that regard, but if that's true it sort works against the point of your post.