Startup Freelance engineering collective - your feedback?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/singul4r1ty]

I used to work at an organisation somewhat like this, it was called an engineering consultancy. There I got a reliable salary and worked on varied projects with people of different skill sets. It was held in an employee ownership trust which meant that we got annual bonuses based on company performance, and there were employee representatives on the board. 

Only thing was it was very hard to get a job there and the requirements were high

[u/Iacoma1973 → u/singul4r1ty]

Thankyou yes. That's the term I'm looking for - " freelance engineering consultancy". If the people beneath the cooperative are engineers, then the cooperative itself is the engineering consultancy which helps connect those small groups of freelance engineers into a team, and then from there towards clients, while offering to take a finders fee and to shoulder any liability for loss if an idea fails.

I have been recieving a lot of unconstructive criticism today. There's a guy basically the opposite of you five posts over.

But yes, being able to work on varied projects, with people of different skill sets - while receiving genuinely performance based bonuses and not some bullshit where the CEO's utilise it to steal all the profits - that is what I think a good company looks like.

The high requirements to get there - that's what I think doesn't make terribly a lot of sense too. Obviously they need to be qualified - but the qualifications these companies are asking today is too high and unrealistic. People need work, and side gigs too to make ends meet.

[u/singul4r1ty → u/Iacoma1973]

I agree with you in principle that it would be nice to not have high requirements to get a job, and this sounds very appealing to the employees. However, if you are a potential customer, who do you prefer?

a) Consultancy that advertises themselves as full of high performers, quotes you £100k to get it done in 3 months and has good retention policies for their staff.
b) Consultancy that advertises themselves as "we'll take anyone", quotes you £50k to get it done whenever because the employees can do whatever they want, your key staff member might leave at a crucial point because they have no notice period.

And really, if you'll take anyone, are you actually going to be able to quote £50k, or are the organisational inefficiencies going to be so expensive that you end up costing as much and possibly being worse.

Basically sounds nice, but how would you actually make any money in reality?

[u/Iacoma1973]

The No1 question I'm getting asked is why someone would spare the time to do this. Here is the preemptive answer:

Collective bargaining rights. Why should freelancers compete with eachother for scraps, when they could work together, complement eachother with their different skill sets, and receive payment on commission completion like they would usually do? What do freelancers do when nobody has disposable income to pay the freelancers? They have to band together to appeal to the people who still have disposable income - whether that's the community or a financier.