Going independent after eight years in agencies

Eight years, three agencies, and then in December I went independent. The work itself — React, Next.js, the same kind of e-commerce and product builds I'd been shipping for years — didn't change much in the first month. Almost everything around the work did.

The obvious shift is that there's no one else deciding what 'done' means. Scope, timeline, and quality bar are now conversations you have directly with a client instead of inheriting from a project manager. That's more work, not less, at least at the start.

The less obvious shift is how much agency structure quietly protects you from decision fatigue. Someone else picked the ticket, someone else prioritised the backlog, someone else answered the client's late-evening email. Freelancing means noticing how much of that structure you'll have to rebuild yourself, on your own terms, or burn out re-deciding the same things every week.

One month in, the plan is simple: keep the same engineering standards I held on someone else's payroll, and be more deliberate about which engagements are worth saying yes to.