The end of a freelancer... In spite of the positive sides of having the ultimate freedom of choice in my profession and being responsible for my own future, I have recently chosen for a future as common employee. I haven’t succeeded like I hoped, but learnt a few tough, but valuable lessons.

And now, the end is near;

And so I face the final curtain.

Frank Sinatra – My Way

As my steady readers know, it is not my habit to write about myself. I consider my personal life not to be too interesting for my readers and try to look more at the world outside and the economic developments in it instead. Yet, I want to do so today, hoping that my story might help someone with taking a decision on becoming a freelancer in The Netherlands or not. 

I have been a freelancer since the start of 2015, originally for a number of reasons:

• My former employer in the ICT industry encountered so much economic hardship during the period 2008 – 2014 that the company hardly survived the crisis. In the process the company lost some valuable customer accounts and dismissed/lost half of their (supporting) personnel base. At the time that I left it seemed that the company had no future ahead, even though the company managed to survive in hindsight.
  
  At that time I wanted to make a fresh start after this hard period and wanted to be part of a growing and successful company again;
  
• My brother also was a participant in the new corporation of independent freelancers that I joined and I looked very much forward to rejoining forces with him in what is both his and my profession: senior software tester and quality consultant;
  
• I wanted to explore new roads in my profession by being responsible for finding my own assignments and trying to do things differently than when I had a fixed contract with an employer;
  
• And last, but not least, I hoped to find a more prosperous future for me and my family.

However, from Monday, 3 October on, 20-odd months after I started my period as a freelance professional, I return to being a common worker under a fixed labour contract. To some ears this might sound like a step back, but I’m glad about it after all.

I’m still not quit sure, whether I just had a stroke of bad luck in my (choice of) assignments at large employers in the financial and commercial services industry or that I ‘had lost my mojo’ as a freelance testing professional. Anyway, the assignments that I had lasted shorter than I anticipated in advance, even though I believed to have done a pretty good job at all of them, while the periods in between those assignments lasted longer and longer.

Even though the market for software testing professionals had improved quite dramatically during 2015 and 2016, it was still very difficult for me to acquire a new assignment. Especially as my rather functional than technical testing knowledge and my only moderate knowledge of testing automation hampered me in finding a new assignment.

Negative ‘cherry on the cake’ was the introduction of the new Dutch law DBA – Deregulering Beoordeling Arbeidsrelaties (i.e. Deregulation of the Review of Labour relations) by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs. 

In order to help genuine freelancers and independent professionals to earn an honest income, this law was supposed to filter out the fake freelancers: people who had been forced out of a steady job against their will by their former employers as well as future principals, into an uncertain existence as freelancer with a very limited job security and a rather low hourly fee (or even piece-wages), without further social premiums and insurances being paid for.

This DBA law also had to protect people from the low wage countries inside and outside Europe, who had been treated as ‘working cattle’ sometimes by relentless principals, for which they had to work under very poor labour circumstances and with extremely poor payments, without having the same rights and privileges that Dutch workers enjoy.

The real freelancers – really independent workers, who did so out of their own free will and choice – would remain unharmedand the blatant abuse of cheap labour from inside and outside The Netherlands would be abolished after this law came in effect. At least, that was the idea...

It turned out a little different...

The DBA law was been introduced in the first half of 2016, with a pilot period of roughly one year in which this law would not be enforced by the tax authorities (i.e. during this pilot period only warnings would be administered in case of violations and no penalties). 

Already directly after the introduction, it became clear that there was a radically different point of view between the Mark Rutte Cabinet in The Hague, that introduced the law, and the Dutch Internal Revenue Service which had to enforce this law eventually.

With this new law, a freelance professional (i.e. ZZP’er in Dutch) has to enter into a model contract with his temporary employer, in which both parties agree that the freelancer will not work into a normal, subordinate employer-employee relation.

To the eyes of the Dutch Internal Revenue Service, this genuine freelance working relation means that:

• The freelancer is not supposed to have fixed working hours, but should be able to choose his working hours himself;
  
• The freelancer is not supposed to have fixed, thoroughly described work packages, in which he does not have the freedom to choose his own results, working methods and solutions;
  
• Instead the freelancer should be totally responsible for the working methods and the end result of his efforts himself;
  
• The freelancer is not supposed to be in a subordinate relation with managers working at his principal, but he should have nearly total freedom in how to do his job.

When not all these conditions are met in a freelance model contract, the Dutch IRS considers the freelance working relation to be a ‘common labour relation in disguise’, which is due for tax and social security payments by the principal (aka the temporary employer). The IRS has to approve such model contracts in advance before they might be used by the freelance professionals in their working relation with their principal.

And perhaps the worst problem of this law – that exists until this very day –  is that a freelancer, even with an approved(!) model contract with his principal in hand, which states that he IS a freelancer and does not have any kind of subordinate relation with his temporary employer, can have his contract being disapproved upon by the IRS after all; for instance after an inspection(?) on the workfloor. This will turn him into a normal employee reciprocally and would leave the principal with a huge bill for overdue social security payments.

This was the killer risk for many current and future principals, as large employers with f.i. more than 1000 freelancers could encounter enormous financial risks for millions of Euros in reciprocal payments of taxes and social security premiums. For a substantial number of companies this risk was actually so big, that they totally abandoned the usage of freelance professionals as temporary workers in their company.

And let's be perfectly clear about it: for most freelance consultants in the ICT industry, as well as in the financial and legal, commercial services industry – probably more than quarter of a million consultants in The Netherlands alone – these freelancing conditions as maintained by the Dutch IRS are in fact a mirage!

There is hardly any freelance consultant working for a common principal:

• who can decide about his own working hours, without listening to the desires of his principal and/or colleagues;
  
• who can decide alone about what he is going to do with respect to his job and how he is going to do it;
  
• who does have total freedom to do as he pleases within his working environment;
  
• who does not have orders and instructions to follow from some manager at his principal.

This simply does not happen for all these hundreds of thousands of consultants. All these freelancers, as well as their principals know this fact by heart and the Dutch IRS knows that they know.

And in spite of all the soothing and comforting words of State Secretary Eric Wiebes of Tax Affairs, who stated repeatedly that ‘things are not as black as they seem with respect to this law and people should be not afraid and simply go to work and make money’, many companies don’t dare to run the gauntlet regarding freelancers anymore.

Perhaps the worst thing is that nobody in the Mark Rutte Cabinet is actually able to let the IRS choose a less rigid stance, with respect to these freelance conditions and model contracts. The IRS rests with its own point of view and does not give a rat’s behind about all statements coming from officials in The Hague.

Currently, the only way out of this political stalemate, in my humble opion, is that the IRS starts to officially enforce this DBA law, by assessing and – when deemed necessary – penalizing ‘offenders’ of it. 

If then one or more of these offenders start a legal case against the IRS or the government, jurisprudence will emerge that creates clarity for the future about the boundaries and thresholds of the DBA law. However, as things are today, this process will not be started before at least mid-2017. That is much too late for many freelance professionals, who are in an equal situation as I was.

Whatever the reasons have been, I didn’t manage to get new assignments at the times that I needed them badly. Nor did I manage to stay long enough in one assignment to create some necessary cash reserves for the future. And every time when I resided at home for much longer than hoped, without an assignment and without having an outlook towards one, I felt my own doubts increase.

Also I felt the mounting pressure from myself and my family to accept any job from any company where they would hire me for a decent fee. It was an unsustainable situation eventually.

A few months ago, I decided to look for a steady employer again, instead of being a freelancer. And even more special, I decided to give up my life as testing consultant and continue as a testing employee for one, non-ICT employer.

Luckily, I managed to get such a job, which pleases me very much and now I am starting a new phase of my life and working career.

The lessons that I learned during the last twenty months are:

• The security and ease of mind that a steady job offers are hard to beat by the extra money (in theory) that a career as freelancer promises to yield;
  
• Government policies with respect to labour and social affairs are often elaborated so poorly and have such grave, unintended consequences that they can destroy more jobs than they protect, even if they were created with the best intentions;
  
• A new assignment can stay out much longer than a freelancer can ignore the fact that he doesn’t earn money during such a jobless period;
  
• In the ICT industry you can become a dinosaur in the blink of an eye, without even noticing it, when the world around you changed totally and you failed to notice it and act upon this;
  
• Sometimes it is harder to get a temporary assignment as a "one-trick-pony" freelancer than a steady job as a versatile, older worker.
  
• If your family feels bad about you being a freelancer, you better quit it, as your family is the most important thing in your life

Will I ever become a freelancer again?! Perhaps... but now is not the right time for that. At least, not for me!

Is there really a shortage in available, correctly qualified personnel for ICT companies? Or is the industry suffering from the consequences of outsourcing, as well as maintaining unrealistic demands with respect to their new employees?!

For me as a (formerly) freelancing worker in the ICT industry, there was a quite interesting news message in Het Financieele Dagblad this week.

From research carried out by the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics it was disclosed that there allegedly is a shortage of roughly 17% in qualified ICT personnel among large employers and principals with an interest in ICT. 

These are companies and institutions like ICT employers, central and local governments and governmental organizations, large banks and insurance companies and other large commercial parties, with an vital ICT component in their line of business.

The following snippets were printed in Het Financieele Dagblad:

Increasing shortage in qualified personnel

Entrepreneurs are more and more hampered by the mounting shortage in qualified personnel. In the ICT industry this shortage amounts to 17%, according to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics.

Roughly 7% of the entrepreneurs states that the shortage in qualified personnel offers difficulties in the daily conduct of business. This number was not that high since 2009. In the commercial business industry 11% of the employers sees this shortage as an obstacle for further growth, while in the Transport and Storage industry 7% of the companies experience such a shortage.

When this research is true and objective indeed, it would mean that it is not possible to fill in roughly one in five ICT jobs, due to a lack of qualified personnel. That is an alarming number indeed, but is it true?! 

If have my doubts personally, based upon my own experiences of these last months and (even) years, since the crisis started in 2008.

As many of my readers know, my official profession is that of a senior software testing professional with 18 years of experience in this industry. Especially the last two years I have been in the situation too often, that I was looking for a new assignment as software tester at the government, the financial industry or other commercial parties.

When I compare the current situation with the situation in 1999 when there REALLY was a shortage in the ICT industry, under influence of the dot-com bubble, these situations are almost diametrically opposite.

In 1999 I received three salary increases in one year myself. Everybody and their sister, who were able to write two flawless lines of computer code in a row, were hired for a future in the ICT industry. Lab assistents, biologists, mathematicians, physicians, teachers and many other professions were lured into a job as programmer, software tester or project manager, with skyhigh salaries, fancy leasecars and other perks, as demand required that. That was a shortage!

Looking at things now, it is a whole different ball-game.

Countless ICT jobs have been outsourced to Eastern Europe, India and other low-wage countries, where whole ‘software factories’ have emerged that mass-produce billions of lines of code for especially large customers of ICT services in Europe and the United States. At the same time the Dutch market has been ‘flooded’ with numerous knowledge workers from these same countries, who chose for a more prosperous future in The Netherlands.

Salaries and fees in the ICT industry, especially for the more common programming, analysis and testing jobs and commonly used tools, are still under fierce downward pressure in a market in which ‘demand’ still rules, like it has already done during the last decade.

I have written dozens of motivations for testing jobs during these last two years and I’ve noticed that large employers and principals are still extremely picky with regard to their (temporary) personnel.

Companies demand very experienced workers with a long list of tool-driven and general (personal) skills and a genuine 'passion for their job', but refuse to pay ‘top dollar’ for them, unless they possess skills that are really extremely rare in the business.

Instead of settling for a (temporary) worker that can meet roughly 80% - 90% of the demands in the advert, knowing that he/she will be able to fill in the knowledge void very quickly in most cases, many large employers and principals still only want to settle for the ‘perfect 10’, when it comes to their temporary personnel and fixed employees.

Their adverts show at least 10 to 15 bullets of specifically demanded experience (“3 to 5 years experience in line of business abc and with programming tool xyz”), personal skills and expert knowledge of very specific tools, often put down as 'knock out criteria'.

If you as an ICT professional cannot meet all these demands or at least the vast majority of those (i.e. the ‘knock out’ criteria), there is a considerable chance that you will not be invited for a job conversation at all and your resumee will untimely end up in the dustbin. And that in spite of the fact that you are probably more than capable to execute the job at hand. 

“No experience within the government? Then were sorry! No experience with the Protractor testing tool?! No, than we cannot use your knowledge and experience!” And indeed: these ‘perfect 10’ guys and girls are still very hard to find, just like they will be in any situation.

A large bank in The Netherlands requires their ICT professionals to bring their own working devices, like a notebook/laptop, storage devices, iPad and telephone (i.e. BYOD aka Bring Your Own Device) and work the first two weeks for free (i.e. without payment) as well. The latter is sold to their 'would be' consultants as 'an introduction period in which personnel is not productive yet’. Refuse this and your application probably does not stand a chance in the process!

Other large companies simply refuse to accept your resumee for a new job or assignment, when you have failed earlier during a  job application procedure for a different job. 

Does that sound like an alarming 17% shortage in ICT workers?! To me, it doesn’t.

And look at things from a different point of view. All the large banks and probably many insurance companies too have dismissed hundreds of their ICT workers, who were not considered ‘fit for the agile way of working’ anymore. Those were people who have worked to the full satisfaction of their employers for years in a row, but suddenly were not good enough anymore.

And for instance ‘Big Blue’ IBM has fired hundreds of workers during a recent reorganization, a.o. for reasons of losing a large contract at KPN, the Dutch telecom company. The following snippets come from Computable.

IBM fires 334 employees

After counseling with the central works council, IBM has decided to scratch 334 jobs within the company. This reorganization had been announced already in March 2016 and now the definitive number of workers has been disclosed.

IBM carries out a large European job cutting operation, in which much work is transfered to India. There is a considerable chance that – after the 334 jobs that have been erased in the meantime – more people will lose their job. IBM would like to have carried out this operation before the end of this year.

To these ears all this does not sound like a real shortage in the number of ICT workers, like signaled by the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, in spite of the increasing number of assignments. 

These IBM workers alone and also the bank’s and insurance companies’ ICT employees are in most cases perfectly capable people of which still many are currently looking for a new job or assignment. Companies and the government just have to give them a chance!

It just sounds like the 17% of ICT jobs that could not be filled in, according to the CBS, are either extremely specialized jobs – which will always be hard to fill in, as such people are always scarce and in demand – or jobs that have been administered by extremely picky companies, looking for their ‘perfect 10’ consultants and employees in vain.

To be honest, I don’t expect the situation of 1999 to return soon to The Netherlands. This in the light of the massive influx of foreign knowledge workers of the last fifteen years or the equally massive outsourcing of Dutch ICT jobs and work backlogs to India and Eastern Europe. 

The Dot Com bubble was really a crazy, ‘once in a lifetime’ situation, but the current situation is definitely not!

I just expect that the companies currently looking for ICT workers will become somewhat less picky in the coming months and years and become more willing to give ICT workers, who score a 7 or 8 out of 10, a chance, instead of waiting for "mr. or mrs. Perfect". 

Let us be honest: most of those ‘7 or 8’ workers are more than qualified and willing to do a wonderful job at their new employer or principal and therefore I don’t see the current ‘shortage’ as a problem. 

It is just a signal that companies and the government have to step over their initial reservations and settle for workers that seem a ‘teeny weeny’ bit less qualified, but are not in reality. And that is actually a great development, to be honest...

“Majesty, point us a dot at the horizon. Somewhere where we – the Dutch people – would want to go for ourselves and our children”. Open letter to the Dutch King as the government’s official straw man on Prince’s Day

Your Majesty,

Since last Prince’s Day [the Dutch National Budget Day and the moment of the official governmental outlook for the next year on the third Tuesday of September - EL] the situation in The Netherlands has substantially improved, as far as the economy is concerned.

Housing prices are up again – especially in the big cities –and unemployment is dropping; in particular among older, 50+ workers. The number of trucks on the Dutch roads is steadily mounting, as a palpable sign of soaring economic activity. In other words, the economy seems to be in a positive flow, in spite of the global unrest, the refugee crisis and the tensions in Eastern Europe. On top of that the Dutch national budget looks fine as well.

There is a lot to be satisfied about for the current PvdA (socialist) and VVD (liberal-conservative) government, that is going to reach maturity unharmed for the first time in many, many years.  And – as 2017 is an election year for the Second Chamber of Parliament – the government is boasting about its achievements during the nearly four years of Cabinet Mark Rutte II.

The PvdA is boasting about the social, labour-friendly parts in their share of the government policy, while the VVD is bragging about their ministers and state secretaries being tough on crime, commuter-friendly (“We delivered more tarmac during this government period than during any other time before”) and being the entrepreneur’s best friends.

Almost everybody in the government – irrespective of their party – is very pleased with himself and wants to share the secret of his success with the Dutch grassroots, as an invitation to give him/her another chance.

And Mark Rutte? He thinks that he is capable of leading the country for another five years, like no-one else is, and he is very much willing to do so too. Well, your majesty, you know him.

But, your highness, look outside the safe zone of your own protected micro-cosmos. Forget those ecstatic sportsmen and -women that you encountered on various occasions in Rio de Janeiro: those people – especially the medal winners – are living in their own micro-cosmos, where they can ignore – even deny – reality and normal live in The Netherlands.

Read the newspapers and don’t skip the comments of common Dutch citizens beneath the articles. Spend a day or two on Twitter or Facebook and other social media to get acquainted with the emotions of ‘Joop & Liesbeth’ (proverbial socialist couple), ‘Jan-Jaap and Brechtje’ (proverbial liberal-conservatives) or their blue-collar rightwing counterparts ‘Henk & Ingrid’. Not always the happiest of emotions; thats true! And often contrary in their conclusions with respect to the Dutch social-economic situation. But very real ones!

Pierce through the tinsel of LinkedIn showing only ‘passionate and utterly motivated people, waiting for a new challenge where they can proactively show what they are made of’; there are quite a lot of them, aren’t there?! Do you think all those people are on LinkedIn for fun?! Really?!

And do you think that all those people on LinkedIn are showing cheesy statements of Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or the Dalai Lama, because they deeply adore those guys? Really?! And not, because these folks hope that some of these idols’ glory, success and glamour will touch themselves on their quest for a new job and a better career?!

Read about the numerous flex-workers, the (not so) freelancers and the hundreds of thousands of youngsters with temporary contracts, who will not receive a fixed contract in many, many years probably. Or the people with a chronical illness and their loved ones, who are all struggling to cope with that circumstance: humanely, but also financially and with respect to their difficult work-leisure balance.

Please walk the extra mile to really know the current feelings of your citizens, instead of only being the ventriloquist’s dummy of your government. Just a perfect spokesman, reading a bad speech that is utterly boring in its insignificance and its stately dryness and cheesiness. Prick through the bragging of this cabinets self-complacency and try to see what the people are missing at this moment: the proverbial dot on the horizon.

Your Majesty, you have three children and so have I. Actually they are almost the same age. Your oldest daughter will become the Queen of The Netherlands, while my youngest son will hopefully become the King of Dutch Chess.

I want my children to grow up in a cleaner, more healthy world. Not in a world in which their lungs will be polluted at a young age with the particulates of the heavy industry and the millions of fossile fuel-driven cars, clouding our highways. And I want them to grow up in a world in which they can get a decent job with a decent salary and a decent retirement fee after they have stopped working; at a reasonable age.

I want them to grow up in a safe world, in which the Second Cold War and Islamic jihads are hopefully a thing of the past again. A world in which mutual understanding has triumphated upon the countries with the biggest guns, the most deadly bombs or the most dangerous religious masses.

A world in which drinking and cleaning water is freely obtainable for all the world’s citizens and daily food stuffs are not the asset of a few powerful companies: Bayer-Monsanto, Nestle, Danone, Syngenta or Cargill. And not in a world in which Africa is still starving from poverty and drought, while being looted by China, Japan, Russia, South Korea or the European countries and the United States; just as South-America and the North Pole.

For my children I want that they have the chance to see their children and grandchildren grow up, just like I see them do that now. I know by heart, that you think about that the same way, with respect to your children.

I know that you are bound by the protocol to express that what is presented to you and that the Prime Minister has written your King’s speech. A Prime Minister who flatters himself with the opinion that he ‘is not the guy for having a grand vision on the world. That he is simply keeping the shop open for “The Netherlands ltd” and that he is doing a fine job with that’. 

Talented in what he does, but utterly uninspiring as a human being.

PM Mark Rutte does not have children of himself and that is OK, of course. I hope for him that he will find and keep happiness in his life: with or without a partner for life. I think I know his situation as I have been in a similar situation too, for quite a long time. Actually not much unlike yourself, your highness.

Nevertheless, you have children, as I mentioned earlier. That gives you an extra responsibility: both as a loving father and instigator of your own ‘blue’ bloodline. And that, even though your daughters live in the same micro-cosmos as you do. 

A micro-cosmos in which encounters with the press and with common, 'normal' people are reduced to half a dozen, carefully chosen and guarded moments per year. And a micro-cosmos in which having a shedload of money, status and a fixed job has never been an issue, even though I dont envy you or your job.

Yet, I hope that you know and understand that a world war with Russia, China or perhaps even the United States would destroy your little Camelot after all, even though you and your loved ones would be among the first people to find shelter. 

And that religious tensions and economic despair in a society can utterly divide people at the bottom of the social ladder and make them afraid, desperate and agressive. And also that the air pollution from fossile fuels won’t stop just outside your little paradises in Wassenaar, Den Haag, Greece or Switzerland, irrespective of how much money you paid and security you arranged for it.

And of course I hope you understand and feel inside your heart that the dissatisfied and disappointed, sometimes even angry and alienated people in The Netherlands want a straw to clutch at: a glimmer of hope from a person that they love and trust beyond anything else. A sign that gives them confidence and courage to move on living their lives and to get more optimistical about the future again, as it is their future; for them to discover!

So please, your highness...!

Go to your ‘employer’ Mark Rutte and his henchmen and tell them to take a hike with Rutte's boring secrets of his Cabinet’s success, their boasting about the positive progression of the Dutch economy and their stately prose about the current state of the Dutch nation, that nobody understands and for which nobody really cares. 

Tell them that you go on strike “like an Air France pilot” if he demands from you to present that boring nonsense again.

Tell them that you heard from your ‘subjects’ (i.e. the Dutch citizens) that they want an inspired and inspiring speech: a speech that will change their life for the better and make the world – at least our country – a better place again, in which solidarity and mutual trust triumphate egoism and carelessness about our fellow citizens.

Tell Mark that you are ready and willing to give that darn speech, like you were never before. Tell Mark that your children – the princesses – want to become 90+ too, just like your grandmother and -father did. And that fossile fueles are soooo 1990.

Tell him that a modern Prime Minister is not a simple technocratic and bureaucratic store manager, like Rutte seems to believe. Tell him that he is an utterly important politician on whose shoulders lies the responsibility of inspiring, motivating and comforting the people in his country: not only to smoothtalk to and pamper his own grassroots.

Go for it, your highness! Show him that you are worth every euro that he pays for you per annum, as the moral leader of our country! You – and no-one else – can do this! I rely on you!!!

Yours sincerely,

Ernst

PS. Tell Maxima to not go berzerk on the hat. She looks fine without it!