Making it Work, or not: A Longitudinal Study of Career Trajectories Among Online Freelancers

Online freelancing is growing rapidly. Yet despite this rapid growth, we have a limited understanding of online freelancers' long-term experiences and evolution or how online freelancing influences their broader career goals. To address this gap, we interviewed a set of online freelancers at two time periods, two and a half years apart. We find that long-term engagement with online freelancing involves a unique set of financial, emotional, relational and reputational burdens that represent the overhead of maintaining an online freelancing career. We find that this overhead influenced participation and perceptions over time, as well as the strategies some freelancers leveraged to manage this overhead. Our findings further highlight how online freelance platforms afforded freelancers unique career development opportunities over time: career domain exploration and transition, entrepreneurial training and reputation and skill transfer. Based on our findings, we present policy and design implications for increasing the sustainability and accessibility of online freelancing.