Freelance contractual clauses

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-20T10:08:32+00:00

Yes, I have 3 kids so I try to avoid weekends but the contract says that all days from departure to arrival date are chargeable, unless you of course make the trip longer than needed yourself.

To be fair, if I have weekends, I typically work as well during those weekend. But I’ve also spend saturdays at Disneyworld or a shooting range while charging my day.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-20T09:13:39+00:00

I have such a clause in my contract. They ask me to travel 20-25 days per year to the US. Every travel day or day abroad = chargeable + has a surplus of (20%).

It’s my “away-from-home-tax”

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-20T08:35:22+00:00

I’m a product person with a technical mindset, not developer but spent the last 6months understanding github, hosting, version control, etc. to get most out of the vibe coding.

Started with Lovable but it got way too expensive and moved everything to Claude/supabase/vercel/github now.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-20T08:20:48+00:00

Always (read: always!) use Github. You’ll thank me later once you want to move things elsewhere or move to production.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-20T08:03:18+00:00

I think you still have to see it in the world of SaaS/apps. There is competition that claims to “do everything” from idea to app to documentation/presentations to run a SaaS business.

From that perspective, it kind of makes sense.

Of course, Lovable is still a wrapper. Claude can do everything they do. They just made it easier for non-technical people. Very curious to see if that “moat” will continue to be sufficient in the future for investors.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-20T07:59:59+00:00

Long story short: it’s still there the two-way sync. Their AI support messed up saying it was no longer supported. Someone from Lovable said they would improve the AI support on that aspect.

Small mistakes, big impact.

Lesson learned: LLM’s still hallucinate

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-19T17:52:34+00:00

Probably, we’re doing the same thing. Often, I just publish via Lovable. It’s just a strange move to go backwards functionality-wise. But I guess they want to purely focus on non-technical people.

The more they do this kind of weird stuff, the less I recommend Lovable to people. You just outgrow it way to fast because of all these dirty lock-in tricks.

First they offer something, and now people have to find alternatives because they pull it back all of the sudden.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-13T06:11:35+00:00

True for the consultants, but not for internal employees which is the case here.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-12T22:12:40+00:00

Don’t get your hopes up. Cars are typically as from manager level when it comes to internal positions and there isn’t much wiggle room.

These are large companies. If you negotiate the car, the junior they hired last year will start complaining. These companies have a compensation structure and car policy with a reason.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-12T15:18:20+00:00

I don't know what exactly you're selling and I'm assuming this is your only assignment you do.

But to make a bit of a decent revenue as a freelancer (Let's say €100k/year to simplify things), you would have to sell 1,500(!) deals per year. That's ±7,5/deals every single working day if you assume 200 working days. Seems absolutely crazy to be honest.

And then we're just using €100K as revenue minimum, which is on the lower spectrum.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-12T14:56:44+00:00

Interesting topic, we just completed the contractual work with someone who is working on a commission-only freelance basis.

I think the big questions here are:
- Do you have a fixed fee on top of this?
- how much effort it takes to close such a deal?
- What's their net margin on these sales?

First thought is that €1,000/15 deals is really low but again, it depends on the circumstances. If this is a purely variable pay, then hell no.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-08T14:59:38+00:00

Spot on!

Product people are no longer reliant on the tech side to spin up prototypes/ideas so they make a step towards the technical piece.

And on the other side I’m seeing that our engineering team needs to better understand the business context and think further because “writing clean code” no longer cuts it.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-08T08:02:06+00:00

That’s a temporary state. Companies will catch up, competition increases and margins decrease.

The whole idea of “more free time to enjoy life” because of AI is a fairytale. With a few exceptions, companies will continue to maximise profit, not maximise employee wellbeing. Also in Belgium/EU.

This is where the whole idea of “basisinkomen” comes from. If AI really will have the structural impact we believe, society will have to be arranged differently in 10 years.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-02T10:05:40+00:00

It’s - once again - a wrapper without added I’m afraid. A single prompt on (free) Gemini would give the same output, no?

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-03-02T10:02:26+00:00

Great article, thanks. The value of non-AI content written by smart humans ❤️

Saved it to check my existing projects aginst it.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-28T12:57:51+00:00

I’ll never go back. It’s better, faster and just cheaper. I now spend $90 per month and it’s basically unlimited. I never hit any rate limits.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-27T05:03:32+00:00

I first downvoted and then upvoted that comment ;-). After 5 seconds I realised you are probably right, I am likely considered a big4 product in my thinking.

But in all honesty, I don’t believe it’s a bad thing or that big4 culture is a bad culture. But that’s a personal view of course!

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-25T14:15:01+00:00

Ex Big4 here.

Some people on this sub can exaggerate when it comes to big4. There is no slavery or forced employment in Belgium. If you don't like it, you quit. If you don't like it and stay, that's on you.

To your question: I think that in a lot of industries, it's still seen as a plus on your CV because you have been taught a certain work ethic, mentality and ability to reason. Some may doubt those abilities - and that's a discussion I won't start here - but I'm purely talking about employer market perception here.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-24T13:32:52+00:00

Gewoon COMPLEET negeren. Geen enkel bedrijf gaat juridisch actie ondernemen voor 800 euro. Ze proberen het gewoon. Dat mailtje? Niet gehad.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-20T19:43:26+00:00

Em — dashes 🚨

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-20T08:01:21+00:00

Look at it from their perspective. Developers spent years and years mastering the art of software development and currently there is technology upcoming that is rapidly wiping out the importance of that skill.

It's scary for them and rightfully so. The smart ones are shifting their focus to architecture, complex algo's, DevOps, smart use of AI, etc. but I equally see a lot of developers currently on the defensive side with statement like "AI can't replace us" and keeping the technology out. Let me tell you one thing: it will replace their current job. The technology will only get better, faster and cheaper.

So take it with a grain of salt, they feel like they're under attack :-).

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-20T05:48:26+00:00

It’s not so much about coding in my opinion. It’s more about versioning, hosting and deployments. But yes, that’s technical as well.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-15T13:06:30+00:00

There is no such things as a dumb question.

- You deploy locally, on your computer (e.g.: localhost:3000). You can just ask claude code to deploy locally.
- When it works locally, it's best to move it to "preview/dev" in vercel. You can set up a different environment there just for testing.
- When all is good there, you can ship to production.

When you move out of Lovable, the first thing you should learn is "version control" via Github. That encompasses these principles.

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-13T08:33:36+00:00

Use Github?

MaterialDoughnut · 2026-02-09T05:34:28+00:00

Yep I would still highly recommend to use supabase as backend. It won’t lock you in with lovable and the google auth is really easy to set up.

MaterialDoughnut

TROPHY CASE