The Value of Independent Professionals — and a Constructive Path Forward
An open reflection on long-term independent work, value creation, and regulation
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to close a line of thinking that has occupied me for some time, and to contribute a constructive perspective to the discussion around independent work and the DBA framework.
I did not choose freelancing as a career in the traditional sense. I followed a way of working that only functions when autonomy is real. For some professionals, independence is not a contractual preference but an operating mode.
From early on, my mental image of “doing work” was simple: the ability to create, think, and take responsibility with enough distance from noise and hierarchy. That distance is not disengagement. It is what enables clarity, ownership, and long-term contribution.
Independence is motion, not avoidance
People do not become independent professionals to escape responsibility. They choose motion over structure: motion toward autonomy, accountability, and deliberate choice.
Independent professionals operate differently from employees. Where organizations depend on stability, independents thrive in change. They move between contexts, industries, and systems — not as tourists, but as contributors. This detachment is not a flaw; it is a feature that creates value.
By working across environments, independent professionals carry knowledge that does not accumulate inside a single organization: patterns that work, trade-offs that fail, and solutions that scale only under specific conditions. This contextual diversity is not theoretical. It becomes practical insight — the kind organizations seek precisely because it cannot be built internally at the same pace.
Depth comes from repeated responsibility
Independent professionals are not faster because they have superpowers. They are effective because they repeatedly take responsibility for similar problems in different contexts.
Depth is built through exposure. Solving architectural, organizational, or delivery challenges across multiple environments sharpens judgment in ways that long-term internal roles rarely replicate. This is the real capital independents bring: pattern recognition earned through responsibility, not abstraction.
Where regulation misfires
I fully understand and support the intent behind the DBA law. False self-employment exists, and people must be protected from exploitation. That goal is legitimate.
However, after more than five years of experience with this framework, its current application appears to create unintended consequences for genuinely independent professionals and for the clients who engage them.
Today, independence is effectively treated as something that must be continuously proven through simplified signals: client counts, contract duration, or formal separation. This leads to defensive behavior on both sides. Independent professionals rotate clients artificially. Organizations avoid long-term collaboration even when continuity, deep context, and ownership would clearly lead to better outcomes.
The result is a market optimized for short-term safety rather than long-term quality. Responsibility fragments. Efficiency drops. And value — paradoxically — erodes.
Intermediaries are a symptom, not a solution
The growing reliance on intermediary structures is often framed as a remedy. In practice, it shifts risk without addressing the underlying issue.
When autonomy is replaced by proxy employment, the very qualities that make independent professionals valuable begin to disappear: pricing responsibility, commercial risk, and the freedom to refuse or end assignments. Remove those pressures, and independence becomes a label rather than a mode of work.
A constructive proposal
Rather than requiring continuous proof of independence through indirect signals, I propose a shift toward periodic, substantive assessment.
Concretely:
Introduce a government-recognized certification of independent professional status
Valid for a fixed period (for example, four years)
Based on assessment of actual working behavior, such as:
— autonomy in decision-making
— responsibility for outcomes rather than hours
— pricing power and commercial risk
— freedom to refuse or end assignments
— absence of hierarchical control
Such a certification would:
— allow independent professionals to take long-term assignments (for example, up to two years) without constant uncertainty
— provide clients with clearer legal certainty and reduced risk
— enable enforcement to focus on genuine cases of misclassification
— reduce the need for artificial intermediary structures
This approach does not remove oversight. It replaces continuous suspicion with targeted, meaningful assessment — benefiting professionals, clients, and the administration alike.
Closing
Independence cannot be meaningfully captured by checklists alone. For many professionals, it is a mindset and a way of contributing that enables responsibility, continuity, and creation beyond predefined roles.
What independent professionals are asking for is not exemption, but clarity.
Not absence of control, but fair and proportionate assessment.
Above all, the ability to work without being treated as a suspect by default.
Respectfully,
An independent professional