Do you know of freelance dev work where I can communicate only through text like email/slack or similar? I really cannot talk over phone/zoom or in person. I absolutely cannot react to questions in an adequate way instantaneously, I just get complete blackouts and everything vanishes. It seems to be some mix of imposter syndrome and general anxiety. I am already getting professional help for it. I am no rockstar developer but I think I have a some decent skills. I know python, databases, micro services, docker, am starting to get experience in AWS and also have a some front-end experience. I built systems that are in use for more than five years reliably and have always been given projects from family members when I was in university. Right after university, I started to work for a startup but quit after a few months because it always felt like I had to play a role and I was anxious every day. I know this is a hard problem, because software development depends a lot on communicating effectively but maybe someone has had similar struggles.
So, my question is: does anyone have ideas how to circumvent this problem? Maybe someone wants to cooperate and act as project-manager? Maybe someone knows where I can find work that does not require calls?
Contracts are harder because everyone wants a call to form some relationship. I try to push my contracts into a different relationship as time goes along like this because it is so much easier and calls get longer.
My method is to have a separate line item on the invoice for calls and no lineitem for email. The 4 hour calls quickly dryup when someone is being billed.
On upwork you can find a lot of projects without that requirement.
Get good at finding clients without talking to people. Filter out those that want phone support.
In the end you might just want to start a pure online business.
First, you could set expectations that all questions are invited but you will record the conversation (or video call) and reply with an organized response to code questions. You are free to ask whatever questions you want to. This limits questions you must answer on the spot to things like availability, etc. You probably know those answers comfortably. If they balk, just ask them to trust you. Then make sure to deliver. A helpful skill is to always be comfortable to say "I will get back to you about that." If you don't feel free to say that, the anxiety might be from not knowing what it is like when that is said. In that case, try it. It's a normal thing in my opinion.
And from what you are saying, they will notice the difference if they don't take you up on your request. Be proactive so it's their choice if they decline your request.
Second idea, for remote work, is to respond via recorded video. I have clients send me recorded video of their questions and activity on the screen. It works well because it's personal and it's async. When first starting out, people hiring do need to see a face and hear a voice. This is a useful next-best option.
Your situation sounds challenging. Your desire to discuss it is commendable.
But honestly your question makes me suspicious, because I have had a client bring on a few people into a project (who I was not able to check beforehand) who abused this asynchronous thing.
One was just QA person who just had multiple jobs and would literally have a different and creative reason she did not have time to finish her work every day. It could take a few days for her to get back to you even if she appeared to be idling in the server. Then with the excuses.
Another was an American scammer who claimed experience with just about every technology, and pretended to be working on "wireframes". When we complained too much that he wasn't available to discuss things, he supposedly started showing up in the chat room. But strangely his answers were quite short and sometimes somewhat broken English. I sort of tolerated it for a week or so because I was really busy doing my part. But then we were supposedly having a call to discuss the actual details and amazingly he seemed to have no problem talking about the project for several minutes without ever actually saying anything specific to the project.
So on that call I insisted that we discuss it, and asked him a specific question about the core technology. He could not think of another way to evade the question so he left the call.
Anyway he eventually admitted to hiring some overseas person to "work" on it, and that was the person who was sitting in the chat room. (Although not really saying or doing anything useful).
Having said all of that, I think video calls are usually unnecessary, and text chat should be sufficient 95% of the time.
I guess you can try work on sites like Fiverr, where you just deliver results but to take on a project, I think it would be extremely rare to avoid such interactions.
For starters, maybe it is a good idea to list out your portfolio here. It might be also not a bad idea to work in an enterprise that doesn't sell tech products.
If you find a company that is doing async remote, then you would be fine.
You might tell people that you have a hearing impairment.
With that said, some clients, psychologically, will need to talk out their problems out loud. They may even tell you that. It's how they need to operate. They may just be too much for you and that shouldn't prevent you from doing well at your business with other clients.
This would tend to be especially true if you can make it clear that you are running a business (sole proprietor) and text-only is your business policy. You could probably even address any issues in a reasonably cool way without talking about your personal health conditions which is kind of a no-no for anybody involved where typical business boundaries are concerned.
So a big part of this might be developing the vocabulary to talk about it at a level that meets the needs of prospective clients and also says, "We can talk about it ALL you want but my boundaries are right here, and I'm also ready to help you out with stuff I'm good at."
Eventually you may also find some related vocabulary for navigating phone calls in a way that makes it clear you are not there to give a half-assed solution over the phone, so you'll need some time. For example, "let me take a look, I will get that on the schedule," "This is new to me, so I'll have to think about that, let me see how the schedule looks," etc.
It may help to think of you as the business, and write about the "you" problems from a third-person perspective. What will you have the business owner do about the issue, if they're your video game character? This can help you focus more on strengths and less about what you can't do for people. It does sound like you have plenty of talent for what the typical small-biz web development client would need.
Getting into a couple of other specifics--if you can, it's a good idea to establish a plan for frequency of communication during a project, and communicate that you have such a plan, up front. "I'll expect to reach out with updates at the next milestone, which is X on date Y. If you have any questions between now and then, my contact information is below." This will also help your clients to be more comfortable not using the phone, since they know their info-needs will be taken care of in any case. You are basically soothing them, so to speak.
It's also a really good idea to practice and develop professional use of your favored media as a way to avoid inadvertently raising the stakes via text communication. This could include using a professional email signature which invites people to reach out (any of these text-based methods). Also, writing emails that do not seem personal in nature and clarifying things to avoid misunderstandings.
Good luck, like I said I've seen it done and if you can develop your practice over time you might even find you get in good with one or two clients, they really love your work, they also like text, and you're set. I think it would be reasonable to look forward to outcomes like that for sure.