How many of you are self employed? What do you do? I won't count startups that are funded, but more the individual who started something for themselves. Curious to know what sustains people.
Currently self-employed as a.....rare coin dealer! Odd path for a tech nerd hacker like me, but certainly the most fun thing I've ever done with no plans to change this gig ever.
My backstory: Collected coins as a kiddo, took a 35-year detour into startup land: Started a VC-backed Web 1.0 company from 1999-2002, ran a non-tech company for ~10 years, then 2014-2022 did very traditional early stage tech product management / utility infielder roles. All fun times with at least one legit acquisition/IPO so far, but it turns out I don't love long zoom meetings and politics and formal process all that much.
In 2021 I started getting back into my old coin-collecting hobby and dabbled in buying and selling at a local coin show, and boy oh boy did that escalate quickly (it was one of the most fun and dopamine-filled weekends I can remember in a long time).
Cut to 2023 and I'm running my own rare coin business full-time -- buying, selling, and trading. It's such a fascinating business and very quiet multi-billion dollar industry with enormous opportunity. You need to have a passion for coin collecting and have a knack and aesthetic eye for quality (it's not all spreadsheet Moneyball), but man is it fun.
Feel free to AMA about being a tech nerd full-time coin dealer :)
I've been self-employed for the last ~18 months. In the past I started two VC-backed startups, then was a PM at some later-stage companies before returning to entrepreneurship.
This time around, I'm building a solo "digital product studio" [1] instead of a startup. So, I'm staying one person, haven't raised money, and have multiple revenue-generating products. Product revenue doesn't cover my costs yet, so I do occasional consulting to bridge the gap.
I like the flexibility of this lifestyle. I'm based in NYC, but writing this from Tokyo where I've been doing a creative residence for the past two weeks.
And, a fun technicality - I truly self-employed in the sense that I have a salary and a payroll system. This is because my company is registered as an S-Corp in the USA, which requires the owner to be on a salary.
I have a similar story. I’ve been self-employed for the last 6 months after 14 years of startups. Started out as an engineer in TN, and moved to SF a couple years ago where I got into management just in time to help with rounds of layoffs. Got some severe burnout, quit, and now I’m working on my own products while doing consulting/contracting on the side through my agency. I live fulltime in an RV traveling the country and working remotely. At the moment, I never want to work for someone else again.
Self-employed on and off as a graphic and web design consultant since 2005 or so, with some time in offices, making websites with static generators, PHP/WordPress, and Python/Django, and print work with pencil, ink, paper, and graphics apps.
2. Try to be nice to other nice people and stay in touch with past co-workers, especially the nicest ones. They make the best bosses or clients later. Don’t burn bridges unless there is no other option.
3. Always be working on a project for yourself that you enjoy and can learn new skills from. If the project could be useful for others, clean it up a bit and share it.
4. Use a paper weekly planner and write down things to do and cross them out when they’re done. Write ideas and things to look up here. Have a drawer or cardboard box in which you throw pieces of paper with ideas written on them. Open the drawer and pick a random piece of paper when feeling stuck.
5. Look in the mirror now and again and ask yourself if you are happy with the upcoming day. If there are too many days in a row when you’re not, time to change, move, etc.
I am a self-employed furniture maker. I'm that guy who somewhat infamously no longer builds software[0]. About a year ago I moved my operations from a makerspace to my own shop. That's come with its ups and downs.
On the one hand, I know which idiot last used a tool: me.
On the other, I would no longer see other humans besides my wife most weeks. To keep sane I also work one day a week at a bike shop fixing bikes. It's something I'd done on a volunteer basis many years back.
The unexpected nice thing about this is that it gives me projects that are an hour or two in size in addition to the many-week sized projects that I do as part of my business. It's sort of like getting to fix a small bug in the midst of adding a big feature; it lets me pop out of the big project for a bit and see something else through from start to finish and see some tangible progress before diving back into a long-running project that moves forward in fits and starts.
Beyond getting to tackle some bite-sized projects, I'd say the thing that sustains me is getting to work with clients. It's tons of fun when people come to me with a vision that we can iterate on and bring into reality. And then the flip side is also rewarding: getting to scratch an itch and turn a design I've been turning over in my mind into reality.
Edited to add: If you've got an idea for a furniture or woodworking project, my contact info and website are in my profile.
Hah I remember seeing this issue. It made me chuckle. I also do wood working part time, it's kinda funny how similar software and woodworking are. I'm hoping to open up a hobby shop one day that teaches both software and woodworking. Congrats to you on following your dreams.
I'd love to hear more about this. I'm a software developer by day and woodworking is a huge passion. Alas due to full time job, kids and other commitments, I don't have much time for it at the moment.
Did you start off with woodworking as a hobby? If so, has it affected your enjoyment now it's a job?
What pitfalls did you find when you first started out?
I've been working on https://webhook.site since 2016 when I posted it here on HN. In fall 2023, I quit my job to work on it full time, and it's one of the best decisions I've ever made. I have around 1400 subscribers, which is enough to pay myself a good salary. I've not done any funding or marketing so far.
Wow, I use your service all the time for misc testing and it's fantastic. Lean, responsive, and straight forward. I honestly didn't realize there way any paid option until I read this and took a look around the website to find it (I completely missed the upgrade button in the upper right).
I figured I'd mention that from a user's perspective to give you a data point. Great service!
I'm self employed for around 10 years now. Before that I was employed as frontend developer for around 7 years.
I started self employment as software consultant, which worked pretty well despite not having any connections from my previous employment. I only needed one or two projects a year to sustain my lifestyle. Getting two companies a year to accept your application isn't hard. If you write at least 5 applications a month, you need a success rate of less than 5%.
I changed to technical writing later, because text is less of a struggle than code, and educational articles that explain how to use software (e.g., services, tools, SDKs, frameworks, etc.) are paid pretty well, especially compared to the non-technical writing tasks. Regular software consulting projects take months and can haunt you for years. An article takes a few days and after that you can do other things you find interesting.
Via technical writing, I got into other kinds of text related jobs the software industry offers, like social media management (e.g., Twitter/X, newsletters, blogs) for companies with developer audiences.
Usually I work less than 20h a week and I can do it from everywhere, which allows me to travel often and having enough time off to enjoy it.
How do you get clients for tech writing, if I may ask? Are you maintaining a stable pool of companies and doing work as they need it, or do you always have to fish for new opportunities?
I've been authoring sw dev books that target a niche audience, and I've done some writing for the company that develops the sw itself. I'm wondering whether to expand to other areas, too—I've got the feeling that 2024 is going to be a rather challenging year, financially speaking.
Curious about this. How did you manage to build up a consulting business without prior contacts? You say you wrote applications, but normally companies aren't soliciting consultants in a public fashion (other than fiver/upwork which seem to be a race to the bottom).
I am working on https://audiodiary.ai as a solo founder, I recently have been getting enough income to just about cover my living expenses and haven’t received any funding and didn’t do any marketing, with 9k users so far since launch last May. It’s fulfilling and great to see people use and love a product I’ve built. I’m obviously highly motivated to grow so it keeps me busy.
This is such a good idea, I wish I’d thought of it. I have trouble maintaining consistency in journaling, but this makes it a heck of a lot easier. I just signed up - good luck!
Self-employed, running https://buttondown.email as a solo founder. (My day generally looks like — 30% engineering, 40% onboarding + support, 10% marketing, 20% operations.) It was a profitable nights-and-weekends project from 2017—2022; took it full-time in 2022.
I think the thing that I would say about self-employment is that people understate the day-to-day flexibility and overstate the month-to-month flexibility. It is _addicting_ to be able to structure a given day exactly how you want it, and to take days off without having to worry about PTO; conversely, I've done a hither-to poor job of increasing my bus factor and it's tough to e.g. plan entire week-long vacations without knowing I'll need to carve out extra time afterwards to catch up on inbound issues.
Being self-employed is hard work for sure. I also _totally_ understand the cliche of "becoming a founder makes you un-hireable"; it's really hard to imagine going back to a traditional job after this, and I find it more fulfilling than anything else I've done in my career.
I have no need for an email sender at the moment, but I just wanted to say that I found your website and premise super simple to understand. I think the thing that often gets lost in large companies is that "tone" gets neutered. This copy reads like a person wrote it, rather than a large committee. Cheers.
> people understate the day-to-day flexibility and overstate the month-to-month flexibility
I completely agree! Somehow every day feels like you are free to do what you want, even take it off, but in the long-term it feels like you never really have free time at all, because your mind is always thinking about the business or feeling guilty for the time off, which could be spent to further improve the product.
In Poland, where I'm from, it's pretty much the norm to be self-employed in Poland in the IT sector.
I believe that around 50% of workers are technically contracted one-man companies, and this percentage is inversely correlated with the seniority level - the greater the earnings (and the sense of job security that goes along with expertise and experience), the greater the incentive.
Going B2B makes a substantial difference in terms of fiscal burdens. Other than that, your day-to-day work looks pretty much the same though. You're just sending monthly invoices to the same employer, typically a single one, sometimes for years on end.
That's for tax reasons only though, technically it is just another form of long term employment. As soon as you have multiple customers that you send invoices to with some regularity and you have autonomy would you pass the 'self employed' test in other countries. If you refer to them as your client and you only have one then you're technically an employee, if you refer to your contact at your client as 'your boss' then you also are an employee.
We have a lot of this in NL as well, the long term effect is the slow erosion of the social safety net. Because good luck if your client decides they no longer need your services, suddenly you find out what the downside of being self employed is. Nothing to fall back on. So save like your life depends on it.
In the UK this was normal for IT (and other) contractors because there were tax advantages to the employer and to the employee/contractor. The employer could avoid paying National Insurance (social security) taxes of 10% as well as pension and sick pay contributions. The employee could pay themselves a small salary - enough to get social security benefits but be in the lowest or no-tax band and pay the rest as dividends from their limited company where tax was paid at a lower rate than income tax.
It was a good wheeze but some years ago the govt bought in legislation "IR35" which basically says that if it looks like a employment contract then it should be taxed like a "normal" employment contract.
This would be quite risky where I am from, for both the freelancer and the employer. Being self employed, but only for a single customer, is false self-employment. If you get caught, your employer has to pay taxes and social security contributions retroactively for up to 4 years, and afaik both the employer and the freelancer are liable for the money owed to the tax office and social securities. If you are caught doing this premeditated, it might be a criminal offence.
My home country also regulates this scenario - one-man companies with ~single client - for businesses strongly. This is hidden employment. How would it be beneficial to anyone?
- the subcontractor doesn't get any social security. Has to provide everything for himself from the private sector. And pensions (however meager). Theoretically he's free to have multiple clients or vary prices but I guess for most this is a pipe dream and they are dependent. For some tax dodging he gives up the whole legal safety net of being employed. Based on your contract you are freely exchangeable.
- the contracting company has more freedoms with getting/tossing employees, although loses a safety net of subcontractor suddenly leaving or changing prices.
- the government loses oversight of actual corporate structures.
Instead of fixing the flaws in the social system, hidden employment just throws it in the bin because haha less taxes, more money and freedom.
What benefit does that provide? Some commenters are saying it reduces taxes. Why would it reduce taxes? Why would the government reduce taxes for people who jump through these hoops?
Me! I started my solo, startup law practice almost by accident via a Hacker News comment years ago. It's now my primary source of income.
It's hard, but less hard than what startup founders do. It's nice having control of my schedule, but the flip side is that there's never a day off. Personally, I think being self-employed is great for people who naturally work really hard and want to capture the full output of their labor.
I don't think I could ever go back to full time employment for someone else. It's addicting having your own business that actually cash flows!
I'm self-unemployed :D Helped a startup to exit a couple of years ago and had a small amount of equity. Been working on building a game since then. I don't think I'm going to make it to the finish line before I need to get another job, but maybe after that job I'll have the game finished and can build a more sustainable path from there.
Definitely envious of those with actually sustainable business models, though, heh.
(p.s. https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants, come say hi in the Discord if you want to talk shop about Rust/Bevy/WASM/gamification of mental health)
I went through your profile and I just want to say, that idea of gamifying mental health with virtual pets (ants!) sounds super interesting! All the best!
I just build projects that interest me (websites, apps, games). So far released 62 things, of which 10 made >$10k. It's interesting because you get to do a variety of things, and I don't really mind the unpredictability. Might even like it in a slot machine variable reward sort of way.
Just now I spent 3 months making a game that turned out to be worth $0, but that's part of the process. As long as the project itself is interesting and you learn something from it, it doesn't feel like totally wasted time.
Self-employed. Project started in 2000. Income fully funded by revenue since 2009. Product is a cross-platform native digital audio workstation (ardour.org). Revenue also funds a significant part of the income of a second developer (total of $220-240k/year in recent years).
Was self employed and worked as contractor programmer for the longest time until a couple of years ago. Thought I would work less. Boy was I wrong. Chasing clients, doing taxes, invoicing people and praying they'll pay on time. Got sick of the not very dependable cash flow which was feast and famine cycles. Went to get a corporate job and even though the work is not as exciting and the codebase is legacy, at least I don't sweat the next paycheck.
I have been self-employed since 2008, when I quit my job in software engineering to go all-in on my software business (that dated from 2003). That failed spectacularly, because I only focused on technology and not on the value I was creating, and with few customers, I had to do on-site contracting for more than a year before going on full-time parental leave.
I then rebooted my software project, launched a landing site and started talking to prospects (hundreds of them), before I set out to pivot my existing product to something that might gain traction. (I wound up throwing away 95 percent of the code.) I spent 2014 through 2019 with the product in beta, barely making a living off of a few enterprise support contracts and doing freelance photography (and depleting my savings), but spending at least 80 percent of my time on building the product and getting it to a finished state.
(Some people seem to be able to build a product in a weekend that gets eager customers. I'm not one of those people, choosing to build something that was, in retrospect, much too big of a project for one person. I probably also spent too much time polishing the product before commercializing it, likely due to a fear of failure.)
In 2019, the product was finally commercialized as a SaaS service. I remember thinking that I either wanted it to be a spectacular success, or a spectacular failure (so that I could focus on other things, after close to 20 years).
It was neither, but has been growing steadily ever since. I would have made much more money working for someone else, but the freedom is unparalleled. I get to set my own hours and focus on things I consider important. I enjoy doing everything from support calls and UX work to building a compiler and a type system (that I have mentioned before on HN).
I also have no one I need to answer to, other than our customers. That has been important over the past couple of years, when a series of health emergencies in my family has diverted my attention elsewhere. I have been very fortunate to be able to do so, focusing on what's important, without having to ask permission to cut down on work temporarily.
Overall, I wouldn't trade this for anything. This year, my product will gain a sister product in a more lucrative field (I'm hoping), and I have plans to commercialize my compiler, both as a service and as a traditionally-licensed library. So I'm excited to stay solo and keep working on building the business.
I am. I founded PG Support (https://pgsupport.dk).
We are a small team of experienced PostgreSQL consultants.
I really like having close contact to customers as well having a very high variance in the type of work that I do.
I also run DebianSupport (https://debiansupport.com) from which we provide professional services for Linux. Mostly Debian and Ubuntu but not exclusively so.
Having used Linux extensively since 1997 and PostgreSQL since 2000, I really like working with both pieces of technology. And I love being able to provide value from my skills and experience.
I am for a couple years now. I do consulting work [1] around Rust/Embedded Systems/Systems Engineering, usually helping teams that are either kicking off a project (so helping with planning, scoping, and backfilling knowledge gaps), or people who want help building a proof of concept (so: just build it for me asap) for existing companies exploring new ideas or for startups that are working on demos for investors, etc.
I've been active on both the open source and commercial side of embedded Rust since the beginning, so it's been fun to watch it grow both as an ecosystem as well as from a commercial adoption perspective. Doing consulting makes it easier to help do more open source docs + support in the open, and seems to be one of more sustainable ways to do OSS in my opinion, if you can swing it.
I’ve been self employed full time for almost 20 years, with one to two employees during that time. It’s a product company which I won’t link to because customers think we’re a big organization.
I worked nights and weekends for about 10 years on the products before they were good enough and selling enough that I could go full time. I’ve focused heavily on not having technical debt, and making the app as user friendly as possible to cut down on customer support burden.
Customer support work on holidays and vacations is required, but only for an hour or two. It’s been a pretty good gig.
[+] [-] nlh|2 years ago|reply
My backstory: Collected coins as a kiddo, took a 35-year detour into startup land: Started a VC-backed Web 1.0 company from 1999-2002, ran a non-tech company for ~10 years, then 2014-2022 did very traditional early stage tech product management / utility infielder roles. All fun times with at least one legit acquisition/IPO so far, but it turns out I don't love long zoom meetings and politics and formal process all that much.
In 2021 I started getting back into my old coin-collecting hobby and dabbled in buying and selling at a local coin show, and boy oh boy did that escalate quickly (it was one of the most fun and dopamine-filled weekends I can remember in a long time).
Cut to 2023 and I'm running my own rare coin business full-time -- buying, selling, and trading. It's such a fascinating business and very quiet multi-billion dollar industry with enormous opportunity. You need to have a passion for coin collecting and have a knack and aesthetic eye for quality (it's not all spreadsheet Moneyball), but man is it fun.
Feel free to AMA about being a tech nerd full-time coin dealer :)
[+] [-] philip1209|2 years ago|reply
This time around, I'm building a solo "digital product studio" [1] instead of a startup. So, I'm staying one person, haven't raised money, and have multiple revenue-generating products. Product revenue doesn't cover my costs yet, so I do occasional consulting to bridge the gap.
I like the flexibility of this lifestyle. I'm based in NYC, but writing this from Tokyo where I've been doing a creative residence for the past two weeks.
And, a fun technicality - I truly self-employed in the sense that I have a salary and a payroll system. This is because my company is registered as an S-Corp in the USA, which requires the owner to be on a salary.
[1] https://www.contraption.co/essays/digital-product-studios/
[+] [-] bicx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hypertexthero|2 years ago|reply
Tips:
1. Live simply and reduce expenses. Avoid debt if you can. Rice and beans recipe: https://hypertexthero.com/eat-play-read/
2. Try to be nice to other nice people and stay in touch with past co-workers, especially the nicest ones. They make the best bosses or clients later. Don’t burn bridges unless there is no other option.
3. Always be working on a project for yourself that you enjoy and can learn new skills from. If the project could be useful for others, clean it up a bit and share it.
4. Use a paper weekly planner and write down things to do and cross them out when they’re done. Write ideas and things to look up here. Have a drawer or cardboard box in which you throw pieces of paper with ideas written on them. Open the drawer and pick a random piece of paper when feeling stuck.
5. Look in the mirror now and again and ask yourself if you are happy with the upcoming day. If there are too many days in a row when you’re not, time to change, move, etc.
More: https://hypertexthero.com/reignite-passion/
[+] [-] mauvehaus|2 years ago|reply
On the one hand, I know which idiot last used a tool: me.
On the other, I would no longer see other humans besides my wife most weeks. To keep sane I also work one day a week at a bike shop fixing bikes. It's something I'd done on a volunteer basis many years back.
The unexpected nice thing about this is that it gives me projects that are an hour or two in size in addition to the many-week sized projects that I do as part of my business. It's sort of like getting to fix a small bug in the midst of adding a big feature; it lets me pop out of the big project for a bit and see something else through from start to finish and see some tangible progress before diving back into a long-running project that moves forward in fits and starts.
Beyond getting to tackle some bite-sized projects, I'd say the thing that sustains me is getting to work with clients. It's tons of fun when people come to me with a vision that we can iterate on and bring into reality. And then the flip side is also rewarding: getting to scratch an itch and turn a design I've been turning over in my mind into reality.
Edited to add: If you've got an idea for a furniture or woodworking project, my contact info and website are in my profile.
https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149...
[+] [-] oooyay|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buttermonster|2 years ago|reply
Did you start off with woodworking as a hobby? If so, has it affected your enjoyment now it's a job?
What pitfalls did you find when you first started out?
[+] [-] jeanlucas|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredsted|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjice|2 years ago|reply
I figured I'd mention that from a user's perspective to give you a data point. Great service!
[+] [-] belinder|2 years ago|reply
If only you could not have it redirect on load, it makes the back button break. Clicking back to return to hackernews is almost impossible
[+] [-] scottydelta|2 years ago|reply
One feature that might not align perfectly with your service but definitely something I would use is Email to webhook forwarding and vice versa.
[+] [-] berkayozturk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] svenhof|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greenie_beans|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ja27|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|2 years ago|reply
I started self employment as software consultant, which worked pretty well despite not having any connections from my previous employment. I only needed one or two projects a year to sustain my lifestyle. Getting two companies a year to accept your application isn't hard. If you write at least 5 applications a month, you need a success rate of less than 5%.
I changed to technical writing later, because text is less of a struggle than code, and educational articles that explain how to use software (e.g., services, tools, SDKs, frameworks, etc.) are paid pretty well, especially compared to the non-technical writing tasks. Regular software consulting projects take months and can haunt you for years. An article takes a few days and after that you can do other things you find interesting.
Via technical writing, I got into other kinds of text related jobs the software industry offers, like social media management (e.g., Twitter/X, newsletters, blogs) for companies with developer audiences.
Usually I work less than 20h a week and I can do it from everywhere, which allows me to travel often and having enough time off to enjoy it.
[+] [-] unD|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vineyardlabs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaalll|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darajava|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesmurdza|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plants|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjackson5324|2 years ago|reply
If you don't mind, can you share how much you're currently able to make from this?
[+] [-] bart7782|2 years ago|reply
In order to find how much your service would cost, i needed to create an account and also download the app.
You also did not specify which features would be locked behind a paywall.
Can you be more transparent about this? I like to know what i'm getting myself into before i start using a product.
[+] [-] throwaway2203|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papa20|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmduke|2 years ago|reply
I think the thing that I would say about self-employment is that people understate the day-to-day flexibility and overstate the month-to-month flexibility. It is _addicting_ to be able to structure a given day exactly how you want it, and to take days off without having to worry about PTO; conversely, I've done a hither-to poor job of increasing my bus factor and it's tough to e.g. plan entire week-long vacations without knowing I'll need to carve out extra time afterwards to catch up on inbound issues.
Being self-employed is hard work for sure. I also _totally_ understand the cliche of "becoming a founder makes you un-hireable"; it's really hard to imagine going back to a traditional job after this, and I find it more fulfilling than anything else I've done in my career.
[+] [-] snide|2 years ago|reply
Bookmarked for when I do need it!
[+] [-] XCSme|2 years ago|reply
I completely agree! Somehow every day feels like you are free to do what you want, even take it off, but in the long-term it feels like you never really have free time at all, because your mind is always thinking about the business or feeling guilty for the time off, which could be spent to further improve the product.
[+] [-] V-2|2 years ago|reply
I believe that around 50% of workers are technically contracted one-man companies, and this percentage is inversely correlated with the seniority level - the greater the earnings (and the sense of job security that goes along with expertise and experience), the greater the incentive.
Going B2B makes a substantial difference in terms of fiscal burdens. Other than that, your day-to-day work looks pretty much the same though. You're just sending monthly invoices to the same employer, typically a single one, sometimes for years on end.
[+] [-] jacquesm|2 years ago|reply
We have a lot of this in NL as well, the long term effect is the slow erosion of the social safety net. Because good luck if your client decides they no longer need your services, suddenly you find out what the downside of being self employed is. Nothing to fall back on. So save like your life depends on it.
[+] [-] sparks1970|2 years ago|reply
It was a good wheeze but some years ago the govt bought in legislation "IR35" which basically says that if it looks like a employment contract then it should be taxed like a "normal" employment contract.
[+] [-] lqet|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poisonborz|2 years ago|reply
- the subcontractor doesn't get any social security. Has to provide everything for himself from the private sector. And pensions (however meager). Theoretically he's free to have multiple clients or vary prices but I guess for most this is a pipe dream and they are dependent. For some tax dodging he gives up the whole legal safety net of being employed. Based on your contract you are freely exchangeable.
- the contracting company has more freedoms with getting/tossing employees, although loses a safety net of subcontractor suddenly leaving or changing prices.
- the government loses oversight of actual corporate structures.
Instead of fixing the flaws in the social system, hidden employment just throws it in the bin because haha less taxes, more money and freedom.
[+] [-] Thorrez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkhanna|2 years ago|reply
It's hard, but less hard than what startup founders do. It's nice having control of my schedule, but the flip side is that there's never a day off. Personally, I think being self-employed is great for people who naturally work really hard and want to capture the full output of their labor.
I don't think I could ever go back to full time employment for someone else. It's addicting having your own business that actually cash flows!
[+] [-] SeanAnderson|2 years ago|reply
Definitely envious of those with actually sustainable business models, though, heh.
(p.s. https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants, come say hi in the Discord if you want to talk shop about Rust/Bevy/WASM/gamification of mental health)
[+] [-] fakedang|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bemmu|2 years ago|reply
Just now I spent 3 months making a game that turned out to be worth $0, but that's part of the process. As long as the project itself is interesting and you learn something from it, it doesn't feel like totally wasted time.
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohthatsnotright|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] racl101|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ringofchaos|2 years ago|reply
Saved enough money to generate 80 percent of my last drawn salary from my investments.
Now focusing on creating my own fintech web app, with generative ai integration.
I like the feeling of working independently and years of corporate job had taken taken toll on mental health.
Currently building skills in fullstack web development and generative ai. Would take freelance job for some extra cash
[+] [-] jacomoRodriguez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidpolberger|2 years ago|reply
I then rebooted my software project, launched a landing site and started talking to prospects (hundreds of them), before I set out to pivot my existing product to something that might gain traction. (I wound up throwing away 95 percent of the code.) I spent 2014 through 2019 with the product in beta, barely making a living off of a few enterprise support contracts and doing freelance photography (and depleting my savings), but spending at least 80 percent of my time on building the product and getting it to a finished state.
(Some people seem to be able to build a product in a weekend that gets eager customers. I'm not one of those people, choosing to build something that was, in retrospect, much too big of a project for one person. I probably also spent too much time polishing the product before commercializing it, likely due to a fear of failure.)
In 2019, the product was finally commercialized as a SaaS service. I remember thinking that I either wanted it to be a spectacular success, or a spectacular failure (so that I could focus on other things, after close to 20 years).
It was neither, but has been growing steadily ever since. I would have made much more money working for someone else, but the freedom is unparalleled. I get to set my own hours and focus on things I consider important. I enjoy doing everything from support calls and UX work to building a compiler and a type system (that I have mentioned before on HN).
I also have no one I need to answer to, other than our customers. That has been important over the past couple of years, when a series of health emergencies in my family has diverted my attention elsewhere. I have been very fortunate to be able to do so, focusing on what's important, without having to ask permission to cut down on work temporarily.
Overall, I wouldn't trade this for anything. This year, my product will gain a sister product in a more lucrative field (I'm hoping), and I have plans to commercialize my compiler, both as a service and as a traditionally-licensed library. So I'm excited to stay solo and keep working on building the business.
[+] [-] 0x000042|2 years ago|reply
I really like having close contact to customers as well having a very high variance in the type of work that I do.
I also run DebianSupport (https://debiansupport.com) from which we provide professional services for Linux. Mostly Debian and Ubuntu but not exclusively so.
Having used Linux extensively since 1997 and PostgreSQL since 2000, I really like working with both pieces of technology. And I love being able to provide value from my skills and experience.
[+] [-] jamesmunns|2 years ago|reply
I've been active on both the open source and commercial side of embedded Rust since the beginning, so it's been fun to watch it grow both as an ecosystem as well as from a commercial adoption perspective. Doing consulting makes it easier to help do more open source docs + support in the open, and seems to be one of more sustainable ways to do OSS in my opinion, if you can swing it.
[1]: https://onevariable.com/
[+] [-] DougN7|2 years ago|reply
I worked nights and weekends for about 10 years on the products before they were good enough and selling enough that I could go full time. I’ve focused heavily on not having technical debt, and making the app as user friendly as possible to cut down on customer support burden.
Customer support work on holidays and vacations is required, but only for an hour or two. It’s been a pretty good gig.
[+] [-] mateuszbuda|2 years ago|reply
Source: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/indie-hackers-revenue