[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Moving from Corporate to Solo Dev?
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Ask HN: Moving from Corporate to Solo Dev?
I'm pretty disillusioned with the corporate rat race...I naively
took on some additional managerial/strategic responsibilities
assuming I'd get a promotion, but I'm finding that even if I did
get the promotion, I'm not enjoying my current work as much, as I'm
far less hands-on. I know I can provide value--I've got industry-
specific domain expertise and I can write high-quality software.
One of the projects I've recently been managing is the outsourcing
of some programming work--work outsourced to a team of
"professional programmers" but with no domain expertise. I think I
could have done better myself in terms of code quality, but even if
I had, I know I wouldn't have gotten paid as much since I'm an
employee. I'd like to capture that value myself instead of dealing
with an OK bonus and sub-inflationary raise. I've been considering
trying my hand going solo, offering my skills on a contract basis.
But I've never done this, and it's a big change for me. Ideally, I
could start with my current employer as a client. How often is
this done? What steps should I take and what should I consider? Any
resources that you'd recommend?
Author : disenchanted_ds
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-07-11 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
| ushakov wrote:
| i've been an intern, a employee and a contractor
|
| what i can tell you is that being contractor was the worst of
| three and contracting is just more competitive type of rat race
|
| i suggest you instead to try launching a startup
|
| if you don't have an idea yet, you can sign up for co-founder
| matching and meet a someone who does
| ramesh31 wrote:
| What do you want out of life? Do you want to write code all day?
| Or do you want to earn enough money to spend your life as you see
| fit? The IC route is just another rat race. But instead of
| dealing with soft issues from 9-5, you have hard issues waking
| you up at 3AM with alerts.
| epc wrote:
| So...I did this and pretty much made every mistake possible.
|
| I:
|
| - underestimated how much cash I'd have to pour in to get going.
|
| - hate sales. hate, hate, hate with a passion of a thousand ESC
| keys trying to get out of vi, hate sales.
|
| - didn't have a shtick or model of what I would do or wouldn't
| do, I ended up taking a scattershot approach of what I'd work on.
|
| - underestimated how many clients would slow walk payments or
| outright refuse to pay once work was completed.
|
| - quickly went sidewise with my local city/state regulations and
| while not fatal ended up being a drag on my attention
|
| - underpriced myself. In an effort to get business I kept either
| cutting deals or allowed clients to effectively con me into doing
| more work than they could pay for.
|
| My advice, in light of those mistakes is:
|
| - if you really want to do this, start by finding a consultancy
| to work for to learn that side of the business. Learn sales.
| Learn accounting. Learn how to build a backlog of prospective
| clients.
|
| - Try to figure out what your pitch would be to a client and then
| try selling that over, and over, and over again. If you detest
| sales, then you should learn before you make the leap.
|
| - set aside more than enough cash to tide you through the startup
| phase. Even if everything worked perfectly and your clients pay
| you on time you may have 60-90 day gaps before payments.
|
| - figure out what your rate would be, and then double it. No,
| seriously, if only to account for the overhead you don't yet know
| you need to account for.
|
| - If you are in the US the chances of you working on contract for
| your current employer are near zero. The IRS will look at that
| situation and deem you to be an employee. About the only way to
| make it work is to work through a third party agency, who's now
| taking 10-20% of your rate to provide a smiling face for the IRS
| and shuffle invoices around.
|
| The other problem I had was I utterly failed to convince
| companies to hire me for the work I specialized in (this was
| early 00's so web site development / web application
| development). They would prefer to spend $1250/hr on an agency
| where there was also only one developer working behind the scenes
| than the rates I was charging.
| abadger9 wrote:
| I have a consulting business on the side - the more you're able
| to build an effective network, the more sustainable it is. You
| either grow your clientele from referrals and your reputation and
| then it feels like you're printing money (i was making $20,000 a
| month with minimal effort on the side 5 years ago) or you
| constantly chase leads and that'll burn you out after a couple of
| years. let me know if you have any questions.
| ushakov wrote:
| how do you build a network if you barely know anyone?
| airbreather wrote:
| Been a contractor all my working life.
|
| As job "replacement", estimate on 35-40 weeks a year of billed
| work, that's what it is with all public holidays, leave,
| professional development etc factored.
|
| Contractors often make more because they skip these and also work
| longer hours.
|
| If you need to pay medical and professional insurances it can
| easily be closer to 25-30 weeks a year billable after expenses,
| for estimating purposes.
|
| Short term contracts should be 20-40% more to allow for "gaps",
| in a hot market just another bonus, but you should stash this, if
| you get it. Also you still pay most insurances during the "gaps"
| so too many is bad news.
|
| Then if you think you are actually selling some service no one
| else is around to do, whatever mark-up you can defend. But go too
| high and you will suffer in a cold market unless you are
| remarkably good and everyone knows it.
|
| Or if you really know your domain and selling results (instead of
| direct effort/activity), then "double dip" as we say, do two
| contracts at same time and double the pay for maybe same or less
| work if you are lucky.
| kc10 wrote:
| I have been an IC all my career and love writing code. I am not a
| hater of corporate environments, but I wanted to build something
| on my own for a long time. I have quit 4 months ago to work on my
| startup, solo.
|
| I hope my experience working solo can shed light on how working
| solo is (If you plan to go into consulting and not build
| something for yourself, the experiences could be different):
|
| 1. Unlimited technology choices, but at the same time considering
| costs have to backoff from ideal choices. For example: I can't
| spin out a microservice for every damn small thing, consolidate
| so I can save on compute costs.
|
| 2. Working alone is hard, really hard. Try to spend time with
| your partner, former co-workers etc.
|
| 3. It not just writing code all the time. Consider the effort and
| costs on the corporate side of things. Incorporating, issuing
| stock, compliance, taxes, bookkeeping, prospective investor
| meetings, insurance etc. They all take time or money.
|
| 4. Having a partner who has a full-time job really helps. My wife
| works full-time and we have our health insurance figured out and
| have a regular stream of income to take care of our necessities.
|
| 5. You are always on-call and have to plan your vacations or at
| times skip one based on your business needs.
|
| 6. You have to sell. Sell to your friends, co-workers, your
| neighbors - anyone who you think can use your product. It's a
| little awkward at time, but I joke it off and try selling again.
|
| 7. 14-16hrs a day is pretty usual on weekdays. I don't work on
| Sundays and work late night on Saturdays. Support from family is
| pretty important.
|
| 8. Lastly, expect to be a generalist. Plan to work on everything
| - product management, UX design, frontend, backend,
| infrastructure, documentation, graphic work, video editing,
| blogging, marketing, sales calls, demos, everything you can
| possibly imagine to stretch your runway.
| [deleted]
| iorrus wrote:
| I'm in the same situation. I'm demotivated as I'm not that
| interested in the promotion opportunities as I wouldn't enjoy
| management. I think working in a different company would be be
| better. I'm considering a smaller start up but now might not be
| the best time to move.
| alberth wrote:
| Are you ready to do the following, because people take the
| following for granted at a corporate job.
|
| - setup business entity
|
| - bank account
|
| - legal documents
|
| - working with a lawyer to get template contracts in place for
| customers
|
| - invoicing software to bill your customer
|
| - chasing down your customers to actually PAY you
|
| - SALES SALES SALES SALES (all things related to winning work
| because it's NOT easy)
|
| - filing state, local, federal taxes
|
| - having to create EVERYTHING yourself (decks, SOW, contracts,
| web site, marketing materials, and more and more and more0\\)
|
| _If you don 't like Business Admin work - don't go solo. Because
| going solo it truly 90% admin work, and only 10% "fun" work (and
| that "10%" is assuming you have a good client)_
| amelius wrote:
| > SALES SALES SALES SALES
|
| Perhaps someone can build a nice app or platform to take care
| of that part of the job for the rest of us.
| Vanderson wrote:
| While I agree with your list, it's not _always_ going to be
| 90/10. Day to day work is the opposite, 10/90, especially if
| you have a lot of production to get done. (then it can be 100%
| fun for stretches of time)
|
| It's the feast or famine issue. When you don't have enough
| work, you are required to do sales to stay in business.
|
| Do enough sales, and have enough repeat work, and you may find
| you have no time for sales, and may not want any more
| customers. It all depends on your customer base and the type of
| work you do.
|
| Also, I loved repeat/consistent work from known customers
| because the documentation and paperwork burden plummets
| dramatically. Sometimes to nothing more than a phone call/email
| to start work, and invoice when it's done.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Build a strong network now. I was a freelancer for a lot of years
| and it was _hard_. Even with a ton of experience, connecting with
| clients take a ton of time and energy. You 'd think it would be a
| no-brainer, but so many companies don't want freelancers and
| those that do it is often because they can't really afford you.
| So many of them want to nickel and dime over price and hours and
| waste your time.
|
| The people I saw find real success in freelancing / contracting /
| consulting had deep networks, often of former employers, where
| they were basically "perma-temps".
| zerkten wrote:
| Depending on what you do, you may be able to setup the situation
| where you learn on the job during job 1, sell the same thing on
| job 2 while optimizing how it's done, and then really profiting
| on job 3 onwards. Success with that depends on how much you crave
| novelty and what the industry is.
|
| Established industries with larger non-tech companies have many
| valuable untapped opportunities, especially as we move to more
| uncertain times. They will want to make a lot of efficiencies and
| getting rid of "non-core" work is an opportunity for contractors.
|
| I know many people who accidentally got into lucrative contract
| roles in pharma because they started with some random 6 month gig
| that gave them access to assess the landscape. This can be done
| more smartly by subcontracting with existing vendors. They are
| often looking for oversight but you have to be comfortable with
| mitigating the level of devs they are providing to the client.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| Starting with your current employer as a client is a good first
| step. I was getting burned out with my job but still liked the
| company and my co-workers. I worked out a way to say on part time
| with the company and stick to certain types of work.
|
| I did this for a few years and last-year I decided I wanted to
| focus on a project I've been working on. I went down to a
| consulting-only basis working 10-12 hours a month. This couldn't
| be easier for me because I bill them on a T&M basis.
|
| Consulting can be a hustle because you're doing your own sales,
| marketing, estimating and bookkeeping. You need to account for
| those factors when you schedule projects and come up with your
| bill rates.
| kjksf wrote:
| Recently someone asked similar question:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31908797
|
| I wrote up my thoughts:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31911728
|
| And then expanded into an essay:
| https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/4682085af50b41f88460593d...
|
| Since you're starting from nothing: do web research about
| freelancing, contracting etc. Use search engine to find the
| articles, read a book or two, watch a few YouTube videos, take an
| udemy (or similar) course.
|
| There's a lot of free or very cheap advice out there and it's a
| bit more information that can be put into a HN comment.
|
| Your first challenge is getting customers so start with marketing
| yourself.
| ge96 wrote:
| Hope you have some money saved up. Also don't undercharge
| (taxes/drought).
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Solo dev is nice, especially as a consultant. You can easily
| build your business credit score and can pay yourself a much
| smaller salary to save on taxes. I'd recommend an aggressive
| payment schedule, net-10 or better to make sure you don't run
| into cash flow issues and need to use a factoring company.
|
| In the end your client(s) may like you so much that they'll
| propose to bring you in full time.
| airbreather wrote:
| In Australia it's all personal exertion taxed at your personal
| rate, if you are a company of one.
| gbtw wrote:
| I have landed a software development gig working for my countries
| government. Pay is good, especially for the low work stress, 36
| hour workweek and 6 weeks of PTO. Finding the right employer
| really helped me get out of rat race.
| Mandatum wrote:
| Which region are you in? In some parts of the world it's very
| lucrative to not have a full time job, others where employment
| law isn't very strong like the US - it's not as worth it.
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| I've moved from corporate, to having a side gig, to doing it full
| time, then back to a side gig, and now I've mostly spun it down.
|
| The stress of always selling was hard. The constant thought of "I
| could be working right now, but I am sitting watching a movie
| with the family" was hard. The money was great, but I feel like I
| lost actual years of my life.
|
| It seems, my friend, solo is not for me. It may be for you. The
| current macroeconomic climate may make this a bad decision even
| if it is for you. I wish you well.
| disenchanted_ds wrote:
| Thanks. The macroeconomic climate is also something I've been
| curious about, too. The timing may be awful, especially if it
| doesn't work out and I want to get back to a full-time job when
| no one is hiring. But being stuck in a role where upward growth
| is meager is draining, too. ("Oh, the bonus and raise pool is
| down again?")
|
| I do know that even in my current job there seems to be
| willingness to pay a contractor rather than hire an
| employee...and I'm not sure how that willingness would change
| if the environment changes.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Contractors are the first to go when the economy goes south,
| because there's no legal protection to the relationship and
| getting rid of it is as simple as _letting it lapse_. It 's a
| huge pain to fire an employee even for cause. Without cause
| (layoffs), you usually have to pay severance, have your
| unemployment insurance premiums go up, and deal with a morale
| hit to people left behind.
| [deleted]
| wnolens wrote:
| My personal short story:
|
| I became so disillusioned with big tech that I quit and took an
| 8mo sabbatical until contract work dropped itself on my lap. I
| was really lucky that I didn't have to do any selling of myself
| which everyone claims to hate (I wasn't in the solo game long
| enough for any of my wells to dry up).
|
| I got my leads from friends working as full-timers at companies
| looking to hire. They were desperate enough for above average
| talent that I could negotiate a part time deal: essentially 20h
| of my week.
|
| I charged about what I was making as a full-timer, but padded my
| hours. Typically work 2-3hrs, bill for 4. In retrospect, this
| wasn't enough for no other reason than it was a better deal for
| them than for me.
|
| I overlapped these gigs for a few weeks and absolutely hated the
| full allocation of my time. Also the context switch was painful.
| I'd go from an archaic MSVC++ codebase in a windows VM to an
| unorganized startup working on iOS/Android. Eventually I quit one
| and kept the higher paying gig.
|
| I liked neither of the jobs. I was sometimes asked to do more
| than just fix bugs, like start architecting a way to a modern
| stack or think about how to integrate a revolutionary feature.
| But when I came back with a plan, their ambitions vanished. They
| thought they could get something magical for nearly free.
|
| So I became disillusioned with contract work :) The jobs often
| exist because an employer wants to pay less than hiring a full-
| timer to do the job. Or the work they want done is inherently
| unattractive. It was isolating too since you're never really part
| of a team.
|
| Ultimately I made the pivot back to big tech. Work is more
| interesting, I obtain more valuable knowledge. My isolation
| problem wasn't fixed due to pandemic =\ And I feel a lot more
| freedom to screw off in the middle of the day when I'm
| frustrated. As a contractor I felt guilt (or I just never billed
| for the hours I took off to go on a bike ride and clear my mind).
|
| Good luck! I'd send personal emails to your network of engineers
| working at small-medium companies that are less flashy and don't
| have a flush hiring funnel. They always need good folks (you'd be
| vetted by your contact) and you may have the leverage to set the
| terms of contract employment.
| daveguy wrote:
| > I charged about what I was making as a full-timer, but padded
| my hours. Typically work 2-3hrs, bill for 4.
|
| This is illegal. To anyone considering solo dev work, do not do
| this. Charge what you are worth and bill accurately. That
| typically means salary/2000 for hourly and then _2 or_ 3 to
| cover overhead. If you're making $200k that's ~$100/hr and
| consult at $200-$300/hr.
| bobbywilson0 wrote:
| I have just written the first steps for starting "solo dev" work.
| The tl;dr is: 1. Business Entity 2.
| Business Bank Account 3. Accountant 4. Invoicing
| software 5. Contract 6. Workspace
|
| My post[1] includes more detail, and I have also written about
| finding your first clients as well. Feel free to follow up in
| this thread with any questions.
|
| Good Luck!
|
| [1]https://medium.com/@bobbywilson0/six-steps-to-start-a-
| consul...
| BirAdam wrote:
| Being on your own is harder than working for others if you want
| to make a lot of money. You will be working 24/7. If you really
| want more "chill" you need to be prepared to accept less money,
| and in general I would recommend working for a non-profit, a
| university, or a government to get less work.
| bodangly wrote:
| Been a contractor for about a decade now. A few tips:
|
| You need at least 1.5x ideally 2x your normal rate to make it
| worth it.
|
| You need to always be selling, probably should make sure you are
| consistently overbooked if you want to keep contracting
| sustainably. Otherwise if you focus on one client only and they
| go poof, you are back in line for a job.
|
| Be prepared to work many many more hours because of the above.
|
| Don't forget to calculate ALL your costs.
|
| If you can get a monthly retainer for X number of hours for close
| to your target hourly rate, take it even if it's a little low. As
| long as you are good you'll (probably) never really need to spend
| X hours. Leaving you with extra billable hours to devote to other
| clients while still having some guaranteed income. This is one of
| the only ways to get ahead, aside from charging "book" hours
| (estimates) rather than actual elapsed hours.
|
| You'll get stuck in whatever price range you start with so do not
| lowball yourself. Again, always be selling, and hours are
| precious, don't waste them.
|
| It's a stressful life because you start to have issues taking any
| time off.
| anotheracctfo wrote:
| A self-employed accountant once told me that you take your
| hourly wage and triple it. 1/3 is your salary, 1/3 is for
| business expenses and taxes, 1/3 is for when you don't have
| work.
|
| The lucrative part is when you get more than 1 FTE of work and
| start hiring employees. Which was my experience working for a
| small consulting firm. I made decent money with my 1/3 salary,
| but my bosses made $$$$ because we priced for 1/3 downtime but
| were constantly flush with work.
|
| Good luck!
| nickjj wrote:
| > 1/3 is your salary, 1/3 is for business expenses and taxes,
| 1/3 is for when you don't have work.
|
| In the US there's also health insurance if you choose to have
| it.
|
| The worst of the worst medical insurance just for you is
| going to run you about $500 / month. Even if you "only" make
| 60k / year, that's still roughly ~10% of your income which is
| a lot.
| nightski wrote:
| If you are lucky enough to have a spouse that works at a
| good company it can be very lucrative to take the self
| employed route and freeload off their plan :)
| biztos wrote:
| And in many other countries too, without the "choose" part.
| I pay more than that for my private health insurance in
| Germany... it's a pretty good one but has a high deductible
| so I've never actually used it in over a decade.
| bhandziuk wrote:
| And this is the reality of consulting too. You might get paid
| X but you are billed out at 2-3X.
| WildGreenLeave wrote:
| The last sentence is really true. I went into
| contracting/freelancing about 3 years ago and whenever I take
| time off, I still feel "guilty" because I could be working and
| make X amount of money extra.
|
| I think it is good to have that insight tho, but if you start
| to remove your personal life because of this, I think you
| should really need to reconsider your strategy. (Looking at TS)
| __pache__ wrote:
| How do you guys cope with this? I feel so guilty taking any
| time off, even to play with my kiddos/dogs/whatever. "Could
| be making $200+/hr right now" is always in the back of my
| head.
| WildGreenLeave wrote:
| Well.. first of all sadly enough I do not earn $200+/hr. I
| am in Europe and there rates are around $100/hr. (Either
| that, or I should turn this post into a looking for work!)
|
| That being said, it doesn't change the feeling. I try to
| make myself feel better by thinking something along the
| lines of this: I have no money issues, more money would
| ofcourse make life a little bit better. But what if I were
| to die tomorrow? I would much ratter spend quality time on
| the life of the people (or animals) I care about, or my own
| life, then have a few hundred bucks extra. That, together
| with knowing that I cannot always work because I will burn
| out and will earn nothing anymore goes a long way.
|
| I work to live my life, I do not live my life to work :)
| __pache__ wrote:
| > But what if I were to die tomorrow?
|
| this is probably the core thought. what would I pay to
| get "one more day with my sons?" millions? if I had no
| more days left and could give it all...
|
| > I work to live my life, I do not live my life to work
| :)
|
| my work is extremely important to a lot of people, I can
| make jobs for others, etc. .. my work _is_ my life, and
| that's way better for lots of people. hard to
| reconcile/balance, for sure....
| WildGreenLeave wrote:
| > my work is extremely important to a lot of people, I
| can make jobs for others, etc. .. my work _is_ my life,
| and that's way better for lots of people. hard to
| reconcile/balance, for sure....
|
| I enjoy my work, I love getting stuff done and helping
| people. But, at the end of the day, I can only do this
| because I am getting paid. So I do not do my job half
| assed because it is only my job, I will try to take the
| extra step where possible. But I have to do it in a way
| that I can keep on doing it.
|
| Life is a marathon, not a sprint
| disenchanted_ds wrote:
| That's a great idea around retainers. I hadn't really been
| considering that as an option.
|
| I've been thinking about even trying to approach this from a
| value-based pricing perspective a la Jacques Mattheij. Seems
| like that could be an easier approach to selling, in terms of
| positioning myself as an expert instead of just a coder-for-
| hire.
| iasay wrote:
| This pretty much nails it.
|
| Also nails why I folded my company and I'm a corporate wage
| slave now. I'd rather all this shit was someone else's problem
| to deal with.
| nightski wrote:
| You can get lucky like myself and have a small handful of
| clients for over a decade. Honestly don't think I'd do
| consulting otherwise. I'd say the key was finding a stable
| industry that has been around for a long time, but at the same
| time is more dysfunctional when it comes to tech. So much
| opportunity to help them out. Often internal IT is underfunded
| and so focused on just keeping things running that there is a
| lot of room for one to differentiate themselves.
| paradite wrote:
| I made the move to become a solo developer building my own apps
| in Apr 2022. Here are the steps I took:
|
| - Started building my own project on weekends while working full-
| time last year.
|
| - Personal project got some traction at end of the year (organic
| growth and good reviews).
|
| - Saw story on LinkedIn of some people quitting their jobs and
| becoming indie dev and got inspired.
|
| - Added ads in my app and started generating revenue ($1 a day).
|
| - Quit job at end of March. I had saved up about 3-6 years of
| runway (counting my average daily expenses).
|
| - Joined an incubator by chance, hoping to find a co-founder, but
| didn't succeed.
|
| - Registered a business (sole proprietorship) at end of May. Only
| cost around $200.
|
| - Added in-app purchase in the app in June.
|
| - Ran ad campaigns of $500 budget and generated $220 in revenue
| in June. $140 from in-app purchase, $80 from ads.
|
| - Currently building and planning to launch next project in Aug.
|
| My background is a senior frontend engineer in a big tech
| company.
|
| Previous job was mostly about managing contractors, interns and
| some internal experimental projects.
| leifg wrote:
| I recently quit being an independent contractor after 5 years and
| returned to being an employee. Let me outline my experience going
| from employee to contractor and back.
|
| In general: I have been a software developer for 14 years. I love
| writing code but I also like to figure out the root of the
| problem and come up with the best solution. I started freelancing
| in Germany and continued to do so in the UK and the US.
|
| The initial reason to go solo was mostly feeling based. I
| imagined being super flexible about what I could work on and
| wanted to have more time off even though it was unpaid.
| Additionally I thought I could spend some time to specialize in a
| field in order to get higher rates and maybe come up with a
| product idea. I also justified this move to myself with "I at
| least gotta try it". I was lucky to find a client pretty quickly
| and enjoyed the networking and finding follow up opportunities.
|
| However a couple of things became pretty clear to me very
| quickly: the easiest way to work as a freelancer for me was to
| basically continue to work as a generic software engineer that
| knows $language for a client 5 days a week and then invoice them.
| I didn't really spin up additional income streams and I didn't
| even take more time off.
|
| However there were a few things that kept me from returning into
| a regular job: The increased income (in my first year my income
| effectively increased by 50% even though I was doing the same
| work), the opportunity to switch "jobs" more often without it
| being perceived as being a flaky employee (this one is kind of a
| hack but nobody ever questioned why I was only working for 3
| months for a particular client).
|
| Things ultimately changed after I moved to the US because the
| calculation now wasn't only about pure money. I also would have
| to factor in health insurance cost (in Europe this is essentially
| the same wether you are freelance or not), there are other
| benefits like 401k contribution and employee stock buying
| programs that I needed to consider. But ultimately I was missing
| working on projects long term rather than just coming into a
| company churning out code. I also enjoy not having to write
| invoices anymore or doing a more complicated tax return or
| figuring out what kind of insurance I need. I am also glad that
| there is now basically no need for me to do any kind of marketing
| or sales related work.
|
| In total I had 9 full time clients and a few short term projects
| (1-2 days). The short term projects were some of the worst days
| as a freelancer because the project was timeboxed and every time
| I scrambled to deliver on time.
|
| In general I would say if you are an hourly/daily rate based
| contractor the only two reasons that I saw as an advantage was:
| more money and seeing more different projects. If you are willing
| to put up with the admin overhead of going solo I definitely
| recommend it, especially if you have a talent or are willing to
| do marketing and sales related tasks. I suggest however to be
| honest with the income calculation. If you compare your current
| job to something like 220 billable days as a freelancer (not
| unrealistic) you are going to see a big increase. But if you take
| into account the benefits and compare this to a competing
| employment offer, the income difference might not be as big.
| phphphphp wrote:
| Good clients are like good jobs, few and far between. Contracting
| is not the solution to bad jobs, a good job is the solution to a
| bad job.
|
| If you can find good clients, contracting can be great, but bad
| clients can be a real drag: it's easier to quit a job than it is
| to fire a client.
|
| I'd recommend giving it a go, but don't expect it to be better,
| just different. Personally, on balance, I prefer it and don't
| plan to go back to full time... but it's often just as defeating.
|
| (Regarding how easy it is, it's very easy, anybody who can get a
| full time job can do contracting, software engineering
| contracting is in high demand, always.)
| darthcloud wrote:
| I confirm that, I was pretty in same situation as OP
| contemplating going solo. I soon realized this would only make
| thing worst. I spend some time looking around for my dream job
| + dream team. I found it in another city, It is an old-ish
| small company (25 years, ~20 employee) got interviewed by Owner
| and CTO and it clicked right away between us. Quality of life
| is more important than growth for them. My wife was very
| supportive and we moved with the kids over there. Best decision
| of my life. My wife noticed a night and day difference in my
| general mood. I realize I got lucky but this is the real fix.
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