Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39259602

by asim • 2 years ago

364 435 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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.

philip120913• 2 years ago

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.

[1] https://www.contraption.co/essays/digital-product-studios/

asim• 2 years ago

This is super cool! I was/am a startup founder too, bootstrapped an open source project, raised VC money, but ultimately it didn't work out. Now thinking about a solo business again and the studio model was exactly what I was looking at. How did you decide what to build?

philip120913• 2 years ago

My first product Postcard [1] is a personal website builder. I built that because I thought a personal website maker made logical sense as an indie business, and I wanted a way to stay in touch with friends after I deleted social media. But, it's hard to scale - user acquisition is the name of the game, willingness to pay is lower, the product isn't super differentiated, and I don't have a lot of experience in B2C. So, it makes money and continues to grow - but is small in absolute terms.

I decided to work on a more ambitious project that I had been thinking about for years, inspired by a product I wanted at my last startup, and by the chaos of being in 100+ slack channels at a previous job. I hate how people use Discord + Slack - they're good for urgent communications, but we need a "low-attention" version for important communications in communities and at work. So, I started building this product last Summer.

Booklet is an async, newsletter-first community platform [2]. Something like Google Groups with the polish of Slack. Booklet's far more complex than Postcard, but plays into my skills more - such as complex permissions systems, email marketing infrastructure, B2B sales, and being able to incorporate all the latest OpenAI goodies quickly. I launched it about three months ago, it has revenue, and I've been scrambling to build things in response to user feedback. I'm thinking of doing a bit of a relaunch next week as some foundational flows come together, such as full PWA support, search, and Stripe member sync.

Coincidentally - the project I launched to dogfood Booklet, called FRCTNL [3], is doing quite well. I had no intention of monetizing it, but I included a referral link to the accounting service I use. People have been using that referral link, and last quarter FRCTNL was my highest-earning product.

I'm sure in a few years I will have some great stories after the fact about the lessons I was missing in plain sight. But, things feel a little chaotic, uncertain, and fun at the moment. The core theme is building things that I want. My main insight so far has been to build unique, differentiated products that I want to use myself.

[1] https://postcard.page

[2] https://booklet.group

[3] https://frctnl.xyz

kgdiem2• 2 years ago

Wow! I’m working on the same thing at https://stackstudio.dev right now. Your blog post was really eloquent, it’s always inspiring when someone else shares your idea. Best of luck.

philip120913• 2 years ago

Thanks! I'm trying to do more essay writing there [1]. Most indie makers seem to have some content strategy where they share their story. I avoid social media and don't desire to become a Youtuber, so I'm focusing on writing as a content channel. I'm focusing essays on my creative process, inspiration, and specific experiences as an operator - the stuff I want to read. I'm avoiding prospective predictions about the future, being negative (an actual self-imposed rule), and talking about things that feel more like theory than practice.

The next piece I plan to publish tomorrow will be a recap of a talk I gave over the weekend, covering how most of our knowledge work practices come from factories, and ways software engineers are at the forefront of changing those industrial-era practices.

P.S. - if you're ever in NYC, come join for a dinner of Dimes Square Ventures [2], which is a little community I run for local indie makers (using Booklet!)

[1] https://contraption.co/essays

[2] https://dimessquareventures.com

bicx2• 2 years ago

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.

ohthatsnotright3• 2 years ago

How do you find work? I've been trying to start a similar consultancy but I've had a hard time finding organizations who don't want staff augmentation.

_t2bs• 2 years ago

Really cool - I’m in a similar boat, having created startups and also was a PM in senior roles at a few great companies. I’ve been consulting, which is fine, but wanted something with a little more connection to the project so I just set up https://metaluna.io and am aiming for something on the agency route. That said, I really like the way you’re thinking of a “digital project studio”. Is there a community of people doing this somewhere?

bouh• 2 years ago

Can you tell us a bit more about this creative residence and how did you get accepted there ?

philip120913• 2 years ago

Yes, it's called Almost Perfect. I previously followed the illustrator Luis who co-runs it, and applied back in 2022.

https://almostperfect.jp

However, the current "version" of Almost Perfect is ending in about a year, and I think they are fully booked until then:

https://www.instagram.com/almostperfecttokyo/p/C2PCMtpS_wq/

It's been a fun experience, though - I shared a house with an illustrator from LA. I spent time exploring Tokyo and working on Booklet. At the end, every resident gives a gallery - normally it's visual, such as drawings, but mine became a presentation.

matsemann4• 2 years ago

And, a fun technicality - I truly self-employed in the sense that I have a salary and a payroll system.

That's how most devs here in Norway would do it. Make a "proper" company, where you own 100 % of the shares. Then hire yourself, and pay yourself salary, withhold taxes, pay into a pension program etc. Mainly because if you make good money, it's better to leave some of it in the company (and for instance re-invest it into some index funds or something), instead of taking it out immediately as salary and getting it taxed before re-investing. But then still take enough salary to cover your expenses, get social security benefits etc.

jacobyoder2• 2 years ago

doesn't the 'company' itself also pay taxes on the income?

For most solo folks in the US, the revenue flows directly to you. You could set up a more complex corporate structure to hold the income that you don't pay to yourself, but that corporation would itself have to pay taxes on the income too. I suspect there's not any real savings/benefit until there's enough 'leftover' money to start getting creative/flexible.

hellojebus• 2 years ago

Love the comparison against Grand Seiko. I'm a self-proclaimed watch nerd and owner of a Shunbun. Grand Seiko makes beautiful watches!

nlh16• 2 years ago

This is awesome! Nice work. This model was a dream of mine for a while -- I generally love being solo but even a small group of 3-6 people working on a revenue-generating digital product studio has so much potential to be super super fun. Good luck with it and keep us posted!

sixQuarks3• 2 years ago

What is a creative residence?

philip120913• 2 years ago

Kind of like a structured professional sabbatical / workcation with a built-in community and some events. (I paid for it, to be clear.)

Here's a video one of the residents made about the program I did:

https://vimeo.com/350701368

pawelwentpawel• 2 years ago

Same here! I've been running my own digital products (https://flat.social and some smaller ones) and bridging the gap with consulting. For me, the flexibility lead to a fully location-independent lifestyle which allowed me to work from places where I feel at my best. Currently writing this from a tropical patio in Brazil :)

benjaminwootton• 2 years ago

Isn’t it difficult for one person to market multiple products or websites? It’s hard enough getting traction for one product, let alone a portfolio?

philip120913• 2 years ago

After I sold my last company, I felt like my identity was overly tied to one product. So, I decided to build a company separate from the products, so that over time the products can change but I have a through line company brand.

When I started this comapny, I didn't have a product - but I had the holding company (Contraption Company). My first product was Postcard, but now I spend most of my time building Booklet. As the shift in products has happened, my professional email address has been the same, the terms of service have been shared between services, and I have a unified blog + announcements email list. This also means I can launch lightweight experiments such as "FRCTNL", and even if it's not commercially successful - I benefit from compounding returns in the brand and mailing list.

rainclouds• 2 years ago

There is someone renting a room around Mount Fuji on AirBNB that advertises themselves as a systems engineer with fiber in the middle of the woods. Sounded like a great place to work to me!

philip120913• 2 years ago

Starlinks are starting to pop up on Airbnb listings.

paulette4492• 2 years ago

I hate to have to ask this but how do you manage healthcare being a solo s-corp? I was under the impression this could only be done through a company if two unrelated family members owned the company? The only other alternative is "Obamacare"? I could be totally wrong.

whitepoplar2• 2 years ago

I'd love to know this as well!

voiceblue• 2 years ago

unrelated family members

Is such a thing even possible?

blatzguzzler2• 2 years ago

Speaking as someone who has been mostly self-employed since about 2002, Obamacare is a godsend. Massively better than the old individual "underwriting" system that basically made it impossible to get coverage. Yes, health insurance is expensive, but you may be amazed that the ACA marketplace plans frequently cost less than employer plans with better market protections. The only way to do health insurance nowadays is to assume it's only for catastrophes; ie: an $8-15k deductible is nothing compared to a $250k hospital visit. Basically, you are buying a discount plan (your insurer's negotiated rates) plus a stop-loss cover. An example: I am an old fart at 63 and have an HSA plan with a $7,500 deductible. My premium is $900/mo, thus the MOST I will ever have to pay for health care in any 12 month period is $18,300. Way less than a $300k uncomplicated heart attack or a $1M cancer diagnosis. Work your tax returns right, and you can get subsidies that reduce the annual costs even more . . .

philip120913• 2 years ago

I found a broker who would give me insurance for one person, but the offering wasn't good. So, I'm on a mediocre Helathcare.gov plan.

This article has good details:

https://www.collective.com/blog/health-insurance-for-s-corps

ryanwaggoner• 2 years ago

I thought NYC didn’t recognize the S-corp, so you end up paying the corporate tax rate. Has that changed?

philip120913• 2 years ago

Hasn't change, it's pretty terrible but my accountants thought it was marginally better. I've heard that some people get an office outside the city (such as Hoboken) to "work" outside the city.

hkhanna• 2 years ago

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!

jacquesm16• 2 years ago

Nice one, congratulations!

mateuszbuda• 2 years ago

Only around 5% of the products from IndieHackers generate a monthly revenue exceeding ~$8,333 (around ~$100k/year).

Source: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/indie-hackers-revenue

goenning3• 2 years ago

Part time freelancing is underrated. More people should try it. That frees up a lot of time for indie hacking

gchamonlive• 2 years ago

Do you have any tips for starting out trying freelancing gigs? I think the main issue would be visibility for me, I still need to build a protifolio that speaks for my skillset, because right now I don't think I have much demonstrable skills outside of a traditional hiring interview pipeline.

thibaut_barrere2• 2 years ago

That is way higher than what I would have expected!

goenning3• 2 years ago

I’be been self employed for ~1.5yrs after quitting my job to build a GUI for Kubernetes [1]

It’s not easy to get started, but im very happy with this change after being a FTE for 15yrs. It’s a refreshing experience having to talk to customers to understand their pain points and then build something for it

I’m also doing some part time freelancing, so with my products + freelancing I’m earning way more than as a FTE

[1] https://aptakube.com

redrove• 2 years ago

Hey I bought aptakube! Very neat product, doesn't suffer from any of the issues that the other GUI k8s apps have. I found it on an awesome-tauri github list.

However I still rely on k9s due to the key bindings and plugin system being irreplaceable. That could change, I'd really like to do things like toggle FluxCD resources or do other custom actions directly in aptakube.

Great product!

goenning3• 2 years ago

Thank you :)

I’ve been thinking of building custom UI for popular CRDs like FluxCD/Argo/others, but I need to get a few highly requested features out of the way first.

sigio• 2 years ago

I've been a self-employed Ops-Engineer/Sysadmin for hire/Sysadmin-as-a-service for 14 years now, after doing the same as an employee for a consulting company for the 10 years before that.

newswasboring• 2 years ago

How does this work? I see sysadmin as having a large day to day component. Do they call you in to setup processes or are you the emergency call?

nehal3m• 2 years ago

I'm considering this avenue as well, I'd be interested in an answer from your parent.

KingOfCoders3• 2 years ago

Me. CTO Coach. ~4years now.

upupupandaway2• 2 years ago

What kind of experience do you have to be able to credibly provide this service? Must be a lot!

KingOfCoders3• 2 years ago

I don't know. Usually clients talk to me to see if we click, ask questions and decide if I can help or not.

On one hand I have been doing software development for a long time, 40+ years of coding (currently Go), 25+ years as a manager (CTO, DoE, HoD,...) in large enterprises and startups. Founded three startups, one fizzled out, one went belly up in 2001 and one sold successfully.

But I learn something new every day.

On the other hand I have no training in coaching - but have been doing it for some years now. You decide.

k__4• 2 years ago

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.

unD• 2 years ago

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.

k__4• 2 years ago

As all articles I wrote under my own name (some are ghost writing) are implicit advertisement, most clients approached me after they read some of my pieces.

Over the years I got a hand full of stable clients. Some want content every month, some every quarter, etc.

Then there is word of mouth. The people I work with at my client companies are usually in the content business, so they need constant influx of quality content and know many other people who need it too.

I also work with a tech content agency, they always have a few articles a month I can work on, if business is slow.

vineyardlabs4• 2 years ago

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).

k__4• 2 years ago

Sure, the public platforms don't have the best paying projects.

But that's how I found my first clients. After 2-3 clients from such platforms, word of mouth did the rest.

I only went for projects that went 3-6 months, so I didn't need that many per year.

aaalll• 2 years ago

Where did you use to apply for contracts?

ringofchaos5• 2 years ago

Would living on investment income be considered as self employed. I quit my management job of Tech department of my company.

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

so asking the big and obvious question: in what did yo invest?

ringofchaos5• 2 years ago

I am based out of India 70% of my portfolio is in equity mutual funds, and the rest in safe instruments. The Indian stock markets have given good returns and my equity portfolio has been doing 17% CAGR (10% inflation-adjusted)

But I have planned for conservative returns of 12 percent overall

yetihehe• 2 years ago

I'm virtually self employed, started about one year ago. Taxes are HIGH where I live, it's a little cheaper for employer to subcontract, so he pays the same overall, I got a raise. I currently have probably one of highest pays for my region, so would have to move to other city to earn more. Plus I do some freelancing in free hours, to bring some more money. Bought a little too big home for my means (it was just before everything suddenly went 2x, "finished" it just before pandemic), so I'm spending everything I get. I earn twice what some of my friends get, but they have more for "life".

GaryNumanVevo2• 2 years ago

Independently wealthy after working 10 years in the Bay Area. I live in Amsterdam now, but I still consult on for startups if the project seems fun, good to have some extra money for the nieces and nephews.

groucho_marx92• 2 years ago

I'd love to live in the Netherlands but their box-3 tax combined with US taxes (I'm a citizen) seem like a bad scenario. How are you doing with it?

GaryNumanVevo2• 2 years ago

International tax law is complicated, I pay someone to do my US and NL taxes. Overall I'm paying less than I did working in California (state + fed).

damon_c• 2 years ago

I was self employed for about 10 years until one of the startups I did along the way turned into something and now I have to work there.

upupupandaway2• 2 years ago

This reads quite funny: “god damn it, one of my projects was successful, so it ruined the fun”

jacquesm16• 2 years ago

That's exactly how it goes though. You put something together on an idle Tuesday evening and you end up as the person running a 30 people company if you're not very careful about it. Success has a massive price tag.

0x000042• 2 years ago

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.

jamesmunns2• 2 years ago

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.

[1] https://onevariable.com/

stevenhuang• 2 years ago

Just found out about your podcast and I quite enjoyed learning how esp-idf came about. Great content!

James talks with Scott Mabin about how he joined the Espressif team and got involved in embedded Rust, the working culture in chip manufacturing companies and preferences about designing and building mechanical keyboards.

https://onevariable.com/blog/cwj-ep016-scott-mabin/

jamesmunns2• 2 years ago

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

alexnewman2• 2 years ago

I never understood what self employed means vs a startup. If I start a Delaware C and raise 20M am I self employed?

Roark662• 2 years ago

Self employed means you're a "one man band" and you have no intention of changing it. A startup is when you may start on your own, but you want to grow it, have employees etc.

I decided long time ago the former makes me a lot happier than the later.

elzbardico• 2 years ago

Technically yes, but in practice we would call you a founder on this situation. In common parlance self-employed is something reserved to people who do free-lancing or have small bootstrapped business: I have a personal list of criteria that I use to differentiate from the non-freelancing self-employed and the startup founder.

1 - No direct subordination relationship with a customer, you are a service provider, not a contractor.

2 - Focus is on revenues, profit and low debt, not growth above everything.

3 - No founding from venture capital investor. If you have a partner most probably she is also part of the operation, or expect to have a return on their investments from what the company sells, not by the company being sold.

4 - You draw a salary, if any, from the operation. There's no other source of money for you to survive other than your personal economies (see 2 and 3)

alexnewman2• 2 years ago

I'm more interested in the legal distinction

ikealampe200• 2 years ago

Me as well! I've started working at startups as an employee about ~6 years ago.

And did my first freelance project about 3 years ago. Mostly doing FullStack with a FE focus. From then I've been working on and off due to studies.

It certainly has its upsides and downsides. Here in Germany, freelancing allows one to somewhat escape generally low salary for employed software developers (as compared to the US). But what I don't enjoy is the distance to the actual issue/customer at hand. It's on average a much more corporate form of work. And the last couple months have been very slow in terms of demand.

martypitt2• 2 years ago

I've been bootstrapping orbitalhq.com for a few years now.

Pretty standard bootstrap story - used consultancy to get us out the door. These days, we're (nearly) self sustained through license revenue, with a small amount of consulting (1-2 projects a year).

It's been a tough ride, and in hindsight, I wish I hadn't pivoted away from consulting quite as early as I had, however we've managed to stay alive, so - so far - independent, which has been nice.

hasty_pudding• 2 years ago

Which consultancy if you don't mind me asking?

martypitt2• 2 years ago

We run our own consulting practice - Notional (https://notional.uk) -- terrible, unmaintaned website, as all the love goes to orbital these days.

jacknews• 2 years ago

I'm self unemployed, lol.

wruza• 2 years ago

Seconded. Was doing it for a year and it feels great, most of the times. I slept in a wrong position tonight and now my back hurts. I’ll either wait the crisis out or… idk tbh, thought of working for animal shelter. The world doesn’t motivate me to do anything atm.

sgt• 2 years ago

Ah, to be free.

runald• 2 years ago

Thirded. Nice to see fellow self-unemployed folks here, makes me feel a lot less lonely and useless.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261936

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261975

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39260479

rolisz• 2 years ago

I've been self employed for 3 years now. I help companies get started with machine learning. ChatGPT is the best marketing for me: everyone and their dog wants ML because of ChatGPT.

I do advisory work and development too.

wordpad253• 2 years ago

How do you find clients? Rather, how did you find your first clients?

asicsp• 2 years ago

Does selling programming ebooks count?

I left my job in 2014 (worked for a semiconductor company), muddled around for 4+ years with not much to show before writing programming ebooks allowed me to earn a living. Fast forward to 2024 and I'm still only earning about 1/3 of what I used to earn (without even considering inflation, what my salary could've been now, etc), but it works for me.

Doolwind3• 2 years ago

I make video games [1] and TikToks [2] about them. I’m a solo game dev doing the coding, design and business/marketing stuff. I’ve worked in mainstream games and as a CTO at a few companies but my passion is making small games I can prototype in a few days and release within a week or so. After trying a lot of different roles the satisfaction of building something hundreds of thousands of people play that I have total control over is deeply fulfilling.

[1] https://attackmove.io/playit

[2] https://tiktok.com/@attackmove

ewuhic2• 2 years ago

What's your experience with tiktok? How well does it perform in terms of attracting people to buy your stuff? Do videos besides plays on popular memes du jour do any good?

Doolwind3• 2 years ago

It’s been amazing. I’ve had about 30% of people that follow me join my Discord which is 10x higher than I expected. Meme videos do the best but a loyal fan base see and enjoys my regular dev style videos too. I do the same on Reels and Shorts with less success. But I enjoy learning which videos do better on each platform.

kebsup• 2 years ago

I'm freelancing two days a week, which generates most of my income.

For the rest of the week, I'm bootstrapping a language learning app.(https://vokabeln.io/)

I'm lucky enough not having to pay rent and also living expenses in Czechia are not that high.

davidpolberger2• 2 years ago

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.

jacquesm16• 2 years ago

That's some very impressive stamina and it must have been really hard at times.

davidpolberger2• 2 years ago

Thanks, it certainly has been. After only a couple of years in the software industry proper, though, I felt I had seen all I needed to see. Crunch time. Arbitrary, ill-informed management decisions. Management who didn't believe in the product the team was passionate about. Products canceled through no fault of anyone working on it. Office politics and bickering.

With my own business, I gain agency. If the product fails, it's because I failed to market it properly, or the product vision was bad and did not resonate with enough customers, or because I failed to execute on that vision. When all the decisions are out of your hands, and you can't even see what prompted them, they can feel capricious and arbitrary.

With my own business, I am in control. I don't have one boss, I have hundreds of them. And as long as I continue to provide them with value, I get to continue doing what I'm doing. I like those terms.

mortallywounded2• 2 years ago

I created a SaaS product (b2b) 7+ years ago. I work on it by myself with no team whatsoever. It generates around a million in profit in every year.

lorenzk3• 2 years ago

I want one of these so bad! Without spilling secrets: was it luck or a systematic process that gave you the idea for your company?

mortallywounded2• 2 years ago

It may sound like a cop-out, but both?

I have no doubt luck was involved. I hit the market at a good time and gained traction quickly. I have done zero marketing and customers come in through word of mouth and via search engines. Surely there was luck in there.

As for choosing the idea-- that was more systematic. I chose a service that solved a real pain point for many companies in a specific industry. I chose it because it because:

1. There were many competitors (10+). That meant someone was making money, and more importantly, someone was spending money.

2. The industry/customers had a very clear channel for early word of mouth/traction (ie, it was easy to reach the customers and say "hey look at this solution for X").

3. A cottage industry exists around the industry. There are many "influencers" and training seminars, conferences, etc. Once my service gained some traction it was easy to stick around because people kept talking about it at conferences. I also gave access to these "influencers" for free.

I'd say stick to B2B, and look for 1-3 from above.. those are ideal for a solo-SaaS product.

firtoz• 2 years ago

I'm doing full time freelancing in the UK and loving it tbh, but sometimes it can get a bit difficult to handle.

I was doing typical employment until October 2023 while doing some part time freelancing. The company had layoffs and I decided to do more freelancing while I look for the next job. Then the freelancing pay became double or more what I'd make from normal employment, so I am unlikely to get back to "being an employee" unless the situation changes significantly.

Initially I was worried about being able to find enough gigs to be able to make enough income to survive, but now my main struggle is to not take on too many responsibilities at once to be able to keep the clients happy, and even had to turn a few people down because I'm getting too busy...

I do get some spare time for myself to work on my own things, a few of those projects do bring income, but my main income source and the thing that takes most of my day is the freelancing.

I hired an accounting company to take care of taxes and stuff.

Most of my clients are in the UK.

I work partially through Toptal and some through my network.

I can't complain too much about it!

emursebrian• 2 years ago

I am working on my second startup. The first startup was bootstrapped hardware company. We released a few electronic devices. I worked on the first product part-time. Just before it was released, I decided to leave my job and work on the company full time.

I worked on the second product full time for about a year. It was profitable, but I never scaled the business up enough to make a living from it. I went back to work full time.

By this point, my appetite for hustling on the weekend to build a business in a market with limited growth potential had diminished. I focused on paying off my mortgage and saving money. After a few years, I had saved enough money to be able to cut back my hours and focus more on my hobbies and passion projects.

I've been working on my current startup Emurse full time since the end of 2020. I am covering costs with the revenue from my first startup and living off savings. We're getting ready to launch the first paid product soon.

V-215• 2 years ago

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.

lqet• 2 years ago

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.

knallfrosch• 2 years ago

If you're from a country like Germany, most of what you're skipping financially is the insurance cost that's covered by the employer (social security etc.) Which means you don't have access to the social safety in case you need it.

V-215• 2 years ago

This risk does exist in Poland, but among the criteria for "false self-employment" is being expected to work within fixed hours, and in a location specified by the employer.

As IT workers - even those who've got contracts of employment - typically do flexible hours, and pretty often work from home (or otherwise remotely), it doesn't really apply.

lifestyleguru9• 2 years ago

Being self employed, but only for a single customer, is false self-employment

This is exactly what happens in Poland and everyone involved feels very smart for cheating the system. That's also why software from Poland is such a tacky crap despite so many "talents". The software professionals have no leverage to push back, they only can walk away. The irresistibile benefit is that one can write off buying a car into operating costs, so the dream of PREMIUM GERMAN CAR prevails over doing anything creative.

mkaszkowiak7• 2 years ago

Similiar laws are in Poland, except they're not really enforced.

It's really rare that the tax office would prove a company exists solely for tax optimization. The risk virtually drops to zero if one freelances after the hours and has legitimate invoices with other companies.

This often causes mismatch between Polish employees who wish to work remotely abroad, and for ex. employeers from the DACH region, where I've heard the laws are strictly enforced. One party claims there is no risk, and the other claims it's too risky :-) (taking other factors aside, such as employee protection, etc.)

strobe• 2 years ago

sure that the case in lot of countries but is something really wrong with idea to have 2+ clients as minimum because reason why work done in that way is because person doing it don't wanna agree on terms that 'employment' contract is required and if that 'single' client is gone he always can get another one in few months. Sometimes you work with few clients in single year but sometimes it just one for 2-3y. And worth part that in some places taxes on self-employment might be higher.

jacquesm16• 2 years ago

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.

V-215• 2 years ago

I can't see why a company couldn't have one long-term customer. It's not unusual eg. in the building sector (where large construction projects, not unlike software projects, can take years to complete).

Another common example is MDs - quite a lot of private doctor's offices are contracted by the National Health Fund, basically providing their services for the public healthcare that way.

Clearly having multiple customers isn't a reasonable requirement for a small company. Software engineering isn't like private residential plumbing - "sink drain unclogged, next please!" :)

good luck if your client decides they no longer need your services, suddenly you find out what the downside of being self employed is.

That goes without saying, and the same obviously applies if you're running a "regular" company, with employees, like a restaurant or whatever.

The risk is arguably even greater, as you will usually pile up some financial obligations (such as credits) and other commodities limiting your financial fluidity (remember Covid? Restaurant owners do).

By the way, you can insure yourself against loss of income. Many insurance companies offer this service.

radicalbyte• 2 years ago

If you're not jumping around contracts regularly every 2 years in NL and are not billing the approximate annual wage for your role every year (assuming that you work the 40-44 weeks) then you're an employee and shouldn't be contracting.

The market now is interesting - there are a huge number of low experience / low skill people flooding the market which has driven prices down for some very good people whilst also making it hard for companies to actually find qualified people. It actually lead to me rejecting a project who really wanted me and I fancied (Government but with a chance to have a really big positive impact on society; I moved mountains with the last project and learned some valuable lessons, seemed a shame to let that dull... oh well).

I've been doing it for about 8 years now, I enjoy it and it has allowed me to both grow like crazy and do things I've always been capable of but wouldn't have attempted as an employee.

The other thing: funding in Europe for ventures is horrible compared to the US. I'll be looking to raise for a project this year and I'm dreading it (Healthcare, we're going to try the public route first because it would be better long term.. although it will leave money on the table it will increase the probability of success we believe).

poisonborz2• 2 years ago

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.

V-215• 2 years ago

How would it be beneficial to anyone?

Most programmers provide outsourcing services for companies from abroad (including outside of the EU).

Low taxes help them - and the umbrella companies AKA software houses - to remain competitive on the global market.

So even if they only pay a smaller fraction of their income to the budget, it's still better than if they didn't get the gig to begin with, because the contracts would go elsewhere.

the subcontractor doesn't get any social security.

You do get healthcare insurance in Poland; no difference here. You're paying those fees just the same way.

You're only required to pay minimum pension charges though, so you have to take care of that yourself. (Objectively speaking, investing your savings in the pension system, of all places, probably isn't an optimal strategy anyway. At any rate, noone stops you from paying more than you're legally required, if you think that it is).

the contracting company has more freedoms with getting/tossing employees, although loses a safety net of subcontractor suddenly leaving or changing prices.

It's obviously a trade-off. Being able to let people go without fuss if a customer downscales their budget (I was on the receiving end of this last year) is a competitive advantage.

the government loses oversight of actual corporate structures

What do you mean by that?

Thorrez2• 2 years ago

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?

mkaszkowiak7• 2 years ago

Taxes.

Standard tax rate (on UoP) is 12% up to ~30k USD, the rest is taxed 32%. On top of that, the employer pays a social security fee, its rate rises proportionally to income.

As an one-person business, you have two most popular options:

- 12% flat tax rate on income, with a flat rate social security fee; (1)

- 19% flat tax rate on revenue. The social security fee is dependant on income, but it's less than on UoP. You can write off expenses in this scenario, so the actual tax rate is actually lower. People generally try to write off as much as they can - for example, the tax agency is OK with programmers buying multiple bikes as a means of "transport to clients" ;)

You can also write off VAT in both scenarios, effectively making a lot of major purchases (desks, chairs, phones, etc) way cheaper. There's also a 5% tax rate, called IP Box, but it's tricky and doesn't apply for every scenario, so I'm taking this aside.

With the employer spending 5k EUR per month (21,7k PLN), you're left with:

- 14,6k PLN on UoP

- 18,5k PLN on 12% tax

- 16,7k PLN on 19% tax, out of which you can potentially recover 3,9k PLN

It's easy to see why software developers choose to start a one-person business. It's worth to jump through the hoops to save on taxes.

(1) There are actually 3 levels dependant on income, but it's lower than the UoP fee for basically most software developers

sparks1970• 2 years ago

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.

netman21• 2 years ago

Self employed on and off for 20 years. I am an industry analyst, former Gartner. If you have questions about that I wrote a book about it. :-) https://www.amazon.com/Curmudgeon-How-Succeed-Industry-Analy...

ykonstant• 2 years ago

I am unemployed; I'll teach undergrad and grad math for change (っ˘̩╭╮˘̩)っ

jessegrosjean• 2 years ago

I've been self employed at Hog Bay Software [1] since 2004. I mostly build Mac apps. A few years I did some consulting. A few other years I worked with some other people, but generally it's been just me the whole time.

Curious to know what sustains people.

It allows me to work on what I am interested in, for me that's the key. For whatever reason I've decided that text productivity apps are really interesting, and worth my time to build. So that's what I do. It hasn't lead to great riches, but I wake up pretty much every day excited to work on what's next. Pretty fun!

[1] https://www.hogbaysoftware.com

docdeek• 2 years ago

I’m self employed for nearly five years now. Based in France, working mostly with software companies scaling up. I have been learning as I go and have managed to find some good ‘cornerstone’ clients that I have been working with regularly since I started. These are supplemented with shorter contracts and freelance work, anything from a one-off gig to a couple of months.

I set myself the goal of earning the same or better (after taxes) as what I was as a full time worker in the same sorts of companies I am now working in, and I’ve always managed that - plus I get many more hours in the week to spend with the family, I don’t have to travel constantly, and I can run every day without thinking too hard about how I am going to fit it in around sleep, family, work, and the rest of life.

I sometimes miss a few things about working in a ‘normal’ job in France (job security, sick leave, paid vacations) but the freedom to create my own schedule and fit work around life a lot of the time more than makes up for that.

nprateem• 2 years ago

Yeah 10 years contracting now taking time off to build my own products. Currently focussing on developing my innovation pipeline to systematically evaluate products/opportunities to decide when to continue or abandon them.

Next job is idea generation, prioritisation and mockups of ones that pass the initial filter. Then the real work starts.

8organicbits• 2 years ago

This question could work well as a poll, which is an infrequently used HN feature: https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

jacquesm16• 2 years ago

It's infrequently used because poll votes don't count as upvotes for the poll, which they really should. And is probably my longest standing RFI for HN.

lorenzk3• 2 years ago

Self-employed freelance developer since 2010.

jacquesm16• 2 years ago

I started working for myself in '86, have been at it ever since with temporary excursion whenever a project got larger and I ended up hiring people or having partners. Wouldn't have it any other way in spite of the obvious risks and drawbacks.

throvavay0502• 2 years ago

I'm a full time Twitch streamer since 2020

2024throwaway• 2 years ago

Can you share roughly your followers/subs/avg viewers, and revenue?

satvikpendem• 2 years ago

I technically am self employed as I have my own LLC, but I generally work as a full time engineer for companies. It just helps for tax reasons but also flexibility in my work, ie choose my own hours and pay rate.

wkirby• 2 years ago

Self-employed for 10 years now as the co-runner of Apsis Labs (https://apsis.io); we're a software development agency with a focus on healthcare technology and HIPAA compliance.

After a decade of building products for clients, we've recently launched our own bootstrapped SaaS offering: https://reamdocs.com --- the contract management platform we've built in-house to manage our services business for the last 5 years.

That all pays the bills, but what sustains me is my time outside of work: my family, my hobbies, my cat. Joys which I have time for because self-employment has allowed me to set my own hours, walk away from toxic clients, and freedom to do what is interesting on any given day.

tj_astro• 2 years ago

I'm about to wrap up my 3rd year as a one-person company (https://www.exaresearch.com) specializing in spacecraft flight dynamics and space situtational awareness (SSA). I basically do custom orbit determination things. Super fun. I spent 30+ years in the business before going out on my own. It's going great, primarily because I have a large network in a niche field.

demondemidi2• 2 years ago

I was self employed from 2009 to 2018. I was an embedded programmer / debugger and I had two major sources of income debugging engineering development boards for two boutique companies. I got the first gig from a friend who worked at one, the second by spamming the embedded world conference, and a handful more through linkedin. I couldn’t really travel because I needed a lab with test equipment. But I did double my previous salary north of 200k and I worked as much or as little as needed. It ended up being an average 40hr work week overall. The one thing I missed out on was equity. A decade without bonuses, RSUs, or options really set me back compared to my peers. Plus I hated having to stress about finding new contracts or if I was going to get cut loose. Finally I quit and went back to a big employer and I’m much happier to not have that financial stress and to have equity again.

ProllyInfamous2• 2 years ago

Finally I ... went back to a big employer and I’m much happier

I have a similar timeline: dropped out in 2009 and started a few blue collar shops (mostly electrician-related). By 2019 I realized (with substantial help from clients / friends) I didn't want to be "on call" 24/7, as bossman, so over the next two years I fired all but my two best clients.

Reflecting on my worklife, I am grateful for so many of my clients/experiences; but it sure would have been a whole lot "easier" had I just worked W2 for somebody else [as were my IBEW apprenticeship days].

I had a family emergency 2022Q1 and then lost my housing 2023Q1 (to a landslide), so I've been promising myself "get employed 2024Q1;" and now with all these layoffs, I've just accepted that this will be my second year I don't have to file income taxes (legally, no income).

The one great thing about being self-employed is it does allow higher wages, flexibility, etc.; in my case, I have enough savings to last decades. If I had a family I would definitely prefer the stability and work/life balance of being a W2 employee [verse running a company, managing clients, installing, etc].

demondemidi2• 2 years ago

Sounds like we had similar experiences except for the LANDSLIDE. That sounds horrible!

Do you really need to work if you have decades of savings? Or is it more about just having something to do?

DougN7• 2 years ago

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.

mhitza• 2 years ago

I've been self-employed for the past 5 years, coincidentally because job recruitment processes were so ridiculous and time sinks at the time (spent ~6 months getting bounced around and ghosted), can't even imagine how things are nowadays.

In the past 3 years through my company (https://webesque.agency) with the aim of expanding in digital product delivery, though I haven't invested enough time and marketing on that front yet. Thus I continue to contract and consult on DevOps automation and Cloud related projects for the time being.

ori_b• 2 years ago

I am currently working on helping small companies solve technical problems, build a strong technical culture, and scale their engineering orgs. Both hands on code and leadership, as needed.

For a summary, https://orib.dev/consulting.html

I'm just starting out with this, but it's looking promising.

bemmu2• 2 years ago

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.

netule• 2 years ago

That’s really cool. Does it all generate enough revenue for you to support yourself financially?

bemmu2• 2 years ago

Yes, as long as I remember not to overspend when things are going well, to cover for future failures.

fredsted4• 2 years ago

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.

greenie_beans• 2 years ago

nice! good job

belinder2• 2 years ago

This looks really useful, I've used similar websites in the past but it's nice that it's all together here in one place.

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

snovv_crash• 2 years ago

Press and hold the back, then select the one you want, works on many browsers

bobobob420• 2 years ago

Ctrl/cmd click back button

fredsted4• 2 years ago

not have it redirect on load

I've not been able to reproduce this in neither Safari nor Chrome (https://sf.gl/share/1707213387.mp4), curious to know which browser you're using. Thanks!

jjice• 2 years ago

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!

fredsted4• 2 years ago

Thanks for the feedback!

svenhof• 2 years ago

Thank you for making this great tool.

scottydelta• 2 years ago

It's a great product. I have used to test things.

One feature that might not align perfectly with your service but definitely something I would use is Email to webhook forwarding and vice versa.

fredsted4• 2 years ago

Thanks! You can do this with Custom Actions: https://docs.webhook.site/custom-actions.html :-)

berkayozturk• 2 years ago

I use it almost everyday at work! Thank you for making it.

ja27• 2 years ago

Nice. I was just thinking of building something like this last week lol

abnercoimbre• 2 years ago

Two years running indie tech conferences [0]. I’m still a programmer: I wrote a replacement for Ticketmaster/Eventbrite and never looked back.

[0] https://handmadecities.com

neom• 2 years ago

Consulting. I've worked deeply on startups for the past 20 years. Now I'm on my own working with founders who need some help getting through a stuck patch/thinking through problems. It's a great way to stay around startups without doing one yourself.

hnrodey• 2 years ago

this is the post I needed today. ty!

rishabhjain• 2 years ago

Been a year and a half since I started https://snowpixel.app/

Pays the bills and gives me enough free time.

fredwu• 2 years ago

I'm "half-half" so to speak.

I work as a CTO in my day job (as an employee).

Also I'm self-employed (via a company structure) to build https://persumi.com - a blogging platform, and https://rizz.farm - a lead gen platform, as well as to work on client work.

https://persumi.com/u/fredwu/hire-fred :)

jurynulifcation• 2 years ago

I'm technically self employed because I got into a toxic contractorship as my first gig, when I didn't have the knowledge to avoid getting taken advantage of. But it's really just a software shop refusing to hire employees and using "contractors" for everything (we're actually employees)

bigie352• 2 years ago

After working at various start-ups and Fortune 200 companies as a Product Manager, I am now working at my families niche consulting company.

The twist is my wife is also helping run her family business and while the two companies bring in similar revenue every year, that's about all they have in common.

It's been pretty eye opening seeing how my father and my FIL operate their respective businesses.

spot5010• 2 years ago

I’m curious to know. Eye opening in what respects?

bigie352• 2 years ago

Mostly in their management philosophy.

My dad typically believes in working smarter not harder and my FIL will do basically anything he can to save a dollar including doing most things himself.

What muddies the water a bit is their respective behavior might be a function of the businesses they run.

Our business is a software consulting practice with healthy margins and my FIL has a physical location with high fixed costs (owns a Tennis club).

FpUser• 2 years ago

Been self employed for over 20 years already. Have my own software and hardware products that generate revenue. Over a time revenue has declined and complement by designing and implementing custom software products for clients.

I am registered as corporation so I am my own employee and pay myself a salary

justanother• 2 years ago

I don't often use the term 'self-employed' because I don't directly receive 1099 income, and I receive a W2 paycheck and benefits, although my employer's headquarters happens to be in my office. But in practical terms, yep I'm self-employed.

We (my wife and I) do business-development for our crazy schemes, sometimes alone, sometimes with the help of up to six contract developers that we love to work with. I fund those crazy schemes by doing contract software development myself. Benefits include 100% paid health and dental insurance, as much 401(k) matching as we can possibly have, and afternoon siestas.

We have no plans to hire anyone else, simply because it would be very important to me to give them a square deal: Equal ownership in the company, equal benefits, nice equipment, and so forth. But I don't mind enlisting other contractors who are already comfortable, and if one of our schemes really takes off, we incorporate a Delaware C-corp around it and make sure everyone owns a piece. That's only happened once, but I managed to quickly step down from the C-suite and become a SW dev contractor at that company.

mfrisbie• 2 years ago

I've been self-employed for nearly two years. I work on a Chrome extension [1] that is used by a significant fraction of the US legal cannabis industry for compliance.

2/3 of my time is spent on consulting projects, which pay better, and the rest is spent maintaining the platform. At the moment, the platform is self-sustaining and the revenue from it is growing fast. I work some of the largest companies in the industry, which is great for network building. The flexibility in schedule it offers is terrific, and I have no need to fundraise or hire.

[1] https://www.trackandtrace.tools/

jborden132• 2 years ago

I'm in the process of standing up a Chrome & Firefox extension. Can I ask what your route to traction was? Many thanks...

ochrist• 2 years ago

Self-employed for 24 years now. Mostly doing test management and project management, but also some coding on and off.

darajava7• 2 years ago

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.

jjackson5324• 2 years ago

That's really amazing. You should start doing some marketing to accelerate the growth!

If you don't mind, can you share how much you're currently able to make from this?

darajava7• 2 years ago

Thanks very much! I’d like to learn more about marketing to help me grow it. It’s hard to put an exact figure on it because it’s essentially growing every day which i’m so happy about, but recently it’s become just enough to sustain me. Perhaps at an entry level software engineering position

jamesmurdza• 2 years ago

Congrats—That is awesome! Curious, how long did it take you to get your first customer?

darajava7• 2 years ago

It happened very soon after launch actually, maybe a few days. Because the name essentially is a search term, people were able to find it right away

bart7782• 2 years ago

I could not find any pricing options on your website.

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.

darajava7• 2 years ago

Such a good point, I never thought of that and think it would add credibility to the product too. 90% of traffic comes from the app store and the pricing is shown there on Google and Apple, most people never see the landing page, but I think this would be good to add.

PS it’s about $30 for a year and $6 for a month (depending on your state/country)

plants• 2 years ago

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!

darajava7• 2 years ago

Thanks very much for signing up! Any issues, questions, or ideas please contact me-you can directly email me from the app.

throwaway22033• 2 years ago

Looks cool. Would love to know pricing and how/where you store data?

darajava7• 2 years ago

Pricing depends on the country but have addressed that in another comment! The privacy policy explains how we store data but will make this clearer and more upfront. I store recordings separately from user info in an S3 bucket and the database is hosted in digital ocean. Recordings are sent to OpenAI for ephemeral analysis and transcription.

papa20• 2 years ago

this is pretty cool. what stack did you use to build the app and how did you launch two native apps so quickly?

davidkuennen• 2 years ago

I'm self employed with https://stockevents.app as well as employed as the Head of Product Management for a construction software company.

nhance• 2 years ago

Self-employed since 2005. It's been a slow road and I haven't wanted to lead a big team so it's been a mix of consulting and small projects. One of them is gaining a tiny bit of traction so I'm hopeful I can scale it up. I'd much rather build a software business than lead a consulting business.

thibaut_barrere2• 2 years ago

Self employed since 2005.

I run 2 long-term consulting gigs (one of them is an Elixir project for the French government at https://transport.data.gouv.fr?locale=en, the other is in the healthcare sector).

I have also bootstrapped various products (and plan to do more in the future).

SeanAnderson2• 2 years ago

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)

fakedang• 2 years ago

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!

SeanAnderson2• 2 years ago

Thank you! :D I appreciate the kind words.

andyish• 2 years ago

I built https://team-today.com with a friend about 4 years ago and have been working on it full-time for the past 6 months.

I tried to get funding but never really got there and we've just managed to grind it out to a point where we have enough revenue to pay ourselves.

The flexible lifestyle is great, I play golf on Wednesdays and help out with childcare much more than I would have been able to with my previous jobs.

There is the looming threat that all our customers will leave us one day and I'll have to go back to a regular 9-5 job, but hey ho.

biddit2• 2 years ago

I've been independently employed the for 13 years as a software consultant. Most of my work has been building web-based business software for small/medium sized businesses. This involves both designing and implementing solutions for non-technical clients. It's a lot of greenfield design and development, which feels a lot like working in an early stage startup.

I have at times taken 6mo - 24mo contracts as just a software engineer when the pay and environment were good enough. This work is far less interesting, because someone else is typically designing what is to be built.

hospitalJail• 2 years ago

It's a lot of greenfield design and development, which feels a lot like working in an early stage startup.

What does this mean?

Also how'd you get your first business?

topkai22• 2 years ago

The term “greenfield” comes from physical development- a you are taking a “green field” and turning it into a factory or housing or similar. It’s contrasted to “brownfield” which means developing in or over an already built up area.

In software development “greenfield” generally refers to new systems development whereas “brownfield” refers to the maintenance, extension, or enhancement of existing systems and solutions.

taormina• 2 years ago

Greenfield development is a way of saying "new and from scratch" usually, whereas editing an existing codebase would not be.

biddit2• 2 years ago

Sibling comments both answered the greenfield thing as I would have :)

As for first business, I built a very small network over 7 years working in house at an advertising agency (which did a lot of digital work) and some startups. While I was just an IC developer, because I could communicate with non-technical people well, I became the first point of contact for a lot of decision makers over time.

If you want to do solo technical consulting start making friends with non-technical people who are in leadership roles. It takes time but it does snowball.

sebnun4• 2 years ago

About 6 months ago I left my job to start my own company and make a language learning tool I always wanted to build (https://www.langturbo.com), It's something I use myself and I see real value in it.

I'm fully bootstrapped and I have some months left of savings to try this out. If this doesn't get traction then I guess I'll have to get a "real" job again :).

KuzMenachem• 2 years ago

link has a , in place of a .

sebnun4• 2 years ago

Thanks! fixed.

jcfrei• 2 years ago

Very cool idea. Probably also needs an app to really gain traction (maybe just start with a webview and not a full native app?). I think lots of people are listening to podcasts on smartphones.

sebnun4• 2 years ago

Agreed, I am also working on a react native app for iOS and Android. I decided to release it on the web first to avoid the extra cut Apple and Google will take and to iterate faster on a single platform, but as you mention, most people expect to have a native app for these B2C apps.

replwoacause• 2 years ago

I like the design of the site, well done!

sebnun4• 2 years ago

Thanks, I'm not a designer by trade. It was inspired by a design trend I like: "neo brutalism"

ailun• 2 years ago

This is nice! Going to try it out for a while. Could potentially expand to TV shows on YouTube, there are tons of free ones for my target language (Chinese). Also, this might be challenging, but would be nice to see Chinese divided into Cantonese/Mandarin and simplified/traditional characters, although it's not a big deal for intermediate learners to just choose podcasts that use their target language themselves.

throwaway22033• 2 years ago

It says you have Arabic but doesn't break it out by dialects.

axegon_• 2 years ago

Not anymore but I was for around 2 and a half years up until this time last year... Well kind of - I worked as a consultant and registered an ltd. Mostly for tax reasons - the corporate tax where I live is very low and I kind of enjoyed sending out an invoice at the end of each month and move on. The company is still legally active since it costs ~10 bucks a month so if I decide to pick up something on the side or get some of my personal projects to an actual product, I can get them out in no time. Or if I decide to go back into the consulting side of things, which has certain pros(but also cons).

vhpoet• 2 years ago

I've been juggling side projects while working full-time as an engineer for the last 15+ years. Most of these projects tanked, but a few have started to bring in some side income. About 6 months ago, I went fully self-employed. I'm not at a Silicon Valley salary range yet, but I should hopefully be there in a year or so.

Main income builders: - https://www.deepwander.com - https://www.readthistwice.com - https://www.iso100mm.com

I've got a background in B2B and product development, and I don't think it would be too hard for me to raise some capital, but I'm intentionally choosing the indie/bootstrapped route as I want to maintain my relaxed lifestyle and have complete ownership and freedom over what I work on and how I do it.

I also enjoy working on B2C way more than B2B because I like seeing my impact on an individual level. But I digress. :)

liminvorous• 2 years ago

I got a certificate error you might want to look into: > Web sites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for www.iso100mm.com. The certificate is only valid for the following names: img.iso100mm.com, iso100mm.com

clintmcmahon• 2 years ago

I've been a freelance web dev/consultant for the past 10 years. Like some other people mentioned, been wanting to have my own product so I started developing a Azure B2C app to help organizations manage users. It's very very niche but solves a problem that I've run into multiple times.

My goal is to continue consulting while releasing my side project.

chrsw• 2 years ago

If I could build things on my own I wouldn't be working for someone else.

mihaitodor• 2 years ago

I am part of Independent Data Lab [1], a collective of bioinformatics consultants based in Europe.

[1] https://www.independentdatalab.com

PaulDavisThe1st• 2 years ago

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).

ohthatsnotright3• 2 years ago

Thank you for Ardour!

blueferret• 2 years ago

I guess I'm partially self-employed, in that I'm reactivating an old/defunct business providing content management & consulting. Still very early on, as I'm figuring out good niches in our AI-enabled world.

I do love seeing threads like this though. All the fun tools & projects people build up.

jmduke• 2 years ago

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.

snide• 2 years ago

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.

Bookmarked for when I do need it!

XCSme5• 2 years ago

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.

twojobsoneboss• 2 years ago

Many 9-5ers minds are always thinking of how to escape anyways, so at least you have something tangible to think about if you already have that business

noufalibrahim2• 2 years ago

I went from full time employment to freelancing in 2010 or so. I wouldn't do that again. Freelancing is the worst parts of a full time job and the worst parts of entrepreneurship combined in retrospect.

I then founded a software services company where I currently work and grew it. It's been a very rewarding journey so far.

I'm not sure if either of these qualifies as "self employed" but that's that. :)

zoomablemind2• 2 years ago

... I then founded a software services company where I currently work and grew it.

Does it mean it's around your software product, or it's some sort of agency?

noufalibrahim2• 2 years ago

An agency. We have a product in the market and a few internal experiments we're working on but the bulk of the revenue is from software services.

charlieyu1• 2 years ago

Self employed on Maths education. Doing a variety of part time job, mainly tutoring. Salary is not great but somehow I'm on my 12th year of being self employed

yboris• 2 years ago

Math tutoring was my main gig for years around and after college. In New Jersey I had plenty of $50/hr cash clients (circa 2010). Some were even up to $100/hr.

It's an excellent self-employment opportunity with virtually zero costs (other than traveling to students by car).

stephenhuey• 2 years ago

Self-employed since December 2019. Back then I wasn't sure how long it would last, but I'm still doing it! I've juggled several consulting clients needed web/mobile app development, sometimes simultaneously, and sometimes with extra developers on the project. A business partner and I also started a B2B SaaS that we're bootstrapping.

rossdavidh• 2 years ago

I mean, it depends on your definition of "employed". :) I am only getting a few hours per week right now, but I am an independent contractor.

donniefitz2• 2 years ago

Self-employed since 2020. I'm basically a software consultant doing hands on software development in the .Net world.

racl101• 2 years ago

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.

JamesBarney3• 2 years ago

Yeah did the same, and I'm also enjoying the corporate life.

Learned a ton of lessons, the first of which is starting a consulting shop for general development is fools errand. You can kind of make if worth it if you're decent at sales and offshore everything.

If I do it again I'll slice our niche down thinner than prosciutto, something like CRM integrations for real estate agents, and have contracts that allowed us to own the IP.

zoomablemind2• 2 years ago

...and have contracts that allowed us to own the IP.

Is it a dreamland or such clause is really possible in the present day cookie-cutter contracts?

WarOnPrivacy2• 2 years ago

Most of my 30+yrs in on-site biz support are SE. I do most everything that small-med biz need done. Mostly Microsoft but some *nix/BSD.

I build firewalls, deploy workstations, troubleshoot crapware like Quickbooks, setup/maintain domains, admin MS exchange/azure, build/run mail servers, virtualize things, fix hardware inc med & pharma equip (with son #3).

Lots of other things except web - which is done by my long-time friend/biz partner.

I've been employed on and off (mostly by clients) and prefer that but circumstances always intervened.

Pros: Flexible sched is plus to deal with family demands and endless crisis. Cons: Uninsured.

WarOnPrivacy2• 2 years ago

Backstory to the above, if you want it:

In 1990 near DC, I did lawn care & hauling. I ingratiated myself with a guy who did GSA auctions and had a PC shop. I did auctions and learned to fix hardware for 2 years. His shop closed and DC is super expensive. I moved my kid and pregnant wife to FL (inexpensive back then) in 92. Worked as an mechanic at a car lot and at a small local IT shop.

In 93 I got a programming scholarship to college. In my last year the org funding me was shuttered as part of the Contract with America. I graduated but without connections, getting hired here was difficult. Two years of resumes yielded one distant job offer.

During that time I did residential IT, which is about as fun as it sounds. I also handed out cards to every local biz and chatted up anyone who'd stand for it. Three years of that led to my first real client, an org for developmentally disabled adults (ARC) down south. I supported ARCs for years until I picked up a nearby automotive group.

I got sent back to zero a lot. The 08 meltdown hit car dealerships. I pivoted to local medical but market changes from the ACA ended that. Next was wife's MI (5 kids by then) and that chaos left me with 2 small clients until she left in 19.

During the entire 30 years, I had a friend and on/off biz partner. I gave him my ARC and pharma clients in 04 to focus on auto. In 19 he moved out of state and returned the pharma along with a web retailer. I picked up another med practice and am really busy sometimes.

Combined with income from 3 sons, we're making just enough to cover FLs (now) expensive bills.

apercu• 2 years ago

Consulting (mostly DT/business process) since end of 2014.

nlh16• 2 years ago

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 :)

erehweb• 2 years ago

Is forgery ever an issue?

93po• 2 years ago

Are you hiring? Haha

nlh16• 2 years ago

Eventually, I hope so! Gotta spin up the machine a bit more. I don't ever want more than a handful of people working on this I am a big fan of the 2-pizza team, but I know I need to scale to a bit more than just me.

lwhalen• 2 years ago

If you're comfortable answering, I'd be SUPER interested to know how the income compares to tech!

nlh16• 2 years ago

If I may give you a somewhat indirect answer: One of the best things about this business is it returns proportionate to the effort you put in. I know people working with $50k in capital who make $500k a year. I also know people with $1m in capital who make $100k a year. (And I know people with $50k in capital making $50k a year).

And at the extreme: I know one high-volume wholesale dealer (who's been doing this for decades) talking about his business. He has about $250k in capital for inventory and he turns his inventory 36 times a year --- $9m in gross sales! And he's a high margin guy -- so I'm guessing he's making $1.5-$2m a year on $250k in rolling inventory.

There are a lot of ways to make money in the coin business and one of the most fun parts is learning new and different strategies every day.

tiborsaas• 2 years ago

How does tech help you to run this business?

nlh16• 2 years ago

I left this reply for last because it's the best question and most significant one for me. Tech helps me A LOT, and it's one of the reasons I'm having so much fun doing what I'm doing.

I've written my own software stack that does a few things:

Consolidates pricing -- by putting readily-available data all on a single screen, so when everyone else needs to check 3 different price guides to get various pricing indicators, I have it all in one place.

Manages inventory -- you would be surprised and perhaps shocked at how disorganized most dealers are. They have absolutely no idea what they own or how much money they're making -- when they buy a coin, they slap a sticker on it with their "cost code" which is just an incredibly weak substitution cypher -- and they refer to this code when they quote sale prices.

Allows for quick appraisals/quotes -- again, most dealers open a paper pricing guide and write down line by line how much they're willing to pay for a coin when they're quoting someone. I can enter a line in 10 seconds and have a buy price right away.

Does some VERY light machine learning / price prediction -- I'd love to say this is massively complex AI, but it's a pretty simple tabular regression based on historical sales data. It gives me one extra data point when I'm buying or selling to figure out if I'm paying a good price or not.

I think it's very possible to run a successful coin business without tech and I know a lot of people who have done it, but I certainly think having this software is helping me get better faster. It's like a set of training wheels that lets me play with much more experienced dealers at a much faster pace than I'd normally be running.

jwithington• 2 years ago

how specific is the hobby? are folks generalist collectors or do people go deep on a specific region/period?

nlh16• 2 years ago

All of the above! There are people who are SUPER specific -- they collect only a single series (say, Buffalo Nickels from 1913-1938), some people who only collect a very specific type within a series (Buffalo Nickels from San Francisco in MS65 or better), and generalists who just like anything that's pretty or interesting or gold or silver or from their hometown, etc.

There are 1001 ways to collect and it's fun to meet all the different folks and learn about their different approaches.

dogman1444• 2 years ago

To what extent did your past income (IPOs, executive…) provide the necessary capital to do this profitably? I wonder if there are some economies of scale required outside of numismatics know-how - ie get positive expected value/profit if you can front to buy $100k worth of coins for the 1 coin that is worth it at $101k.

nlh16• 2 years ago

That is an excellent and reasonable question. I was able to put a moderate chunk of capital into my inventory and yes, that absolutely has helped (the old 'it takes money to make money'), but at the same time, I'm not the most efficient capital allocator. I know people who make just as much as I do (and more!) with 1/10th the capital, but they play a different version of the game I do and have a different set of skills.

I do think that numismatic know-how is an absolute must and the more you have the more opportunities there are. There's very little money to be made simply churning bullion, for example. That doesn't require a ton of know-how other than hanging a shingle and buying and selling gold and silver. But margins there are 2-3% if you're lucky, so that's a hard game to play unless you've got a BIG chunk of capital to throw at it. (Also, I'd argue bullion slinging is on the fringe of true "numismatics" but I'm a snob about that lol)

ethanpil• 2 years ago

I have been curious about using computer vision to bulk scan and identify valuable coins. Have systems like this been put into use already? If not do you think they might dilute the value of "rare" coins by creating many more "finds" then were typically possible without the technology?

nlh16• 2 years ago

Hasn't been done (well) yet, and it's absolutely doable. BUT - I don't think that's actually one of the big problems to be solved. I would argue there are enough knowledgable eyeballs out there that there really aren't too too many "undiscovered" rarities.

And what I mean by that is, for example: The 1909-S VDB or the 1955 Doubled Die are two of the mega rarities when it comes to Lincoln cents. They are worth $500+ even in the worst shape. But they're very obvious to someone with even basic coin knowledge, and there are lots of books and pictures out there. And in fact, I'd argue there are very very very few of those coins out there that haven't been identified for what they are -- they've been known rarities for 114 and 68 years respectively. So computer vision telling someone that it's a rare coin isn't going to be too much of a game-changer.

(This is a strongly stated, loosely held belief btw - I can easily be argued into a different perspective).

I think a much more interesting application for computer vision to the business is when it comes to grading (coins are graded on a 1-70 scale for Reasons). And in some cases, the difference a single grade point makes can be $thousands. Official grading is still done entirely by human eyes. An efficient computer vision system to look for undergraded coins I think has real opportunity. It's not an easy feat though - you can't really truly grade with static photos, and there needs to be normalization, so you'd need video clips w/ depth mapping of many thosands of coins to train a model properly. But it could be done!

bdhcuidbebe• 2 years ago

I used the iphone/android Maktun a little, it can identify coins and paper bills from camera.

bibliotekka• 2 years ago

Awhile back a friend of mine started talking about how he was getting into coin dealing as a full time job. I was never able to quite believe him, and then was just kinda baffled when he started buying houses and nice cars and boats and taking expensive vacations. Was he legit or was he dealing drugs? Is the coin game that lucrative?

nlh16• 2 years ago

Hmmm I mean it can certainly be lucrative but it is NOT a get-rich-quick kind of business. It's a get-rich-slow business if you know what you're doing and put lots of effort in over years. So I'd say I'm skeptical, but you never know!

I'm not sure I'd jump to the conclusion that he was dealing drugs, but it's certainly an option that he was...shall we say....washing his income.

bbsz• 2 years ago

huh! that's awesome, personally - this is a very inspiring bio.

nlh16• 2 years ago

Thank you!!

paulette4492• 2 years ago

What percentage of your sales are to other dealers vs collectors/non-industry customers? Thx

nlh16• 2 years ago

This is a good question and one that comes up often. I'd say it's around 60% to dealers, 40% to collectors. I'd like the skew to be more like 10%/90%, and that's my aim, but I take the position that a quick profitable sale to a dealer can be better than waiting for the right collector to come around and pay full retail price. It's a delicate dance and you need to develop an intuition for what coins are collector-friendly and quick sellers vs. what's more likely to sit around for a while. And the answer is different for every dealer and every series of coin. There are a lot of variables!

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

Do you do paid appraisals of collections?

nlh16• 2 years ago

Yes! And free appraisals if the collection is for sale and I can have an opportunity to make an offer :)

It's a balance of time investment for me. If I know someone has no intention of selling and just needs an insurance appraisal, then that would be a paid service since I'm simply selling my time and expertise (which I'm more than happy to do). If there's an opportunity for me to purchase the collection, I'll usually put the bid together at no charge since that's a sales & marketing expense on my internal brain books.

A lot of dealers will try to split the difference -- they'll offer the appraisal at no charge if they get to purchase the collection, and if they don't end up purchasing then the appraisal fee comes into play. I actually think that's a reasonably fair model and may adapt that.

sixQuarks3• 2 years ago

I’ve been self employed since 2004. Never really had a “real” job even before that. Started a web site in 1997 and sold it a year later for 7 figures, worked as a “cofounder” at the company that acquired, then started more sites on the side until revenue exceeded my salary and quit.

petecooper• 2 years ago

How many of you are self employed?

+1. Self-employed since 2006. Previously at Sophos.

What do you do?

I'm a technical generalist, and it's slowly killing me. I need to specialise in…something.

Curious to know what sustains people.

Fear of eviction & a broken anhedonic treadmill. Coming up to 20 years of that, there's a lot of damage to fix, frankly.

devgoth• 2 years ago

I feel the same way regarding being a generalist. I’ve been a software generalist with a focus on web dev for my entire career but as I progress in my career I see the benefit of specializing. I can definitely see the benefit of specializing as a self-employed/freelance software engineer.

defulmere• 2 years ago

Currently self-employed with a web hosting company started with some former colleagues when the company we used to work for was bought out and shut down. We were fortunate to be included in a list of alternate providers that the old company gave to their customers and had an early influx of a couple thousand customers. As a result we've got a ton of customers who we've been working with for 16+ years.

I handle the customer-facing stuff, ie service and support. That sort of work has the downside of dealing with occasional negativity, but for the most part our customers are happy and capable of producing complex problems that are fun to solve :)

geocrasher• 2 years ago

Greetings from another web hosting junkie! 25 years in the business this year.

shanecleveland• 2 years ago

Happy customer here!

moralestapia2• 2 years ago

Yo!

Opalstacker here as well, is it 16 years now? Wow, time flies!

Sending my greetings to Sean, best support I've ever had :D.

dheera• 2 years ago

I was self-employed from 2020-2022, mainly for tax reasons. There are lots of things 1099 employees can deduct from taxes (home office rent, lunches, any work-related electronics and furniture you buy that the company doesn't reimburse, etc.)

Just make sure that when you negotiate the rate you bump it up enough to account for self-employment tax, health insurance, and vacation time. The company would have to pay for these anyway for W-2s (self employment tax becomes payroll tax) so they shouldn't be opposed to the slightly higher rate to account for these things.

It's idiotic that W-2 cannot deduct these but it's reality.

As a bonus if you ever work overtime you actually get paid for your additional work. Another thing W-2s should get but don't.

rsweeney21• 2 years ago

I'm currently self employed, but I just accepted a role in big tech. After 4 years I was able to set up my recruiting company to run without me, so I can earn about $300K-$500K per year from that, plus my full-time salary.

I'm also working on a new SaaS product (co-pilot + CRM for small recruiting agencies). I'm looking for someone to work on it with me. Tech stack is svelte kit + node + python for custom models. I have an audience of 160K followers on LinkedIn, mostly recruiters, that I can reach when the product is launched.

If you are looking for an interesting side project that will generate revenue, email robert at getditto dot com.

benkyo• 2 years ago

I would like to be self employed. But I don't know how to find contracting gigs. Any advice?

wordpad253• 2 years ago

Same as finding a job, go through all your contacts - work colleagues, clients or friends

teuobk2• 2 years ago

Yup, self-employed embedded firmware and hardware engineer. I mostly consult on things like wearable sensors (especially class 2 and class 3 medical devices) and industrial control systems. I also have a bit of an odd niche in phosphorescence-measurement instruments for research and practical applications. The closer to the metal, the better! The tighter the power requirements, the better! The more connected, the better!

Been doing it independently for almost 14 years now. Was based in Minnesota, but now I'm in Colorado. Wouldn't have it any other way.

wordpad253• 2 years ago

Is compensation competitive compared to working for Intel or something? Do you make 150 hourly?

teuobk2• 2 years ago

In terms of total compensation, I probably pay myself about what I would make at one of the big tech companies. (Side note: before changing to consulting, I did spend several years working as an engineer in a "real" job at a large medical device company.) The real appeal to me is twofold: first, I have strong control over my time; and second, I get to see and work on a very wide range of interesting projects and challenges. You can certainly get all of this in a traditional job as well, but my personal opinion is that it's easier to find it as a consultant.

gwbas1c• 2 years ago

Not currently self-employed, but I've been a "self-employed" contractor in the past.

In case it was because the "client" wanted a temp, but the contract lasted longer than what, IMO, was appropriate. I was early-career, and the "client" really wanted to treat me as an employee.

In the second case the employer had a limited budget and we agreed on contract-to-hire. 18 months went by and I eventually had to really twist their arm to bring me on full-time. (They were treating me like an employee.)

Anyway, contracting (as a self-employed consultant)'s great if you like that kind of thing and are prepared to incorporate to take advantage of tax laws; but if you want to be an employee, it's annoying.

jborden132• 2 years ago

I've been self-employed since 2006. Started my last company in 2008. Bootstrapped and grew that over 12 years and sold it to private equity. Private equity mismanaged the rollup they assembled and lost 95% of the value in the companies.

Now I find myself middling between looking for steady/normal work and trying to stand up my new project, https://getspence.ai (landing page gets a revamp this week). I never expected trying to find steady/normal work as an exited entrepreneur to be so difficult. There are so many square holes and I often feel like a round peg.

hypertexthero2• 2 years ago

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.

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/

kmarc• 2 years ago

Live simply and reduce expenses.

Besides the obvious message here (less spending, more money to save), the simple life is that gives you less headache and burden of administration, which is a huge pro when it comes to "being on your own" (eg managing yourself as a business).

In general, minimalistic lifestyle xnot owning stuff (especially expensive stuff like a car, home, etc) gives so much freedom...

neilv• 2 years ago

The first tip about being self-employed is funny and telling:

1. Live simply and reduce expenses. Avoid debt if you can. Rice and beans recipe:

Some people can make really good money self-employed, but for the rest of us (including myself), salaried employment would've been much easier.

Also, a period of lower income will keep paying negative dividends afterwards, because it's expensive to be poor. There might also be long-term impact of stress, if the lower income and uncertainty of being self-employed had more net bad stress than the corporate job would've. (Though corporate BS as an employee can be the worst stress, worse than not knowing whether you can keep your self-employed business afloat.)

bruce5112• 2 years ago

Being self employed is not for the faint-hearted. You get to work long hours, for irregular pay, for lots of different bosses (I mean customers), and as a bonus (if you succeed) you get to deal with difficult staff.

And those are the good bits...

On the other hand you are more in control. You decide what to work on, and when. You decide how many zoom meetings to have (well, sort of.) You won't be laid off (although you might not get paid.) There's no office politics, and no boss to get jn your way.

Sure it can end up being financially rewarding, but a good job, with good investing, likely comes out ahead.

spookybones• 2 years ago

Are you still finding clients for static websites and Wordpress? I got out of that game six years ago and am considering getting back in as a side-hustle. It seems though that most of that freelance work has dried up.

hypertexthero2• 2 years ago

Mainly previous clients I’d worked with before, with occasional new ones.

Meeting in person and getting along with your client is important.

https://www.miltonglaser.com/files/Essays-10things-8400.pdf

ultra-jeremyx• 2 years ago

Interesting thread. Anyone here in the U.S. and supporting a family? The main hurdle for me starting my own business is cost of healthcare. I haven't looked too deeply into options, but I assume I'd be taking on a huge cost to support a spouse and children.

JamesBarney3• 2 years ago

If you don't have any current expensive active costs the marketplace is fine. It's not great if you have a spouse or kids who suffers from a chronic condition that is hard to get covered for, but it's mostly fine for most health catastrophes.

dbrueck2• 2 years ago

Be sure to make complete use of any subsidies you can get through the marketplace.

For example, if you saved up some money to live off of while you get your business going, it's very possible that your net income for the year could be negative (or at least very low), so with a spouse and kids it's feasible that your insurance premiums could be $0.

Of course, once you start making money, you'll want to dial back and eventually stop using the subsidies, otherwise come tax time you'll have to pay them all back for that year.

mauvehaus2• 2 years ago

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.

https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149...

buttermonster• 2 years ago

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?

mauvehaus2• 2 years ago

I'm sorry you don't much time to pursue it; It's a delight to get to build things!

I might be a little weird in that I started woodworking by taking classes to explore it as a possible career change. I took some evening classes, followed by some week-long classes to see how it would feel to do it all day for a full week. It's not directly comparable, but it was close enough.

Given that I got into this with the intent of it possibly being a job instead of going from hobby to career, I'm not sure I have a good basis for answering whether doing it for work has sucked the enjoyment out of it. I love building stuff, and when I get tired of doing one kind of project, I seek out other types. Sometimes I quote something lower than I otherwise would if it's something I'd like to do (or vice-versa). Honestly, I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do this for work.

The parts that do sometimes wear me down are the non-woodworking parts. Today I'm in front of my computer getting my books finalized to get a P&L to my accountant for our taxes. I can enthusiastically recommend FreshBooks for having excellent support, but damn, bookkeeping is not my thing.

Figuring out how to market the product is also a trick; I don't have a background in that, and I'm probably overlooking opportunities as a result.

Keeping a website up to date is sometimes kind of a hassle. My wife does most of the nuts-and-bolts work (because otherwise I'd get hung up on stupid stuff that doesn't matter), but I'm still very much a part of generating the content.

As for pitfalls, I guess the above has pretty well covered it :-D Figuring out the non-woodworking aspects is a continuous learning experience.

jeanlucas• 2 years ago

I still find your comment hilarious

oooyay• 2 years ago

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.

pmontra2• 2 years ago

Self employed since 2006. Currently working for a couple of customers. Three of them would be too much, no meaningful weekly deliveries for at least one of them. Current stacks: Django with server side rendering and Rails with a Vue.js frontend. Side projects on my home servers in whatever fits short time slots and small footprints: Lua with OpenResty, Python with customized http.server POST and GET methods, Ruby and bash scripts. Possibly other things that don't come to my mind now.

The greatest thing it to be able to adjust the daily and weekly schedule around what I want or have to do and when, and no commuting.

t_mahmood2• 2 years ago

How do you manage?

I have difficult managing two clients. How do you switch context, and make sure your are fairly distributing time and focus for each client, while not getting overwhelmed. My psychiatrist suspected ADHD, so probably that's why context switching is difficult for me. How do you make yourself to stay on the task and meet deadlines?

pmontra2• 2 years ago

Two consecutive days for a customer, tree days for the other one. Ideally it would be 2+2 and 3 free days but it's difficult to find a new customer that is happy with only 2 days.

Anyway, yes context switching can be a problem. That's why those days must be consecutive. Furthermore, I write down in a text file a few lines about what I did every day and how many hours I spent. My file goes back to October 2012. That's very useful to bill customers at the end of the month and to restart from the previous week. I also write short TODOs in the same file about what I'll have to do the next week when I'll be back on the project. Git commit messages and slack chats also help to get back into context.

What else... I have a virtual desktop per customer, with editor windows, terminals, browser windows open all the time. Not having to restart everything every week and finding all pieces in the same place probably helps too. It surely costs some RAM but it's cheap. My laptop has 32 GB, 18.9 used by programs right now according to htop.

smallerfish• 2 years ago

I run a fractional CTO business. I started it in 2013, went full time as CTO with my 4th client and stayed through exit a couple of years back, and then took on multiple clients again starting around 12 months ago.

The flexibility and being my own boss is great. I have enough bandwidth to work on long term bets, while keeping income flowing. The type of clients who hire fractional CTOs can be challenging - they're typically bootstrapping, and often have unrealistic expectations. Finding new clients hasn't been particularly hard, at least so far; word of mouth in my network has been about 70% of engagements, with online postings the remainder.

Not for everybody. I own my house and don't have kids, so I have a high risk tolerance. But, if you have a safety net and the confidence in your skills, it's a great lifestyle.

primax2• 2 years ago

That sounds like a fantastic business. Are you hiring more fractional CTOs? I'd love to check you guys out and apply.

jason_zig• 2 years ago

I've been self employed (doing the "solopreneur" thing) for ~8 years now. I wrote a blog post about the early days[0]. TLDR I have been bouncing between eCommerce (Shopify Apps) and software in the music space. Both of those avenues have roadblocks and challenges when it comes to building a future proof solo career: Shopify is a narrow market and changes fast while the music industry is all over the place. So now I'm focused on Zigpoll[1] which will hopefully have some legs take me from solopreneurship to early retirement :)

[0]https://www.zigpoll.com/blog/being-a-solopreneur-part-one

[1]https://www.zigpoll.com

iancmceachern• 2 years ago

I do.

I run a small hardware product design firm and injection molding supplier right here in San Francisco.

Www.iancollmceachern.com Www.goldengatemolders.com

curo• 2 years ago

I'm bootstrapping https://www.crone.ai and making a small amount of money.

I've bootstrapped a few companies. B2B apps are easier since you can do custom work for business clients while you perfect your software.

Crone AI is much harder. It's my first edtech consumer app. It's been live for 3 months and we've made $1,500 so far (lol).

My previous business startups made $200k ARR and $1M ARR. Iterating on consumer apps is more fun and you can still extrapolate growth from small numbers.

pilom• 2 years ago

I teach whitewater kayaking and swiftwater rescue with my company https://whitewaterworkshop.com. I started doing it on nights and weekends around a full time tech job and then when COVID hit, demand for outdoor activities skyrocketed so I went full time with it.

I worked in tech for about 15 years where I paid off my student loans very aggressively, then once those were done I started pushing the same amount of money into retirement and savings accounts. My wife and I have no kids and were probably putting $50k+/year away. Turns out if you do that for 15 years, you end up with enough money to never need to worry about rent or health insurance again and you can choose what you want to do that is more fun. For me that was instructing and leading epic multi-week rafting trips like the Grand Canyon 3 times, the Maranon River in Peru, and the Alsek River in Alaska.

dbrueck2• 2 years ago

Self-employed since 2009 (can't believe it's been that long). Started out doing dev-for-hire work with a friend: web sites and mobile apps mostly. Along the way we built up a "war chest" to self-fund something of our own, then grew it up and sold it off. Rinse, repeat. Currently we have a small company (10 people) in the VR sector.

Self-employment is definitely not for everyone, but I love the freedom and flexibility. It'd kill me to go back.

addictedcs• 2 years ago

Solo founder at Emysound[1]. Started 10 years ago as an open-source project, building an algorithm for audio fingerprinting. Added a commercial offering, selling storage built specifically for audio fingerprints, targeting enterprise customers. Since the offering was too technical (it's hard to sell solutions to problems that are too narrow and domain-specific), pivoted to more "business-oriented problems". This last year's pivot is a chance to finally grow. Running a business in single-player mode is, at times, too stressful. Aside from the technical part, which I very much enjoy, I need to wear marketing, sales, and customer support hats.

[1] https://emysound.com [2] - https://github.com/AddictedCS/soundfingerprinting

uncertainquark• 2 years ago

I’m an independent space exploration writer, and I love my job: https://blog.jatan.space/about

Happy to answer any related questions.

sriram_sun• 2 years ago

S-Corp, W-2 for myself. I do pretty mundane programming related stuff for safety critical systems (med device and am always looking for interesting stuff). Been remote consulting averaging 1-2 clients since mid 2017. Here's my profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sriramsundar/. Worked full time for about 15 years prior.

justinbaker84• 2 years ago

I have been self employed for 10 years now. I manage Google Ads for small and medium businesses.

I still have the desire to create a great start up, but at least this way I can pay the bills and have more free time to work on start up ideas.

raintrees• 2 years ago

IT service, sales and support business, and private cash-flowing multi-family real estate business (we provide nice places for people to live without the headache of owning/maintaining/repairing your own home).

Tade02• 2 years ago

I'm formally self-employed but it's actually a means of keeping talent from emigrating by granting tax benefits to people like me.

I do side gigs when the opportunity arises, but more often than not I don't have the time for anything but my main thing.

zesfy• 2 years ago

For the last 4 years, I've been working on app that help solo founder like me to manage their project but intuitive to use on mobile. Finally get the app ready for private beta soon, so lately my time have been focused getting the word out about the app.

App Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSiHWdoekCE

takkatakka2• 2 years ago

Self-employed running https://bankstatement2csv.com Like the url implies, it's a pdf bank statement to csv converter. What Rob Walling from microconf would call a 'step 1 business'.

I quit my job in December to work on it full time. It doesn't pay the bills yet (current MRR $590/month), but it is slowly growing! Little bit of a race to see if I can pay my bills with it before I run out of runway.

sebiw• 2 years ago

Nice! What did you do in terms of marketing to get to ~$600 MRR?

takkatakka2• 2 years ago

I've tried a variety of things (LinkedIn Ads, Reddit Ads, Google Ads, SEO, responding to relevant reddit questions). Most of the paying customers come from google ads, but a few have come from my reddit comments.

The reddit comments are pretty direct, like, the poster is asking about how to convert pdf bank statements to csv and I provide a link w/ full transparency that I'm the developer.

poulsbohemian• 2 years ago

Since 2005, with a brief interlude at a company between 2008-2012. Have been a solo freelancer, an employer, in both tech and now real estate. Thinking through some options for the future, but I foresee opening multiple businesses in the next few decades, ideally so there will be assets for my kids to manage someday.

What sustains me? I like to eat and have a roof over my head. Could I have made more money going a different route? Almost certainly. But, life is about tradeoffs.

seereadhack• 2 years ago

I'm ~10 years in as a full stack product dev on brown and green projects for ~100 big and small clients across a range of sectors.

Previously, I worked as a back-end dev in NYC in the media sector - initially at half a real salary because my employer decided to take a gamble on a n00b dev with a degree in writing - and then as a suit wearing front-end dev consultant in the finance sector for 2 years altogether.

I love the flexibility and the range of work. I have had partners and employees but am solo again and enjoying it. My spouse has good health insurance and a more traditional career, albeit one that has required a move every 2-3 years, and that helps quite a bit.

You will save yourself a lot of grief if you can build up your credibility and a good stack of relevant and wide-ranging contacts before you start. Bad clients can cost you more than money.

If you are considering it, be honest with yourself. Many, many folks are better suited to a more structured work life. Advocating for yourself AND your client's best interest is no small challenge when you are solo. Finding a niche, whether in technical expertise or industry focus, will help significantly.

Also – I highly recommend adjusting not just your rates but your billing structure to create more value for clients and better work. E.g. I now have tiered support plans – and tbh if I were based in SV and 10 years younger, I would probably build a SaaS to make it easier for more folks to do that.

Vic-Bhatia• 2 years ago

Long-time lurker, first time poster. Here goes… Founder CEO of a bootstrapped compliance engineering startup. Ex-FAANG who got really frustrated by the engineering toil caused by audit and compliance management. Most compliance tasks are manual, repetitive, tactical, and lack enduring value. As an engineer who spent 20 years dealing with auditors and regulators globally and who understands compliance really really well, I knew I had to change things or I would never forgive myself. If you’re an engineer who’s had to face auditors you know what I am talking about :-)

Anyways, building out an automated cloud compliance platform. MVP is coming out in the next few months. B2B subscription based SaaS platform for automated SOC 2 compliance in AWS. Post MVP looking at PCI and then some of the data privacy regulations. Also reviewing upcoming compliance requirements for AI and Electric Vehicle Charging Management Systems (EVCMS).

PS: Happy to answer any engineering questions or share tips on how to become compliant with least toil. Regulators aren’t engineers and engineers don’t understand what needs to be minimally done to get the auditors off their back, so this is my way of giving back to the community. Traveling internationally and will respond here on a best effort basis, or my LinkedIn (listed in my HN profile) is the best way to reach me.

Cheers! Vic

spaceships• 2 years ago

Self employed here. Mostly React / React Native specialist. I've been working in React since it was relatively new but try to stay up on latest updates in the ecosystem.

Backstory: Not entirely planned, but I was talking with a company about potentially being a frontend architect or something along that line. As the conversations progressed, they said they couldn't hire me fulltime since I wasn't able to come in to the office daily but they could give me a long-term contract. I've been consulting ever since.

worik• 2 years ago

Not any more! Yippee!

cdeutsch• 2 years ago

I was for 2 or 3 years over 10 years ago. I built apps (mostly web based) for smaller businesses and startups.

I'll likely be going back to it after being laid off last June and not being able to find the same level of pay.

XCSme5• 2 years ago

I've been "self-employed" for the around 3-4 years now, mostly building UXWizz[0]. It's not really sustainable at the moment, due to the lack of marketing. I still get sales somehow by focusing mostly on the product development, but this year I will try to market it more. I don't plan to grow it into a huge business, just enough to be comfortably sustainable ($10k/mo from the current ~$2k/mo).

[0] https://www.uxwizz.com

mackopes2• 2 years ago

I quit my job and became self-employed ~6 months ago. I work as a freelance developer and I focus on 3D graphics and computer-vision, but I occasionally take on other projects if they are interesting.

I find jobs on Upwork and I do cold reach out on LinkedIn and via email. So far, I managed to keep myself pretty busy and I landed a few pretty good projects. I consider that a success since I went into the freelancing world not knowing much about it.

It's hard, especially with the uncertainty of where the next project/money is coming from, but I can't imagine going back to a full-time employment anytime soon.

vineyardlabs4• 2 years ago

If you don't mind my asking where are you based? I am interested in building a consulting business but all my contacts are in industries that are regulated and don't really hire individual consultants. So Upwork and places like it seem attractive but seem like such a race to the bottom due to the saturation of developers from third world countries there.

mackopes2• 2 years ago

I am based in London, UK.

And yes, you are right, Upwork can be a race to the bottom. Since I am based in a rather expensive city, I can't really compete with other developers on price, but I can still compete on offering, expertise, commitment, etc.. So far I managed to find enough clients who are willing to pay extra for a premium service.

Naturally, it also depends on the service you are providing. Luckily, my niche is not as saturated yet.

The other point with companies not willing to hire an individual is something I can relate to as well. And not only in regulated industries. It's mostly startups and small companies I work with at the moment.

primax2• 2 years ago

I am at the moment due to being in a bit of an odd situation.

I've been hit by layoffs in tech twice in the past 2 years. Once due to the consultancy I was working in selling, and all non-billable roles being terminated as a part of the sale. Then I joined a mid-sized startup as a head of engineering, and it turned out their remote work policies were bogus and they wanted me in the office all the time, and so they ended my probation.

So I'm a bit disillusioned with the hiring process in tech right now, so I'm working on two things:

1. Building market pricing intelligence software (basically manual scraping and data engineering, but I have plans to make it more sophisticated) to track prices of products in the market. I've got a couple of profitable no-risk ways to use this data, and it's started off nicely. And I think one day the tool will be worth a lot.

2. Working in my wife's gourmet packaged food business. It makes good money, and a large part of the business is waiting around for dehydrators or ovens to do their thing... so it means I have time to work on code while bringing in steady money.

I'm going to check out the fractional work/moonlighting job sites someone else posted as it might be a better way to more effectively make money to support my family while I build, but then again it's pretty satisfying working with my hands making food.

jasondigitized• 2 years ago

What fractional / moonlighting sites are you referring to?

janetacarr• 2 years ago

I've been self-employed for nearly three years as a freelancer / consultant.

Though, I have a course I've pre-sold during the recent work drought. These pre-sales have been paying the bills. So there's lots of pressure to deliver on them while still trying to line up freelance/consulting work.

I started doing this because I had big indie hacker dreams. Now I just think that I'm partially unemployable. What matters most to me is controlling my own destiny and Intellectual Property rights. Writing code is what fills me up, and It needs to be protected. Otherwise, I feel trapped, growing bitter and angry over time. So I'll keep doing this until I have more products.

My ultimate goal is to create a portfolio of products to pay the bills. I have no particular biased towards what. They could be courses, ebooks, or even games. 2023 was a special case in terms of cash flow (business cycle goes down), but I'm hopeful for the future, and my course sold decently well, so I think I'm getting the hang of this entrepreneurship thing.

Soupy• 2 years ago

Oh hey that's me! I sell maps on the internet - https://pastmaps.com

After selling my last startup in 2022 and being very burned out I decided to lean deeper into my own hobby - metal detecting. This lead to me building out a lot of cool tooling around historical maps to help me find better areas to detect and I slowly began to realize that there were many other hobbyists and enthusiasts who also were interested in the maps and tools I was building. So Pastmaps was born

The traffic and server costs started snowballing in the past year so I added the ability to buy physical prints of any of the maps in the collection and this has also started to take off. It's only ramen-profitable for now so don't go thinking that this is hugely successful by any means but it's growing on its own so I'm excited to see how big it can get.

Next up is also adding some premium tooling and features that many of my members have been begging me for so fingers crossed!

shooker435• 2 years ago

I left Google about 8 months ago to build a Shopify app. I was a sales engineer that kept selling a super complex product to large retailers, and I thought it would be cool to "productize a service" and democratize it for smaller retailers.

It's amazing taking a full product from 0 to 1 with a small team, we're bootstrapped but have some revenue coming in now from very satisfied customers. I don't know if we'll ever raise money or have an exit, but I wouldn't trade the experience for the world.

jasfi• 2 years ago

I'm working on my own projects. Right now, most of my effort goes to AI Construx (https://aiconstrux.com), build things with AI.

benbojangles• 2 years ago

Me! Since about 2019 I started designing and selling circuit boards among other things. I came from nothing,no funding support, just investing a few hundred dollars here and there and applying my own beliefs. I am forever grateful and won't take it for granted. I get to work from home, be my own boss, oversse everything, turn a good profit, build my savings, have my food delivered to my door, and workout using peloton. Everything is beautiful and I don't complain. I am able to offer support and advice to others in a much more positive manner and inspire people who want to give it a shot.Things which have changed perspective to me include reading job postings and realising how different i was towards them to how i am now, how upset people become when i discuss with them that i am successfully working for myself at home, how i feel knowing i can buy expensive things if i want to but i dont wish to - the feeling alone is often enough, i don't travel as much both in daily life or holidays because i am low stress and comfortable - my life is a holiday everyday. I have to remind myself recently to look ahead to new ideas and not to rest on what i do forever but maybe if im lucky i could.

outcoldman• 2 years ago

Successfully self employed since 2018. Built my own product that I sell as B2B to large businesses in Kubernetes/OpenShift space. Making a good salary of principal software engineer.

As a hobby working on side projects (apps for apple ecosystem) and my main hobby - skydiving (it is expensive).

silexia• 2 years ago

Founded, bootstrapped and still completely own CoalitionTechnologies.com. Started it 15 years ago and we do website development, programming, and online marketing. 270+ full time employees and another hundred or so contractors. World class management team has allowed me to step back and buy a cattle and hay farm two weeks ago...

tonymarks• 2 years ago

Founded sapien.ai in 2016 - evolved from web chatbots and voice search SDKs, to custom LLMs and generative ai search, etc. Brought in a co-founder and did the Sand Hill Road Shuffle, met with A16z, Benchmark, Sequoia, Accel, (and a whole bunch of smaller ones), plus made it to the final interview at YC. But then A16Z passed, and so everyone else did too, and then my co-founder quit because of the stress of raising capital - and also because crypto was going through a hype cycle (ICOs). So I went back to bootstrapping and have been profitable ever since. I have been fortunate to work with global brands such as the Olympics, NBA, NFL, Home Depot, Virgin Atlantic, and more.

MarkVenison• 2 years ago

self-employed here (company owner)

nocubicles• 2 years ago

I am self employed for the last 12+ months. I am doing Microsoft Dynamics ERP software development and consulting.

First when I started I was doing subcontracting for larger companies but now I have few customers of my own and it works out fine. I can provide them better and quicker service then larger companies can and for some customers the man and a dog company suites very well and for some companies it doesn't.

I handle everything myself when it comes to business - creating content, being active on Linkedin for inbound leads, doing the bookkeeping, doing the monthly tax reports etc.

Schwolop2• 2 years ago

I'm a self-employed consultant, generally either CTO-style "make your company run better and build better software" stuff or, less often, specific robotics and automation stuff where I'm legitimately something of an expert. I have a PhD in decision theory / optimisation / meta-computing - and it was all applied to autonomous vehicles. A recent client I've picked up in the mining industry is paying me something like 300% of the highest salary I ever earned before setting out on my own.

In addition, I co-founded a company that makes Escape Rooms. We sold 13 turn-key rooms to other operators, then eventually invested in our own venue. We were the only company in the southern hemisphere to win a prestigious TERPECA award this year, so it's not a stretch to say our venue is probably the best in Australia. I've never earned a cent from this in eight years... But, this year is the one. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully?!?

Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

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