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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

In my experience this is pretty bad advice for a lot of people. Starting a business is 1) almost always more time consuming and stress-inducing than working a normal job, 2) tends to end up being 20% the stuff you enjoy doing and 80% the stuff you don't, and 3) has an incredibly high chance of being really bad for you financially.

A potentially better solution several of my friends have pursued to good effect is to get the hell out of the 9-5 world and work a non-office job. Bartending is an example, another friend is now a baker, a third does event planning. Etc.

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It isn't necessarily more stressful and time-consuming.

The point isn't to "start a business", it's to carefully engineer a viable business - which means doing solid research on customer numbers and income/profit estimates, creating a system for acquiring customers, and so on.

Basically an adult plan. Not am impulse or hobby business.

And that includes setting work limits for yourself, so you don't become the cliched 80-hr a week self-employed robot.

2) is certainly true. But it's true for any job. It's very rare for work to be wholly positive, no matter what you do.

The most basic difference is that you have an internal locus of control. This immediately removes a lot of stress, because you're no longer responsible for cleaning up other people's mistakes, or pandering to unrealistic whims.

You're still vulnerable to macro-economics, although that's true of any job. But you can also improvise and pivot your way out of difficulties - which is much harder when you're being managed from above.

In theory, that's true but I think you're making it sound a lot easier than it actually is. I don't know a single owner of a profitable business with employees that works less than a $250k/yr FAANG engineer. I sure as hell didn't any of the times I've run businesses. In general, you end up trading one set of issues for another - typical employee frustrations for typical business owner frustrations (closing new clients, dealing with employees, fighting competitors, keeping clients happy, managing all the overhead operations that come with business ownership, etc.)

It's possible to run a low-stress lifestyle business, but I would say it's not the norm and tends to be fragile unless we're talking something like lone wolf 1099 contractor self-employed without significant family obligations.

You don't have to take on employees. My one person business has been far more stable than my previous employment. I can lose a customer and still pay the bills, that wasn't the case when my only customer was my employer.

I agree with your original point, it isn't for everybody and it sounds like it wasn't for you. But I know many people who have managed to fit their business around their life rather than their life around their business.

Sounds like Office Space. ICYMI, the main character quits his job at a tech company and works outside doing construction.

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