Not really. This just proves that corporate life isn't the most profitable option for the OP. You just can't make sweeping statements like this based on a single anecdote.
I'll offer this to other "corporate" folk out there. I was self-employed since late 2010 until I recently (last month) joined a mid-stage startup. During my last year of self-employment I took home ~$400k in cash, and lots more in early-stage stock, and worked maybe 15-20 hours per week. There are very few corporate jobs that would even come close to that balance of take-home pay and work-life balance.
TBH, I just got bored. All of the inefficient aspect of my work got slowly eliminated over the years due to process improvements, which meant that only the most unpleasant, manual aspects were left over (read: legal, negotiation, business development, etc.).
80% of my income was consulting related. I tried to branch off into making a SaaS and "failed" (which I'm still kind of excited about but have no time to pursue), but I did succeed in making an App Store portfolio which brings in decent profit.
can you share what you did consult on? To me consulting is very mysterious as it's a very generic term but I'm always amazed by people earning 250K-500K due to "consulting". Is it easy to do or more like being in the right place/right time/right skillset?
Totally. I'm a generalist software engineer with a specialty in early stage startup tech. In addition to actually writing the code, setting up infrastructure (AWS and all that), and anything explicitly code or "DevOps" related, I also helped clients understand the development process, advised them on product, worked with designers, etc.
I agree that consulting is kind of a nebulous term, but if you ask me, it's essentially shorthand for "solving problems that people have that they can't (or don't want to) solve themselves". The problems that clients came to me with were all related to getting a startup off the ground from the technical side.
Slowly but surely, I found a niche in working with smart, non-technical founders who want to start startups. Turns out that most good programmers willfully ignore that market (for good reason, it's really hard to separate the wheat from the chaff).
I've been programming in some way or another since the mid-90s, not old hat by any measure, but AWS and the "cloud" was hardly present when I really started getting my hands dirty with web programming during the early/mid-2000s.
I knew people making that in the mid-1990's in the IT end of biotech in California and also Switzerland. I would assume that something similar to "computer people" salary increases has happened to consulting rates too, on the higher end.
Never made anything near that myself consulting, but even when I was doing that kind of work (around 2000-ish) I knew people who were differently motivated than I was, in San Francisco, making more than those numbers and working less than I did.
The trick was they worked on the business first, whereas I was always working on the product first (which wasn't even my product, of course). So for instance I might spend all night coding in order to make something shine (hello startups!) and be wiped out from it the next day, but these other type of people would see that as a massive anti-pattern and route around it contractually.
For instance I knew one consultant who only flew business class - it was in her contract - and billed every hour from taxi pick-up to drop-off if not more whenever she had to go to a meeting outside driving distance. She read documentation on the flights.
Of course I ended up working for one such person for a while, because the sort of heads-down nerdy coder with no stomach to fight about money is ideal for farming out some of your more time-consuming work. :-)
I am now working for a decent 6-figure income and EXTREMELY happy with the stability and 40-50 hour work weeks...in comparison to the ABSOLUTE GRIND I went through trying to help that startup get off the ground - this is a godsend.
Your scenario is VERY UNLIKELY IMO.
My first job was at a startup that crashed and burned, and what I took from that experience was that the only financially responsible way to work with startups as an engineer is to work on a lot of them to spread out the risk, or be a founder. There's just no other way unless you're comfortable with a ton of risk.
Like I said in my post above, this "success" didn't come overnight; I spent many years grinding with the business development, upping my development skills, and putting myself out there. It was not easy.
Didn't have either of those before.
Also, if I get canned, I can find another job...there is a LOT of work out there for what I do...
You are at a certain point in the cycle. At somepoint you may move to creating your own startup (maybe not because you had a negative experience earlier).
It's just the circle of life.
You've lost me here. Are those ealry-stage stock of yourself, giving you were self-employed? Or you made side jobs with cash+stock payments?
Clarified here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202222
None the less some of us just aren't cut out for the corporate life. I'd pick poverty over the lack of autonomy, petit politics and meaningless work any day.
Poverty doesn’t liberate you, it restricts you, and not just in the workplace, but in your entire life. Want to go on a trip or eat fancy food? Too bad you can’t, because you don’t have money and you’re broke poor. Want to get a great career? Too bad, you got to work at fast food joint because you can’t afford the education. Want kids? Nope you can’t afford it so keep it in your pants, and women don’t want to get serious with some broke dude anyway.
There is no way you’d choose poverty. There is little advantage to being poor in society that punishes being poor.
We are talking about programmers here. Unless there are unique circumstances that sort of poverty is off the table.
I've done this before and I would do it again. I wish I had something profound to add but I don't. Working in a corporate environment is just incredibly grating.
Also "being poor" is generally not the fault of the poor person. Accepting a job however, is the fault of the employed person.
Would you also put your kids in poverty? It's not a simple when you think beyond yourself.
That said I understand risk tolerances and it not being everyone's cup of tea but saying everyone should be a corporate employee ignores an entire set of priorities people tend to have besides stability and money.
When it's just you, and your entire livelihood depends on sucking up to big fish to get that one payday that will float you for the next few months while you find another big fish, the boundaries between work and home dissolve. You feel a constant stress to get projects done and you even lay awake at night terrified of what happens if your next big fish doesn't materialize. Your performance in any one task decreases because you have to wear every hat. You're a good programmer, but are you a good businessman? Advertiser? Hustler? Lawyer? Can you afford a team? Will do you everything yourself?
If you're still a kid, don't have debts, don't own property, don't have a family, don't have any roots, the risk/reward and excitement of this chaotic and generally financially ruinous lifestyle could be good or even make you happy.
But for many people, the stress of putting your family, your investments, your retirement and ultimately your future on the line is one of the most unhappy things possible.
I don't think there is anything wrong with doing your 8 hours to make a living, and then taking the next 8 hours to enrich your life -- not for profit, but for health. Exercise, learning and growing, cooking and entertaining, starting a family, investing in life and happiness outside of coding... it's just notoriously difficult to do these things as an entrepreneur, and all the "big successes" as a rule (with exceptions) are "16 hour workers", as in, 100% of useful waking hours spent on the job.
It also takes a while to realize that working more than 8/hrs a day is not sustainable. You'll be less productive in the long term. So really even as a self employed individual it's better to work less than a full time job imho.
Sure some people overwork but that isn't unique to running a business, you will find those people in big companies as well.
Also my experience was that having a family, owning a property and being rooted in my location gave me the support I needed to succeed.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1067175527180513280
"No one ever changed the world at 40 hours a week"
"80 hours minimum, with peaks at 100 hours"
A 100 hour week would be 16.6 hours for 6 days and 1 day off, or 14.25 hour days with no days off
The idea that entrepreneurs need to work more than 40 hours a week to be successful is as old as our industry, and I'd go so far as to say that those casually working a schedule that looks more like a salaried position are probably "consultants" and aren't really entrepreneurs trying to build something or change something
But I've worked at many startups and ok 50 hours would be common. As they say, one pregnancy takes one person 9 months. You can't do it in 4.5 with two people (or by working harder).
This isn't a given. Plenty of (particularly large) companies will inflict this on you, but it's also very possible to work at a company and have autonomy and do meaningful work.
First, if you do rake in corporate money, and don't spend it all, you'll have a nest egg which gives you so much more choice in how you live the rest of your life.
Second, if you don't have a nest egg - yeah you can't just gamble that you'll build software-as-a-service and instantly be making enough money to live. As he said, people assumed he'd use freelance to make up the difference. He didn't, but it is an option. Now freelance/contracting can be nearly as corporate as a full-time office job, and it isn't as stable an income, but it can pay really well.
For many software engineers three months of full-time contracting could pay for a year's worth of expenses. (Assuming you make choices that align with that goal.) This would let you spend a great deal more time focusing on your business goals, and give you some freedom to fail some of the time.
I'm doing contracting work for multiple different customers, long-term project, and I generate 100-200k of revenue on a yearly basis from that. That leaves me with slightly higher salary than if I'd work for a boss, but I have tonnes, and tonnes more freedom and time for my kids. It's just not possible to scale that past 300k/yr, because there's only so much time you can sell.
Once you have a product, you can scale it through the roof, since a digital product, if set up well, has negligible costs, will allow you to earn way more, but only if you find something that people want bad enough to pay for and a large enough group to pay for it. Loads and loads of people have the skills required to build a product, but not a lot have the right idea and marketing to go along with it to make it a success.
In general, the way it's worked for me is if I have multiple potential new gigs, I ask for more money. When the next gig comes along, that's my new baseline. Over the last 6 years that's helped moved the hourly rate to a number I wouldn't have asked for upfront. I hate to say no to customers too, so sometimes end up working 60-70 hour weeks in bursts. It's worth it though, because when things get quiet, I can go snowboarding for a week without asking a boss for permission...
My hourly rate is €85 currently, which is a lot for the small to medium size businesses I work for. Hiking up that rate would meen I would have to work for larger companies, which I don’t want to.
I work from my own office, and get to spend loads of time with my family; if I’d start to work for bigger companies, I’d have to work on-site and loose a lot of time in transit and make it a lot more difficult to dictate the working hours on a day to day basis.
With everything going on this year: Brexit, US elections, impeachment, corona virus, etc... it’s entirely possible this years returns could be negative.
My point is that when you get to the point where your savings is high enough your money works for you at a level that makes it possible to live off of alone.
If the S&P is looking flat then you could rollover some of it to a high dividend REIT that pays 10-15% too.
You know the business cycle is peaking when people think you can easily throw their money into some investment paying 15%...no problem!
Can you explain how a public investment - any public investment - can continuously generate those kinds of returns without taking on massive amounts of risk?
Let me guess...you thought 2013 was the top?
If it doesn't work out, it's not like he lost the knowledge, he can still easily get a job anywhere. Probably even a bump from the startup experience.
for most of history everyone worked for themselves. one could argue the modern day corporate structure is completely unnatural and doesn't fit (most) everyone.