Hacker News Reader

Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

I mean, once I have enough money to retire, I'll retire, but I'll "keep working". The difference is that I'll be my own boss and manage my own time and lead my own projects. I can't imagine not doing this, since there's so much left to do.

View on HN

Being your own boss isn't all it's made out to be. You think you will have all the time in the world but in reality you are on call 24/7 so never completely off work.

Not exactly; my work will just be an extension of my existing hobbies (CNC, mathematical explorations, machine learning, etc) and I've learned to scale back my expectations so that there's nothing I have to worry about when I leave the garage at night.

I certainly wouldn't be working to make money or anything. I don't even etsy my CNC stuff (though I could) because I don't want to turn my hobbies into a "job"

Not every industry requires being 24/7 on-call -- just stay away from the web stuff, and regular business hours become much more common. There are still "crunch" time when a customer wants you to work 120 hours a week but this is a question of being able to say "no"... which is much easier if you have enough money in the bank to retire anytime.

Depends on the type of job. Making a new mission critical SaaS app? Sure, you're on call. But if you're making some small websites or blogs, or even outside of the tech space in something like carpentry, you can take all the time you want.

It's really about whether you have customers or not, and what kinds of customers they are.

Another strategy is to get closer to someone that shares your vision for the future but has a lot more resources and let you work on your long term ideas. There is a limit to the set of things you can do alone.

If you have customers or stakeholders then you are not your own boss.

You can fire customers.. I've done it a few times.

I am my own customer. I don't even etsy my work, though I could.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com