Comment by hsn915 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hsn915 | Hacker News Reader

As far as I can tell, the suggested way of working would be incredibly stressful for someone like me.

First, I have to learn stuff I hate just because the market currently demands it.

I can't really bring myself to do that.

With everyone jumping on AWS and the latest JS frameworks, I stick to programming in Go and deploying static binaries to a single/cheap VPS. I basically only have one library in my 'npm' depdendencies (a virtual dom library).

Second, You have to keep advertising yourself online to keep getting more contracts. I don't really know how to do that. I tried it in the past and didn't really get anywhere. I don't know how people get contracts with > $500/day rates. But still, even if I knew how to do it, it would probably still be stressful to some degree.

Third, You have to be content living in a small town. It's great if that kind of life suits you, but it doesn't really suit me. Now, being at the center of a big city is not for me either, but I like to be close to the center. I want to live in a place with lots of amenities and shopping nearby. Where a car is an optional luxary, not a necessity.

The point of money is to enjoy life. If you live in the middle of no where, what does it matter that you have a million dollars in the bank? Or even that you have a house?

I think for someone like me, going the independent product development route seems much saner/healthier.

Anyway, here's a side remark as well:

> We are all going to die, and Earth will explode in the Sun in a few billion years: please, enjoy some now.

What's up with people bothering with what will happen in a million years from now? And then concluding since it all goes away then only right now is important?

Like, why not, you know: now is important, but a 1000 years from now is important too.

About getting 500+ rates, in my experience, it is bubbles.

You’re in bubble A, totally by coincidence, where you and other contractors are doing say 300 a day rates. Hard to change because that’s going to be the expectancy within that bubble. Higher rates will stand out and descisionmakers will think lower is normal.

Bubble B happens to have 800 a day, work will be equal, not harder, not easier, just in this bubble, it’s that rate.. same psychology for outliers applies.

Started in 400 a day bubbles, currently working in 900 a day bubble, worked for a couple of years in 1800 a day bubble..

Psychology of normal expectancy bubbles all the way down..

This is what I think whenever someone tells me to sell something on Amazon or create an NFT. “Technically” I could figure it out and have the time to do it, but I wouldn’t because of the soul sucking nature or the pursuit.

Yea. I remember right around college all the grownups around me were telling me to go to medicine and not computer science. A friend of my father even told me "IT is in great decline, it has no future".

When I was still a student, a number of other adults were giving me advice to get into the oil business.

It might have been a bad decision financially, but I just could never bring myself to care about these things.

This sums up my feelings towards NFTs succinctly. I feel like the vast majority of people are interested in them for the potential financial gainz and not the tech.

Just yesterday I got texted by a non technical friend asking if I knew how to build a minting site. Yes, I'm sure I could figure it out over a weekend but I have absolutely 0 interest in doing that.

Fortunately I feel comfortable enough with my current income and position where I don't feel an urge to waste the brain cycles learning about them.

You do not have to learn stuff 'you hate' to be a contractor. And Go is very much in demand. Surely you could be a contractor using Go? I do not see why you have live in a small town either? You could just a well just live 20-40 min outside city center or in a smaller flat.

Most people use Go to write microservices which is ridiculous for me.

Why? Isn't that exactly what Go was designed for?

microservices is a fad, the only services we like are the ones that are rightly sized

He talks about getting contracts through agencies that exist for remote jobs. Not anyone has to self-promote their brand like he has.

What you do is not terribly important, but your contacts are.

I had a really neat setup for developing API and apps really quickly 8 years ago and it didn't go anywhere. All my clients were getting that and I was able to get fixed contracts done very quickly (increasing my rate) but I never managed to build an audience and find a way to productivize it and sell it. Eventually I went out of sync with some clients who needed something else and I didn't want to pay the effort to maintain it, so I just use other off-the-shelf solutions.

The primarily driver in that change was that I got new contacts and working experience together with people earning more and I was able to charge a higher daily rate doing whatever needed to be done. Most of the jobs don't find their way to recruiters, they're just word of mouth and they can be quite lucrative.

At the same time, even if I was making 500£ per day, I knew people making 900£-1000£ per day. Some of them were just incredibly specialised on something domain specific (there was a bit of a stereotype, the Java guy with finance experience contracting for a bank with water to their neck and charging 1000£ per day), but some of them were just your average frontend engineer who contributed to some cool sounding famous framework.

I managed to charge high amounts in some specific circumstances where my knowledge was needed, but I never managed to network with the people routinely making 1000£ per day doing your average job.

Recently I got to those numbers, but I think that happened mainly because my circle "upgraded" (aka people who trust me got into position of power with high spending power) and because of covid inflation. Money is just not worth much when there is so much of it around and assets keep growing.

Hope you find that helpful in your contractor career.

The second part of your post is about preferences. Preferences changes.

I used to enjoy city center life as well, partying in the cool places, going at tech events with famous people. After a while going out started feeling tired, so I settled down and started a family. With a family a big city is not very attractive. I moved to a smaller city, so I don't have to drive and I pay significantly less for the same property. The events are much worse compared to city life, but all the amenities are there, walkable distance.

I'm in the process of moving to an even cheaper location, so I can buy an even bigger property and have a nice garden. There are also some tax, weather and societal considerations into that - but I'll have to start driving again. This may have felt like a big pain in the past but it's manageable right now.

If you read between the lines of the original posts, he's basically recommending to work smart so that a little of your work goes a long way economically and to live somewhere relatively cheap, so that it's easier to retain more money. It doesn't necessarily prescribe your life.

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