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Comment by xwdv | Hacker News Reader

You can go further and say there is little to no advantage in freelancing. A lot of remote dev work isn’t even 40/hrs a week of constant work. You can pick a low stress job working from home and still make six figures, more than most freelancers with far less stress.

I’ve given up on ever pursuing freelancing because I realized I actually didn’t want to be self-employed, I just wanted to work from home and be in control of my time.

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In Europe freelancing is still the main way for a proper paycheck. The salaries have been rising so we'll see if the situation changes, but for now the six-figure jobs are still somewhat elusive outside freelancing.

> You can pick a low stress job working from home and still make six figures, more than most freelancers with far less stress.

Where are these low stress remote jobs making six figures? Asking for a friend.

There’s plenty of jobs that are just heads down coding, cranking out tickets and attending a couple zoom meetings a week. Once you find such a job, just stick to it. Don’t go getting promoted to some higher position where you have to endure more meetings or become responsible for more things and have a bunch of people depending on you.

When you want more income, pick up a second job that is also similar. You should easily clear a quarter million dollars or more a year this way, and all you’re doing is writing code and going to some meetings. Easy.

Most US tech companies, except the trick is that you have to put up strong boundaries to overworking and be okay with level stagnation.

Most folks I know in FAANG/equivalent are not that stressed once you give up the race for promotions and accolades.

Even then, I've found setting boundaries can actually help with promotions. Making it clear that your time is valuable to you can help force others to value your time. As long as you're spending the rest of your time on the right stuff (80/20 rule totally applies), you can have stellar performance AND a 40 (or effectively less) hour work week.

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> I realized I actually didn’t want to be self-employed

Good for you. I spend a lot of time on /r/freelance and I've identified this as the main reason most freelancers have trouble and just flat out don't like it. They really just don't like running a small business. It's essentially impossible to thrive as a freelancer unless you accept (actually embrace!) this.

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