Poll: Should you work for yourself or take a full-time job? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Should you work for yourself or take a full-time job?

45 pointssilent_cal99 comments

I know it will depend on the person, I'm just curious as to which work arrangement that you all find to be more rewarding in terms of work-life-balance, pay, job satisfaction, etc. By "Work for yourself" I mean freelancing, independent contracting, building a profitable application, etc.

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You are always working for someone—whether you have one big customer, a few medium-size ones, or many tiny ones.

More customers is in some ways more sustainable, because losing a single customer is less of an impact and you are more likely to have a well-oiled up-to-date process for getting new customers.

Perhaps a bigger differentiator is not employment vs. self-employment but whether you can do something you enjoy doing while getting compensated for it and living a balanced life—which is possible in either arrangement.

Is not about who do you work for, is about what you own. Running your own show makes you the owner of your work, you could sell your business, pass it down to your family, etc... when you work for somebody else, you are contracting your time, without any ownership, you can't leave your kids your Senior Engineer position at Google, but you could leave them a profitable business. Is like renting vs buying, sometimes makes more sense to rent, but most of the time is better to buy(long term).

This really changed my perspective.

I'd rather my parents leave me a bundle of cash rather than saddling me with their startup.

This made me laugh because of the frankness. I interpreted the above as being more “sustainable small business” than a startup but maybe it’s irrelevant.

It's hard though. Running a business is a full time job. Most businesses need to adapt. Handing over control to kids might not sit well with current employees or those with a financial interest in it. And the kid may very well want to do literally anything else and now be unable to do so. Especially if the business is not easily sold or would be seen as against the family wishes to do so.

If it's just a financial interest in a business that the kid won't be controlling, then it's just money anyway.

You can sell your business, the cash you can leave to your kids, is upper bounded by how high you can get into the corporate ladder, which for most people, is not very high. Your family can always sell your business and get that cash. I was also referring to a profitable business, not a startup (is pretty uncommon for people to leave startups to their next in kin). I know people who have someone else running their family business (with a pretty good deal for both parties) and focus on other stuff they care about.

You can try to sell your business. Selling a business is non-trivial. Especially if you're not close to it and don't know it. The cash you leave to your kids owning a business is upper bounded by how well your business does. Which, sure, could be better or worse, but most notably has a chance of being worth nothing.

There are for sure many stories where a family business worked out great. But I would prefer an equal value in cash over a randomly chosen small business any day. Even if we subset it to the profitable ones.

I feel like the "leaving them a profitable business" is quite hopeful.

Chances are that the business will go under by the time you want to get out of it. Then giving the burden to your kids down the line seems even more risky.

They will probably not want to follow your path and maybe having this weight on their shoulder will change their life decisions in an unfavored manner.

Just my two cents, I think working for yourself is fine, but it still seems like a time-constrained endeavor.

> Chances are that the business will go under by the time you want to get out of it.

What makes you think that? Obviously there is always risks associated to almost everything you do, and running a business is no exception, but I don't think most businesses follow the "go down by the time you want to get out." route.

> Then giving the burden to your kids down the line seems even more risky.

The burden of an asset? You can always sell your parent's business, for cents on the dollar in the worst case?, and you still get more than what you would get if your parents had nothing. Also cash savings and running a business are not exclusive, actually, usually people running business have more assets/cash that people working for somebody else.

> I think working for yourself is fine, but it still seems like a time-constrained endeavor.

Working for somebody else's business is also a time-constrained endeavor.

I'm not saying that everyone should be running a business, you could make the case of a VP at Amazon making way more than an indie hacker, sure, the thing is the possible amount of VPs at companies big enough with such high salaries, are the order of hundreds , in the other hand, there is thousands of people making a lot of money online, with all type of niche apps and/or services.

I don't know how much we can relate to smaller business, but it does seem like the average life expectancy of a business is lesser than the expected work span.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1259275/average-company-...

I do agree on the case for the value of the business as an asset.

> cash savings and running a business are not exclusive, actually, usually people running business have more assets/cash that people working for somebody else.

It's true that it does make sense, especially since you probably get more financial literacy by running a business.

I've been pondering how to have my own consulting myself for a while. Maybe I'm a bit sour of not having found a proper way yet...

I feel you. I'm more or less in the same situation, I have a cosy job at FAANG, but I have at least 2 very close friends who run their online hustle and not only make more than me, but also pay less taxes ;). One of the hardest things for me is finding a good niche for a business.

It's not surprising that at this point the poll is at 21 vs 22.

Competition will ensure that incentives remain more or less balanced between the two options (the less freelancers there are, the more they can charge, and the less full timers there are, the more they will be paid). Unless we lived in a world where one of them was so much easier to attract talent to that the other just died off.

For specific people in specific circumstances one might be a bit better (small kids at home, difficulty selling your services, etc'), but the differences between people's preferences aren't that huge, so we should expect the poll to be about 50-50.

It isn't balanced anymore.

Users of a site run by a startup accelerator might be prone to lean towards a certain one of these answers.

But again, a lot of these users would have seen both sides of the coin and so I guess that makes them the best audience to participate in that poll

> It's not surprising that at this point the poll is at 21 vs 22.

>Competition will ensure that incentives remain more or less balanced between the two options (the less freelancers there are, the more they can charge, and the less full timers there are, the more they will be paid).

I agree that competition prevents one side from being too lopsided, but there's no reason why it would result in a 50-50 split. For instance, if being employed has structural factors that makes it preferred (eg. stability, economies of scale), then you'd expect more people to be employed. Indeed, that's how the broader economy works; the employed/self-employed ratio in the US isn't even close to 50-50.

The difference between freelancing and employment is spurious to begin with and is really only differentiated to make collecting taxes easier for the government. Which also means that the government is known to reclassify freelance agreements into employment agreements to suit their favour. 50/50 might be closer to the norm if buyers and sellers had more freedom to choose.

I wish I could get a job that pays well, offers camaraderie, fulfillment, and opportunities to grow. I have tried many times to fit in. In a 35 year career the longest I ever held a job was 4 years. I finally figured out that I was not employable. Happy to be working for myself.

I think the next best step would be for you to be the boss that you always wanted to have and hope to attract minds that are like your younger self.

Check out DAOs, to me they strike a good balance.

What kind of work are you doing now?

Ha, very similar situation. For me, it's always management that makes me quit a job (sometimes relatively quickly). I do find contracting, where I can convince myself that I'm divorced from the management chain. Would love to hear more about your stint and what drives you to quit, email in my profile.

Different at different times of your life. I'm mid 40's. Have done some work for myself, largely career for other people culminating in c-suite roles.

Now using all that knowledge running on my own startup (and loving it...) which I'd tried to get up and running 10 years ago. The skills gained over the last 10 years absolutely invaluable for launching the startup with much greater success than version 1 :)

Option 3: form a worker owned co-op and distribute profits between members instead of shareholders and management.

Do you have any examples of this actually working?

In a few years I hope to have a company working like this.

Read: Reinventing the Organization

Any organization where people have the title "partner" is usually structured this way. E.g. I think big accounting firms like EY use this model.

No, I'm not referring to a partnership. See my comment in the other thread. Equality/equity for all.

https://www.coops.tech/ has many.

There was an earlier thread with others - I'll try and find it later, maybe.

This would take a lot of management though.. What happens if someone is contributing a lot less than the others? Or a lot more?

What happens in any other company in this situation?

Most of the time? Nothing. Which is fine if you don’t mind putting in more effort for the same pay as someone in your co-op, but at that point why are you in a co-op?

I don’t know but I’d probably reach out to other co-ops to see how they solve the freeloader problem.

Co-ops exist in industries that require more management than SWE, no reason it couldn’t work for devs too.

Plus, if your first and primary concern is the hard problem of who does more than whom, maybe you just aren’t temperamentally suited for a coop.

I don’t discount the feasibility of co-ops, but to say they require no management is simply untrue.

There's also the partnership model of accountants and lawyers - as a normal part of the career ladder, everyone at or above a certain level of seniority collectively owns the firm.

I prefer equality for all. Most partnerships exclude certain positions from becoming a partner, and you typically have to buy out a partner to become one (thus ensuring only the "right people" become partners).

This is my dream, something like https://www.humblebundle.com but an ongoing effort. Instead of one winner/influencer with a long tail of paupers, the money would be split evenly or through a formal process involving tenure/credentials/experience and/or a minimum payout on individual successes of maybe 10-20% like a royalty.

The main goal of this would be to provide runway outside of the venture capital status quo. Basically a scalable UBI model that doesn't require a huge buy-in by the general public.

As far as who's pulling their weight or not, I believe that framing is a fallacy. Success is stochastic now, meaning that it gets increasingly difficult to predict who will win. That's why VCs invest in 10s or 100s or startups to find a winner that supports the rest, and why all that matters is capital, at least to a first order approximation. This would give us some leverage to start removing the artificial barriers to entry (like how banks generally only loan on assets, not potential) and transition to something more like the Star Trek economy where everything is automated and only machine labor and unearned income is taxed, and the economy is large enough to provide an ever-growing stipend for everyone.

What happens if you need capital? If employee A only has $1k to spare, but employee B has $10k to spare, should everyone's contributions be capped at $1k?

Your model could work for businesses that aren't capital intensive (eg. consulting shops), but won't work for anything that requires a runway.

That capital doesn't have to be reflected as a percentage of ownership does it? What if they were structured as loans to the company which are paid back with interest separate from dividend payments from ownership? Then people who "invest" financially into the company still get rewarded for it, but they can't just buy up all the profits with an ownership position. I'm not deep into this area, so I don't know what sort of regulatory (or otherwise) hurdles this approach would face.

It does not. You can make whatever terms you want. You don't need to contribute any capital to get a share.

>That capital doesn't have to be reflected as a percentage of ownership does it? What if they were structured as loans to the company which are paid back with interest separate from dividend payments from ownership?

Why would anyone want to invest in a highly risky venture (ie. immature tech companies) with capped upside? It's the same reason why VC companies want equity, not debt obligations in return for their investment.

Presumably because they believe in the model. The upside comes from the cooperative ownership. Clearly this isn't intended to attract VCs, but to encourage financial investments from existing employee owners.

Okay, but why would I want to buy $10k worth of junk bonds from the scrappy startup where I work at? A normal person who wants better returns than t-bills or investment grade bonds buys equities, not junk bonds. Sure, that loan might help the startup to succeed in its mission and therefore net me more profit, but it suffers from the free rider problem. Everyone in the business benefits if it succeeds, but if it fails you experience 100% of the losses. Why would anyone want to invest more than the minimum/average amount?

But how would you manage such a company? It's difficult enough having a management team and board of directors running the show. If everyone in the company has a say it may become unworkable.

Interested in responses.

Coops are a thing, at least in the UK. The gist is it works like any other company, everyone simply owns a share of it, and according to some rules some have more tha others. Management is still like a normal company, as is pay and everything else. Its simply dividends are paid to everyone who works there.

But this implies they won't be able to secure money from investors to grow their company. They can only borrow or sell bonds.

I work for myself and love it but it isn't for the faint of heart. If you want to work for yourself I recommend first working for other people for 5-10 years—basically, get paid to learn your industry. Then when you can't rise any farther, that's the time to go work for yourself.

Note I'm a person who's relatively less motivated by money, and my idea of successful self-employment is to be a consultant with a very good work-life balance. If you're trying to start a billion-dollar company this advice isn't for you, but I wish you the best of luck.

Sounds awesome, thanks. It just seems so hard to make this work when you factor in the huge costs of insurance, etc.

The costs of insurance should be built into your service pricing, just as a traditional employer builds their own employee costs into their pricing.

I'm spending less than $400/year on liability insurance in case a client sues my company, or if I cause a data breach/loss for them . What insurance are you planning on paying for?

@sjducb Would you be willing to kindly share the type insurance that you referenced here, as well as the name of your provider? If you wish, find my email address in my profile and feel free to share that way. Thanks so much!

I didn't vote and I'm surprised that I don't see a comment about this topic: it's heavily context-dependent, and at different stages in someone's career the pendulum may swing from one side to the other. I believe that I would enjoy working for myself, and I kind of did so for a few years as a contractor, but what I really would enjoy is providing a software product or service that people paid for and where I had full creative control. I believe that working at a job provides many benefits: If the company is big, you may work on problems at a scale or magnitude that is difficult to stumble into on your own. You may find mentorship, teaching, or growth opportunities when working at a company that will be harder to find when working for yourself. You'll find it easier to get your code reviewed when working on a team than on your own. You'll probably enjoy a much wider variety of social interactions in your day job if you're working at a big company than on your own. You will get a lot more independence and the chance to really own your success and your failure if you work on your own. You'll get a much bigger piece of the pie if you find huge success on your own. And finally (yeah right, this list could go on ad nauseam) you'll be much more likely to enjoy a steady paycheck, paid right when you expect it, if you work for a company.

I suspect the majority of people should aim for a full-time job. Working for yourself (excepting certain industries where it’s very much the norm, say plumbing) is an additional skill set that can take quite the time to acquire.

However, if you find yourself with the opportunity you may want to avail yourself; laid off and you can consult for six months while looking for new work? Could be an opportunity. But many who try it eventually go back to salary work because of any number of externalities.

It’s also not a binary decision; when getting hired you can ask for carve outs for side work that doesn’t involve your day job - or you can become a notary public or a real estate agent and just offer your services to friends and family.

I currently do both.

I have a small SaaS that I work on one day a week.

The last 4 days I work a job.

The SaaS pays by far the highest hourly and feeds my hunger to create.

The job gives me fulfilment socially and makes me feel part of something.

It feels like I should double down on one. But I really enjoy both, so why?

This is what I’m feeling as well. The job handles some needs, and the pure drive to create is best handled in self owned work, but it does depend entirely on the actual circumstances in both cases.

You ideally want a good rewarding job with an owned project you’re passionate about.

Nothing beats working for yourself. That said, if you have a family or dependent people, make sure you arrange some sort of financial security before doing anything adventurous

For the most part nobody "should" anything.

In general, if you're entrepreneurial, yeah, work a part time job and build something.

If you're all in in developing professionally for the corporate ladder, go grab a full time job.

what about if you just care about the work itself?

Then get a full-time job, that way you can work in the job most of the time and enjoy it.

You'd not have to take care of the uncertainty that is around being a freelancer. These details are taken care for you, so you'd just focus on your work.

Work for yourself is always superior. The nature of employment is akin to slavery. Master-slave, lord-serf, employer-employee. When the US was founded, people largely worked for themselves as craftsmen and farmers. People were probably a lot happier then than today, for obvious reasons, less oppression.

People that do work for themselves often present themselves as victims, being responsible for more in some ways. But the freedom is regained, and sense of liberation. I've offered these individuals many times to simply apply and get a job working for someone else to quench their victimhood. While I'm sure it's happened many times, I've never personally met a taker on that offer.

Unless someone had a terrible experience and couldn't make it work while being self-employed, most people intrinsically know that having your boss be "survival" rather than an actual talking head (who will cut you as soon as you're not profitable just the same), is superior. There's more upside financially doing this as well, rather than locked in a situation where the only reason you're there is because you're creating more value than you accept in pay. Self-employed people always get 100% of the fruits of their passion and labor back.

Interesting - do you work for yourself too?

A side business. I’m working on it. I’m eager to be free at last.

This is like asking, "should I cook for myself or go out to eat?" I don't mean to be that guy, but your initial opening "I know it will depend on the person" says it all. I don't really understand why one take a poll about this except, possibly for academic reasons.

Understand that, even if the poll results are heavily skewed towards one side, it says very little about reality. Both the audience and respondents are self-selecting. And the answers more reflective of what the respondents want to believe (or want others to believe) than what actually is.

Instead, perhaps you should think about why you feel the need to ask in the first place? Is it self-doubt? Perhaps a desire to fit in? Do you feel as if you don't control your own life? Are you seeking affirmation for a choice you already made? Are you seeking "evidence" to support an argument? Once you know yourself, you will be able to answer this question and many others much more easily.

IMO, a good understanding of one's self cannot happen without brutal honesty. Which requires stepping back and making hard observations without the interference of one's ego. This is quite difficult, but is certainly do-able. Best of luck.

It's just to see what people's opinions are. Every opinion poll has the same limitations - doesn't mean it's futile, IMO.

I would much much rather have a normal job! If I worked for myself, I would have to waste significant amounts of time running a small business. As part of a larger organization, someone else can deal with all the tedious nonsense involved in getting paychecks to show up regularly, leaving me free to focus on the engineering work I actually care about.

At times I hate my full time job. But when I tried to be a freelancer, I went broke. I will not risk this again.

I’m almost 50. I worked for myself for about 10 years then I return to government. Between taxes, insurance, business fees and forms, once I hit 45 I swore I would never work for myself again. The freedom is great, but consistency, and someone else managing the numbers and overhead, it’s so much easier.

It’s a terrible choice to make: Freedom versus Security, but I think we deserve both.

My wife got laid off a few years back and started her freelance marketing business out of that. She loves it. She's really anti-meeting and bullshit and this allows her to just do her job (copywriting) 90% of the day. Maybe because her parents were small business owners, she is fine dealing with the small business busywork (quarterly taxes, business generation).

Most of her business started with former coworkers who know she's good hiring her, and then that work expanding, and now her website has good SEO and she gets more offers than she can accept.

Some of her other friends attempted freelancing but weren't able to get too much business or didn't like it for whatever reason. YMMV I guess.

I always tell her she should start an agency (hire people beneath her) to make more money, but she hates agencies and is happy with how things are. Only downside is it's a little harder to make heaps of money this way, since she can only raise her rates so high.

Worked for myself for two decades. While I enjoyed the freedom, it has its downsides (e.g. no sick pay).

I work for a large corporation now and enjoy it a lot. Strong unions ensure good pay and great, family friendly working conditions. I even get days off for taking care of my kid (in full pay). I also enjoy working with colleagues. When I was self employed, I had occasional contractors / collaborators working with me on projects, but that’s not the same as loyal colleagues who always have your back.

Most importantly, as others here stated, do something you love.

First I traded time for money, working in tech, saved a small fortune.

Now, run my own saas, trading money for more time.

Not everyone will be good at being their own employer and others will have a personality of lifestyle clash working in a 9am to 5pm job for someone else.

So, should you work for yourself? It depends. Should you work a full-time job? It also, depends.

option 3: work part time for yourself and part time for others

(sounds like your definition of "work for yourself" is already compatible with this option but mixing or time-slicing both angles in a more conscious way can be very rewarding.)

Is this really possible? I've heard of this option, but I don't see a lot of demand for part-time workers.

Yeah, I'm myself one. My job requires from me only 20 hours a week and it's well paid too.

It's uncommon I know, but youd have to look in places like AsyncOK.com or similar.

Okay, thanks for the info. How does job stability compare to having a full-time job? Do you get benefits?

I should have clarified. I'm a contractor, not an employee, so I don't get employment benefits (these benefits I provide myself outside of the employment system, so I'm very happy with it).

For my specific case, the job is very stable, since it's not predicated on temporary requirements. I've been a bit more than a year like this.

I'm currently working as a contractor and although the pay is nice, I hate working for clients / employers since you're always subservient to their whims.

My contract was cancelled because they found a cheaper option (a hire) so now I'm working on my own software product. I've always dreamed of starting my own company, becoming rich and doing what I want, working on what I want, whenever I want.

It's no wonder companies are finding it harder and harder to fill in positions. People are just fed up with managers and executives telling them what to do.

But as an employee you're even more 'owned'.

If you are employed you are trading stability for upside. When you work for yourself and specially if you work on products that are not capital intensive and have insane economies of scale (as in Software) the upside is gigantic.

I'm employed and I regret every minute of it. The only reason why I'm still employed is because I'm the sole provider for my family and haven't been able to take time off because I realized the mistake way way too late in life.

@jdmoreira Some of your comments resonate so much with me! I was a web dev in the early 2000s, and was too scared/conservative to join startups or go into business for myself back then...So, for decades i've moved away from develpment and into tech mid-level leadership and/or project management, and always working for medium/big enterprises. Nowadays, i have tons of regret, and wish i could be better at sales in order to have my own *sustainable* business. A couple of years ago i did have a side business for tech consultaning but could not generate enopugh business to sustaion it as my main job...so, here i sti still employed for anoither faceless enterprise using me like a small cog in a big system. I too am the sole provider for my family...so while you and i might have different circumstances and likely different origin stories, YOU ARE NOT ALONE! If there's any silver lining for you and i and others like us....i hear that statistically, contrary to the news/headlines about young folks being the majority of business owners/startup people, actually most people who go into business for themselves do so later in life (in U.S. 50~55). At least i hope that stat is true! Good luck to you and all of us who dream!

Thanks. I appreciate your follow up and you are right. There is time for sure!

If you ever want to reach out and just bounce some stories or ideas just mail me at joao@$hnusername.me

I have 2 full time jobs and working for my startup. 1 job provided stocks, my startup provided crypto, and my monthly income overall is 15k. It's hard to handle everything but key is to prioritize and do as much as possible in a day. Nobody blames me if I hang on a task, because everybody has multiple jobs as well - it feels like an unspoken acceptance between people. For context, I'm living in Romania

drop out and be a criminal. it's really the most fulfilling option

please advise

opsec

Keep in mind the HN bubble is real.

Right now, its 74 votes for FT, 113 Work for Yourself.

"Work for yourself" is a fine answer if you have enough in savings that you can take the risk of not having work. HN has a greater proportion of people that can do that.

I question how many people voting for FTJ would actually prefer WFY but don't have that level of financial security.

I've done both. 18 years working for companies big and small and 5 years consulting. It would be a no-contest vote for consulting if there was affordable healthcare.

Even without affordable health care I'll vote "Work for yourself" but the margin is smaller.

$23,000 per year for healthcare is a tough pill to swallow.

(I live in the US obviously)

Work for yourself but you won’t get work life balance until you’ve built something stable. You’ll have much higher satisfaction but you also have much higher risks.

If you are risk adverse or just want something steady so you can enjoy a work life balance, go take a job, work your 9-5, don’t quiet quit but don’t go above and beyond.

In high school I would do the bare minimum to get an A- (a 4.0 GPA).

A well paying full time job is the adult equivalent. I've not much interest in being super wealthy so the higher possible earnings on entrepreneurship is irrelevant. A stable well paying upper middle class job is a sweet deal.

Pay, work-life balance will suffer if you work for yourself. You will have to think about many more things than just coding and accrue more expenses (taxes, business structure, marketing).

How do you find consulting gigs without using recruiters?

I had a lot of trouble with this. . I'm not a speaker at conferences nor am I someone who gets coffees with ex coworkers regularly.

Start by doing both. Organically build your personal business to the point where if forces you to quit your day job because it's better in all ways.

I'v done both.

I'v nominally worked for myself, as half-owner and company director.

I'm a huge geek, with mental health symptoms that could be mistaken for autism and ADHD but are actually due to trauma from having terrible parents who I removed from my life decades ago.

The customers were clueless disorganised nitwits. Their upper management was out playing golf, so we had to try to get their disgruntled office staff to stop looking at facebook for five minutes and cooperate with us to get things done.

I handled complicated technical stuff but had to leaving talking to the customers to someone else.

It depends on your personality.

I'm too honest and bad at manipulating people to be a good salesman or executive.

Sales is a totally different skill set and psychopathic personality disorder to making the technology work.

> I'm a huge geek, with mental health symptoms that could be mistaken for autism and ADHD but are actually due to trauma from having terrible parents who I removed from my life decades ago.

I have a similar background. Can I email you?

> ...Sales is a totally different skill set...

Its not just that - though i agree with you - it is also that the sales skillset needs to be to a degree of closing deals/sales. I have been a really great wingman/second banana when it comes to sales...I'm actually the person in the room who helps win over customers almost 100% of the time in both influencing as well as technical competency...But as a partner...If i'm left to be my own sales person, to generate new leads, new business, etc....well, then, i suck terribly. What i need is a topnotch sales person, where i can join them as second banana/tech sales...and then i can build a crazy good business. Closing sales on one's own is hella hard!

Both? :sweat:

Work for yourself if you can make it viable then it will be a lot more rewarding and grow you as a person as opposed to being a voiceless number in some open plan office just counting the days to your next holiday.

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