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Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

The reality is super bleak. Listen to the Indiehackers podcast and you will see that most of the 'crazy success' stories involve someone getting lucky and ending up with $10k/mo, that is a low junior dev salary at a FAANG.

The most recent episode featured a guy who was an expert at building and selling Shopify apps. He built 10 different apps, but 97% of his revenue was coming from 1 of them. Even in his own special niche he had a 10% success rate. It was something like the 4th product he had launched also, so it wasn't the product of lessons learned.

I don't want to make it sound bleak because everyone should experience building something from scratch (I have tried and still dabble) but it is really a tough game.

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Throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm one of those senior FAANG guys making $300k/year, every day I'm waking up at 5 and working on my own startup idea for 3-4 hours so that some day I can get back to my home country and have freedom, $3k/month will be enough. I will try very hard to get that freedom, only if I fail I'll look for another job. $10k/mo as a solo founder and $10k/mo at FAANG is in no way comparable.

I'm sure you know about this already, but it's worth spreading the word any chance I can get: Look into Financial Independence

You don't need THAT much money to retire. You can put all your money into the stock market, then withdraw 4% per year and live off it and reasonably expect to live like that indefinitely, since the exponential growth of your savings will balance out the ongoing withdrawals and inflation.

At $40k a year you could retire with $1M saved, which could be doable in 10 years of saving FAANG money pretty comfortably.

On the topic of FAANG sucking: I'm another FAANG guy making the big levels.fyi bucks. This job is great, best job I ever had, but I do hate it as well. I have to ask for permission to take a few days off. My only real long vacation opportunities are during the same time of year as everyone else on the planet, so traveling anywhere is a stressful overpriced fiasco. I spend hours every week getting yelled at in meetings over stupid fucking no-op line items on spreadsheets. I can't take my kid to the park during the winter because I'm stuck going into an office during the entirety of daylight hours every day. While I was typing this rant, I got a popup from Slack telling me I need to update the format of my pull requests to match some stupid fucking template.

People aren't meant to live this way, it's bullshit. </RANT>

And that's your best job so far?

Which FAANG uses slack? Because I'd like to avoid them. Microsoft and Google sure don't, but then they have their own thing going on, so I'm not sure that's any better.

This rant was awesome. Please post more like it. I am at the point in my career where I don't really need a manager. I am mature enough to come to work and produce valuable things. Still, managers are required in the corporate world, and they ask you do all sorts of dumb things that add no value, e.g., "pull request reformatting".

I'm sorry to hear about your holiday situation. I assume you have about 20 business day or more per year. One idea: Pre-plan 3-4 holidays at the start of the year. Get them pre-approved by your manager. Also: Ask if you can buy more holidays (give up base salary). Most managers think you are crazy for asking, but few say no. (It required some finess with HR.) If you could get 5-6 weeks of holiday per year, you might be able to put up with more b/s from your manager. It helps me a lot. I try to take a one week holiday every quarter. Also: Ask your partner if you can take a holiday alone. Be upfront and tell them "nothing shady", but you want to go backpacking in India or drive accross New Zealand for two weeks (or whatever). Most partners are supportive if you are making very good money (like you).

That's a great suggestion, thanks for that. Especially if I went for a less demanding and remote-friendly role I'll bet that would work really well to keep a decent work-life balance.

I'm just going to tough it out one more year, and hopefully I can get out of this hamster wheel forever after that. I managed to save about $500k in 4 years, so I should be able to move somewhere normal, buy a house, and live in it with my family while working on a revenue stream

>You don't need THAT much money to retire. You can put all your money into the stock market, then withdraw 4% per year and live off it and reasonably expect to live like that indefinitely, since the exponential growth of your savings will balance out the ongoing withdrawals and inflation.

>At $40k a year you could retire with $1M saved, which could be doable in 10 years of saving FAANG money pretty comfortably.

It depends what kind of securities you are buying and where, especially if you want to secure your kids’ future (their education/healthcare/land/legal risks). I also think a 4% withdrawal rate is too optimistic given the demographic changes that are projected to occur, I am using 2% for my calculations.

There's also combinations to consider - for example, GP saves $0.5 mil, yielding $20k/yr, generates additional $20k through work.

Firmwarrior, you need a different manager.

4% is specific to 60/40 US portfolio with 30 years horizon to not die poor at the end of it , a safer rate would be 2/2.5%[0]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FwgCRIS0Wg

I think 10k/month from a product and 10k/month from FAANG have a vastly different value quality of life wise

If you attain relative independence at 10 K per month, it might be worth it.

Personally, I am a very independence-minded person and I am not sure what offer would I have to receive in order to drop my current business (with a lot of small customers, so not a single chokepoint) and become a cog in some big wheelhouse.

Experience of my peers (I am soon to be 45) says that big wheelhouses can sometimes collapse with alarming speed and once you get used to the putative safety, the aftereffects can break your family, your mind (one guy I knew really fell into a bad alcohol habit after being let go from a bank) etc.

Just went and listened, and sure enough the first episode was on point. Justin Welsh. Smart guy, but he does attribute a lot of his success to being one of the first people to create posts specifically for linkedin, which allowed him to acquire an audience of about 20k very quickly.

Yeah he is actually doing pretty well. The people who do the best seem to be the ones who do newsletters and courses on... how to build SaaS companies lol.

LOL. Totally agree. In the gold rush, sell shovels. I also like it when people who are really good bloggers or technical writers do some navel gazing and write a post about how their most valuable skill is writing and it should be yours also. I have a good laugh when I see those.

1 out of 10 sounds about right. Especially if you're taking a shot in the dark and/or not competing in an established market. Truth be told, it is tough, but its not the path of least resistance, so there's nothing else to expect. It is easier to push through if you have thick skin. If you have grit, you can iterate through projects quickly and find the one that connects with a market. The trap is falling in love with your idea without first proving it can generate revenue. I know guys who have poured tens of thousands of dollars into SAAS, only to discover after-the-fact that nobody wants to buy it.

Every person's situation is unique, but less money can be equivalent given the tangible costs (transportation, food, clothing, etc) and intangible (stresses of any particular jobs like meetings, hours, etc)

Furthermore it's very few businesses that make it past 20 years and it's very hard to transition from one business to another. I am now in that tight spot as a successful businessman in year 14

What do you do?

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