An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games.
Working for yourself at your own pace is.
As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
> As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
This is great for people whose own pace is reasonable and matched to their compensation. If you’re paying someone 50th percentile compensation and demanding a 90th percentile work pace and output from them, you’re just going to have endless turnover as you burn people out.
Conversely, if you’re paying 90th percentile compensation and you have an employee moving at half the speed of their peers, eventually you’ll get fed up and replace them with someone better matched to the position.
But this all breaks down when you get into the weirder ends of the market. Self-pacing works great for you because you can put in the work to deliver $500K/year of value and companies appreciate it. It doesn’t work for many people whose idea of a workday is to put in 1-2 hours of focus and then browse the internet all day, which is a larger portion of the developer population than I would have guessed before becoming a manager. Other people can’t help but wander through tasks, get distracted by rewrites or new frameworks, needlessly refactor working code, or otherwise do a lot of activity without producing a lot of work. Both of these fault modes benefit greatly from the pacing and structure of management.
There’s no one size fits all approach. I think solo dev contracting is a great option for some people, but the type of person who can self-manage, sell themselves, network, and retain self-discipline isn’t all that common.
I think this is a great example of how different people thrive in different environments.
Only if they're a 50th percentile person.
Burnout is also not only a function of workload. Other factors can contribute too.
Of course they have zero incentive to get anything done, they get paid regardless of how well the project gets done.
Maybe if they had the guts to leave a paycheck for browsing Reddit and started their own business they would have success too.
When I work on my projects I have way more stamina than when I'm doing client work. I kind of have to resist the urge to kill myself all the time instead of doing that boring job and I keep reminding me I'll be able to build a villa with the money.
I don't think it's laziness or lack of accountability, I think it's the 20 years of indoctrination in the school system - which are just factories churning out employees afraid of stepping out of line.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. I personally wouldn't say humans are lazy, but simply: people avoid doing things they find unenjoyable, but if they must do something unenjoyable they'll find ways to minimize their time spent doing it.
> Of course they have zero incentive to get anything done, they get paid regardless of how well the project gets done.
This makes it sound like freelancers get more work done, not because it's more enjoyable, but because they must to get paid.
> Maybe if they had the guts to leave a paycheck for browsing Reddit and started their own business they would have success too.
For some people, getting paid to browse reddit is one definition of success.
> When I work on my projects I have way more stamina than when I'm doing client work. I kind of have to resist the urge to kill myself all the time instead of doing that boring job and I keep reminding me I'll be able to build a villa with the money.
Huh... After reading this I need to rethink what you are even arguing. I assumed it was that freelancers put in more hours because the nature of their work is more fulfilling. But you're really just saying, yeah humans are lazy to the point of wanting death over client work, but at least with freelance I can frontload the actual number of miserable hours worked, instead of spreading them over 30 years.
If you've been lucky enough not to encounter them in your day to day, then that's really good, because when you have to work with one of them, boy does it suck.
That being said, I've only encountered this a few times in over 10 years working as a software developer. Most people really do want to do a good job. Even if some of them get distracted easily and need more structure.
That's why we get paid after all. I really enjoy my job and I'm effective, but if I didn't need money, it's not so fun that I wouldn't drop it to do other stuff I find more rewarding.
We aren't built for this either, especially not thought work. Society compells it, which is what it is, but we are not evolved for an 8 hour day of thinking at a desk.
Some people are good at it, but we are asking far more than some people to do it, and you have to do -something- to survive, and the outcome is obvious from thay lens in my opinion.
If anything, school set me up with higher expectations. Here I am in college, doing interesting math problems and programming projects and such. I get out to the real world and boss man is just like, "client just needs an application/feature to do X," and the solution is just fetching the data, putting it in a list, and doing a for loop over it. If anything, College had me expecting to do a lot cooler shit.
These are all problems that stem from management, not employees.
Yeah, but not necessarily for any malicious reason. It may not matter to you. My impression is that these people are burnt out from high school and college. But they fit a superficially, stereotypically identical profile to like, the one person you know putting in 80 hour weeks, so they keep getting hired. This is not a fringe idea, it's common enough to be made fun of in movies.
My point is that there are a dozen commenters litigating all sorts of irrelevant issues, when the explanation for how people who want to work 1-2h weeks keep getting $200k/yr+ jobs seems obvious to many non-industry laypeople.
I loved:
* the flexibility
* getting paid for every hour I worked (I billed by the hour)
* the freedom to choose clients
* having more than one made me feel more stable
* how close it kept me to the business problem space
* the ability to take time off
* the distance: I could roll my eyes and say "at least I'm getting paid for this BS" when there was political BS
However, after time I joined a team because:
* PTO is quite nice
* Insurance (in America) is better in general for employees
* it was great to be part of a team
* the ability to specialize in a way that is difficult as a contractor (I can be further away from direct revenue generation or product creation)
Highly recommend everyone tries this out as you'll have a much greater appreciation for all the components of a business when you are doing them yourself (or are responsible for them).
As someone who is (overly?) honest/careful; this could be a con. Also, if you're able to, bill by the day.
This isn't really how it works though. If you find "getting called in" (what does this mean?) to be terrible, you should be charging more for that service. You should be in control.
The whole point is to generate enough surplus value that your client signs the cheque, no questions asked, and is happy to do it. You shouldn't squabbling over hours.
A while back I worked at a consultancy that typically billed using a 15-minute granularity during standard office hours, reasonably rounded up/down. Unless otherwise contracted, outside of office hours the granularity increased to 1 hour rounded up. A 5 minute fix would be billed as an hour, a 65 minute fix as 2 hours, etc. It was also only undertaken for emergencies; general work requests would be done the next business day.
Generally all contracts were budgeted some number of hours per billing cycle per service. N full-time engineers would be converted to an equivalent amount of hours for the budget.
The result was that overtime was used judiciously and clients were rarely insisted on pushing big changes near the end of a day or on Fridays.
I bill by complete days now, so I don't take on work that is less than a day.
If I work half a day for a client, the next day I will work half a day in the rest of that job.
This still gives me the flexibility to not get bored in a single day.
This sounds like a day here means "about 8 hours" as opposed to "the work performed during a given calendar day". Makes sense.
I think that it is unabashedly a pro, because whenever you are adding value to the business and can defend it in an invoice, you're able to get value for it. Unlike when you are a salaried employee and the extra hours don't get you anything material (maybe noticed and provided with a raise. maybe).
Given the fight we’ve seen over WFH, I’m very inclined to believe that this is intentional by the industry. By focusing on paying top dollar for FTEs and demanding incredible amounts of time and energy from them, companies maintain a level of control that they wouldn’t have by working with a fractional engineering team.
* I wanted to add that I am referring to software developers. Creative types like the author of this article are always shit upon by corporate types unfortunately
My performance reviews are always "exceeds expectations", but I haven't seen how this benefits anyone other than the company so far.
Maybe I should just take it more easy but I feel like I'd float under the radar for possible promotion then.
Few companies have sane compensation policies. by all means put in extra work when you have an opportunity to learn some new skill from it. but once you get to a pint where your skills are valuable, either jump ship to a another company that pays commisserate to your new skill level or start or join a startup where you get enough equity to eat at the adult's table when the ipo or acquisition happens
Basically, you're most likely being taken advantage of and will never be properly rewarded for what you're doing, IME.
Another is to find organizations that have individual contributor (IC) promotion tracks that are at least as lucrative as the management track. (Of the highest-paid, most respected people at my company, most of them are not in management and are simply really good at what they do.)
Schmoozing is not the way.
I stopped caring about getting promoted and doing things just for visibility. If I see something that needs to be done, I make sure it gets taken care of. I ask intelligent questions in meetings and have almost always put way more thought into anything we're working on than anyone else so I'm able to have good questions and concerns. I focus on delivering for the business and not impressing other software engineers.
The key, and this is the one piece of bullshit unfortunately, is to make sure your manager and ideally your manager's manager know about what you are doing. I mostly accomplish this during my one-on-one and by speaking up in various meetings we are in. I also work for a company where talking directly to senior management and even executives is truly accepted.
The thing is, most people are followers and need to be told what to do. Become the person that knows what needs to be done and makes sure things don't fall through the cracks. Unless you are looking to go into management, focus on the technical and driving projects to completion, but avoid trying to manage other people. Eventually if you build enough respect from the team you can get them to do what is needed and your can build enough trust with your manager that you can direct them to deal with problem employees.
The downside to all of this is that I'm pulled into absolutely everything because everyone wants my opinion and I'll actually make decisions for everyone instead of meeting about it 15 times. I end up doing very little actual development these days, but I'm paid extremely well and don't have to manage people. In the end this doesn't bother me that much because I see corporate software development as a different activity from the one I actually enjoy.
I went from "lucky to get hired" application support engineer peon to being groomed for CTO by stepping out of my lane. My supervisor had a sign on his wall: "Stay in your lane." I did not (he ended up sacked by the CFO). I found that even pissing off some key executives (CEO/CFO) a few times just helped my profile. I got lucky but it was all deliberate.
One of the executives I inflamed (CFO) had to sign off on two record setting raises/promotions for me. All brought before the board of directors/investors by the then/current CTO.
To be fair, I was also super productive/knowledgeable and a high-performer. Everyone else was used to working at big companies, I had been sitting at home the previous ten years playing on my computer and gardening.
If you want to stand out then you need to go somewhere that you can.
Or threaten to leave and get a real raise
Honestly it does sound like you're doing it wrong. If you want to get paid more there are more effective ways of doing that. If you enjoy tough tasks that's fine, but be honest with yourself and make sure you're doing it because you want to.
Ish. It's complicated.
IME, most folks have a low standard for "good" and don't differentiate well above a certain minimum. Someone with an MFA and 150k in debt may expect to get paid more than someone with no degree and no school debt, but that doesn't mean the buyer will rate the MFA higher -- which means they won't pay them more money.
The MFA may also expect to spend X hours on a project without _explaining that_ to the buyer.
That's not corporate types being stingy or such, it's a mismatch of expectations. At the end of the day, buyers value the work much lower than the sellers, so the sellers are going to be disappointed far more often.
Doesn't this require a level of coordination between hirers that almost certainly doesn't exist?
I see these takes all the time about how "the industry" cabal coordinates to screw over workers. Never have I seen any meeting notes or interviews from former CEOs on how this coordination might happen, just disgruntled employees feeling they deserve more.
Clearly, the heads of HR and other people who define corporate compensation talk to one another, “hey what are you guys doing to manage pay cuts, reductions in staff, etc in this economy at company x/y/z”.
It’s a pretty obvious benefit of having a strong professional network. I.e you have people you can ask for mentorship and advise. Every startup board was asking companies to belt tighten and reduce costs because of the economy earlier this year and last year.
A relatively small number of companies and startups in tech define top of market for compensation. Clearly the people at those companies know one another and talk about what they are doing.
Except when it does. Remember when most of big tech had secret no-poach agreements to keep the wages of engineers down [1]? It wasn’t that long ago.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
Do people really think this ? VC funded startups are as corporate as it gets, probably worse, just a different kind of corporate.
The second you take funding you have a new boss[1]and have all sorts of constraints which become more and more rigid with more rounds .
There are only few well understood models of scaling and governance that VCs know to work, if you deviate too much they are going to fire and replace you.[2]
It would be rare to have the kind of corporate control Zuckerberg enjoys today for a founder and neither are valuations and preferences terms generous to founders larger you raise .
Whether small business or a giant startup the power dynamics is the same . how much money you need to make payroll(including yours in a solo op) and who is funding it , if you don’t need any money at all then you are the king , if you cannot afford even a small short fall everyone else who can bring that money is your boss
[1] until you raise funding, there are many bosses you cannot afford to piss off : early users/customers , employees, vendors and so on you don’t have the money to attract the talent you desire or runway to say no to capricious user demands
[2] I am not even including the class of funds like a16z who early on will bring in dozens of experts who are on staff and have done scaling many times , imagine part of management, the -1 team reports to your boss also
How did you get started to snap up your first jobs on it?
I started on freelancer websites when I was 15 and it was nice to bag 20$ per hour plus extra if I happened to be faster.
But the more experienced you get the more you can charge and use your network instead of cheap jobs on Upwork.
- network
200k:
- high signaled / luke warm outbound on dev communities (YC work at a startup job board is one)
- referrals
300k++:
- dedicated outbound tech sale person
I have a dedicated outbound sales person who pings their network for referrals every few weeks. Their job is to weed out noise + educate + convert hourly to project based billing
Went into a lot of detail on Reddit a couple years back here
https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/ommiww/commen...
I can see how that helps in increasing revenue, but it also makes the work less agile, requires longer negotiations and adds risks. So it's probably not for everyone.
Some others have found a way to bill similar amounts but on short projects billed by the day/week. That sounds preferable to me, but you need to have a skill that produces value in such short projects.
I assume you're a software developer? There's your skill.
I think you're overthinking this. How is it less agile? You have a project, a price and a timeline. Everything between then and the end is on your schedule.
The only "unintuitive" skill you need to hone is assessing value and pricing based on that. But there is endless analysis and analogies out there to help.
We are trying this but have you seen the constant media siege bombarding us with “studies” show remote work is bad for you? In the uk there are now articles saying that even hybrid is bad. We want to be more independent but we are not always allowed to. Tech is meant to be the easiest path to independence yet somehow its not. Wondering why.
Going remote shouldn’t change the pace of worn. For some people, going remote causes their productivity to collapse (distractions, loneliness, feeling disconnected, less oversight) but those people should be managed individually.
But being remote or in office shouldn’t determine your pace of work.
As opposed to wasting time chatting or in useless meeting. That means you dont have to rush getting the actual work done.
So yeah, it’s a better, slower, calmer, well thought out, pace.
It’s you, the code, and the environment that makes you happy. Thats why working less results in more output, paradoxically.
What kind of companies and tech stack do you work with?
I've worked as a freelance solo dev (sadly for far less than $500k/year) and the difference between my revenue and profit was close to zero. Expenses included accountancy costs and the occasional new laptop or whatever bit of hardware I could justifiably call a business expense, but it was a tiny fraction of my revenue.
But if you assume as I do that your time is the most valuable thing you have, then there’s no way to generate profits when all you sell is your time.
You can generate cash, sure. But profits as in selling something for more than it cost you, never. You can never get that time back, and it’s worth more than anything.
I would guess many will disagree with this perspective.