Work a regular high-paying software job, save, invest, reach FI, then do software all day.
Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#12It’s extremely hard to engineer a product, sell a product, support a product, and administer a business all on your own. It really only works if you can escape a few of those hats through luck, unusual cleverness, or the right partner.
The easier road to having a lot of agency in your work is through consulting/contracting as you’ve already started. The more expertise your develop and the more reputation you earn, the more confidence you can bring to your recommendations and the more freedom your clients will give you. Once it starts churning, you make plenty of money and have lots agency and rarely need to look hard for work.
But that takes time. The most valuable advice, besides patience, is to be discerning about what clients you accept and retain. It can be tempting to take any client during a dry spell or to become enamored by a client with cool ideas, but some prospective clients will devour your soul and others will have financial trouble that leaves you with large unpaid invoices and little recourse. You can learn to spot this ahead of time and you want to develop that skill. Too extreme a bad client, or too many bad clients, will burn you out worse than any bad manager at bigcorp. So stay watchful and don’t be afraid to fire bad clients once you see things looking dicey.
Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#13If you need to get paid you aren’t “working for yourself” or controlling the project. Whomever pays for your work decides most of the parameters. That’s called freelancing or consulting. You don’t “become” a freelancer or independent developer. That’s not an identity. You find customers who will pay you to deliver solutions to business problems. If you have a good reputation and track record and relationships with yo…
The first half of this advice seems like possibly-unnecessary semantic pedantism.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#14build something and launch it. charge money for it. publish about it. repeat. check out @indiehackers and @levelsio, and the book "start small stay small" by rob walling
This is the way. Just dive in and start with something.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#15I was in the same boat. Tried starting my own agency. Had a bit of success, but I was spending a huge chunk of my time just chasing money down. Then I stumbled upon a way to have my cake and eat it too: Becoming a Solutions/Sales Engineer.
It's all the upsides of running your own consultancy, without the downsides of chasing money and customers. I have generally flexible hours, tonnes of autonomy, and have a nice balance of getting to talk to people and coding. None of the coding I do is rocket science-level hard for me because I'm working with the same set of APIs every day, but is incredibly helpful for customers. My boss hardly ever tells me what to do, every week we have a 1/1, asks if the customers I'm helping are happy, and I tell him what I'm helping them do the following week.
It really is the best gig on the planet. I wish I would have known about this path sooner.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#16It's not exactly what you have in mind, but my friend walked into local small businesses saying "Hey, can I make you a website?". Then he googled "how to make a website" and figured out how to drag and drop with WordPress. Literally no tech experience, just a few business cards, and it went uphill from there.
He gradually moved into SEO and marketing as his customers wanted that. Right now he has about 40 customers that give him consistent work.
To this day, he's still amazed that I can code and write CSS.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#17build something and launch it. charge money for it. publish about it. repeat. check out @indiehackers and @levelsio, and the book "start small stay small" by rob walling
This is the 'best' way, absolutely, but it's not the easiest and it's tricky if you need a regular income.
But even if you try and it doesn't work out 100%, you still learn a ton.
Rob has a new book out, by the way, "The SaaS Playbook". Haven't read it yet, so not sure how it is, but "Start Small, Stay Small" is one of the best business books I've ever read because he went out on a limb with real, practical advice rather than handwavy BS. That means it's a bit dated now, but probably still worth a quick read.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#18If you need to get paid you aren’t “working for yourself” or controlling the project. Whomever pays for your work decides most of the parameters. That’s called freelancing or consulting. You don’t “become” a freelancer or independent developer. That’s not an identity. You find customers who will pay you to deliver solutions to business problems. If you have a good reputation and track record and relationships with yo…
I am you. Or more accurately I am what you want to be.
I started in a small business as employee #1 (with the founder as #0). We wrote bespoke software for customers. When that well proved unreliable as income we built products and took them to market (much more reliable risk of actually getting a salary this month.)
Over a long career I've had the freedom to elite what I want, release when I want, with any cadence I want and so on.
Of course I also learned what my customers like, what they don't like, and what they like, but I don't like. Inevitably (because I like to eat) my work patterns match what they like.
I font have 1 boss now. I have 1000. With 1000 voices all at the same time. Some are louder. Some are more useful. (The most useful are seldom loud).
Ultimately I do provide enough value for them to graciously pay me. But make no mistake - it was very hard (non programming) work to get here. The key insight was marketing. I have spent probably half my career actively marketing - and for a long time that included a lot of travel. I have visited my potential customers in small groups I cities across the globe. Multiple times. I've run training courses, attended industry conferences, processed orders, and so in.
Independent means doing -all- the jobs, not just programming. If you want to make a living this way (and i do) just be aware that there's still a million things to do. Programming might be the fun part, but you need enough discipline and desire to do the rest as well.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#19Worker owned coops are another way to gain agency and independence without having to give up working with peers
Re: Ask HN: What's the best way to become an independent software developer?
#20If you need to get paid you aren’t “working for yourself” or controlling the project. Whomever pays for your work decides most of the parameters. That’s called freelancing or consulting. You don’t “become” a freelancer or independent developer. That’s not an identity. You find customers who will pay you to deliver solutions to business problems. If you have a good reputation and track record and relationships with yo…
The first half of this advice seems like possibly-unnecessary semantic pedantism.
It may seem that way, but its not.
If you only have 1 boss, he gets 100% of the control over you.
If you have 100 customers, they each get 1% control. But they all pay 1% [1] of your income. So you get to make 100 people happy not just 1. Its a very real issue in this sort of space.
[1] in truth they're not equal. 10% probably make up the bulk of the income. They shout with a quieter voice. When they whisper you jump. The ones who pay the least will also complain the most. About "trivial things". Listening to them improves the product enormously.