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Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#11

Post by gchamonlive »

goenning wrote: post #6
mateuszbuda wrote: post #4

Only around 5% of the products from IndieHackers generate a monthly revenue exceeding ~$8,333 (around ~$100k/year). Source: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/indie-hackers-revenue

Part time freelancing is underrated. More people should try it. That frees up a lot of time for indie hacking

Do you have any tips for starting out trying freelancing gigs? I think the main issue would be visibility for me, I still need to build a protifolio that speaks for my skillset, because right now I don't think I have much demonstrable skills outside of a traditional hiring interview pipeline.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#12

Post by ringofchaos »

Would living on investment income be considered as self employed. I quit my management job of Tech department of my company.

Saved enough money to generate 80 percent of my last drawn salary from my investments.

Now focusing on creating my own fintech web app, with generative ai integration.

I like the feeling of working independently and years of corporate job had taken taken toll on mental health.

Currently building skills in fullstack web development and generative ai. Would take freelance job for some extra cash

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#13

Post by yetihehe »

I'm virtually self employed, started about one year ago. Taxes are HIGH where I live, it's a little cheaper for employer to subcontract, so he pays the same overall, I got a raise. I currently have probably one of highest pays for my region, so would have to move to other city to earn more. Plus I do some freelancing in free hours, to bring some more money. Bought a little too big home for my means (it was just before everything suddenly went 2x, "finished" it just before pandemic), so I'm spending everything I get. I earn twice what some of my friends get, but they have more for "life".

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#14

Post by asim »

philip1209 wrote: post #2

I've been self-employed for the last ~18 months. In the past I started two VC-backed startups, then was a PM at some later-stage companies before returning to entrepreneurship. This time around, I'm building a solo "digital product studio" [1] instead of a startup. So, I'm staying one person, haven't raised money, and have multiple revenue-generating products. Product revenue doesn't cover my costs yet, so I do occas…

This is super cool! I was/am a startup founder too, bootstrapped an open source project, raised VC money, but ultimately it didn't work out. Now thinking about a solo business again and the studio model was exactly what I was looking at. How did you decide what to build?

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#15

Post by philip1209 »

gchamonlive wrote: post #11
goenning wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part time freelancing is underrated. More people should try it. That frees up a lot of time for indie hacking

Do you have any tips for starting out trying freelancing gigs? I think the main issue would be visibility for me, I still need to build a protifolio that speaks for my skillset, because right now I don't think I have much demonstrable skills outside of a traditional hiring interview pipeline.

I run this free community for fractional tech workers - come check it out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37419830

The reality is that being self-employed requires building business skills and being able to sell your skills. I previously founded a VC-funded developer marketplace, and the people that won all the jobs were the great communicators - not the most experienced (or inexpensive) developers.

Fractional work is a nice in-between where you ideally have a retained part-time contract, paid weekly or monthly, so that you aren't constantly looking for new projects.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#18

Post by 0x000042 »

I am. I founded PG Support (https://pgsupport.dk). We are a small team of experienced PostgreSQL consultants.

I really like having close contact to customers as well having a very high variance in the type of work that I do.

I also run DebianSupport (https://debiansupport.com) from which we provide professional services for Linux. Mostly Debian and Ubuntu but not exclusively so.

Having used Linux extensively since 1997 and PostgreSQL since 2000, I really like working with both pieces of technology. And I love being able to provide value from my skills and experience.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#19

Post by nehal3m »

newswasboring wrote: post #9
sigio wrote: post #7

I've been a self-employed Ops-Engineer/Sysadmin for hire/Sysadmin-as-a-service for 14 years now, after doing the same as an employee for a consulting company for the 10 years before that.

How does this work? I see sysadmin as having a large day to day component. Do they call you in to setup processes or are you the emergency call?

I'm considering this avenue as well, I'd be interested in an answer from your parent.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#20

Post by jamesmunns »

I am for a couple years now. I do consulting work [1] around Rust/Embedded Systems/Systems Engineering, usually helping teams that are either kicking off a project (so helping with planning, scoping, and backfilling knowledge gaps), or people who want help building a proof of concept (so: just build it for me asap) for existing companies exploring new ideas or for startups that are working on demos for investors, etc.

I've been active on both the open source and commercial side of embedded Rust since the beginning, so it's been fun to watch it grow both as an ecosystem as well as from a commercial adoption perspective. Doing consulting makes it easier to help do more open source docs + support in the open, and seems to be one of more sustainable ways to do OSS in my opinion, if you can swing it.

[1]: https://onevariable.com/

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