Ask HN: How do you earn your money?

Hah you got me, I'm 36. I also agree that consulting can be a trap, but for the reason that it's not scalable. A consulting firm is only worth about as much as its employees, so there's no real exit strategy. I guess I'm kind of lucky that I don't live in a big city so can afford to dabble in it. But it does sting sometimes to not receive residual income for past work.

Cool to hear about your earlier escapades. My business partner and I were just getting a foothold in Mac OS 9 shareware games when Apple switched to OS X and antiquated the code we had worked so hard on for 5 years. I took it really personally and suffered several years of depression. Things didn't turn around for me until I stopped using my own code. Now I don't maintain an "engine", I just scavenge commonly used code and find that it shields me from the whims of proprietary APIs.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I also look back on what might have been, and sometimes wished I had been born 5 years earlier, when things were “booming”. But it’s an easy trap to fall into, because at least for the time being, programmers’ leverage is increasing faster than competition can fill the niches. Kids today, what with their supercomputers and megabit internet connections and being able to stand on the shoulders of giants’ open source projects! Get off my lawn! In my day we didn’t even have the internet! We had BBS’s, and floppy disks that stopped being readable, and books.. paper books! Imagine such a thing! And girls didn’t even use computers! Neither did teachers! Can you imagine?

I too have often wished the geeks and hackers of the world were better at networking. Generations of potential have been lost to reinventing the wheel. It’s kind of ironic that we’re so able to communicate in this distributed fashion and solve problems but have so few interpersonal and professional relationships.

That's awesome to learn about worker co-ops. I was thinking about starting a software development or SAAS company where every person is a worker/owner, so it's good to know they already exist.

Here's what I'd love to do if I ever started my own company:

I start the company with 1 or 2 other software developers and designers. We would each own an equal number of shares. Any new team members would have to go through a relatively intense interview process, but when they joined, they would receive an equal number of shares, which means that our shares would be evenly diluted. And the next time we bring someone new on board, the decision would need to be unanimous.

Since we'd be giving away such a huge number of shares, they would vest over something like 7 years. But we would be giving them actual shares, instead of stock options that you have to exercise with your own cash. Also, keep in mind that that person would probably own more of the company after their first year, than most early employees own after 3. So yes, if we bring on someone new and our company was doing really well, we might be giving away millions of dollars in stock, and paying them massive bonuses in their first month. But why not? If we could pull it off, I think that would be an incredible way to structure a company.

And we'd start all of this without outside investment. Mailchimp and GitHub are two awesome examples of bootstrapped startups. But if it ever made sense for us to raise $100 million, then we'd go ahead and do that, knowing that every single person's shares would be diluted equally.

As soon as we start making enough money, we'd be able to pay everyone an equal base salary. We'd all agree on a budget for equipment, office space, hosting, altruism, and cash reserves, but the rest of the profits would be paid out as monthly bonuses.

We'd also dedicate a very large portion of our time and assets to altruistic causes from the very beginning. Eventually, our company would become a non-profit of sorts, where each of us re-invest our millions, and work on fixing everything that's wrong in the world.

I think that finding like-minded people will be pretty damn hard, but even if it's just ten of us, I think this would be an amazing way to build a company. I don't think this would be able to scale past 50 or 100, but who knows.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant :)

Agree 100% with you. I never for a single moment regretted spending the time in Tibet. It was literally a life-changing experience.

A lot of times it is said that you should pursue your carrier while you're still young and without many responsibilities. But the same goes for creating something meaningful with your life, for exploring the world and widening your perspective on life. It is much easier done when you're young and it beneficially affects the rest of your life.

I am so happy this thread exists. Reading a bunch of raw, honest, and insightful stories about the journey through an industry fueled by reality-distortion is like a breath of fresh air. This feeling must be what people mean when they talk about the "old HN". Glad to see its spirit still lays beneath the surface.

It's a good question. I love to read people's responds here and kudos to all who have shared their experience. Answering to your question, I work as an employee. I enjoy working in a company because there are trainings, financial support to get IT certification and the salary is not bad. Also the company's dream which is to make IT more secure is pretty much similar to my dream. So if you end up working as an employee, better be in a company that has the same dream as yours.