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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?

#261

Post by V-2 »

mkaszkowiak wrote: post #138
poisonborz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that this is a very wrong direction for any country but especially eastern europe. It's like: welfare/health care system is bad, taxes are not used well. Top earning knowledge workers want an exit hatch, let's cater for them and they can hop off the welfare tax system. This way they can also provide cheap prices to foreign companies. So many problems. These are just top off my head: - Countries should wan…

I agree that it's problematic, however: > welfare/health care system is bad, taxes are not used well There's a widespread lack of trust in the Polish government, which decreased even further during the 2015-2023 period. If the money is being funelled to the ruling politicians' families and friends, why willingly pay high taxes? I believe this is an underlying core issue, which would probably take a new generation to…

I'm not sure if there had been any unprecented drop in the trust level between 2015 and 2023 (meaning under the Law and Justice government).

While it is true that it's relatively low in Poland in general... Eg. according to this survey [1], the percentage of respondents expressing trust in the government decreased from 38% in 2016 down to 32% in 2022 (while clearly exceeding 40% about half way through).

Which is pretty normal whenever the same party stays at power for a longer period; its popularity wears out over time.

For comparison, the same score was at 39% back in 2012, midway through the term of the government preceding Law and Justice. Hardly a striking contrast.

I'm even less sure about your claim when it comes to the context of welfare systems in particular.

Social transfers and safety net is one of the very few areas where the Law and Justice government achieved substantial results, even though it had to steer the country through the hardships of the pandemics.

For example, in terms of the percentage of children at risk of poverty and social exclusion Poland ranked 14th in the EU back in 2015 [2]. By 2022, it ranked 6th [3].

Also look at [4], [5], [6]...

I am putting aside the infamous judiciary reforms, abortion, and other hot button areas (which are far less of a priority for an average voter than echo chamber—commentators tend to assume). I'm focusing on the taxing & welfare, and sheer facts.

[1] https://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2022/K_037_22.PDF

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/E...

[3] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

[4] https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/11/10/poland-has-eus-second...

[5] https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/06/20/poland-has-eus-third-...

[6] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1130472/poland-poverty-r...

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

#262

Post by t_mahmood »

pmontra wrote: post #258

Self employed since 2006. Currently working for a couple of customers. Three of them would be too much, no meaningful weekly deliveries for at least one of them. Current stacks: Django with server side rendering and Rails with a Vue.js frontend. Side projects on my home servers in whatever fits short time slots and small footprints: Lua with OpenResty, Python with customized http.server POST and GET methods, Ruby and…

How do you manage?

I have difficult managing two clients. How do you switch context, and make sure your are fairly distributing time and focus for each client, while not getting overwhelmed. My psychiatrist suspected ADHD, so probably that's why context switching is difficult for me. How do you make yourself to stay on the task and meet deadlines?

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

#263

Post by jason_zig »

I've been self employed (doing the "solopreneur" thing) for ~8 years now. I wrote a blog post about the early days[0]. TLDR I have been bouncing between eCommerce (Shopify Apps) and software in the music space. Both of those avenues have roadblocks and challenges when it comes to building a future proof solo career: Shopify is a narrow market and changes fast while the music industry is all over the place. So now I'm focused on Zigpoll[1] which will hopefully have some legs take me from solopreneurship to early retirement :)

[0]https://www.zigpoll.com/blog/being-a-solopreneur-part-one

[1]https://www.zigpoll.com

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

#264

Post by mentos »

philip1209 wrote: post #257
benjaminwootton wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it difficult for one person to market multiple products or websites? It’s hard enough getting traction for one product, let alone a portfolio?

After I sold my last company, I felt like my identity was overly tied to one product. So, I decided to build a company separate from the products, so that over time the products can change but I have a through line company brand. When I started this comapny, I didn't have a product - but I had the holding company (Contraption Company). My first product was Postcard, but now I spend most of my time building Booklet. A…

I'm self employed in NYC and its a dream of mine to travel/work in Japan. I've sort of written the idea off that unless I can speak the language its going to be too difficult. Curious if you agree or not.

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

#266

Post by philip1209 »

derzan wrote: post #223
philip1209 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first product Postcard [1] is a personal website builder. I built that because I thought a personal website maker made logical sense as an indie business, and I wanted a way to stay in touch with friends after I deleted social media. But, it's hard to scale - user acquisition is the name of the game, willingness to pay is lower, the product isn't super differentiated, and I don't have a lot of experience in B2C. S…

What avenues did you go through to reach VC funding? Prior connections, or other points of communication?

It was a little bit of everything, to be honest.

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

#267

Post by zoomablemind »

JamesBarney wrote: post #252
racl101 wrote: post #211

Was self employed and worked as contractor programmer for the longest time until a couple of years ago. Thought I would work less. Boy was I wrong. Chasing clients, doing taxes, invoicing people and praying they'll pay on time. Got sick of the not very dependable cash flow which was feast and famine cycles. Went to get a corporate job and even though the work is not as exciting and the codebase is legacy, at least I…

Yeah did the same, and I'm also enjoying the corporate life. Learned a ton of lessons, the first of which is starting a consulting shop for general development is fools errand. You can kind of make if worth it if you're decent at sales and offshore everything. If I do it again I'll slice our niche down thinner than prosciutto, something like CRM integrations for real estate agents, and have contracts that allowed us…

> ...and have contracts that allowed us to own the IP.

Is it a dreamland or such clause is really possible in the present day cookie-cutter contracts?

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

#268

Post by buttermonster »

mauvehaus wrote: post #254

I am a self-employed furniture maker. I'm that guy who somewhat infamously no longer builds software[0]. About a year ago I moved my operations from a makerspace to my own shop. That's come with its ups and downs. On the one hand, I know which idiot last used a tool: me. On the other, I would no longer see other humans besides my wife most weeks. To keep sane I also work one day a week at a bike shop fixing bikes. It…

I'd love to hear more about this. I'm a software developer by day and woodworking is a huge passion. Alas due to full time job, kids and other commitments, I don't have much time for it at the moment.

Did you start off with woodworking as a hobby? If so, has it affected your enjoyment now it's a job?

What pitfalls did you find when you first started out?

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

#269

Post by throwaway2203 »

darajava wrote: post #129

I am working on https://audiodiary.ai as a solo founder, I recently have been getting enough income to just about cover my living expenses and haven’t received any funding and didn’t do any marketing, with 9k users so far since launch last May. It’s fulfilling and great to see people use and love a product I’ve built. I’m obviously highly motivated to grow so it keeps me busy.

Looks cool. Would love to know pricing and how/where you store data?

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

#270

Post by philip1209 »

mentos wrote: post #264
philip1209 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After I sold my last company, I felt like my identity was overly tied to one product. So, I decided to build a company separate from the products, so that over time the products can change but I have a through line company brand. When I started this comapny, I didn't have a product - but I had the holding company (Contraption Company). My first product was Postcard, but now I spend most of my time building Booklet. A…

I'm self employed in NYC and its a dream of mine to travel/work in Japan. I've sort of written the idea off that unless I can speak the language its going to be too difficult. Curious if you agree or not.

I speak zero Japanese. I've met a lot of immigrants here in the last couple of weeks, and it seems that you can get to a working level of Japaneses within a couple of months. After that, it seems that working for a Japanese company IRL is the biggest determinant of becoming fluent.

The good news it that Japan seems to be in desperate desire of skilled foreigners, and announced plans this week for a digital nomad visa: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/02/02/japan/society/d...

I've heard that the path from temporary visa to a more permanent one is somewhat straightforward for a self-employed person if you're able to show moderate revenue from Japanese clients.

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