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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?

#351

Post by badpun »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #218
mkaszkowiak wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is tax optimization related to the quality of developed software?

If you have to breach rules which are a standard in developed countries, means exactly that you are uncompetitive with your skills. Funny that social and salary dumping where exactly the populist argument that the British voters picked up most eagerly in referendum on Brexit. That's post-Communist mentality to feel satisfaction from "screwing someone over", it's devastating the social trust, on macro scale it doesn't…

You don't have to breach any rules. Every job offer I've ever had in Poland had an option for regular contract of employment ("umowa o pracę"). If you want to be taxed more, that option is always on the table.

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

#352

Post by janetacarr »

I've been self-employed for nearly three years as a freelancer / consultant.

Though, I have a course I've pre-sold during the recent work drought. These pre-sales have been paying the bills. So there's lots of pressure to deliver on them while still trying to line up freelance/consulting work.

I started doing this because I had big indie hacker dreams. Now I just think that I'm partially unemployable. What matters most to me is controlling my own destiny and Intellectual Property rights. Writing code is what fills me up, and It needs to be protected. Otherwise, I feel trapped, growing bitter and angry over time. So I'll keep doing this until I have more products.

My ultimate goal is to create a portfolio of products to pay the bills. I have no particular biased towards what. They could be courses, ebooks, or even games. 2023 was a special case in terms of cash flow (business cycle goes down), but I'm hopeful for the future, and my course sold decently well, so I think I'm getting the hang of this entrepreneurship thing.

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

#353

Post by Soupy »

Oh hey that's me! I sell maps on the internet - https://pastmaps.com

After selling my last startup in 2022 and being very burned out I decided to lean deeper into my own hobby - metal detecting. This lead to me building out a lot of cool tooling around historical maps to help me find better areas to detect and I slowly began to realize that there were many other hobbyists and enthusiasts who also were interested in the maps and tools I was building. So Pastmaps was born

The traffic and server costs started snowballing in the past year so I added the ability to buy physical prints of any of the maps in the collection and this has also started to take off. It's only ramen-profitable for now so don't go thinking that this is hugely successful by any means but it's growing on its own so I'm excited to see how big it can get.

Next up is also adding some premium tooling and features that many of my members have been begging me for so fingers crossed!

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

#354

Post by primax »

smallerfish wrote: post #259

I run a fractional CTO business. I started it in 2013, went full time as CTO with my 4th client and stayed through exit a couple of years back, and then took on multiple clients again starting around 12 months ago. The flexibility and being my own boss is great. I have enough bandwidth to work on long term bets, while keeping income flowing. The type of clients who hire fractional CTOs can be challenging - they're ty…

That sounds like a fantastic business. Are you hiring more fractional CTOs? I'd love to check you guys out and apply.

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

#355

Post by badpun »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #88
V-2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's also why software from Poland is such a tacky crap despite so many "talents" [citation needed] How do you recognize "software from Poland" anyway?

> How do you recognize "software from Poland" anyway? Whatever is created in all these nearshoring and outsourcing centers in Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław. Currently mostly Azure, SAP, business Java and Angular.

In my experience, the software can be crap because the companies tend to only hire technical people over here in Poland, while business guys remain in the HQ. The highest business person you'll see in Poland is typically a PO, while a PM and people above him are in the headquaters. This has the effect of not keeping the Polish team tightly in the loop, which translates into worse software.

The second problem is that the companies tend to hire a lot of people at the same time when they open their offshore/nearshore center in Poland - often going from zero to hundreds, or even thousands over the span of just a couple of years. Having such large organization of effectively people with no previous institutional history is akin to a herd of only young elephants, who don't have any elders and don't know what and how they should be doing exactly. The "elders" are in the HQ obviously, but building company culture exclusively over Zoom, especially on the scale of hundreds/thousands new hires, is a bad idea.

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

#356

Post by lifestyleguru »

badpun wrote: post #355
lifestyleguru wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you recognize "software from Poland" anyway? Whatever is created in all these nearshoring and outsourcing centers in Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław. Currently mostly Azure, SAP, business Java and Angular.

In my experience, the software can be crap because the companies tend to only hire technical people over here in Poland, while business guys remain in the HQ. The highest business person you'll see in Poland is typically a PO, while a PM and people above him are in the headquaters. This has the effect of not keeping the Polish team tightly in the loop, which translates into worse software. The second problem is that…

This isn't a mistake or overlook. They treat the office like a sweatshop. No you are not exceptionally skillful. Within weeks they're able to move to a cheaper location and they will once their Excel will say so. It's so funny seeing devs on B2B in Poland thinking they are some entrepreneurs while for HQ they are in the same league as another office in Pajarumbad.

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

#357

Post by shooker435 »

I left Google about 8 months ago to build a Shopify app. I was a sales engineer that kept selling a super complex product to large retailers, and I thought it would be cool to "productize a service" and democratize it for smaller retailers.

It's amazing taking a full product from 0 to 1 with a small team, we're bootstrapped but have some revenue coming in now from very satisfied customers. I don't know if we'll ever raise money or have an exit, but I wouldn't trade the experience for the world.

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

#358

Post by blatzguzzler »

paulette449 wrote: post #335
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…

I hate to have to ask this but how do you manage healthcare being a solo s-corp? I was under the impression this could only be done through a company if two unrelated family members owned the company? The only other alternative is "Obamacare"? I could be totally wrong.

Speaking as someone who has been mostly self-employed since about 2002, Obamacare is a godsend. Massively better than the old individual "underwriting" system that basically made it impossible to get coverage. Yes, health insurance is expensive, but you may be amazed that the ACA marketplace plans frequently cost less than employer plans with better market protections. The only way to do health insurance nowadays is to assume it's only for catastrophes; ie: an $8-15k deductible is nothing compared to a $250k hospital visit. Basically, you are buying a discount plan (your insurer's negotiated rates) plus a stop-loss cover. An example: I am an old fart at 63 and have an HSA plan with a $7,500 deductible. My premium is $900/mo, thus the MOST I will ever have to pay for health care in any 12 month period is $18,300. Way less than a $300k uncomplicated heart attack or a $1M cancer diagnosis. Work your tax returns right, and you can get subsidies that reduce the annual costs even more . . .

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

#359

Post by hotpotamus »

blatzguzzler wrote: post #358
paulette449 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to have to ask this but how do you manage healthcare being a solo s-corp? I was under the impression this could only be done through a company if two unrelated family members owned the company? The only other alternative is "Obamacare"? I could be totally wrong.

Speaking as someone who has been mostly self-employed since about 2002, Obamacare is a godsend. Massively better than the old individual "underwriting" system that basically made it impossible to get coverage. Yes, health insurance is expensive, but you may be amazed that the ACA marketplace plans frequently cost less than employer plans with better market protections. The only way to do health insurance nowadays is…

It's probably worth remembering this sort of thing when people say there is no difference between the parties. Every Republican voted against it, they almost repealed it, and apparently are gearing up for another crack at repeal https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/01/trump-o...

At your age, you'll likely be on Medicare soon either way, but some of us are still decades away.

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

#360

Post by lifestyleguru »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #311
V-2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fighting, I was just curious what you're basing your claim on. I disregarded your unnecessarily incendiary phrasing ( "software from Poland is such a tacky crap" ) completely.

Software from all of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR is lower quality than American and Western European. Source: live in ex-USSR. We all hired to deliver shitty code for low cost. Not as shitty as Indian, but you get what you pay for.

Here is another mistake, some weird superiority. For the HQ in London, Munich, San Francisco, or Zurich, they are all in the same outsourcing low cost league as Bangajabad. It completery doesn't matter for them whether AI in Java and Kubernetes on Azure is bloated 2 or 3 times too much. Occasionally show them some low quality codebase from India to stroke their egos "you see that's why we keep the office in Novowsky".
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