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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?

#41

Post by firtoz »

I'm doing full time freelancing in the UK and loving it tbh, but sometimes it can get a bit difficult to handle.

I was doing typical employment until October 2023 while doing some part time freelancing. The company had layoffs and I decided to do more freelancing while I look for the next job. Then the freelancing pay became double or more what I'd make from normal employment, so I am unlikely to get back to "being an employee" unless the situation changes significantly.

Initially I was worried about being able to find enough gigs to be able to make enough income to survive, but now my main struggle is to not take on too many responsibilities at once to be able to keep the clients happy, and even had to turn a few people down because I'm getting too busy...

I do get some spare time for myself to work on my own things, a few of those projects do bring income, but my main income source and the thing that takes most of my day is the freelancing.

I hired an accounting company to take care of taxes and stuff.

Most of my clients are in the UK.

I work partially through Toptal and some through my network.

I can't complain too much about it!

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

#42

Post by KingOfCoders »

upupupandaway wrote: post #32
KingOfCoders wrote: post #8

Me. CTO Coach. ~4years now.

What kind of experience do you have to be able to credibly provide this service? Must be a lot!

I don't know. Usually clients talk to me to see if we click, ask questions and decide if I can help or not.

On one hand I have been doing software development for a long time, 40+ years of coding (currently Go), 25+ years as a manager (CTO, DoE, HoD,...) in large enterprises and startups. Founded three startups, one fizzled out, one went belly up in 2001 and one sold successfully.

But I learn something new every day.

On the other hand I have no training in coaching - but have been doing it for some years now. You decide.

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

#43

Post by emursebrian »

I am working on my second startup. The first startup was bootstrapped hardware company. We released a few electronic devices. I worked on the first product part-time. Just before it was released, I decided to leave my job and work on the company full time.

I worked on the second product full time for about a year. It was profitable, but I never scaled the business up enough to make a living from it. I went back to work full time.

By this point, my appetite for hustling on the weekend to build a business in a market with limited growth potential had diminished. I focused on paying off my mortgage and saving money. After a few years, I had saved enough money to be able to cut back my hours and focus more on my hobbies and passion projects.

I've been working on my current startup Emurse full time since the end of 2020. I am covering costs with the revenue from my first startup and living off savings. We're getting ready to launch the first paid product soon.

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

#44

Post by ewuhic »

Doolwind wrote: post #34

I make video games [1] and TikToks [2] about them. I’m a solo game dev doing the coding, design and business/marketing stuff. I’ve worked in mainstream games and as a CTO at a few companies but my passion is making small games I can prototype in a few days and release within a week or so. After trying a lot of different roles the satisfaction of building something hundreds of thousands of people play that I have tota…

What's your experience with tiktok? How well does it perform in terms of attracting people to buy your stuff? Do videos besides plays on popular memes du jour do any good?

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

#45

Post by Doolwind »

ewuhic wrote: post #44
Doolwind wrote: post #34

I make video games [1] and TikToks [2] about them. I’m a solo game dev doing the coding, design and business/marketing stuff. I’ve worked in mainstream games and as a CTO at a few companies but my passion is making small games I can prototype in a few days and release within a week or so. After trying a lot of different roles the satisfaction of building something hundreds of thousands of people play that I have tota…

What's your experience with tiktok? How well does it perform in terms of attracting people to buy your stuff? Do videos besides plays on popular memes du jour do any good?

It’s been amazing. I’ve had about 30% of people that follow me join my Discord which is 10x higher than I expected. Meme videos do the best but a loyal fan base see and enjoys my regular dev style videos too. I do the same on Reels and Shorts with less success. But I enjoy learning which videos do better on each platform.

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

#46

Post by V-2 »

In Poland, where I'm from, it's pretty much the norm to be self-employed in Poland in the IT sector.

I believe that around 50% of workers are technically contracted one-man companies, and this percentage is inversely correlated with the seniority level - the greater the earnings (and the sense of job security that goes along with expertise and experience), the greater the incentive.

Going B2B makes a substantial difference in terms of fiscal burdens. Other than that, your day-to-day work looks pretty much the same though. You're just sending monthly invoices to the same employer, typically a single one, sometimes for years on end.

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

#47

Post by mamidon »

philip1209 wrote: post #26
asim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

Very interesting, I like the idea of frctl. Signed up.

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

#49

Post by jacomoRodriguez »

ringofchaos wrote: post #12

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 buildin…

so asking the big and obvious question: in what did yo invest?
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