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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?

#431

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

groucho_marx92 wrote: post #425
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #16

Independently wealthy after working 10 years in the Bay Area. I live in Amsterdam now, but I still consult on for startups if the project seems fun, good to have some extra money for the nieces and nephews.

I'd love to live in the Netherlands but their box-3 tax combined with US taxes (I'm a citizen) seem like a bad scenario. How are you doing with it?

International tax law is complicated, I pay someone to do my US and NL taxes. Overall I'm paying less than I did working in California (state + fed).

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

#432

Post by Schwolop »

I'm a self-employed consultant, generally either CTO-style "make your company run better and build better software" stuff or, less often, specific robotics and automation stuff where I'm legitimately something of an expert. I have a PhD in decision theory / optimisation / meta-computing - and it was all applied to autonomous vehicles. A recent client I've picked up in the mining industry is paying me something like 300% of the highest salary I ever earned before setting out on my own.

In addition, I co-founded a company that makes Escape Rooms. We sold 13 turn-key rooms to other operators, then eventually invested in our own venue. We were the only company in the southern hemisphere to win a prestigious TERPECA award this year, so it's not a stretch to say our venue is probably the best in Australia. I've never earned a cent from this in eight years... But, this year is the one. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully?!?

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

#433

Post by V-2 »

mkaszkowiak wrote: post #131
Thorrez wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the government design it like this? Do they want to encourage this type of thing? What benefit does encouraging this provide to society? The US doesn't do this. They try to make self employed vs employed by a company have the same tax rates.

Good questions, no clue. The answer probably lies somewhere between a "badly designed tax system" and "stimulating growth of the IT sector".

It certainly helps the IT sector to stay globally competitive, also attracting foreign talent (hence plenty of programmers from eg. Ukraine, particularly these days).

Being self-employed has its own downsides - if anything goes south (as in, you did something terribly wrong, there's graphite on the ground, and you're held financially responsible for the outcome), you are liable down to your very last penny, in theory at least.

By comparison, if you're on a contract of employment, you're only liable up to the equivalent of your three salaries, even if your negligence has caused damages in the millions.

You are not protected by the labor law (by contrast, getting fired on an employment contract runs into plenty of legal protections should you choose to dispute it).

It makes sense to me that accepting greater responsibility - as a one-man company - gets compensated somehow, like in the form of lesser tax burdens.

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

#434

Post by V-2 »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #132
Thorrez wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the government design it like this? Do they want to encourage this type of thing? What benefit does encouraging this provide to society? The US doesn't do this. They try to make self employed vs employed by a company have the same tax rates.

Because they need to keep some gaps in the tax law to allow their friends to pay less taxes than normal people. The US famously had a huge amount of tax law exemption just because of corruption. Nowadays you need an international setup to achieve the same, because the same old tricks have been used by many and there was enough political pressure to change it. Some countries simply just didn't go through enough scanda…

> Because they need to keep some gaps in the tax law to allow their friends to pay less taxes than normal people.

The self-employed in Poland provide almost 30% of total budget revenue from income tax [1]. (This statistic is somewhat dated, but I don't believe it's changed drastically since). That's a lot of "friends" and "wealthy expats".

[1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/259268/1/1777969808....

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

#435

Post by Schwolop »

mcv wrote: post #207
jacquesm wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have multiple customers over time; 3 years ago, I worked on a different project, for a different client, than I do now. But with the kind of projects I work on, it's hard to do several of these projects at once, and they're too long to do several in a year. So please be very careful and if you can find a side gig that doesn't interfere with your main one so you have at least some protection. It could be a low hou…

> so you have at least some protection. Protection from what exactly? > Without multiple clients you are super fragile, don't have a strong negotiation position and in case of any kind of headwind you're immediately on the ropes. Not at all. I can walk away and I have my financial reserves. My negotiation position is stronger than when I'm an employee. > If you insist on doing long running contracts try getting two t…

> Protection from what exactly?

I think jacquesm is advocating that you have multiple sources of income (clients) to protect from the possibility that you lose your one and only client and suddenly have zero income.

I take a different approach to my consulting. It sounds like you do too. I typically have just one client, but I charge them a metric shitload and tell them quite specifically that I do that in part to protect myself should I need to go months and months without a replacement client. Obviously there are limits to this and I'd have zero clients if I charged too much, but between that and a savings buffer built up from previous clients, I don't feel like this is a precarious situation at all.

But I also have to admit/concede that I do not think my advice is replicable. I only started being so aggressive about my rates once I already had the privilege of being able to survive for years without any income. For someone who _needs_ reliable income, jacquesm's advice is probably more useful than mine.

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

#436

Post by icer2312 »

moralestapia wrote: post #413
mortallywounded wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may sound like a cop-out, but both? I have no doubt luck was involved. I hit the market at a good time and gained traction quickly. I have done zero marketing and customers come in through word of mouth and via search engines. Surely there was luck in there. As for choosing the idea-- that was more systematic. I chose a service that solved a real pain point for many companies in a specific industry. I chose it bec…

Hi @mortallywounded! As @lorenzk said, thanks for sharing your experience on these things. You also taught me something meaningful, and you didn't even have to do anything! I was curious about what kind of product you've made and started stalking your comment history to see if I got some clues about it. I eventually reach a comment from you (on a thread about a dev. who got his Apple account cancelled) to which I rep…

Hahahaha, this is hilarious :P

Yes, you never know who you could be talking to. Reminds me of the trial lawyer advice of "never ask a question you don't know the answer to".

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

#437

Post by aaalll »

k__ wrote: post #10

I'm self employed for around 10 years now. Before that I was employed as frontend developer for around 7 years. I started self employment as software consultant, which worked pretty well despite not having any connections from my previous employment. I only needed one or two projects a year to sustain my lifestyle. Getting two companies a year to accept your application isn't hard. If you write at least 5 application…

Where did you use to apply for contracts?

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

#438

Post by belinder »

fredsted wrote: post #405
belinder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks really useful, I've used similar websites in the past but it's nice that it's all together here in one place. If only you could not have it redirect on load, it makes the back button break. Clicking back to return to hackernews is almost impossible

> not have it redirect on load I've not been able to reproduce this in neither Safari nor Chrome ( https://sf.gl/share/1707213387.mp4 ), curious to know which browser you're using. Thanks!

Chrome on android

I tried it again now and it's working now

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

#439

Post by papa20 »

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.

this is pretty cool. what stack did you use to build the app and how did you launch two native apps so quickly?

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

#440

Post by geye1234 »

k__ wrote: post #326
geye1234 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a couple of questions if you don't mind: - I have a Business Analyst/Product Mgr background. I've never been a developer, but I can read code well enough and get a good idea of what's going on. Do I have a chance of breaking into this? How would I go about doing so (other than the obvious like trying to do it as part of my day job)? - Do you worry LLMs are going to put you out of business? - Very broadly speaki…

"Do I have a chance of breaking into this?" In my experience, the success stands and falls with how well you can grasp technical topics and explain them to people who have less time than you to learn them. I know a bunch of good writers, who never got far, because their technical understanding wasn't enough to write guides/tutorials/explainers. "Do you worry LLMs are going to put you out of business?" Not yet. I use…

Belated thanks for the reply.
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