How many of you are self employed? What do you do? I won't count startups that are funded, but more the individual who started something for themselves. Curious to know what sustains people.
Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
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Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#2I'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 occasional consulting to bridge the gap.
I like the flexibility of this lifestyle. I'm based in NYC, but writing this from Tokyo where I've been doing a creative residence for the past two weeks.
And, a fun technicality - I truly self-employed in the sense that I have a salary and a payroll system. This is because my company is registered as an S-Corp in the USA, which requires the owner to be on a salary.
[1] https://www.contraption.co/essays/digital-product-studios/
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#3Me! I started my solo, startup law practice almost by accident via a Hacker News comment years ago. It's now my primary source of income.
It's hard, but less hard than what startup founders do. It's nice having control of my schedule, but the flip side is that there's never a day off. Personally, I think being self-employed is great for people who naturally work really hard and want to capture the full output of their labor.
I don't think I could ever go back to full time employment for someone else. It's addicting having your own business that actually cash flows!
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#4Only around 5% of the products from IndieHackers generate a monthly revenue exceeding ~$8,333 (around ~$100k/year).
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#5I’be been self employed for ~1.5yrs after quitting my job to build a GUI for Kubernetes [1]
It’s not easy to get started, but im very happy with this change after being a FTE for 15yrs. It’s a refreshing experience having to talk to customers to understand their pain points and then build something for it
I’m also doing some part time freelancing, so with my products + freelancing I’m earning way more than as a FTE
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#6Only around 5% of the products from IndieHackers generate a monthly revenue exceeding ~$8,333 (around ~$100k/year). Source: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/indie-hackers-revenue
Part time freelancing is underrated. More people should try it. That frees up a lot of time for indie hacking
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#7I've been a self-employed Ops-Engineer/Sysadmin for hire/Sysadmin-as-a-service for 14 years now, after doing the same as an employee for a consulting company for the 10 years before that.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#8Me. CTO Coach. ~4years now.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#9I've been a self-employed Ops-Engineer/Sysadmin for hire/Sysadmin-as-a-service for 14 years now, after doing the same as an employee for a consulting company for the 10 years before that.
How does this work? I see sysadmin as having a large day to day component. Do they call you in to setup processes or are you the emergency call?
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?
#10I'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 applications a month, you need a success rate of less than 5%.
I changed to technical writing later, because text is less of a struggle than code, and educational articles that explain how to use software (e.g., services, tools, SDKs, frameworks, etc.) are paid pretty well, especially compared to the non-technical writing tasks. Regular software consulting projects take months and can haunt you for years. An article takes a few days and after that you can do other things you find interesting.
Via technical writing, I got into other kinds of text related jobs the software industry offers, like social media management (e.g., Twitter/X, newsletters, blogs) for companies with developer audiences.
Usually I work less than 20h a week and I can do it from everywhere, which allows me to travel often and having enough time off to enjoy it.