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The quitting economy

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Re: The quitting economy

#191

Post by sidlls »

gregjor wrote: post #186
spinlock wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there's a market for independent contract sales. I would love to pay 15% of a contract to someone who could source and close contracts for me. Unfortunately, I think there's no way to escape the need to network. But, it's a learnable skill so you just have to put in the time and effort.

I work through 10X Management, doing freelance programming. They find customers, define the work parameters and scope, close the deals, do all contract and billing, and provide customer support as necessary. Flat 15%, I see the contract with the customer. They get better rates than I do on my own.

10X Management seems to be heavily focused on web development as well.

Re: The quitting economy

#192

Post by ilaksh »

I have a theory that part of this is related to shrinking real economies. People use less energy, buy less stuff, etc. The real economy shrinks. Money has less utility. Business lags. Fewer employers can afford to pay competitively.

I think that the economic system assumes constant growth, and doesn't have a way to deal with the sustainable consumption rates that we are now trying to adjust to.

Re: The quitting economy

#193

Post by toomuchtodo »

ell0ell0 wrote: post #91
fierarul wrote: post #82

I've quit only once, from the mega-corp, in order to start freelancing. I've never quit from a customer project. And oddly, I've worked for very few customer for years and years. Controlling and understanding the entire cash-flow really helped. My other IT friends did job-hop while young but as they settled down, they started staying longer. After 30 it's basically smooth sailing. So, I don't see a quitting economy.…

I dunno i'm 35, own a home and have a kid and the longest I've ever worked anywhere is my current job at 2.5 years. I'm only sticking it out here to get a bit more vested and then I'm taking my shares and going on to the next thing as always. Especially because each time I change jobs I end up with a close to a 20% raise on average...

I'm 34, married, have a toddler, and have definitely stopped hopping (used to be at a gig no more than 2-3 years each).

My last gig was a startup, and it's my last startup. I'm at an enterprise now that pays a bit less than double what I made at my last gig, no more than 40 hours a week, no on call, and they treat their employees very well.

Re: The quitting economy

#194

Post by dalbasal »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #187
dalbasal wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) That's definitely a very Ronald Coasian answer! We should start that lobby to get Ronald Coase accepted into neoliberalism or novoliberalism or whatever comes next. I purposely didn't give the answer because I think there are possibly other explanations besides transaction costs and regulation (probably the more friedman-esque go-to). The reason I like his papers a lot is because of his questions. He has a Darwini…

Huh. I think this highlights the fact (that I didn't realize until now, really) that I never really considered Friedman an "economist" in the strictest sense — in my view he's more of a normative political theorist, who uses economic models combined with empirical evidence from history to draw conclusions about policy. Though I'm politically & philosophically simpatico, I've never really looked to Friedman (or Hayek,…

Friedman was a professional economist all his life. His most famous area was on monetary policy which was very politically important in that era of hyperinflation disasters.

But, economics bleeds into political science readily. Marx was an economist. Hayek (mentioned in the article) is most famous for political pamphleteering, but he was certainly an economist too. Both he and Friedman got the nobel prize for their economics.

Neoliberalism is very much an economics-politics hybrid movement.

Re: The quitting economy

#195

Post by gregjor »

sidlls wrote: post #191
gregjor wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work through 10X Management, doing freelance programming. They find customers, define the work parameters and scope, close the deals, do all contract and billing, and provide customer support as necessary. Flat 15%, I see the contract with the customer. They get better rates than I do on my own.

10X Management seems to be heavily focused on web development as well.

Not really. The whole world is very focused on web development so it looks that way.

Re: The quitting economy

#196

Post by tmat »

spinlock wrote: post #111
mcguire wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about what I've decided, but all the freelance work I've seen available has been web development---the kind of thing I'm trying to escape. Freelancing for a systems programmer has a "I can't get there from here" problem, particularly since I'm crap-tastic at networking.

I feel like there's a market for independent contract sales. I would love to pay 15% of a contract to someone who could source and close contracts for me. Unfortunately, I think there's no way to escape the need to network. But, it's a learnable skill so you just have to put in the time and effort.

I have 2 other freelancers I work w/. We've created a freelance conglomerate of sorts. We all work on a contract to contract basis. We offer our entire network a 10% finders fee. If someone you recommend closes w/ us you get 10% of the contract. This has worked out great for us. This also extends to the company we registered to provide all the freelancers w/ insurance and other things you should have when running your own company. So all the freelancers get 1m+ insurance through the company they bill as.

The company makes $30/hr on every hour billed. This covers taxes, etc as we also handle payroll and taxes for the freelancers but you could easily forgo this part. The person who brings in the client gets a 10% finders fee. We use this money to subscribe to lead generation services which deliver us hot leads and such.. RFP's, etc.

Anyone who contacts these leads and lands a client can earn the 10% finders fee.

Devs then take the rest as an hourly.. usually this means they're making between 90-120/hr depending on the contract. We specialize in Ruby, Elixir, ReactJS/React Native work.

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