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My Second Year as a Solo Developer

mtlynch.io

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Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#281

Post by jldugger »

WD-42 wrote: post #264
gwbas1c wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like this guy is trying to run a lifestyle business, and his investments pay enough interest that he can coast for a long, long time. To be quite honest: He's spending all day playing . That's a position I envy quite a bit.

I'm not sure I understand this attitude. There is a specific lifestyle he is trying to achieve and the is working towards being successful at reaching it. At what point does it stop being "playing" and become just living? Do you have to be miserable at a 9-5 job to be considered serious by society?

I think the point is that if you can self-fund by living off the investments, you're really effectively retired and not particularly motivated to fix profitability gaps in your new career.

In a sense, it's cool, cuz like, you're helping people in the world out for less than the cost to provide that service. But in terms of recommended reading material for people hoping to replicate the situation without an infinite runway, selection bias is a definite concern.

Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#282

Post by influx »

mtlynch wrote: post #122
ingend88 wrote: post #65

@mtlynch what tech stack do you use?

Different things for different projects. I'm trying to move toward mostly Go + Vue stuff. * Zestful: Python + Docker + CRF++ * Is It Keto: Flask + AppEngine * What Got Done: Go + Vue + AppEngine ( https://github.com/mtlynch/whatgotdone ) * WanderJest: Go + Vue + AppEngine * mtlynch.io: Hugo ( https://github.com/mtlynch/mtlynch.io )

Do you use any web frameworks with Go?

Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#283

Post by adventured »

jacurtis wrote: post #271
willj wrote: post #203

Naive question by someone who’s never started a business: when bootstrapping companies while keeping your day job, how do you deal with intellectual property clauses in employment contracts, such that your employer owns the “inventions” you create in your free time, on your own equipment, unrelated to the business area you work in? I know laws vary by state, but I would find it especially disheartening if you spent y…

Generally, when an employer owns your "inventions", this only applies to "inventions" created while using the employer's resources. Most employement contracts will make it sound like they own every waking thought, but in most cases when this has been taken to court, the precedent has been set, that it really only applies to inventions or ideas that happen in relation to and using employer's resources. So this means t…

> Most employement contracts will make it sound like they own every waking thought, but in most cases when this has been taken to court, the precedent has been set, that it really only applies to inventions or ideas that happen in relation to and using employer's resources.

A simple example of this that I like to point out to people in tech to help them understand that an employer doesn't inherently own your soul, is picture yourself starting a Pizza Hut franchise (convenience store, or anything equivalent) strictly on your own time and dime entirely outside of work. Does your employer get to own that business, get to take it away from you, just because you work for them 9 to 5? Nope and it sounds particularly absurd when you frame it with something more traditional. Or imagine starting a real-estate renovation business, where you renovate houses in your own spare time; same thing, does IBM get to own your house renovation business just because you pull 9-5 for them? Hell no they don't.

The only serious risk difference re starting tech businesses (vs other traditional businesses) while working in tech is in cases of competitive issues if you start something directly in the employer's wheelhouse. Then you better lawyer up well ahead of time and navigate it very carefully.

Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#284

Post by biztos »

dbancajas wrote: post #135
theli0nheart wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! TBH, I just got bored. All of the inefficient aspect of my work got slowly eliminated over the years due to process improvements, which meant that only the most unpleasant, manual aspects were left over (read: legal, negotiation, business development, etc.). 80% of my income was consulting related. I tried to branch off into making a SaaS and "failed" (which I'm still kind of excited about but have no time to…

> iled" (which I'm still kind of excited about but have no time to pursue), but I did succeed in making an App Store portfolio which brings in decent profit. can you share what you did consult on? To me consulting is very mysterious as it's a very generic term but I'm always amazed by people earning 250K-500K due to "consulting". Is it easy to do or more like being in the right place/right time/right skillset?

> I'm always amazed by people earning 250K-500K due to "consulting"

I knew people making that in the mid-1990's in the IT end of biotech in California and also Switzerland. I would assume that something similar to "computer people" salary increases has happened to consulting rates too, on the higher end.

Never made anything near that myself consulting, but even when I was doing that kind of work (around 2000-ish) I knew people who were differently motivated than I was, in San Francisco, making more than those numbers and working less than I did.

The trick was they worked on the business first, whereas I was always working on the product first (which wasn't even my product, of course). So for instance I might spend all night coding in order to make something shine (hello startups!) and be wiped out from it the next day, but these other type of people would see that as a massive anti-pattern and route around it contractually.

For instance I knew one consultant who only flew business class - it was in her contract - and billed every hour from taxi pick-up to drop-off if not more whenever she had to go to a meeting outside driving distance. She read documentation on the flights.

Of course I ended up working for one such person for a while, because the sort of heads-down nerdy coder with no stomach to fight about money is ideal for farming out some of your more time-consuming work. :-)

Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#285

Post by wolco »

reflectiv wrote: post #74
theli0nheart wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry to say but this proves that for someone who actually has to work for a living ie earn money, corporate life is absolutely the correct choice. Not really. This just proves that corporate life isn't the most profitable option for the OP. You just can't make sweeping statements like this based on a single anecdote. I'll offer this to other "corporate" folk out there. I was self-employed since late 2010 until I r…

I'll offer a counter example in that the startup I joined failed miserably and I ended up losing out on a LOT of income. I am now working for a decent 6-figure income and EXTREMELY happy with the stability and 40-50 hour work weeks...in comparison to the ABSOLUTE GRIND I went through trying to help that startup get off the ground - this is a godsend. Your scenario is VERY UNLIKELY IMO.

Most people work at startups because they can't get a job at google if they do they leave. Those who work at google at somepoint feel they need to be closer to the product/customer/action many leave and create a startup (because they have the google brand and can raise money). Those startups hire developers who can't get into google.

You are at a certain point in the cycle. At somepoint you may move to creating your own startup (maybe not because you had a negative experience earlier).

It's just the circle of life.

Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#286

Post by drawkbox »

mtlynch wrote: post #84
swalsh wrote: post #19

Just some honest feedback. I have a use for Zestful, and the price is good. But playing around, it seems good at the easy stuff (but I can do the easy stuff myself) it's not so good at the hard stuff. For example the string "3/4 cup risotto rice, Arborio or Carnaroli" It identifies the unit and quantity fair enough, and it's right when it says "Risotto rice" is the product. But then it says "Arborio or Carnaroli" is…

Thanks for reading and for testing out Zestful! > For example the string "3/4 cup risotto rice, Arborio or Carnaroli" > It identifies the unit and quantity fair enough, and it's right when it says "Risotto rice" is the product. But then it says "Arborio or Carnaroli" is a preparation method. I can totally see WHY it says that. But I'm not sure that's correct. Yeah, I'm constantly improving the model, but there will a…

> It identifies the unit and quantity fair enough, and it's right when it says "Risotto rice" is the product. But then it says "Arborio or Carnaroli" is a preparation method. I can totally see WHY it says that. But I'm not sure that's correct.

Simple solution: for your 'Preparation' just say 'Preparation or additional options' and the additional preparation can contain swap out products that later you can identify by brand name or common marketing name.

So when it says '"Risotto rice" is the product and the "Arborio or Carnaroli" is a preparation method. Changing that to 'Preparation method and additional options' then later parsing potential products helps it a bit.

Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#287

Post by wolco »

criley2 wrote: post #173
cambalache wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots and lots of self employed people are not "working" 24h/day.Where does this myth come from? Is it corporate propaganda?

It's coming from inside the house! https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1067175527180513280 "No one ever changed the world at 40 hours a week" "80 hours minimum, with peaks at 100 hours" A 100 hour week would be 16.6 hours for 6 days and 1 day off, or 14.25 hour days with no days off The idea that entrepreneurs need to work more than 40 hours a week to be successful is as old as our industry, and I'd go so far as to s…

People have changed the world over a tweet. If changing the world is all you want to do, plant a tree. The world will be changed for the better.

Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#288

Post by wolco »

thrownblown wrote: post #141
Grimm1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't made the choice to have children and so it doesn't apply to me. That is your decision and that class of problem doesn't apply to everyone.

Well if you do, know that the $3k/mo saas that took 2 years to build isn't going to put that kid through college but will allow you to be a present and engaged parent to your child for the precious few years before they go to school.

College can be free. Three 3k/mo saases would.

Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer

#289

Post by macNchz »

mtlynch wrote: post #248
hinkley wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arborio is a kind, just like Granny Smith, bing, or Key. I wonder if it'd be easier just to have a dictionary of kinds of ingredient and anything else is a preparation.

It's the kind of thing that seems like it's solvable with rules, but once you get into the weeds, there are too many rules and exceptions and exceptions to those exceptions. In addition to prep notes, there's also text that most clients consider garbage. For example, "2 cups sugar, I use Sweetums brand!" the brand preference is garbage. And then there are tokens like "pound" that could mean different things in differ…

Years ago I built a recipe app for a client who wanted it to have a "smart" shopping list feature that could dedupe ingredients from disparate recipes, normalize their quantities and sum them up to friendly totals. I fell waaaay down the parsing rabbit hole battling those exceptions-to-exceptions, what a mess. Reading your examples gave me a flashback!

The app only had a couple of hundred recipes so we wound up just having someone manually translate every ingredient for every recipe into a common structure in a spreadsheet.

Anyhow, thanks so much for these posts, I quit my job a few months ago to work on a few projects of my own and I've really enjoyed reading your updates. Looking forward to more in the future.

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