No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees • Hacker News Board

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#321

Post by geerlingguy » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

callmeed wrote: post #280

philipkiely wrote: post #15

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

> I make more than enough to afford proper health insurance on the open market. Everyone at Gumroad is paid very well and should be able to afford the same. This might be true for everyone at Gumroad , but I wouldn't be so sure. You also seem dismissive (probably unintentionally) of one of the biggest problems we have in the US right now: health care and insurance is ridiculously expensive–especially for people with…

Family of five, $2000/month on ACA for a high deductible plan with a lot worse coverage than I used to get at my previous four employers. No vision insurance, and pretty weak dental too.

ACA is not a great alternative and I lament the fact that I pay more for health care (even if I don't use it at all) than I do for my mortgage, utilities, internet, and phone bill every month. (Midwest, LCOL).

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#322

Post by cercatrova » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

jb_s wrote: post #279

DVassallo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I own a SaaS business and also sell my own products on Gumroad itself. In fact, the latter was my biggest income source in 2020 — $282K sales last year: https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1333888186762678274

Respectfully - and I'm sure i'm just missing something - but I still don't actually understand what you do. The only thing I can see that makes you money is a subscription service to help people how make money on the Internet.

Books, courses, info products mainly.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#323

Post by Ericson2314 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:49 AM UTC

One one hand, this is exactly the the sort of less-work more-productivity UBI and universal healthcare should unlock for everyone. Gig heaven not gig hell.

When I heard "creators" I was worried this was some sort of platform where we had tiny aristocracy living off rents. But I gather it's turn-key software one runs on their website? That's great!

No platform means it's a lot harder to extort your customers. Meaning this is much more likely to be "the real deal".

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#324

Post by cercatrova » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:50 AM UTC

konjin wrote: post #278

asd9900 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are not even 26? Congrats man, you made it :) That's more than I ever made in my life (close to 40).

Money is not how you count if you made it. I made as much as OP at that age (and am now a few years older) and I'm very far from making it. Millions don't go as far as they used to when everyone around you is even richer.

With all due respect, your comment suggests that you were spending beyond your means, or keeping up with the Joneses. Millions go very far if invested properly and drawn down properly so that the principal is never touched. If you're spending the millions instead, then yeah, that's definitely not gonna go far.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#325

Post by bawolff » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

I feel like this would scale really poorly. But i guess they dont want to be billion dollar company so that's ok for their goals.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#326

Post by cercatrova » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #306

poorman wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't realize that as a contractor, you can write off the room you're using for your office. As a remote employee you cannot. For people living in high rent areas, that's significant.

People don't realise that on the internet you need to mention a jurisdiction when you talk about things like law and tax.

Sites like HN, reddit, Twitter etc are de facto US based, assume if no country or jurisdiction is specified that it's the US. Now, which state it is in the US is a different matter.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#327

Post by cercatrova » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #39

I work for a large SaaS company with hundreds of engineers and a very healthy revenue. It's widely acknowledged that the company would continue to function exactly as it is now for a very long time if they fired 95% of the staff. Heck stability and uptime would probably improve due to fewer deployments/no new feature adds. So the graph with declining expenses and increasing revenue isn't at all surprising. The proble…

That's the price that's paid for such leverage. High employee count is better protection from competitors but more expensive. Leaner teams are cheaper but may be susceptible to competitors. Of course, caveats abound as many times leaner companies are the ones that can move faster, see startups.

This is all very similar to standing armies. The more people, the more expense but better protection. What countries do, therefore, is let other countries do part of their jobs, ie US protecting many other countries who don't have large militaries. I'm not sure what the analogue is in business, maybe partnerships?

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#328

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

deathgrips wrote: post #303

mkingston wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA ~17% of GDP appears to be spent on health care. I guess that skews fairly heavily toward elderly people, but 10% on health insurance for a family of four doesn't seem out of the realms of sanity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_h...

Maybe that's because the US needs more healthcare?

A consequence of the US being richer. They spend more on education too. Baumol’s cost disease means as a country gets richer more money will go to labor costs and medicine is really labor intensive. I’m not sure I’d say the US needs more healthcare so much as they can afford it and that’s how they choose to spend the money. Healthcare and education will soak up a practically unlimited amount of money, and if you’re the richest country in the world you have more money. The US has higher household consumption than anywhere else bar Hong Kong. Rich countries spend more on healthcare and the US is the richest.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#329

Post by valzam » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #157

> There is another downside to this system: people have to track their hours. Some people solve this by billing 20 hours a week, even though they may work a bit more or a bit less. Others track it diligently, in 15-minute increments, and send a detailed invoice every week. I cannot stand tracking hours. No thanks.

It's really only as bad as you make it though. Sure, don't grossly over/underestimate but I would imagine that a lot of their contractors work in half day increments at least, which makes it a lot easier to track.

A friend of mine works at a law firm and they track by the minute, as in people record when they go pee and when they come back. that sounds like hell. So I see where you are coming from.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#330

Post by naruhodo » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 3:06 AM UTC

Guthur wrote: post #310

rablackburn wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imaging paying 10%+ of your salary just for health insurance I decided to actually look at my budget from the last year and see how this compares to my costs. In Australia I pay about ~28% of my salary in tax. 2% is for medicare, and I have private health insurance on top of that for roughly the same cost again (for dental, which isn't covered in our system because of dentists lobbying an exception back in the 80s)…

Just as an aside i think dental care in Australia is ripoff expensive. As anecdotal evidence; with the ban on international travel local dentists are apparently very busy as people can no longer fly abroad for more cost effective care.

As context for non-Australians, dental care has only very limited funding in the Australian public healthcare system. I have read that the government of the day thought that opposition from dentists might jeopardise the battle for public health cover. It is the policy of at least one party (The Greens) to expand dental cover under Medicare in Australia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2019-03-18/calls-for-medi...