71–80 of 262 posts
She’s far from alone and for no other reason than my seething hatred of capitalism, I believe it’s true for most people.
As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
I loved:
* the flexibility
* getting paid for every hour I worked (I billed by the hour)
* the freedom to choose clients
* having more than one made me feel more stable
* how close it kept me to the business problem space
* the ability to take time off
* the distance: I could roll my eyes and say "at least I'm getting paid for this BS" when there was political BS
However, after time I joined a team because:
* PTO is quite nice
* Insurance (in America) is better in general for employees
* it was great to be part of a team
* the ability to specialize in a way that is difficult as a contractor (I can be further away from direct revenue generation or product creation)
Highly recommend everyone tries this out as you'll have a much greater appreciation for all the components of a business when you are doing them yourself (or are responsible for them).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it humorous that anyone thinks they are capable of forcing talented people to do more than they want. Most of the people who feel pressure to make their corporate masters as happy as possible are either desperate or barely competent. All one must do is appear to be slightly better than all of the dead weight in the corporate world. No need to work hard. * I wanted to add that I am referring to software develop…
Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I feel I work harder than most people on my team. I always go for stories in areas that are more complex than the rest or areas that are new to me. I'm always trying to learn more to keep ahead of the rest. My performance reviews are always "exceeds expectations", but I haven't seen how this benefits anyone other than the company so far. Maybe I should just take it more easy but I feel li…
As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
> Working for yourself at your own pace is. > As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this. We are trying this but have you seen the constant media siege bombarding us with “studies” show remote work is bad for you? In the uk there are now articles saying that even hybrid is bad. We want to be more independent but we are not always allowed to. Tech is meant to be the easiest path to independence…
As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
What kind of companies and tech stack do you work with?
As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
> As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
This is great for people whose own pace is reasonable and matched to their compensation. If you’re paying someone 50th percentile compensation and demanding a 90th percentile work pace and output from them, you’re just going to have endless turnover as you burn people out.
Conversely, if you’re paying 90th percentile compensation and you have an employee moving at half the speed of their peers, eventually you’ll get fed up and replace them with someone better matched to the position.
But this all breaks down when you get into the weirder ends of the market. Self-pacing works great for you because you can put in the work to deliver $500K/year of value and companies appreciate it. It doesn’t work for many people whose idea of a workday is to put in 1-2 hours of focus and then browse the internet all day, which is a larger portion of the developer population than I would have guessed before becoming a manager. Other people can’t help but wander through tasks, get distracted by rewrites or new frameworks, needlessly refactor working code, or otherwise do a lot of activity without producing a lot of work. Both of these fault modes benefit greatly from the pacing and structure of management.
There’s no one size fits all approach. I think solo dev contracting is a great option for some people, but the type of person who can self-manage, sell themselves, network, and retain self-discipline isn’t all that common.
I think this is a great example of how different people thrive in different environments.
Agencies charge like a very good contractor but use midrange to lousy contractors/employees to do most of the work, and bring the good ones in only in need. It’s selling the difference between the two.
One guy I worked with spent a lot of effort evaluating Ukrainian and south American talent who had fluent or at least business level English. It took him awhile but the devs he fed work to were solid engineers, almost FAANG tier but he paid them s*t or good for their locations. I've kept their names handy because poaching them would be dirt easy. Knowing this as well as what you said, I avoid agencies now and simply…
In the UK, you need to collect evidence that you are a contractor and not an employee of a company. One of the ways you can do this is by hiring people to do some or all of the contracted work on your behalf. It might be unlikely given it is Upwork, but if those freelancers are repeatedly doing big or long jobs for the same client(s) then this may be a legitimate tactic to avoid falling foul of the taxman.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it humorous that anyone thinks they are capable of forcing talented people to do more than they want. Most of the people who feel pressure to make their corporate masters as happy as possible are either desperate or barely competent. All one must do is appear to be slightly better than all of the dead weight in the corporate world. No need to work hard. * I wanted to add that I am referring to software develop…
Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I feel I work harder than most people on my team. I always go for stories in areas that are more complex than the rest or areas that are new to me. I'm always trying to learn more to keep ahead of the rest. My performance reviews are always "exceeds expectations", but I haven't seen how this benefits anyone other than the company so far. Maybe I should just take it more easy but I feel li…
Few companies have sane compensation policies. by all means put in extra work when you have an opportunity to learn some new skill from it. but once you get to a pint where your skills are valuable, either jump ship to a another company that pays commisserate to your new skill level or start or join a startup where you get enough equity to eat at the adult's table when the ipo or acquisition happens
As a solo dev contractor who got my business to $500k/year during the pandemic - I echo a lot of the sentiment in this post. An extension to the post I want to touch on is that VC funded startups are not the only way to break free from the dreadful corporate games. Working for yourself at your own pace is. As an industry we're surprisingly very behind in normalizing this.
Would you mind sharing how to get started? I am full stack dev. I can pivot my current job into a contract but I’m scared of getting more clients.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I ask how you find contracts? Are there that many contract roles posted in public or is it due to your network?
100k: - network 200k: - high signaled / luke warm outbound on dev communities (YC work at a startup job board is one) - referrals 300k++: - dedicated outbound tech sale person