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Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#331

Post by Vic-Bhatia »

Long-time lurker, first time poster. Here goes… Founder CEO of a bootstrapped compliance engineering startup. Ex-FAANG who got really frustrated by the engineering toil caused by audit and compliance management. Most compliance tasks are manual, repetitive, tactical, and lack enduring value. As an engineer who spent 20 years dealing with auditors and regulators globally and who understands compliance really really well, I knew I had to change things or I would never forgive myself. If you’re an engineer who’s had to face auditors you know what I am talking about :-)

Anyways, building out an automated cloud compliance platform. MVP is coming out in the next few months. B2B subscription based SaaS platform for automated SOC 2 compliance in AWS. Post MVP looking at PCI and then some of the data privacy regulations. Also reviewing upcoming compliance requirements for AI and Electric Vehicle Charging Management Systems (EVCMS).

PS: Happy to answer any engineering questions or share tips on how to become compliant with least toil. Regulators aren’t engineers and engineers don’t understand what needs to be minimally done to get the auditors off their back, so this is my way of giving back to the community. Traveling internationally and will respond here on a best effort basis, or my LinkedIn (listed in my HN profile) is the best way to reach me.

Cheers! Vic

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#332

Post by spaceships »

Self employed here. Mostly React / React Native specialist. I've been working in React since it was relatively new but try to stay up on latest updates in the ecosystem.

Backstory: Not entirely planned, but I was talking with a company about potentially being a frontend architect or something along that line. As the conversations progressed, they said they couldn't hire me fulltime since I wasn't able to come in to the office daily but they could give me a long-term contract. I've been consulting ever since.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#333

Post by biddit »

hospitalJail wrote: post #164
biddit wrote: post #152

I've been independently employed the for 13 years as a software consultant. Most of my work has been building web-based business software for small/medium sized businesses. This involves both designing and implementing solutions for non-technical clients. It's a lot of greenfield design and development, which feels a lot like working in an early stage startup. I have at times taken 6mo - 24mo contracts as just a soft…

>It's a lot of greenfield design and development, which feels a lot like working in an early stage startup. What does this mean? Also how'd you get your first business?

Sibling comments both answered the greenfield thing as I would have :)

As for first business, I built a very small network over 7 years working in house at an advertising agency (which did a lot of digital work) and some startups. While I was just an IC developer, because I could communicate with non-technical people well, I became the first point of contact for a lot of decision makers over time.

If you want to do solo technical consulting start making friends with non-technical people who are in leadership roles. It takes time but it does snowball.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#334

Post by stevenhuang »

jamesmunns wrote: post #20

I am for a couple years now. I do consulting work [1] around Rust/Embedded Systems/Systems Engineering, usually helping teams that are either kicking off a project (so helping with planning, scoping, and backfilling knowledge gaps), or people who want help building a proof of concept (so: just build it for me asap) for existing companies exploring new ideas or for startups that are working on demos for investors, etc…

Just found out about your podcast and I quite enjoyed learning how esp-idf came about. Great content!

> James talks with Scott Mabin about how he joined the Espressif team and got involved in embedded Rust, the working culture in chip manufacturing companies and preferences about designing and building mechanical keyboards.

https://onevariable.com/blog/cwj-ep016-scott-mabin/

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#335

Post by paulette449 »

philip1209 wrote: post #2

I'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 occas…

I hate to have to ask this but how do you manage healthcare being a solo s-corp? I was under the impression this could only be done through a company if two unrelated family members owned the company? The only other alternative is "Obamacare"? I could be totally wrong.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#336

Post by whitepoplar »

paulette449 wrote: post #335
philip1209 wrote: post #2

I'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 occas…

I hate to have to ask this but how do you manage healthcare being a solo s-corp? I was under the impression this could only be done through a company if two unrelated family members owned the company? The only other alternative is "Obamacare"? I could be totally wrong.

I'd love to know this as well!

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#337

Post by demondemidi »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #190
demondemidi wrote: post #77

I was self employed from 2009 to 2018. I was an embedded programmer / debugger and I had two major sources of income debugging engineering development boards for two boutique companies. I got the first gig from a friend who worked at one, the second by spamming the embedded world conference, and a handful more through linkedin. I couldn’t really travel because I needed a lab with test equipment. But I did double my p…

>Finally I ... went back to a big employer and I’m much happier I have a similar timeline: dropped out in 2009 and started a few blue collar shops (mostly electrician-related). By 2019 I realized (with substantial help from clients / friends) I didn't want to be "on call" 24/7, as bossman, so over the next two years I fired all but my two best clients. Reflecting on my worklife, I am grateful for so many of my client…

Sounds like we had similar experiences except for the LANDSLIDE. That sounds horrible!

Do you really need to work if you have decades of savings? Or is it more about just having something to do?

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#340

Post by throwaway2203 »

darajava wrote: post #283
throwaway2203 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks cool. Would love to know pricing and how/where you store data?

Pricing depends on the country but have addressed that in another comment! The privacy policy explains how we store data but will make this clearer and more upfront. I store recordings separately from user info in an S3 bucket and the database is hosted in digital ocean. Recordings are sent to OpenAI for ephemeral analysis and transcription.

Can I export the recordings and the resulting (presumably text) diary?
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