31–40 of 191 posts
It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money. I believe the same applies for startup foun…
Robert Kiyosaki and other wealthy people state that wealth is measured in time. Can you not work for x weeks, months, years and still make money or at least maintain status quo? If you can, you're probably already wealthy and doing better than the vast majority of people out there.
We all love to read success stories of startup founders where it escalated quickly and they got out with a huge amount of money. These people however are not a good representation of what's out there. Most wealthy people I've met over the course of my life do things that not a lot of people think about and take for granted. They're sometimes rather boring, not glamorous, not innovative things like selling sausages, web hosting, web development services, selling plain white shirts, toilet paper, pipe fittings, cleaning businesses, restaurants and so on. These people then invest their proceeds in other "boring" assets like real estate, other businesses, fonds etc. with a long term view.
A lot of these people moved from being a specialist (consultants, chefs, programmers, contractors) to business owners. Not working in but on the business. Hiring other specialists, people who do the grunt work, the sales, the programming and so on. They then invest their proceeds into assets that will continue to generate money at different percentages even after they completely stop working.
In your particular case that could mean that you could start with very specialized consulting work. Then slowly transition into providing tooling for a monthly fee. Then slowly removing yourself from the business as much as you can. The beauty of it is that monthly recurring revenue is compounding. Also have a look into SWaS (Software With a Service) http://www.tropicalmba.com/swas/.
Investing/saving $5K a month for 15 years with an expected rate of return of 7% and an expected inflation rate of 3% will bring you to a place where you end up with a balance of ~$1.5MM (or $1MM after inflation) to your name. Would that make you wealthy in your books?
It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money. I believe the same applies for startup foun…
Product could be SaaS, software, consulting, contracting.
Save half of what you make, diversify your investments, and pay down your debt. Do this for 15 years and you will be rich with your skills.
Mostly it seems pretty sensible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I second contracting. You are responsible for your own skills, but you can start very young, and you usually get better skills than permanently employed people. Then only drawback is the lack of social ties with your employer, but nowadays employers don't really care for employees, and having more money than a permanent employee will give you more latitude.
I'm completely unfamiliar with this - does this mean working with a staffing agency, or working on your own (freelancing?)?
Just make sure to negotiate your benefits to include the ability to take classes (both the time during your days to attend, and reducing the costs -- preferably to zero -- of attending)
It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money. I believe the same applies for startup foun…
Why does money motivation reduce your chances? I don't think being exceptional is enough, there are several open source projects created and maintained by exceptional devs, but they don't make >600k/year. Being exceptional working at anything but the right company won't make you money. Why do you thing "dev big corps" are better? What does that mean to you? I think of Microsoft, Google, IBM, Apple, but even after you…