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Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

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Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#101

Post by chadcmulligan »

xyzzyz wrote: post #72
aengvs wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently moved to the US from Australia. The amount my employer and I pay for my healthcare is significantly more than I paid in Australian taxes for healthcare. And that's before including my deductible, things my insurance doesn't cover and the amount I pay in US taxes for healthcare.

In Australia, the government spends over $70B on healthcare, but collects only around $10B through Medicare levy surcharge. The only reason your healthcare spending in Australia seemed so low is because an overwhelming majority of the cost of healthcare in Australia is covered through general taxes, and not through the Medicare tax. Even if you focus on Medicare benefits only, the Medicare levy surcharge only covers…

The US actually spends more per capita on health care than Australia both public and private https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#103

Post by m0zg »

>> If I work on my own business alone, I won’t have co-workers until I hire them.

There's another, more subtle issue. If you aren't sitting on a million-dollar seed round, there's a _huge_ energy gap between working alone and hiring someone, even for a consultancy, never mind some kind of product effort on which you work for a year before you get any revenue.

This is in part because of the additional taxes you have to pay if you're no longer flying solo, and in part because of demands on your own time. Say you're doing something solo and you're super strong technically and can do what you do very efficiently. It's pretty easy to generate a ton of revenue working in this way. It's also much easier to tolerate gaps or reductions in revenue - you could just work on your own stuff and continue to pay yourself from past revenues. Say, now, you want to grow, and hire people. But you can't just hire people. Now you have to pay for their benefits, pay unemployment insurance, etc etc. Moreover you have to manage them, which will reduce your own "technical" throughput to basically zero. I've done a back of the envelope, and for me it doesn't make sense to have fewer than 10 people in my employ, since I can't skim enough off the top to justify my own loss of productivity. And 1 person solo LLC vs a 10 person company are vastly different companies in terms of business operations (especially bizdev and sales), taxation, and regulation.

I'd theoretically like to grow at some point. But I don't know how to do it in a sustainable fashion as a consultancy.

Being (overly) fiscally conservative, I would not feel comfortable hiring for a more product-oriented business either unless it demonstrates traction and upward trajectory. $1k/mo is not what I'd call "traction".

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#104

Post by 52-6F-62 »

n4r9 wrote: post #99
52-6F-62 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say I had a great childhood in general, but also with some major stress factors—I feel I can safely say that those stressors don’t leave you on their own so organically. And that kind of stress, even if it’s not conscious all of the time, can colour one’s perspective in an impactful way. Sometimes for better, funny enough—but also for worse in others.

Absolutely. It's impossible to bring yourself to take risks and leave your comfort zone if the outside world is a terrifying and malicious place.

I wouldn’t say that’s my experience, though I’m sure that’s true. I’m referring more to the stresses imbued to a family from something like lack of money.

It’s more of an internal preservation thing than a fear of externalities.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#105

Post by tannerc »

kentrado wrote: post #23
tannerc wrote: post #2

I like Austin Kleon's insights here [1]: "A day job gives you money, a connection to the world, and a routine. Freedom from financial stress also means freedom in your art. As photographer Bill Cunningham says, 'If you don’t take money, they cant tell you what to do.' Because the real truth is, once you start making money doing what you love, it BECOMES A JOB. And with it comes all the hassle of a job." It's why I've…

I would like to try that approach but I just don't have the energy after working all day to come home and start investing time chasing wildly creative projects.

I’m writing a book on how I do this! I’ll be sharing here on HN once it’s complete.

But the TL;DR for the chapter on motivation and energy comes down to: work on things that improve your own life, set clear objectives, and work in small chunks. The book itself is being written in 30 minute chunks throughout my week because that’s all the time I can spare.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#106

Post by Xcelerate »

Tade0 wrote: post #11
dvt wrote: post #3

Not to be dismissive, but this post feels a bit like rambling without a clear thesis or main argument. It's also rife with dubious claims: > I’ve been working remotely for four years now, and I know that working alone can make you lonely.. I also work full-time remotely. I built a community around myself, made new friends and regularly hang out with people I met at coffee shops, at startup meetups, old classmates, ex…

I hear it a lot, but this argument honestly falls flat on its face as long as you're not a weird hermit that only works from your house. Having worked remotely for close to five years now those who worked in coffee shops and not from the comfort of their own homes were usually the weirdos.

I work in an office currently but did the coffee shop thing in grad school. That would be my work environment preference honestly; something about the ambient background noise / environment and knowing none of those people will interrupt you. (Actually, my office has a coffee shop within in and that is indeed where I sit most of the day when I’m not in meetings.)

I am an extreme introvert though and could go just fine for weeks without interacting with anyone, so if that’s what you mean by “weird”, then yeah, I guess so.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#107

Post by JoshTriplett »

glfharris wrote: post #27
overcast wrote: post #5

Probably the biggest hurdle is dealing with healthcare on your own, it's just prohibitively expensive to deal with alone in the US. Multiple incomes is where it's at, at least until one of the projects takes off to cover cost of living and healthcare nonsense.

Wouldn't that imply startup rates to be much higher in countries with national healthcare? But I don't think that's borne out in data.

There are many confounding factors there. Countries with government-provided healthcare also have many other differences that contribute positively or negatively to entrepreneurship.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#108

Post by m0zg »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #101
xyzzyz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia, the government spends over $70B on healthcare, but collects only around $10B through Medicare levy surcharge. The only reason your healthcare spending in Australia seemed so low is because an overwhelming majority of the cost of healthcare in Australia is covered through general taxes, and not through the Medicare tax. Even if you focus on Medicare benefits only, the Medicare levy surcharge only covers…

The US actually spends more per capita on health care than Australia both public and private https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

Yes. And US doctors make more "per capita" than Australian doctors. About twice as much. If they continue making more, I don't see how paying their billing rates from the taxes addresses the "affordability" problem. If you were to fix billing rates at a lower level (through single payer and such), you wouldn't really have any doctors to begin with, at least not for a while.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#109

Post by unishark »

dvt wrote: post #3

Not to be dismissive, but this post feels a bit like rambling without a clear thesis or main argument. It's also rife with dubious claims: > I’ve been working remotely for four years now, and I know that working alone can make you lonely.. I also work full-time remotely. I built a community around myself, made new friends and regularly hang out with people I met at coffee shops, at startup meetups, old classmates, ex…

Well as for entrepreneurs, limited ability to meet people is a common complaint. There's even a TED talk about the issue. We had a successful founder speak to my class when I was in school, and this is one of the downsides they discussed. Most people meet friends through work, and meet significant others through friends.

Re: Working for someone vs. doing your own thing

#110

Post by m0zg »

jbay808 wrote: post #78
wolco wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's do the math. Someone making 100,000 On average you pay 2% of annual salary to health levy which gives you medicare 2000.00 If you are over 90k you pay 1.5 unless you have private insurance On average $2000. Plus on average $800 in extra like someone driving you to the hospital $4800 aus to usd = $3312.41 It looks like you are paying half. But the government is spending 7800 a year per person. So the additional…

Given the context of this conversation... How does the math change if you strike out on your own, earning nothing for a year? I think it suggests that the healthcare barrier to entrepreneurship is much higher in the US than in Australia.

I pay $15K/yr for a family of 3 for health insurance. Where I live it costs $95K/yr post-tax for a family of 3 to maintain middle class lifestyle (verified by not working for a year), including about $3K/mo mortgage, $1k/mo real estate tax, $1K/mo groceries, and a modest vacation in the tropics in December. So while $15K is clearly expensive, it's not dominant in the grand scheme of things. Of these numbers, BTW, it's the real estate tax that pisses me off the most: I have to pay the government to live in my own goddamn house, WTF.
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