71–80 of 120 posts
Why so US centric? In my country the corporate forms are completely different.
We hired nanny for one year when my wife went back to work. The tax and paperwork nightmare of having even a single employee for a small business makes me never want to do it again. It's structured in such a way as to bias it towards larger employers who have accountants and lawyers to rely upon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am currently doing this. What I am doing on the side or the companies I am doing it for does not compete in any way with what my day job company produces. Edit - I do have the problem you are describing though. Where to find clients who will pay a reasonable rate. Don't mean to spam but since this seems relevant, full story here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821974
The link takes me to an empty HN page.
You need to set showdead=yes in your HN profile.
I have a startup configured as an LLC right now. I've been dayjobbing to bootstrap it for the past year, but will be going full-time on the startup in mid-June. I've been contracting as W2 through a pimp, rather than using my company for it. Switching to full-time is going to be very interesting. Dayjobbing has been good for buying me some time to really think through what I'm doing and climb some learning curves, bu…
Haha, when I read that part I LOL'ed.
If people are open to it, I would really love to hear some anecdotes about making the transition from working for a big tech company to doing independent consulting. It seems very hard (often forbidden by the company) to pick up clients on the side while being an employee, but quitting a job without any clients is pretty scary. And I'm not even clear where to find clients (who will pay a reasonable rate).
Depending on where you are (I'm in London), lots of contracts are offered through recruitment agencies so put your CV out there and you will get spammed by recruiters (several of them contacting you for permanent position in a different country and using things not even mentioned in your CV, you can safely mark those recruiters as spam).
One important thing is to not bother looking if you're not free pretty much immediately, you're supposed to be free in less than a week or immediately so if you're looking for clients with a 1-2 months notice, you won't get any.
For the interviews part, all the one I had were very simple, some without a single technical question.
As desarun said, an important thing is to get an accountant and create a company (not sure outside of the UK).
Anyway to give you an idea, my first contract was 3 days a week and I was still making more than my previous fulltime job.
Again if you're in the UK, this book is really good: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Contractors-Handbook-Expert-Guide-Fr...
If people are open to it, I would really love to hear some anecdotes about making the transition from working for a big tech company to doing independent consulting. It seems very hard (often forbidden by the company) to pick up clients on the side while being an employee, but quitting a job without any clients is pretty scary. And I'm not even clear where to find clients (who will pay a reasonable rate).
I saved enough cash to last me for more than a year, took some time off to chill out, think and make plans, then work found me. You know all these times someone asks you if you can do this or that for them, and you had to say no because you didn't have the energy to do it well in addition to your job? Yeah, you just stop saying no. Then you do it _well_. Word gets around. More folk ask. Eventually you start saying no…
Two LLCs, one for Appointment Reminder and one for everything else. The separation is exactly because AR has potentially high liability in event of a HIPAA incident and, while I'm insured against it, I don't want DHS to have a claim on substantially all of my business assets in the event that everything goes wrong. I go back and forth on whether I want to take investment at some point. At the moment, mostly working o…
I do not want to make assumptions, but because your concerns are regarding potential liability (and rightfully so)if those are single member LLCs (you are the sole owner), then you will not be receiving the limited liability legal protection generally associated with the LLC.
Founded 14 years ago (profitable since 2002, ~$8M EBIT in 2013), sold most of it in the past 6 months (in 2 steps) and will be retiring soon. Does that count?
Heck yeah. I thought I might be the oldest at 10 years but you got me beat. Congrats on the long haul success.