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You've described my thinking exactly - the only difference is that when I started my software development business (http://www.atlascode.com http://www.atlascod

You've described my thinking exactly - the only difference is that when I started my software development business (http://www.atlascode.com http://www.atlascode.com) in my early 20s I didn't have an MBA. All of my college friends jumped on to their respective corporate ladders straight out of college. They out earned me from day one. In fact, the first two to three years of being in business got me in to about £30k of debt which was used to fund the startup. In hindsight this was a small price to pay for the lessons I was taught. At the time it took a huge amount of mental strength to stay the course - my friends all seemed to have more money, more time and infinitely less stressful lives. Ten years later the business is in very good shape. I'm definitely amongst the top earners compared to my peers but that's not as important as the flexibility owning the business offers me. Amongst other things I get to: * Call the strategic shots - hire people I want to work with, work with the management team to define our company strategy and vision * Launch new software products and pitch new custom software clients - both things I enjoy and I'm good at. There's nothing more satisfying than getting a new software product to profitability or landing a new £500k software development contract * Work in the office or from home as I see fit. In fact, there have been times when I've worked from another country altogether for weeks at a time because I can I wouldn't give up my business to go work as a consultant for another company for anything at this stage. Having said that, if things went south and I was left without any other option but to take a job I would hope that my decade of experience would be of huge value.

gr33nman 10y ago
I'm curious: do you extend the work from home option to your employees?
- simonswords82 10y ago
  Yes. One guy works full time from at home because he prefers it and the project is setup in a way that we can accommodate him working at home. Other people tend to work from home on a case by case basis. So if they need to be at home for any reason they can dial in - we're not precious about people being in the office all the time. Having said that, the team largely prefer to be in the office, especially as they all live locally. If anybody else requested to work from home full time I suspect we'd create a company policy which was overarching rather than working on a person by person basis. Interestingly one of our strategic issues at the moment is finding enough office space to home all the new hires we've taken on recently. So allowing/requesting that more staff work from home might be a solution to that problem.
  - jfoutz 10y ago
    One company I worked for required everyone to work from home at least one day a month as part of the disaster recovery plan. It was neat that we could be fully remote. Made stuff like snow easy to deal with.
    - simonswords82 10y ago
      That's a very good idea and one I'll look to implement.
bjelkeman-again 10y ago
Yep. They could complement the question with: "Which MBAs have higher job & life satisfaction."
shostack 10y ago
How would you compare the risk you had vs the risk they had in terms of earnings? Presumably you got lucky given the failure rate of startups,no?
- simonswords82 10y ago
  I feel I would be guilty a form of survivorship bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias) if I tried to answer that question objectively. Above a certain amount of annual income I don't really care how I stack up against my peers who opted for the 9 to 5. What I now have in return for the upfront risk of failure is the flexibility to work how, when and where I please. This is something I know for sure my peers don't have.

gr33nman 10y ago

I'm curious: do you extend the work from home option to your employees?

simonswords82 10y ago
Yes. One guy works full time from at home because he prefers it and the project is setup in a way that we can accommodate him working at home. Other people tend to work from home on a case by case basis. So if they need to be at home for any reason they can dial in - we're not precious about people being in the office all the time. Having said that, the team largely prefer to be in the office, especially as they all live locally. If anybody else requested to work from home full time I suspect we'd create a company policy which was overarching rather than working on a person by person basis. Interestingly one of our strategic issues at the moment is finding enough office space to home all the new hires we've taken on recently. So allowing/requesting that more staff work from home might be a solution to that problem.
- jfoutz 10y ago
  One company I worked for required everyone to work from home at least one day a month as part of the disaster recovery plan. It was neat that we could be fully remote. Made stuff like snow easy to deal with.
  - simonswords82 10y ago
    That's a very good idea and one I'll look to implement.

bjelkeman-again 10y ago

Yep. They could complement the question with: "Which MBAs have higher job & life satisfaction."

shostack 10y ago

How would you compare the risk you had vs the risk they had in terms of earnings? Presumably you got lucky given the failure rate of startups,no?

simonswords82 10y ago
I feel I would be guilty a form of survivorship bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias) if I tried to answer that question objectively. Above a certain amount of annual income I don't really care how I stack up against my peers who opted for the 9 to 5. What I now have in return for the upfront risk of failure is the flexibility to work how, when and where I please. This is something I know for sure my peers don't have.