7 ms·

If you're currently an employee, start thinking by your 40s about how you could become your own boss. By 50, if you've played your cards right, you have a lot

If you're currently an employee, start thinking by your 40s about how you could become your own boss. By 50, if you've played your cards right, you have a lot of connections, a lot of expertise, and you've become rather expensive to employ. So you do attract attention from the cost cutters wherever you work. But it also means that you might deliver more business value as a consultant than as a full-time employee anyway. I've seen people who got ahead of this trend, they planned for it, and made it work. They prepared for a long time and then they left. Instead of treading water in the same job for another decade, they semi-retired into consulting. You do it when you're prepared, you've done your homework, and you can name a couple of companies where you have contacts that would probably be interested in retaining you. Often, your first customer is your former employer. Because if you were doing an essential job, they probably won't be well prepared for it, and they'll want to re-hire you on a consulting basis to oversee the transition. You end up getting less total compensation from them, but you get paid at a higher rate per unit of your time. Then you string together a few other gigs. If you can't get as much work as you want you at least have some flexibility, maybe you end up spending the winters in a low cost country or something. The key is in the preparation and paying attention to the right details while you're still in corporate. If you do it right, it can actually help your interests stay aligned with your employer's throughout your entire career. If they have cost pressures your switch to consulting can be a win for them too. Like a lot of things in life, the key is to know when to quit.

thatoneuser 8y ago
Man you’re not wrong, but imho it’s a pretty bleak world where you have to have the competence as an independent consultant to survive the last 20ish years of your career. No doubt many of us can attain that, but I’d venture to say that the majority of people can’t. Whether mental defficiency, physical limitations, etc, there are a lot of curveballs in life that don’t set most people up to fit this role.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  One option is to raise children that will grow up to support you in older age and live together to cut down on babysitting and housing costs. That’s the norm everywhere people can’t afford to live individually.
- scarface74 8y ago
  If you have a mental deficiency you’re kind of out of luck anyway when it comes to being gainfully employed. On the other hand, one reason I would think about being a consultant is because it would be a lot easier physically than typing on a keyboard all day and risk RSI.
  - thatoneuser 8y ago
    I guess I should have been better at that statement. I’m not talking mentally disabled in the low iq sense, but more on a relativistic sense. I would wildly guess that consultants make up 25% or less of the workforce (really that’s an intuitive guess so it’s probably a lot more or less). Which would imply only around the top % to match that number (whatever it is) are even capable of being a consultant. And then you have to have the social/network skills, the ability to plan around uncertainty, the ability to shift industries if yours becomes automated or your knowledge falls too far from modern practices, etc. Don’t get me wrong I’ve worked as a consultant and really enjoyed it. But I’m also young and I can take risks like that. I honestly fear for anyone who doesn’t have a severely privileged background attempting to make this a viable career alternative to traditional work. There are so so many gotchas.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Ideally, I would prefer to work for a consulting company as an overpriced “implementation consultant”, “digital transformation consultant”, etc. I’ve been recruited (ie lunch with hiring managers who wanted to talk to me) for such a role because of my experience based on my resume but I knew that I needed to take some time to get more real world experience in a few areas - cloud and front end and the $cool_kids JavaScript stack. That being said, I am in my mid 40s and consider myself competitive in the local market as a back end developer/architect with the Microsoft stack and fairly competitive with AWS. As far as being “privileged”, I found the industry to be mostly merit based over my 20+ year career. I’m a minority, below average height, went to a no name state college and I have a slight disability - not the model of someone with any “privilege”. I’ve never been rejected for a job that I thought I was qualified for - I also only use recruiters. I don’t waste my time blindly submitting resumes. That may change in three or four years when I am looking for my next job. There are relatively few local companies that do the type of consulting that I’m focusing on compared to standard “full stack” developer/architect roles.
ryandrake 8y ago
I like your comment, but I wish you (and other similar commenters) would reveal more details of the secret sauce! Whenever people on here advocate "going into consulting" they do so with vague advice like: Lay the right foundation! and Play your cards right! and Do your homework! These things sound great but aren't specific or actionable. If I want to quit my job in, say, a year and become a consultant, what specific steps do I need to take? How do these companies "retain" me? How do you know they have "cost pressures" that lead to you consulting? Where do I find out about these "gigs" to string together? Does this activity go through recruiters just like a regular job hunt? Which contacts help you find these gigs? I don't have that many--what do you do when you've talked to them all? Most of my contacts from previous companies are individual contributor rank-and-file employees and probably are not involved with hiring contractors, plus they work for companies I quit and don't want to work for anymore! I wish there was more of a HOWTO besides: 1. Nebulously Prepare 2. ??? 3. You're a consultant with multiple gigs!
Animats 8y ago
Yeah, right. Take on the risks of a startup as you approach retirement.
- cft 8y ago
  Consulting is definitely not a start-up. It's not scalable. Separately, the average age of founders of successful tech startups is in the late forties.
- Zanni 8y ago
  Alternative take on the parent comment: take on some risk as a consultant to avoid the risk of getting laid off, and do it well in advance of retirement.
  - apatters 8y ago
    Someone gets it, thank you. Startups are high-risk, high-reward ventures which make less sense to attempt as you age. It's normally a good idea to start moving your assets into fixed income and other low risk investments as you approach retirement, the same risk aversion applies to your income source(s). Making the shift to consulting, if done properly, actually lowers your income risk because you can't lose your entire income in one go. If you have 3-4 regular clients, the most any one of them can do is force you to take a partial pay hit. That's why it's a good idea to consider this path and start laying foundations that could make it possible long before you turn 50. Even though many HN users seem to misunderstand it, this isn't a novel idea by any means.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      In my mid 40s, my first alternative would be working for a consulting company. Secondarily going out on my own.
- randomacct3847 8y ago
  The idea of retirement is a joke, as if it’s this formalized thing that everyone is entitled to. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be, but we act like everyone is supposed to just sit on a golf course once they turn a magic age and live happily ever after without needing to earn a dime for the rest of their lives. Personally I find the classical “retirement” you see in TV ads to be a sham sold by baby boomers.
AndyMcConachie 8y ago
I hate this attitude among Americans. Like there is some strategy you can play that will make sure you won't get screwed over in life, and that if you do get screwed over in life it's because your strategy was wrong. It has so much more to do with luck than I think people like you are willing to admit. Where is the compassion in your writing? This story is about people losing their jobs simply because they're old and used up by a society that doesn't give a shit. And here you are talking about strategies for success. It's gross.
- achillesheels 8y ago
  >> I hate this attitude among Americans. Like there is some strategy you can play that will make sure you won't get screwed over in life, and that if you do get screwed over in life it's because your strategy was wrong. That’s called life? You make it sound as though the existence of risk in life is an evil, rather than a plain fact.
- dang 8y ago
  Please keep nationalistic slurs far away from Hacker News, regardless of who you have a problem with. In addition, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow all the rules when posting here. They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
- ThrowMeDown01 8y ago
  Also, another confusion of "anyone" vs. "everyone". The English language has those two distinct words, unlike my own native language, so English speakers should actually be at an advantage here. Any time someone comes up with an example that (in an idealized universe, but let's grant them the unrealistic assumption because it does not even affect the final result) would work for anyone, make a check if it works for everyone, meaning what would happen if everyone actually did just that. I think such huge levels of new "entrepreneurs" just means you get something like "Uber jobs". All the risk of being on your own but none of the benefits of being part of a large organization. Even if every single new entrepreneur were to cure one kind of cancer - how many such people are needed before the ROI on a cure for a cancer form is down to pennies? Just to use an extreme example where every single person actually is a genius. Now imagine what happens when most people are ordinary. Not to mention that actual monetization of cures for forms of cancer can only be handled by - large companies! It seems to me to be quite clear, given the complexity of what needs to be done in today's world economy (vs. shoe makers or smiths or XYZ makers in centuries past who could happily work alone or with just family) that most people in the economy should be employed and part of large(r) organizations. If everybody is an individual (entrepreneur) this would not fit into how modern society works, solving complex tasks in a tight network of people. To me it's like propagating a mostly bacteria world because multicellular organisms, where individuals give up most of their autonomy and prefer to be part of a big organization, are somehow "bad" (and cancer cells, breaking out of the organization to follow their own path, are somehow rebels fighting for freedom?). To me, people giving up many of their freedoms to work in a higher-level form of organization is something positive, and I think we actually need more of it. The problem is that, following the multicellular organism analogy, today's organisms (firms) are quite hostile towards their own cells (workers). Too narrow-minded. They could (allowed to) be that way - if the parent organization, the state, would jump in and provide the safety instead, on the (even) higher level. For the unbelievable wealth (in tools, knowledge, infrastructure, processes, networks) that at least part of humanity has accumulated and achieved I think we have waaayyyyy too much risk completely unnecessarily put on individuals, for no good reason. We could easily give everyone food and shelter and some basics. To me, much of that pressure on people is completely artificial. "Sure, we could feed you, but we won't because you are unworthy."
chrisbennet 8y ago
This is what I did. Mid fifties and earning more than I ever did before. The wife with equal experience plus a masters in CS hasn’t been able to find work. Employers are enthusiastic about her skills but once they figure out her age, crickets.
- achillesheels 8y ago
  I don’t understand your wife’s treatment. Is it because of fear of salary requirements, underemployment, or health insurance premiums? I only see reason in my last guess.
  - chrisbennet 8y ago
    I don’t know, I would be guessing. Ageism is a thing and because it is illegal, you can’t find out why.
randomacct3847 8y ago
I’m aiming to save enough to be able to retire by 35...not that I want to but I want the optionality.
scarface74 8y ago
I don’t get why people think “starting your own company” is less risky than working for someone. I’m in my mid 40s and don’t spend a single minute worried about being laid off or my company folding. I do however spend a lot of time keeping my network of local recruiters warm and making sure my skillset is marketable. I have a group of friends we are all in our 40s and we all change jobs at the drop of a dime. None of us have any desire to be in management but we make sure we keep up with industry trends. In fact, our former manager is in his late 50s and self demoted to a developer after his kids graduated and he is a full stack .Net/JavaScript/Azure Developer.
akudha 8y ago
In a true capitalist fashion, there should be some "course" and some "workshop" that teaches how to do this...

thatoneuser 8y ago

Man you’re not wrong, but imho it’s a pretty bleak world where you have to have the competence as an independent consultant to survive the last 20ish years of your career. No doubt many of us can attain that, but I’d venture to say that the majority of people can’t. Whether mental defficiency, physical limitations, etc, there are a lot of curveballs in life that don’t set most people up to fit this role.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
One option is to raise children that will grow up to support you in older age and live together to cut down on babysitting and housing costs. That’s the norm everywhere people can’t afford to live individually.
scarface74 8y ago
If you have a mental deficiency you’re kind of out of luck anyway when it comes to being gainfully employed. On the other hand, one reason I would think about being a consultant is because it would be a lot easier physically than typing on a keyboard all day and risk RSI.
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  I guess I should have been better at that statement. I’m not talking mentally disabled in the low iq sense, but more on a relativistic sense. I would wildly guess that consultants make up 25% or less of the workforce (really that’s an intuitive guess so it’s probably a lot more or less). Which would imply only around the top % to match that number (whatever it is) are even capable of being a consultant. And then you have to have the social/network skills, the ability to plan around uncertainty, the ability to shift industries if yours becomes automated or your knowledge falls too far from modern practices, etc. Don’t get me wrong I’ve worked as a consultant and really enjoyed it. But I’m also young and I can take risks like that. I honestly fear for anyone who doesn’t have a severely privileged background attempting to make this a viable career alternative to traditional work. There are so so many gotchas.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Ideally, I would prefer to work for a consulting company as an overpriced “implementation consultant”, “digital transformation consultant”, etc. I’ve been recruited (ie lunch with hiring managers who wanted to talk to me) for such a role because of my experience based on my resume but I knew that I needed to take some time to get more real world experience in a few areas - cloud and front end and the $cool_kids JavaScript stack. That being said, I am in my mid 40s and consider myself competitive in the local market as a back end developer/architect with the Microsoft stack and fairly competitive with AWS. As far as being “privileged”, I found the industry to be mostly merit based over my 20+ year career. I’m a minority, below average height, went to a no name state college and I have a slight disability - not the model of someone with any “privilege”. I’ve never been rejected for a job that I thought I was qualified for - I also only use recruiters. I don’t waste my time blindly submitting resumes. That may change in three or four years when I am looking for my next job. There are relatively few local companies that do the type of consulting that I’m focusing on compared to standard “full stack” developer/architect roles.

ryandrake 8y ago

I like your comment, but I wish you (and other similar commenters) would reveal more details of the secret sauce! Whenever people on here advocate "going into consulting" they do so with vague advice like: Lay the right foundation! and Play your cards right! and Do your homework! These things sound great but aren't specific or actionable. If I want to quit my job in, say, a year and become a consultant, what specific steps do I need to take? How do these companies "retain" me? How do you know they have "cost pressures" that lead to you consulting? Where do I find out about these "gigs" to string together? Does this activity go through recruiters just like a regular job hunt? Which contacts help you find these gigs? I don't have that many--what do you do when you've talked to them all? Most of my contacts from previous companies are individual contributor rank-and-file employees and probably are not involved with hiring contractors, plus they work for companies I quit and don't want to work for anymore! I wish there was more of a HOWTO besides: 1. Nebulously Prepare 2. ??? 3. You're a consultant with multiple gigs!

Animats 8y ago

Yeah, right. Take on the risks of a startup as you approach retirement.

cft 8y ago
Consulting is definitely not a start-up. It's not scalable. Separately, the average age of founders of successful tech startups is in the late forties.
Zanni 8y ago
Alternative take on the parent comment: take on some risk as a consultant to avoid the risk of getting laid off, and do it well in advance of retirement.
- apatters 8y ago
  Someone gets it, thank you. Startups are high-risk, high-reward ventures which make less sense to attempt as you age. It's normally a good idea to start moving your assets into fixed income and other low risk investments as you approach retirement, the same risk aversion applies to your income source(s). Making the shift to consulting, if done properly, actually lowers your income risk because you can't lose your entire income in one go. If you have 3-4 regular clients, the most any one of them can do is force you to take a partial pay hit. That's why it's a good idea to consider this path and start laying foundations that could make it possible long before you turn 50. Even though many HN users seem to misunderstand it, this isn't a novel idea by any means.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    In my mid 40s, my first alternative would be working for a consulting company. Secondarily going out on my own.
randomacct3847 8y ago
The idea of retirement is a joke, as if it’s this formalized thing that everyone is entitled to. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be, but we act like everyone is supposed to just sit on a golf course once they turn a magic age and live happily ever after without needing to earn a dime for the rest of their lives. Personally I find the classical “retirement” you see in TV ads to be a sham sold by baby boomers.

AndyMcConachie 8y ago

I hate this attitude among Americans. Like there is some strategy you can play that will make sure you won't get screwed over in life, and that if you do get screwed over in life it's because your strategy was wrong. It has so much more to do with luck than I think people like you are willing to admit. Where is the compassion in your writing? This story is about people losing their jobs simply because they're old and used up by a society that doesn't give a shit. And here you are talking about strategies for success. It's gross.

achillesheels 8y ago
>> I hate this attitude among Americans. Like there is some strategy you can play that will make sure you won't get screwed over in life, and that if you do get screwed over in life it's because your strategy was wrong. That’s called life? You make it sound as though the existence of risk in life is an evil, rather than a plain fact.
dang 8y ago
Please keep nationalistic slurs far away from Hacker News, regardless of who you have a problem with. In addition, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow all the rules when posting here. They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
ThrowMeDown01 8y ago
Also, another confusion of "anyone" vs. "everyone". The English language has those two distinct words, unlike my own native language, so English speakers should actually be at an advantage here. Any time someone comes up with an example that (in an idealized universe, but let's grant them the unrealistic assumption because it does not even affect the final result) would work for anyone, make a check if it works for everyone, meaning what would happen if everyone actually did just that. I think such huge levels of new "entrepreneurs" just means you get something like "Uber jobs". All the risk of being on your own but none of the benefits of being part of a large organization. Even if every single new entrepreneur were to cure one kind of cancer - how many such people are needed before the ROI on a cure for a cancer form is down to pennies? Just to use an extreme example where every single person actually is a genius. Now imagine what happens when most people are ordinary. Not to mention that actual monetization of cures for forms of cancer can only be handled by - large companies! It seems to me to be quite clear, given the complexity of what needs to be done in today's world economy (vs. shoe makers or smiths or XYZ makers in centuries past who could happily work alone or with just family) that most people in the economy should be employed and part of large(r) organizations. If everybody is an individual (entrepreneur) this would not fit into how modern society works, solving complex tasks in a tight network of people. To me it's like propagating a mostly bacteria world because multicellular organisms, where individuals give up most of their autonomy and prefer to be part of a big organization, are somehow "bad" (and cancer cells, breaking out of the organization to follow their own path, are somehow rebels fighting for freedom?). To me, people giving up many of their freedoms to work in a higher-level form of organization is something positive, and I think we actually need more of it. The problem is that, following the multicellular organism analogy, today's organisms (firms) are quite hostile towards their own cells (workers). Too narrow-minded. They could (allowed to) be that way - if the parent organization, the state, would jump in and provide the safety instead, on the (even) higher level. For the unbelievable wealth (in tools, knowledge, infrastructure, processes, networks) that at least part of humanity has accumulated and achieved I think we have waaayyyyy too much risk completely unnecessarily put on individuals, for no good reason. We could easily give everyone food and shelter and some basics. To me, much of that pressure on people is completely artificial. "Sure, we could feed you, but we won't because you are unworthy."

chrisbennet 8y ago

This is what I did. Mid fifties and earning more than I ever did before. The wife with equal experience plus a masters in CS hasn’t been able to find work. Employers are enthusiastic about her skills but once they figure out her age, crickets.

achillesheels 8y ago
I don’t understand your wife’s treatment. Is it because of fear of salary requirements, underemployment, or health insurance premiums? I only see reason in my last guess.
- chrisbennet 8y ago
  I don’t know, I would be guessing. Ageism is a thing and because it is illegal, you can’t find out why.

randomacct3847 8y ago

I’m aiming to save enough to be able to retire by 35...not that I want to but I want the optionality.

scarface74 8y ago

I don’t get why people think “starting your own company” is less risky than working for someone. I’m in my mid 40s and don’t spend a single minute worried about being laid off or my company folding. I do however spend a lot of time keeping my network of local recruiters warm and making sure my skillset is marketable. I have a group of friends we are all in our 40s and we all change jobs at the drop of a dime. None of us have any desire to be in management but we make sure we keep up with industry trends. In fact, our former manager is in his late 50s and self demoted to a developer after his kids graduated and he is a full stack .Net/JavaScript/Azure Developer.

akudha 8y ago

In a true capitalist fashion, there should be some "course" and some "workshop" that teaches how to do this...