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> Unless you work for a great company as a software engineer, you can make/keep significantly more money as your own company. This comes at the expense of time

by xwdv 5y ago

> Unless you work for a great company as a software engineer, you can make/keep significantly more money as your own company. This comes at the expense of time and energy. Running a "company" will involve a lot of other things beyond software engineering. Like stocks, there's also no guarantee you will beat the market (the market being the best salary you can get). The most time and energy efficient way to make money with little risk is still to take a standard software engineering job, don't take on unnecessary responsibilities, and just work remote to eliminate commute (you don't get paid for commute time but because you still have to do it you have to account for it as part of your work hours, which can vastly reduce your true hourly rate).

adabyron 5y ago
If you have one or two solid long term clients, the running a company is minimal once you're setup. You pay yourself a salary, do a few quarterly state tax items & a monthly payment to the IRS. It's usually the initial setup that is the biggest pain & if you ever make any changes like wanting to move states or addresses. This is where I think a service would be really beneficial. At the same time, the amount of time/revenue lost to this is less than the amount gained by tax benefits. I mean every company made 5 months of salary plus benefits per employee from the PPP loan over the past 2 years. That alone was huge. From personal experience, it sounds like "the best salary you can get" requires hunting for decent opportunities, studying for tons of ridiculous interview questions, networking with employees at the company to get a leg up & of course taking a ton of interviews. Plenty of time/energy goes into that as well. Of course you can counter argue that getting clients takes plenty of time energy. So it maybe comes down to each person's own unique situation and which opportunity is best for them. I've found that doing great work, gets your name out there & marketing is not required. Learning to say "no" to jobs tends to be required more than marketing.
- xwdv 5y ago
  Don't forget health insurance and errors & omissions insurance. Finding clients takes about the same effort as preparing for job interviews except you have to constantly be looking for clients. It's not easy finding and managing multiple long term clients, and even then you need about 3 or 4 to ensure one doesn't hold too much leverage over you. In the end, it's a wash, if starting a company was two or three times better than a salaried job it might be worth it, but as it stands it's barely 1.2x better than a salaried job. If you want more money it's best to just do a salaried full time job and then do some work occasionally on the side or develop other passive income streams.
- varispeed 5y ago
  > If you have one or two solid long term clients, the running a company is minimal once you're setup. In many countries, big consultancies lobby governments to treat such business as disguised employment. Here in the UK from this year, you may likely be caught by these new rules and have to pay employer and employee tax on the entire revenue - which essentially means you pay more tax than an employee, you don't have any employment rights and you still have business running costs that you cannot claim any tax relief from.
hokumguru 5y ago
Sure but, anecdotally, the only people I know who have "beat the market" are either healthcare professionals or small business owners. The successful entrepreneur has a much, much higher ceiling than almost every other occupation. Sure, a cushy software job will be reliable and probably be very lucrative but those do have an eventual cap that doesn't exist when self-employed.

by xwdv 5y ago

adabyron 5y ago

If you have one or two solid long term clients, the running a company is minimal once you're setup. You pay yourself a salary, do a few quarterly state tax items & a monthly payment to the IRS. It's usually the initial setup that is the biggest pain & if you ever make any changes like wanting to move states or addresses. This is where I think a service would be really beneficial. At the same time, the amount of time/revenue lost to this is less than the amount gained by tax benefits. I mean every company made 5 months of salary plus benefits per employee from the PPP loan over the past 2 years. That alone was huge. From personal experience, it sounds like "the best salary you can get" requires hunting for decent opportunities, studying for tons of ridiculous interview questions, networking with employees at the company to get a leg up & of course taking a ton of interviews. Plenty of time/energy goes into that as well. Of course you can counter argue that getting clients takes plenty of time energy. So it maybe comes down to each person's own unique situation and which opportunity is best for them. I've found that doing great work, gets your name out there & marketing is not required. Learning to say "no" to jobs tends to be required more than marketing.

xwdv 5y ago
Don't forget health insurance and errors & omissions insurance. Finding clients takes about the same effort as preparing for job interviews except you have to constantly be looking for clients. It's not easy finding and managing multiple long term clients, and even then you need about 3 or 4 to ensure one doesn't hold too much leverage over you. In the end, it's a wash, if starting a company was two or three times better than a salaried job it might be worth it, but as it stands it's barely 1.2x better than a salaried job. If you want more money it's best to just do a salaried full time job and then do some work occasionally on the side or develop other passive income streams.
varispeed 5y ago
> If you have one or two solid long term clients, the running a company is minimal once you're setup. In many countries, big consultancies lobby governments to treat such business as disguised employment. Here in the UK from this year, you may likely be caught by these new rules and have to pay employer and employee tax on the entire revenue - which essentially means you pay more tax than an employee, you don't have any employment rights and you still have business running costs that you cannot claim any tax relief from.

hokumguru 5y ago

Sure but, anecdotally, the only people I know who have "beat the market" are either healthcare professionals or small business owners. The successful entrepreneur has a much, much higher ceiling than almost every other occupation. Sure, a cushy software job will be reliable and probably be very lucrative but those do have an eventual cap that doesn't exist when self-employed.