4 ms·

You’re assuming a well-functioning SaaS business, which is decidedly harder to come by than a decent job.

gnicholas 4y ago
Oh sure, building a SaaS business that generates $100k is harder than getting a job that pays $100k. The key question is: what is the difference in difficulty, and does it justify the incremental benefit of generating a self-sufficient income stream, rather than a one-time payment?
- scarface74 4y ago
  How difficult do you think it is for any developer to get a $100K job in any major city in the US? My “self sufficient income stream” comes from always being employable and having a strong network. Back in 2012, the company I worked for was struggling. Guess how much sleep I lost? I saved money and when layoffs happened, I called some recruiters and literally had another offer in less than a week. That’s close to my experience since 1996 across 8 jobs. Admittedly until the current one, most of them were uninspiring CRUD jobs at companies no one ever heard of
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    > My “self sufficient income stream” comes from always being employable and having a strong network. The point is that an employee only gets paid as long as he clocks in. Once he turns in his badge, the paychecks cease. You have a self-sufficient way to remain employed (and in a high-paying field — this is great!), but that is not the same thing as generating passive income, which is what SaaS businesses aim to do. One is not always better than the other, since it is harder to build a business than to just remain employed. But given the choice, most people would choose ongoing passive income to ongoing active employment.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      And how is SaaS income “passive”? There is server support, sales, etc. Guess how many days sleep I’ve ever lost worrying about “market fit” or customer acquisition or whether my little SaaS company would be eaten alive by a better funded competitor? How many little SaaS companies even Net as much as the average new grad makes their first year at any tech company? I personally gladly choose not to have the stress of starting my own business or independent consulting. Even though I have the skillset and experience and pedigree to do “cloud consulting”. I have a whole organization full of lawyers, accountants, sales people, on call technical support so I can just wait for the next assignment. If I have an issue with an AWS service that I can’t solve, I just post my question to an internal Slack channel and one of the developers of the service answer my question.
      - gnicholas 4y ago
        > And how is SaaS income “passive”? There is server support, sales, etc. It surely depends on your market, but things like sales are for generating new income. You can always stop working on sales and keep drawing existing income. I don't know how much server support most SaaS businesses entail, but in my (n = 1) experience, it's not a lot. I"m a little confused by your reference to independent consulting, which is not at all like SaaS. It has more flexibility than full-time employment, but it's still active income that you have to work for (with a minor exception for retainers). But it sounds like you aren't really interested in finding a way that passive income could be useful, and I'm not here to list all the reasons people like to run SaaS businesses. If the benefits don't stand out to you, then by all means you should do something else!

Oh sure, building a SaaS business that generates $100k is harder than getting a job that pays $100k. The key question is: what is the difference in difficulty, and does it justify the incremental benefit of generating a self-sufficient income stream, rather than a one-time payment?

scarface74 4y ago
How difficult do you think it is for any developer to get a $100K job in any major city in the US? My “self sufficient income stream” comes from always being employable and having a strong network. Back in 2012, the company I worked for was struggling. Guess how much sleep I lost? I saved money and when layoffs happened, I called some recruiters and literally had another offer in less than a week. That’s close to my experience since 1996 across 8 jobs. Admittedly until the current one, most of them were uninspiring CRUD jobs at companies no one ever heard of
- gnicholas 4y ago
  > My “self sufficient income stream” comes from always being employable and having a strong network. The point is that an employee only gets paid as long as he clocks in. Once he turns in his badge, the paychecks cease. You have a self-sufficient way to remain employed (and in a high-paying field — this is great!), but that is not the same thing as generating passive income, which is what SaaS businesses aim to do. One is not always better than the other, since it is harder to build a business than to just remain employed. But given the choice, most people would choose ongoing passive income to ongoing active employment.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And how is SaaS income “passive”? There is server support, sales, etc. Guess how many days sleep I’ve ever lost worrying about “market fit” or customer acquisition or whether my little SaaS company would be eaten alive by a better funded competitor? How many little SaaS companies even Net as much as the average new grad makes their first year at any tech company? I personally gladly choose not to have the stress of starting my own business or independent consulting. Even though I have the skillset and experience and pedigree to do “cloud consulting”. I have a whole organization full of lawyers, accountants, sales people, on call technical support so I can just wait for the next assignment. If I have an issue with an AWS service that I can’t solve, I just post my question to an internal Slack channel and one of the developers of the service answer my question.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      > And how is SaaS income “passive”? There is server support, sales, etc. It surely depends on your market, but things like sales are for generating new income. You can always stop working on sales and keep drawing existing income. I don't know how much server support most SaaS businesses entail, but in my (n = 1) experience, it's not a lot. I"m a little confused by your reference to independent consulting, which is not at all like SaaS. It has more flexibility than full-time employment, but it's still active income that you have to work for (with a minor exception for retainers). But it sounds like you aren't really interested in finding a way that passive income could be useful, and I'm not here to list all the reasons people like to run SaaS businesses. If the benefits don't stand out to you, then by all means you should do something else!