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I couldn't agree with you more. The reality is that owning a business is effectively monetizing your creditworthiness (not unlike being a landlord), which is a

I couldn't agree with you more. The reality is that owning a business is effectively monetizing your creditworthiness (not unlike being a landlord), which is a pretty easy way to make a living, assuming you start out with a decent supply of capital/creditworthiness.

jokethrowaway 3y ago
I don't think the problem for tech people is in thinking it's too hard. I think it's trading working on what they like vs doing admin / sales / marketing. That said, I wish everybody were a contractor and employees wouldn't exist. (Good) Contractors are accountable exactly to what they are paid for (no more and no less). Employees are accountable to drinking coffee and it's a damn pain working around them to try to get something done. The only exception is people with equities working in startups and dreaming big.
- cbsmith 3y ago
  > I think it's trading working on what they like vs doing admin / sales / marketing. That's certainly one of many good reasons not to run your own consulting business. That said, it's entirely possible to hire/outsource support to do much, if not all, of the admin/sales/marketing work. > (Good) Contractors are accountable exactly to what they are paid for (no more and no less). Employees are accountable to drinking coffee and it's a damn pain working around them to try to get something done. In my experience, productivity tends to depend more on the "good", than on the contractor/employee dimension, and a non-trivial part of the "good" stems from how well they are being managed by the business... which yeah, a huge part of being good at managing either contractors or employees is about accountability. Sometimes you get better employees or contractors than you deserve, and that can imbue the contractor/employee characteristic with more causal significance than it deserves, but by and large, you don't.

jokethrowaway 3y ago

I don't think the problem for tech people is in thinking it's too hard. I think it's trading working on what they like vs doing admin / sales / marketing. That said, I wish everybody were a contractor and employees wouldn't exist. (Good) Contractors are accountable exactly to what they are paid for (no more and no less). Employees are accountable to drinking coffee and it's a damn pain working around them to try to get something done. The only exception is people with equities working in startups and dreaming big.

cbsmith 3y ago
> I think it's trading working on what they like vs doing admin / sales / marketing. That's certainly one of many good reasons not to run your own consulting business. That said, it's entirely possible to hire/outsource support to do much, if not all, of the admin/sales/marketing work. > (Good) Contractors are accountable exactly to what they are paid for (no more and no less). Employees are accountable to drinking coffee and it's a damn pain working around them to try to get something done. In my experience, productivity tends to depend more on the "good", than on the contractor/employee dimension, and a non-trivial part of the "good" stems from how well they are being managed by the business... which yeah, a huge part of being good at managing either contractors or employees is about accountability. Sometimes you get better employees or contractors than you deserve, and that can imbue the contractor/employee characteristic with more causal significance than it deserves, but by and large, you don't.