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It's interesting how so many people have an aversion to being a business owner / entrepreneur, and will instead put in so much effort to optimize being a well-p

It's interesting how so many people have an aversion to being a business owner / entrepreneur, and will instead put in so much effort to optimize being a well-paid employee, instead of learning how to start and run a business. These salaries listed are great salaries, no doubt, but they are not dramatically more than say, a guy running a successful local plumbing business. And the ceiling is limited as an employee, whereas it's virtually unlimited as a business owner. If you aren't a shoo-in at FAANG and you want to make that kind of money, your best bet is to learn how to start and run a business. I don't mean try to launch a billion dollar social app that needs venture funding. I mean a SAAS that solves a boring problem for other businesses with money to spend.

Rinzler89 2y ago
> instead of learning how to start and run a business Because the stress and risks of running a small business as a solo inexperienced first time business owner are insane compared to a regular 9-5. Especially if you start hiring other people, your liability then increases 10 fold as now anything can happen with them (sick leave, absenteism, low performance, sabotage, etc) but you're still bound to the same deadlines you agreed with your customers or you'll get sued for damages by them. As an employee you have some basic rights and protections from the state on the limits your employer can squeeze from you, more or less, depending on where you live. As a contractor or company however, you don't, and can be fully liable in court for your failures to deliver regardless of your personal circumstances. Unless you know what you're getting into and have the know-how, experience, or mentorship, it's not worth it in most cases.
- keiferski 2y ago
  I get that, but if you’re trying to get a job at one of the best paying companies in the world, is the stress level actually that different? And there are plenty of examples (search on HN for them) of people running one person internet businesses and making a healthy living.
  - brigadier132 2y ago
    Im doing both and yes its very different. The stress at the big companies is nothing.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      Sure, I get that. But are the people trying to maximize income as an employee really looking for the low stress route in the first place? I suppose I should have qualified my comment by saying it's if your primary aim is to maximize income.
      - filoleg 2y ago
        My primary goal is to maximize my income with the least amount of stress possible, and FAANG hits that spot just right. I guess you can say I could maximize further by switching to finance or starting my own business, but the amount of extra stress is just not worth it at the moment, personally.
      - The_Colonel 2y ago
        Stress level has very unclear correlation with compensation. My very personal experience was that higher the compensation, less stressful the job was.
        dontlikeyoueith 2y ago
        At my compensation my only stress is what happens if I get laid off and can't find new work in this market.
      - jinushaun 2y ago
        > I get that... > Sure, I get that... Doesn't sound like you get it. You ask why people have an aversion to starting their own business and people are giving you reasons that you don't want to accept. I've done both. Working FAANG is way easier than running your own business. Orders of magnitude less stress. That's why some people can "rest and vest" at FAANG.
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  > Because the stress and risks of running a small business as a solo inexperienced first time business owner are insane compared to a regular 9-5. Believe it or not you get over this. It’s kind of like the fear of going up on stage to give a presentation. Some people get an addictive rush, these are usually serial entrepreneurs who just love to be in charge because they have no problems with risk/stress tolerance (mostly). You get better at handling the stress as you get more comfortable with where your business lies and what value you offer, et cetera. Hiring/firing is hard for people but you have no choice and certainly you’re not beholden to give people jobs. People are there to work, do their best at the moment, your job is to ensure them they’re looked after adequately and your door is always open to them if they have to talk to you. Everyone should attempt to start a small business or a side consulting gig. Failing that, you should strive to make it to VP-suite of your company where in most cases you’ll be tasked with running an arm of the business - the risks are there but it’s more of a simulated environment as well. The CEO will shit test you in almost everything you do and say and this is the grilling you will need, because they expect you to be capable of running things in their stead.
  - wepple 2y ago
    > Everyone should attempt to start a small business or a side consulting gig. Failing that, you should strive to make it to VP-suite Utter horse shit. I want to earn enough to live without too many worries, and spend time with friends and family. Being able to leave at 5 is irreplaceable
    - riehwvfbk 2y ago
      I don't think there are many places in tech where an employee can leave at 5 and expect to keep their job.
      - wepple 2y ago
        I politely disagree. If you think “hours spent at desk” correlates with performance, I don’t really know what to tell you. I do work late, and over my career have absolutely pulled all nighters and weekends and been on the redeye, but that’s when I stretch or flex, and it’s simply not sustainable.
- gmadsen 2y ago
  isnt this the purpose of LLCs?
  - robotcookies 2y ago
    LLCs limit your financial liability, but you can still work thousands of hours on a business and end up making nothing. If you work the same thousands of hours as an employee, you will make money.
  - redler 2y ago
    When you start up a business from scratch you quickly become familiar with bank requirements for a personal guarantee. The LLC will not protect you from personal financial exposure in the full amount of all your business credit facilities, loans, leases, etc.
- richardreeze 2y ago
  > the stress and risks of running a small business as a solo inexperienced first time business owner are insane compared to a regular 9-5. Precisely. Add to that that as a regular 9-5 worker you have one role. As a solo business owner you have several roles (engineer, marketer, customer service, designer, etc...).
- sarimkx 2y ago
  This. Working for a big company in the US is massively underrated. Over time, most people working in these companies will be much better off financially and with less stress/health issues. The silicon valley/tech bubble over-romanticizes entrepreneurship without realizing its NOT for everyone. For every 1 success story you hear about entrepreneurship, there are 50-100 that fail. The stress and anxiety is not something everyone can or should take if they have the opportunity to coast at FAANG and make $500K+. How many businesses make $500K in revenue in the US? Not many? [1] I am paraphrasing here, but I really agree with how Scott Galloway put it: The US corporation is the greatest wealth creating vehicle in history. Way safer and easier to build wealth working at Google. Giving "StArt a BusZineaSs BRO" as a blanket advice is very disingenuous. [1] In 2018, 9% of small businesses made more than $1 million. https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/small-business-statistics/ https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/small-business... Note: Many statistics online say the number is actually fewer than 5%!
  - sarimkx 2y ago
    https://jmduke.com/posts/essays/two-years/ https://jmduke.com/posts/essays/two-years/ Guy running an email SaaS clearly says working full time would make him more money.
kevinsync 2y ago
Yes. This is a bit reductive, but literally everything is out there for the taking -- you just have to go out and get it! Anecdotally, I've noticed that a disproportionate amount of formally-educated people I've encountered in life are more allergic to this idea than the opposite.. I don't have any solid theories as to why, exactly, but it's curious nonetheless.
- mr90210 2y ago
  Have look at Nassim Taleb’s Skin In The Game. He explores this topic at length.
- xeromal 2y ago
  Because a lot of people don't want everything resting on them. Takes a special kind of person. I know I ain't one. My dad owned his own business with a 100 employees and it was miserable growing up
- randomdata 2y ago
  > I don't have any solid theories as to why What sees you discount the obvious? That is, formally educated people end up in formal education because they have a proclivity towards not wanting to have to go out and get it. They want someone else to hand it to them. Which is, after all, what the "formal" part of formal education describes.
- sakopov 2y ago
  The problem is identifying what to go out and get. Because most people will go out and get the wrong thing and end up burning themselves out of future endeavors.
epicureanideal 2y ago
> I mean a SAAS that solves a boring problem for other businesses with money to spend. Profitable software-based ideas are increasingly difficult to find. Thousands of people are exploring every niche and trying to start startups in them, which is great, but competition is fierce and unexplored niches are shrinking. And of course, it's still not straightforward even if you find a relatively unexplored niche. Most people I see who have attempted startups had extensive family support or personal wealth from exits as an employee of a company that had an IPO.
- keiferski 2y ago
  People say this but I don’t buy it at all. If anything, it feels like the vast majority of the business world is still operating on some combination of Excel and a software program that was outdated a decade ago. The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Just check out the number of posts you see on HN where you have people that started "successful" small (< 10 people) SaaS businesses. In basically all instances: 1. These stories get a ton of upvotes because they're actually quite rare. 2. The total income to the founder is still considerably (like way considerably) less that a senior dev at a FAANG.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      Big sample size issue here. I don't know why anyone would want to share that they have a profitable one person business, as it only invites competition. The people actually doing that are almost certainly going to keep it a secret.
  - epicureanideal 2y ago
    > The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. I think there are probably several hundred HN readers who would be happy to tackle those problems. Boring is probably not the issue, but obscure is, assuming these problems exist. If they're difficult to discover that the problem exists, that's a challenge. Further, if the problems exist but are highly unique in each case, there may be a reason it's solved in a one-off way by Excel or scripts rather than a scalable product. The use of Excel isn't inherently ripe for disruption. There are plenty of problems to be solved that just can't be solved profitably. It would be no better than solving a problem that someone has but is unwilling to pay for.
mr90210 2y ago
I agree with you, but I also understand that some just don’t know that entrepreneurship could also yield those salaries and more. Some can’t handle the uncertainty that of entrepreneurship. Some have been entrepreneurs and after an exit do decide to work for someone else. As for myself, I can’t wait to free myself from these chains called salaried employment. (I don’t mean to offend anyone)
harimau777 2y ago
How do you get the startup capital to do this? At least in the area where I have know how it would cost at least a million to get the space, hardware, raw materials, and employees to start turning out products. Then you would need money for marketing and logistics.
- whynotmaybe 2y ago
  Depending on where you are, you can often find gov support to start your business. (Here in Canada, this support can be grants, loans or event free experts time.) When it's gov monetary support, you usually have to bring 50% of the total amount. Otherwise, you can contact incubators like YC. If they approve your idea and grant you money, you can then easily apply for loans at banks because you've been vetted by a well known company. After all that energy spent, you will understand the quote : > Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.
tiffanyh 2y ago
Statistically, you'll make more money working for someone else than working for yourself (and have a better work/life balance as well). And you might say, "well - you'll never become a billionaire working for someone else". That's not true. There's plenty of CEOs (non-founders) who are billionaires. And the chances of you running your own company and becoming a billionaire, is about the same probability as you becoming a CEO at a Fortune 500.
- anticorporate 2y ago
  While true, I'd suggest if someone's career choices are primarily motivated by a desire to become a billionaire, they are not making rational career choices anyway and are likely to be unswayed by, you know, evidence.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > There's plenty of CEOs (non-founders) who are billionaires. Being a business owner doesn't necessarily mean being the founder. No CEO is becoming a billionaire by collecting a paycheque. They might become a billionaire by accepting the right stock offer in lieu of wages, but that makes them the business owner again.
  - mciancia 2y ago
    With that logic, most (every?) SWE working at faang is a business owner since they all get stock options/rsu
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - randomdata 2y ago
      Absolutely. FAANG wages are certainly competitive, but not out of line from what you can make in any old Poducksville software company. It is the becoming an owner of FAANG that sets them apart financially.
  - tiffanyh 2y ago
anomaloustho 2y ago
Started a business doing 1M annual recurring. I have plenty of reasons why it’s more advantageous. • When times get tough, cofounders playing chicken to see who can take the lowest salary • Giving yourself the lowest pay to prevent income loss of your employees • Always having to hunt for sales to maintain your survival (which is typically nebulous and subject to when they feel like signing) • HR and always trying to figure out how to not get sued • Losing big customers or big customers going out of business For any one of those bullet points there’s a coulda woulda shoulda, but again, just taking your 400k from a well established company that isn’t fighting for its survival every day is not inherently inferior to the heroics and cortisol required to operate a business.
- havefunbesafe 2y ago
  Just went through a lot of these, and can confidently say: way way more dangerous to own a company than be a part of one. Significantly less fun, however. I believe it comes down to personality type.
mattmaroon 2y ago
As someone who has been self-employed for over 20 years, done the startup thing (including going through YC in the very early days), I totally understand why people would not want to. There are real downsides to owning your own business. It’s probably been 15 years since I had a day where I didn’t check my email. Most people are Indians, not chiefs, and I think that’s actually an evolutionary adaptation that’s built into us. Someone may want to be the best programmer they can be rather than the best at managing employees, setting business strategy, dealing with taxes and other paperwork, etc. Totally get it.
- ghaff 2y ago
  In general, one-person shops have real downsides for both owners and customers. As an employee, I've often been in situations where I simply haven't been reachable for extended periods of time which obviously isn't great for a customer either absent a fallback. Fallbacks of various sorts are available but probably not at "the SaaS is down" level.
brigadier132 2y ago
Building a business is really hard.
- eloisant 2y ago
  Especially a business that will get you the same revenue as a FAANG job.
hanniabu 2y ago
Bird in the hand
joshuamorton 2y ago
They're probably 2-3x the guy running a local plumbing business doing remarkably fewer hours. And of course it's more accessible. The average guy running a plumbing business is probably 30 something, while people can hit 300k at faang a year or two out of college with like one good promotion.
- keiferski 2y ago
  In what universe is getting a 300k FAANG job more accessible than starting a local plumbing business?
  - joshuamorton 2y ago
    That wasn't the question, the question was a 500K faang job vs. a local plumbing business making a comparable amount of money. I think it's very easy to start a failing plumbing business. I think it far less accessible to start a plumbing business that competes with a FAANG salary. Put another way: how many people do you know who started their own consumer-facing, bootstrapped business, of any kind and who take home $3-500,000 as CEO? My answer is, like, two and they're both lawyers who didn't start making that kind of income until their mid thirties. Edit: It would not, at all, surprise me if even in the trades the most common path to business ownership was to take over someone else's already existing business, which would I think cut even further into this point since it would mean the most common path to entrepreneurship is optimizing employment in a small business context. I think getting a FAANG job is difficult, but for the median 30 year old (who has around $5,000 saved up and limited or no external safety nets), starting a business as your primary source of income is a really good way to bankrupt yourself and not much else, and valorizing that path is actively harmful.
- StopTheWorld 2y ago
  I worked with a guy who went to a public university - not a top 25 public university but in the ballpark. He was hard-working, smart and "got it", but he wasn't at the level of some super-geniuses I met coming out of school. He worked with us (Fortune 100, non-FAANG, non-tech, non-big metro) as a junior SWE for a year and did not get promoted as he desired. He jumped ship for a FAANG-adjacent company after a year working for us, and his TC jumped from <$100k to over $200k. Two years later he was promoted to senior and his TC is now over $300k. He is smart but not a genius. He kind of knows what is going on though, he "gets it". Probably even more motivated than smart, but not insanely motivated. Motivated enough to learn how to get features done at a brisk pace, take ownership of his team's work, and to study for interviews. Didn't go to a top tier CS program, didn't come out of FAANG or FAANG adjacent, and probably took a detour working for us, but three years later his TC is over $300k. He also had the luck to jump ship before the FAANG layoffs of late 2022.
alex_suzuki 2y ago
While running a small business can be incredibly fulfilling and teach you a ton of adjacent skills that you wouldn’t learn as a SwEng at a FAANG (sales, marketing, …), I find it infinitely more stressful than regular employment. There’s just so much more responsibility resting on your shoulders. Holidays have never felt the same since I left employment in 2011. No regrets here, just saying this path is not for everyone and not as accessible as you might think.
entropyneur 2y ago
You make it sound so easy. I've ran small businesses for most of my career and I've never made more than a quarter of what I currently make working as a contractor (ironically, for a business I once started, now owned by someone else). And most of the time I earned 5-10% of that.
- keiferski 2y ago
  I'm not sure how I made it sound so easy, because presumably getting a 250k job at a FAANG isn't easy either. Which is what my point was - if you're going to deal with the time and stress to get one of the most desirable jobs, why not use that same time and effort to build a business?
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    > getting a 250k job at a FAANG isn't easy either Except, it kinda is for people that have the right background and are well suited to it. That is, the reason I think you're getting a lot of pushback is that many folks are just inherently risk averse. There are people who are smart, know how to work hard, and know that if they have a path laid out in front of them, they can succeed. For entrepreneurs, there is simply much more variability. You can be smart, work hard, do everything right, and still fail in unexpected ways due to things outside of your control. I don't think entrepreneurship is bad at all, but it's not surprising at all to me that people who want to go the FAANG route aren't well suited to starting their own business.
  - entropyneur 2y ago
    Because it's a lot more predictable. Put in the necessary effort and you are almost guaranteed to get a FAANG job. And the best part, it's completely clear where that effort needs to be directed. Yes, you need to have the smarts, but for a business that pays as much you need to have a lot more than that, plus luck. I'm all for entrepreneurship and personally couldn't work for one of those companies, but with FAANG salaries being this high I don't think those people are making an irrational choice at all.
  - ActorNightly 2y ago
neilyio 2y ago
Would you be open to mentoring someone curious about doing so?
brotchie 2y ago
Startup guy who’s now at FAANG. I’m technical technical technical (IC track). I love building products. Prototyping to find PMF and then spinning that up into a staffed project, then onto the next new thing. Get to work with excellent SWEs, PMs, PgMs, etc. In startup land I was doing so much, pitches, recruiting, coding, landing page design, dev ops, pretty much the full stack. In FAANG land I can just focus on existence proofs and then there’s a whole support structure helping that happen and bringing the product to market. You could argue that setting up this pipeline is the goal of a startup, but it’s a LOONG road. The opportunity cost is immense. It’s immensely difficult to recruit. You have to effectively pause your life. Scary to have children with startup level uncertainty. At a certain $$ where you can live a comfortable life, enjoy 95% of what you do day to day, get to be in an environment with top notch colleagues, it’s a tough sell to start something from scratch with all that risk.
- nicce 2y ago
  > I love building products. Prototyping to find PMF and then spinning that up into a staffed project, then onto the next new thing. How many products you have actually finished and worked on and polished over years if they produced something valuable in the end? That defines the actual realised value of the business. Jumping from one product to another does not mean that all of them were constantly producing revenue or were success. It might look good in the CV but what was end result?
  - brotchie 2y ago
    Hit and miss. It’s pretty equivalent to % of finding product market fit in startup land. Mostly worked on internal products. One HUGE hit, a few moderate hits, and quite a few failures. The calculus for projects at a large bigco are different from a startup though. It’s not necessarily clear bottom line revenue, especially for innovation teams. Crypto, for example, bigco needs at least some folks working on it to build an understanding of the technology, market, pain points. Some of these projects are started with literally no intention of profitability, but as an explicit build-to-learn. There’s a wide spectrum of SWE interest and capabilities. Some folks love the creativity of greenfield new product exploration. Others love the focus of crafting a perfectly scalable, maintainable system. These are really just points along a product lifecycle. I understand myself enough and am unapologetic about getting “bored” easily, and need to be constantly working on creative things. Others at the other end of the spectrum have a visceral reaction to that. They can’t do what I do, and I can’t do what they do.
dayvid 2y ago
Different skillsets involved. You will eventually have to give up programming and focus on developer sales/marketing/recruiting skills. Very rare to see businesses where you're sole developer and salesperson unless you are the main SME on a niche field/technology you probably developed. Also A LOT of FAANG is immigrants who can't start a business in the US or children of immigrants whose parents put strong pressure on them having an upper middle class job.
scosman 2y ago
> your best bet is to learn how to start and run a business Startups are so hit and miss. It's really really hard to make $500k a year at a startup. There's many years of zero, near zero or sub-intern salary. After that there's either failure or a big payout that dwarfs the FAANG salary. Classic businesses can get a substantial salary sooner than a startup, but do have a ceiling. If you're selling a well known need (plumbing, consulting, etc), there's competition and a ceiling at hours worked. Having done both, a FAANG job is infinitely less effort than running a company. Also lower stress, lower risk, and immediate rewards/pay. I still have more fun starting companies though!
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  That's a really informed comment from both sides of the exact fence. >there's either failure or a big payout that dwarfs the FAANG salary. Tech or not I think it usually doesn't dwarf anything but if it comes close, a little bit low or high, that's a huge milestone above failure. In that case it might allow you to maintain readiness for an incredible bonanza which might be within reach only from beyond that point, and that can be what dwarfs the "big payout". IOW depending on the situation, occasional big payouts that really just even things out may not be very life-changing even if they are big, but it can give you more rolls of the dice at things that can't be approached any other way.
lowbloodsugar 2y ago
I don’t see why so many people try so hard to be a professional football player when they could just as easily start a business launching rockets into space. The one has got nothing to do with the other. Running a small business is far more sales and marketing, and if you are lucky enough to get to the point where you need to hire someone, then HR, managing suppliers and fuck me don’t get me started on fucking customers.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
greenthrow 2y ago
Running a business is so much more work and most businesses fail. This is terrible advice.
desdenova 2y ago
And how, exactly, does one "learn" that? To me it's always been a matter of personality. As an introvert, I can't picture myself doing the kinds of social interactions required to sell a business on my own.
dontlikeyoueith 2y ago
> And the ceiling is limited as an employee, whereas it's virtually unlimited as a business owner. It's also unlimited as a gambler. That doesn't mean everyone should start buying lotto tickets.
Bjorkbat 2y ago
I mean, that's what I'm trying to do (the business, not the monetary milestone), but something to be mindful of is that on Indie Hackers only 12 people out of 17,000 in the community got to $10k MRR. https://www.indiehackers.com/post/holy-heck-this-is-hard-8ebe864174 https://www.indiehackers.com/post/holy-heck-this-is-hard-8eb... Granted, this is Indie Hackers, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think the general idea still applies. Getting to $10k a month, let alone making $250k a year (so ~$20k/month) is really hard, probably about as hard as making $250k a year as an employee, maybe even harder.
- ferryman 2y ago
  When you say taking this with a grain of salt, do you mean the success rate would be better outside of Indie Hackers?
johann8384 2y ago
Because I am happier as a great employee. I have a large family and have chosen base salary over stock when it comes up for example. I make a great salary and we can afford to have a lot of fun. We took four months and traveled in an RV. I have 7 lids and they all have a sport so we do lots of Soccer, Field Hockey, Softball, Baseball, etc. That is expensive and time consuming but I am at 99% of their games. I can't do that as well while starting and running a company.
- karolist 2y ago
  That's a lot of lids.
rco8786 2y ago
> so much effort to optimize being a well-paid employee It seems like you are vastly underestimating the effort (and risk) it takes to start a successful SaaS that brings its founder $500k+ annually. You're right about everything if you can actually start and grow that business, but you're glossing over how difficult that actually is to do, and the fact that you have to start from $0 income.
y-c-o-m-b 2y ago
I don't think this works out well for most people anymore. I mean that was true a few years ago when things were booming even, but now you're almost guaranteed to have a very hard time. I know someone that is over-employed and has over half a dozen jobs (yes you read that right, and it's been verified); most of them are at entrepreneur owned companies and they are all struggling right now, hanging by a thread with a skeleton crew.
localfirst 2y ago
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randomdata 2y ago
> will instead put in so much effort to optimize being a well-paid employee, instead of learning how to start and run a business. Being an employee is still running a business. The separation you are trying to draw isn't meaningful. That particular line of business is one of the few businesses out there with a near-guaranteed customer base, though. That's a highly attractive trait for someone operating a business. With small risk comes small reward, of course, but it is no surprise that most businesses venture in that direction.
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
> It's interesting how so many people have an aversion to being a business owner / entrepreneur I like coding. I don't want to run a business, and these are very separate skills. This is like asking why an IC doesn't want to become a people manager.
sakopov 2y ago
Nothing interesting. No matter what people say, starting a business is incredibly difficult and takes a certain amount of luck. I've done 3. Failed at all 3. Made $0. Some people aren't cut out and are better off being employees.
borroka 2y ago
A comment, the one I am responding to, that would fit much better in the "hopeful" bucket than in the "realistic" one. I, like many others, hold a white-collar job in a technology company, not FAANG, with a salary between 300 and 400K per year, with lunch breaks, paid vacation days, good health insurance, and the opportunity to work from home at least 75% of the time. At the end of my workday, which I have not found to be stressful in at least 3 years, I am fresh, hydrated, and ready to spend late afternoons, evenings, and nights pursuing my interests, taking care of the kids, and maybe learning French at last. I see guys running fairly successful local businesses, both physical and digital. Assuming you have a choice between the two paths, a brief look at the physical condition and a conversation with me and the business owner would quickly lead you to prefer one of the two paths. I might be privileged, lucky, in an unusual situation. But the same is true for the successful local entrepreneur running a plumbing business with profits equivalent to those of experienced people working in tech.
John23832 2y ago
It's not as simple as "start a business". You have to find a business that makes sense for you (you know it, you want to put up with it, etc). You then have to execute. All the while hoping that you don't get struck by lightning (something kills your business), while also hoping to get struct by lightning (you become wildly successful). God forbid you need job security (family, health care, etc.). Contrast this to going into a job, where what you do is laid out for you, you just have to execute. With insurance. With job security. Even as someone who has run a startup and still has the itch, it's a no brainer.
paulcole 2y ago
> These salaries listed are great salaries, no doubt, but they are not dramatically more than say, a guy running a successful local plumbing business What about all the guys running unsuccessful local plumbing businesses?
sidcool 2y ago
Some people want to do cool technical stuff while getting paid well, and not interested in managing a business. Most researchers are like that.
satvikpendem 2y ago
One is basically guaranteed, as long as you learn and play the game; the other, to put it simply, is not. It takes an order of magnitude more effort and savviness to make a successful business than grind Leetcode and work at FAANG for 30 years. And even then, the FAANG employee is likely to outearn you.
Noneofya 2y ago
> It's interesting how so many people have an aversion to being a business owner / entrepreneur It’s not like nobody wants that, the scarce thing is having a good business idea unless you want to go into consulting. > And the ceiling is limited as an employee, whereas it's virtually unlimited as a business owner. That’s kinda stretching it. Higher FAANG-level salaries are enough to reach financial independence, which is pretty much „unlimited“ territory for most normal people. On the other hand, most businesses are not hyper successful. It‘s not like becoming a millionaire entrepreneur can be taken for granted. It’s interesting that you don’t seem to understand this. Survivorship bias or something else?
greenie_beans 2y ago
everybody saying this is a bad idea, which gives me hope that it might work out.
ligic25061 2y ago
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red-iron-pine 2y ago
> but they are not dramatically more than say, a guy running a successful local plumbing business. I know a guy who ran a successful plumbing business around Northern VA. Took home around 300k per annum. I used to bang his daughter. He worked hard, though, and had a couple of other guys working jobs independently under him, on top of his work. He was mostly corporate and construction work, but a couple of those guys under him also did residential, and he mostly supervised. I'm far less than his TCO but also don't have to get elbow deep in shit and work remotely from my basement. Respect the hustle, but I think I'm winning in terms of work-life balance and QOL.
madeofpalk 2y ago
> instead of learning how to start and run a business. Maybe people want to be developers, and not managers/CEOs/business owner/entrepreneurs? They're completely different jobs. Why would you expect everyone to aspire to the same thing? We don't look at nurses and say "its funny how so many nurses have an aversion to become a multinational pharmaceutical CEO"
aniix 2y ago
What type of SaaS? Any ideas?
1290cc 2y ago
There is an opportunity cost to starting a new business. Depending on market and your experience it can take several years before you get anywhere close to earning the same level of income as a mid to senior level FAANG employee. There is also the time commitment to dealing with everything outside of being an IC (taxes, healthcare, finance, marketing, disputes, legal). To anyone exploring starting a new business I would keep the day job and suffer until you get to a point where the business is on a good clip and you can dedicate all your time to it. Otherwise spending 20 years at FAANG and enjoying your life is really not a bad way to live, in fact its a dream to 99% of the planets population.
999900000999 2y ago
I want to rest and vest. I've gotten to final stage interviews with FAANG. I want the get the job, put in my 9-5 and go home. Plus running a business takes a lot of money and luck...
datahack 2y ago
Everyone is a genius for taking the safe employee path until we have a bad economy and the layoffs come. It’s been a LONG time since that’s happened. Just remember that.
- neupsh 2y ago
  I feel like layoffs are easier to ride through with just a limited amount of money saved. A barely new small business will have tougher time surviving a bad economy.

Rinzler89 2y ago

> instead of learning how to start and run a business Because the stress and risks of running a small business as a solo inexperienced first time business owner are insane compared to a regular 9-5. Especially if you start hiring other people, your liability then increases 10 fold as now anything can happen with them (sick leave, absenteism, low performance, sabotage, etc) but you're still bound to the same deadlines you agreed with your customers or you'll get sued for damages by them. As an employee you have some basic rights and protections from the state on the limits your employer can squeeze from you, more or less, depending on where you live. As a contractor or company however, you don't, and can be fully liable in court for your failures to deliver regardless of your personal circumstances. Unless you know what you're getting into and have the know-how, experience, or mentorship, it's not worth it in most cases.

keiferski 2y ago
I get that, but if you’re trying to get a job at one of the best paying companies in the world, is the stress level actually that different? And there are plenty of examples (search on HN for them) of people running one person internet businesses and making a healthy living.
- brigadier132 2y ago
  Im doing both and yes its very different. The stress at the big companies is nothing.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Sure, I get that. But are the people trying to maximize income as an employee really looking for the low stress route in the first place? I suppose I should have qualified my comment by saying it's if your primary aim is to maximize income.
    - filoleg 2y ago
      My primary goal is to maximize my income with the least amount of stress possible, and FAANG hits that spot just right. I guess you can say I could maximize further by switching to finance or starting my own business, but the amount of extra stress is just not worth it at the moment, personally.
    - The_Colonel 2y ago
      Stress level has very unclear correlation with compensation. My very personal experience was that higher the compensation, less stressful the job was.
      - dontlikeyoueith 2y ago
        At my compensation my only stress is what happens if I get laid off and can't find new work in this market.
    - jinushaun 2y ago
      > I get that... > Sure, I get that... Doesn't sound like you get it. You ask why people have an aversion to starting their own business and people are giving you reasons that you don't want to accept. I've done both. Working FAANG is way easier than running your own business. Orders of magnitude less stress. That's why some people can "rest and vest" at FAANG.
stonethrowaway 2y ago
> Because the stress and risks of running a small business as a solo inexperienced first time business owner are insane compared to a regular 9-5. Believe it or not you get over this. It’s kind of like the fear of going up on stage to give a presentation. Some people get an addictive rush, these are usually serial entrepreneurs who just love to be in charge because they have no problems with risk/stress tolerance (mostly). You get better at handling the stress as you get more comfortable with where your business lies and what value you offer, et cetera. Hiring/firing is hard for people but you have no choice and certainly you’re not beholden to give people jobs. People are there to work, do their best at the moment, your job is to ensure them they’re looked after adequately and your door is always open to them if they have to talk to you. Everyone should attempt to start a small business or a side consulting gig. Failing that, you should strive to make it to VP-suite of your company where in most cases you’ll be tasked with running an arm of the business - the risks are there but it’s more of a simulated environment as well. The CEO will shit test you in almost everything you do and say and this is the grilling you will need, because they expect you to be capable of running things in their stead.
- wepple 2y ago
  > Everyone should attempt to start a small business or a side consulting gig. Failing that, you should strive to make it to VP-suite Utter horse shit. I want to earn enough to live without too many worries, and spend time with friends and family. Being able to leave at 5 is irreplaceable
  - riehwvfbk 2y ago
    I don't think there are many places in tech where an employee can leave at 5 and expect to keep their job.
    - wepple 2y ago
      I politely disagree. If you think “hours spent at desk” correlates with performance, I don’t really know what to tell you. I do work late, and over my career have absolutely pulled all nighters and weekends and been on the redeye, but that’s when I stretch or flex, and it’s simply not sustainable.
gmadsen 2y ago
isnt this the purpose of LLCs?
- robotcookies 2y ago
  LLCs limit your financial liability, but you can still work thousands of hours on a business and end up making nothing. If you work the same thousands of hours as an employee, you will make money.
- redler 2y ago
  When you start up a business from scratch you quickly become familiar with bank requirements for a personal guarantee. The LLC will not protect you from personal financial exposure in the full amount of all your business credit facilities, loans, leases, etc.
richardreeze 2y ago
> the stress and risks of running a small business as a solo inexperienced first time business owner are insane compared to a regular 9-5. Precisely. Add to that that as a regular 9-5 worker you have one role. As a solo business owner you have several roles (engineer, marketer, customer service, designer, etc...).
sarimkx 2y ago
This. Working for a big company in the US is massively underrated. Over time, most people working in these companies will be much better off financially and with less stress/health issues. The silicon valley/tech bubble over-romanticizes entrepreneurship without realizing its NOT for everyone. For every 1 success story you hear about entrepreneurship, there are 50-100 that fail. The stress and anxiety is not something everyone can or should take if they have the opportunity to coast at FAANG and make $500K+. How many businesses make $500K in revenue in the US? Not many? [1] I am paraphrasing here, but I really agree with how Scott Galloway put it: The US corporation is the greatest wealth creating vehicle in history. Way safer and easier to build wealth working at Google. Giving "StArt a BusZineaSs BRO" as a blanket advice is very disingenuous. [1] In 2018, 9% of small businesses made more than $1 million. https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/small-business-statistics/ https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/small-business... Note: Many statistics online say the number is actually fewer than 5%!
- sarimkx 2y ago
  https://jmduke.com/posts/essays/two-years/ https://jmduke.com/posts/essays/two-years/ Guy running an email SaaS clearly says working full time would make him more money.

kevinsync 2y ago

Yes. This is a bit reductive, but literally everything is out there for the taking -- you just have to go out and get it! Anecdotally, I've noticed that a disproportionate amount of formally-educated people I've encountered in life are more allergic to this idea than the opposite.. I don't have any solid theories as to why, exactly, but it's curious nonetheless.

mr90210 2y ago
Have look at Nassim Taleb’s Skin In The Game. He explores this topic at length.
xeromal 2y ago
Because a lot of people don't want everything resting on them. Takes a special kind of person. I know I ain't one. My dad owned his own business with a 100 employees and it was miserable growing up
randomdata 2y ago
> I don't have any solid theories as to why What sees you discount the obvious? That is, formally educated people end up in formal education because they have a proclivity towards not wanting to have to go out and get it. They want someone else to hand it to them. Which is, after all, what the "formal" part of formal education describes.
sakopov 2y ago
The problem is identifying what to go out and get. Because most people will go out and get the wrong thing and end up burning themselves out of future endeavors.

epicureanideal 2y ago

> I mean a SAAS that solves a boring problem for other businesses with money to spend. Profitable software-based ideas are increasingly difficult to find. Thousands of people are exploring every niche and trying to start startups in them, which is great, but competition is fierce and unexplored niches are shrinking. And of course, it's still not straightforward even if you find a relatively unexplored niche. Most people I see who have attempted startups had extensive family support or personal wealth from exits as an employee of a company that had an IPO.

keiferski 2y ago
People say this but I don’t buy it at all. If anything, it feels like the vast majority of the business world is still operating on some combination of Excel and a software program that was outdated a decade ago. The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Just check out the number of posts you see on HN where you have people that started "successful" small (< 10 people) SaaS businesses. In basically all instances: 1. These stories get a ton of upvotes because they're actually quite rare. 2. The total income to the founder is still considerably (like way considerably) less that a senior dev at a FAANG.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Big sample size issue here. I don't know why anyone would want to share that they have a profitable one person business, as it only invites competition. The people actually doing that are almost certainly going to keep it a secret.
- epicureanideal 2y ago
  > The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. I think there are probably several hundred HN readers who would be happy to tackle those problems. Boring is probably not the issue, but obscure is, assuming these problems exist. If they're difficult to discover that the problem exists, that's a challenge. Further, if the problems exist but are highly unique in each case, there may be a reason it's solved in a one-off way by Excel or scripts rather than a scalable product. The use of Excel isn't inherently ripe for disruption. There are plenty of problems to be solved that just can't be solved profitably. It would be no better than solving a problem that someone has but is unwilling to pay for.

mr90210 2y ago

I agree with you, but I also understand that some just don’t know that entrepreneurship could also yield those salaries and more. Some can’t handle the uncertainty that of entrepreneurship. Some have been entrepreneurs and after an exit do decide to work for someone else. As for myself, I can’t wait to free myself from these chains called salaried employment. (I don’t mean to offend anyone)

harimau777 2y ago

How do you get the startup capital to do this? At least in the area where I have know how it would cost at least a million to get the space, hardware, raw materials, and employees to start turning out products. Then you would need money for marketing and logistics.

whynotmaybe 2y ago
Depending on where you are, you can often find gov support to start your business. (Here in Canada, this support can be grants, loans or event free experts time.) When it's gov monetary support, you usually have to bring 50% of the total amount. Otherwise, you can contact incubators like YC. If they approve your idea and grant you money, you can then easily apply for loans at banks because you've been vetted by a well known company. After all that energy spent, you will understand the quote : > Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.

tiffanyh 2y ago

Statistically, you'll make more money working for someone else than working for yourself (and have a better work/life balance as well). And you might say, "well - you'll never become a billionaire working for someone else". That's not true. There's plenty of CEOs (non-founders) who are billionaires. And the chances of you running your own company and becoming a billionaire, is about the same probability as you becoming a CEO at a Fortune 500.

anticorporate 2y ago
While true, I'd suggest if someone's career choices are primarily motivated by a desire to become a billionaire, they are not making rational career choices anyway and are likely to be unswayed by, you know, evidence.
randomdata 2y ago
> There's plenty of CEOs (non-founders) who are billionaires. Being a business owner doesn't necessarily mean being the founder. No CEO is becoming a billionaire by collecting a paycheque. They might become a billionaire by accepting the right stock offer in lieu of wages, but that makes them the business owner again.
- mciancia 2y ago
  With that logic, most (every?) SWE working at faang is a business owner since they all get stock options/rsu
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Absolutely. FAANG wages are certainly competitive, but not out of line from what you can make in any old Poducksville software company. It is the becoming an owner of FAANG that sets them apart financially.
- tiffanyh 2y ago

anomaloustho 2y ago

Started a business doing 1M annual recurring. I have plenty of reasons why it’s more advantageous. • When times get tough, cofounders playing chicken to see who can take the lowest salary • Giving yourself the lowest pay to prevent income loss of your employees • Always having to hunt for sales to maintain your survival (which is typically nebulous and subject to when they feel like signing) • HR and always trying to figure out how to not get sued • Losing big customers or big customers going out of business For any one of those bullet points there’s a coulda woulda shoulda, but again, just taking your 400k from a well established company that isn’t fighting for its survival every day is not inherently inferior to the heroics and cortisol required to operate a business.

havefunbesafe 2y ago
Just went through a lot of these, and can confidently say: way way more dangerous to own a company than be a part of one. Significantly less fun, however. I believe it comes down to personality type.

mattmaroon 2y ago

As someone who has been self-employed for over 20 years, done the startup thing (including going through YC in the very early days), I totally understand why people would not want to. There are real downsides to owning your own business. It’s probably been 15 years since I had a day where I didn’t check my email. Most people are Indians, not chiefs, and I think that’s actually an evolutionary adaptation that’s built into us. Someone may want to be the best programmer they can be rather than the best at managing employees, setting business strategy, dealing with taxes and other paperwork, etc. Totally get it.

ghaff 2y ago
In general, one-person shops have real downsides for both owners and customers. As an employee, I've often been in situations where I simply haven't been reachable for extended periods of time which obviously isn't great for a customer either absent a fallback. Fallbacks of various sorts are available but probably not at "the SaaS is down" level.

brigadier132 2y ago

Building a business is really hard.

eloisant 2y ago
Especially a business that will get you the same revenue as a FAANG job.

hanniabu 2y ago

Bird in the hand

joshuamorton 2y ago

They're probably 2-3x the guy running a local plumbing business doing remarkably fewer hours. And of course it's more accessible. The average guy running a plumbing business is probably 30 something, while people can hit 300k at faang a year or two out of college with like one good promotion.

keiferski 2y ago
In what universe is getting a 300k FAANG job more accessible than starting a local plumbing business?
- joshuamorton 2y ago
  That wasn't the question, the question was a 500K faang job vs. a local plumbing business making a comparable amount of money. I think it's very easy to start a failing plumbing business. I think it far less accessible to start a plumbing business that competes with a FAANG salary. Put another way: how many people do you know who started their own consumer-facing, bootstrapped business, of any kind and who take home $3-500,000 as CEO? My answer is, like, two and they're both lawyers who didn't start making that kind of income until their mid thirties. Edit: It would not, at all, surprise me if even in the trades the most common path to business ownership was to take over someone else's already existing business, which would I think cut even further into this point since it would mean the most common path to entrepreneurship is optimizing employment in a small business context. I think getting a FAANG job is difficult, but for the median 30 year old (who has around $5,000 saved up and limited or no external safety nets), starting a business as your primary source of income is a really good way to bankrupt yourself and not much else, and valorizing that path is actively harmful.
StopTheWorld 2y ago
I worked with a guy who went to a public university - not a top 25 public university but in the ballpark. He was hard-working, smart and "got it", but he wasn't at the level of some super-geniuses I met coming out of school. He worked with us (Fortune 100, non-FAANG, non-tech, non-big metro) as a junior SWE for a year and did not get promoted as he desired. He jumped ship for a FAANG-adjacent company after a year working for us, and his TC jumped from <$100k to over $200k. Two years later he was promoted to senior and his TC is now over $300k. He is smart but not a genius. He kind of knows what is going on though, he "gets it". Probably even more motivated than smart, but not insanely motivated. Motivated enough to learn how to get features done at a brisk pace, take ownership of his team's work, and to study for interviews. Didn't go to a top tier CS program, didn't come out of FAANG or FAANG adjacent, and probably took a detour working for us, but three years later his TC is over $300k. He also had the luck to jump ship before the FAANG layoffs of late 2022.

alex_suzuki 2y ago

While running a small business can be incredibly fulfilling and teach you a ton of adjacent skills that you wouldn’t learn as a SwEng at a FAANG (sales, marketing, …), I find it infinitely more stressful than regular employment. There’s just so much more responsibility resting on your shoulders. Holidays have never felt the same since I left employment in 2011. No regrets here, just saying this path is not for everyone and not as accessible as you might think.

entropyneur 2y ago

You make it sound so easy. I've ran small businesses for most of my career and I've never made more than a quarter of what I currently make working as a contractor (ironically, for a business I once started, now owned by someone else). And most of the time I earned 5-10% of that.

keiferski 2y ago
I'm not sure how I made it sound so easy, because presumably getting a 250k job at a FAANG isn't easy either. Which is what my point was - if you're going to deal with the time and stress to get one of the most desirable jobs, why not use that same time and effort to build a business?
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > getting a 250k job at a FAANG isn't easy either Except, it kinda is for people that have the right background and are well suited to it. That is, the reason I think you're getting a lot of pushback is that many folks are just inherently risk averse. There are people who are smart, know how to work hard, and know that if they have a path laid out in front of them, they can succeed. For entrepreneurs, there is simply much more variability. You can be smart, work hard, do everything right, and still fail in unexpected ways due to things outside of your control. I don't think entrepreneurship is bad at all, but it's not surprising at all to me that people who want to go the FAANG route aren't well suited to starting their own business.
- entropyneur 2y ago
  Because it's a lot more predictable. Put in the necessary effort and you are almost guaranteed to get a FAANG job. And the best part, it's completely clear where that effort needs to be directed. Yes, you need to have the smarts, but for a business that pays as much you need to have a lot more than that, plus luck. I'm all for entrepreneurship and personally couldn't work for one of those companies, but with FAANG salaries being this high I don't think those people are making an irrational choice at all.
- ActorNightly 2y ago

neilyio 2y ago

Would you be open to mentoring someone curious about doing so?

brotchie 2y ago

Startup guy who’s now at FAANG. I’m technical technical technical (IC track). I love building products. Prototyping to find PMF and then spinning that up into a staffed project, then onto the next new thing. Get to work with excellent SWEs, PMs, PgMs, etc. In startup land I was doing so much, pitches, recruiting, coding, landing page design, dev ops, pretty much the full stack. In FAANG land I can just focus on existence proofs and then there’s a whole support structure helping that happen and bringing the product to market. You could argue that setting up this pipeline is the goal of a startup, but it’s a LOONG road. The opportunity cost is immense. It’s immensely difficult to recruit. You have to effectively pause your life. Scary to have children with startup level uncertainty. At a certain $$ where you can live a comfortable life, enjoy 95% of what you do day to day, get to be in an environment with top notch colleagues, it’s a tough sell to start something from scratch with all that risk.

nicce 2y ago
> I love building products. Prototyping to find PMF and then spinning that up into a staffed project, then onto the next new thing. How many products you have actually finished and worked on and polished over years if they produced something valuable in the end? That defines the actual realised value of the business. Jumping from one product to another does not mean that all of them were constantly producing revenue or were success. It might look good in the CV but what was end result?
- brotchie 2y ago
  Hit and miss. It’s pretty equivalent to % of finding product market fit in startup land. Mostly worked on internal products. One HUGE hit, a few moderate hits, and quite a few failures. The calculus for projects at a large bigco are different from a startup though. It’s not necessarily clear bottom line revenue, especially for innovation teams. Crypto, for example, bigco needs at least some folks working on it to build an understanding of the technology, market, pain points. Some of these projects are started with literally no intention of profitability, but as an explicit build-to-learn. There’s a wide spectrum of SWE interest and capabilities. Some folks love the creativity of greenfield new product exploration. Others love the focus of crafting a perfectly scalable, maintainable system. These are really just points along a product lifecycle. I understand myself enough and am unapologetic about getting “bored” easily, and need to be constantly working on creative things. Others at the other end of the spectrum have a visceral reaction to that. They can’t do what I do, and I can’t do what they do.

dayvid 2y ago

Different skillsets involved. You will eventually have to give up programming and focus on developer sales/marketing/recruiting skills. Very rare to see businesses where you're sole developer and salesperson unless you are the main SME on a niche field/technology you probably developed. Also A LOT of FAANG is immigrants who can't start a business in the US or children of immigrants whose parents put strong pressure on them having an upper middle class job.

scosman 2y ago

> your best bet is to learn how to start and run a business Startups are so hit and miss. It's really really hard to make $500k a year at a startup. There's many years of zero, near zero or sub-intern salary. After that there's either failure or a big payout that dwarfs the FAANG salary. Classic businesses can get a substantial salary sooner than a startup, but do have a ceiling. If you're selling a well known need (plumbing, consulting, etc), there's competition and a ceiling at hours worked. Having done both, a FAANG job is infinitely less effort than running a company. Also lower stress, lower risk, and immediate rewards/pay. I still have more fun starting companies though!

fuzzfactor 2y ago
That's a really informed comment from both sides of the exact fence. >there's either failure or a big payout that dwarfs the FAANG salary. Tech or not I think it usually doesn't dwarf anything but if it comes close, a little bit low or high, that's a huge milestone above failure. In that case it might allow you to maintain readiness for an incredible bonanza which might be within reach only from beyond that point, and that can be what dwarfs the "big payout". IOW depending on the situation, occasional big payouts that really just even things out may not be very life-changing even if they are big, but it can give you more rolls of the dice at things that can't be approached any other way.

lowbloodsugar 2y ago

I don’t see why so many people try so hard to be a professional football player when they could just as easily start a business launching rockets into space. The one has got nothing to do with the other. Running a small business is far more sales and marketing, and if you are lucky enough to get to the point where you need to hire someone, then HR, managing suppliers and fuck me don’t get me started on fucking customers.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

greenthrow 2y ago

Running a business is so much more work and most businesses fail. This is terrible advice.

desdenova 2y ago

And how, exactly, does one "learn" that? To me it's always been a matter of personality. As an introvert, I can't picture myself doing the kinds of social interactions required to sell a business on my own.

dontlikeyoueith 2y ago

> And the ceiling is limited as an employee, whereas it's virtually unlimited as a business owner. It's also unlimited as a gambler. That doesn't mean everyone should start buying lotto tickets.

Bjorkbat 2y ago

I mean, that's what I'm trying to do (the business, not the monetary milestone), but something to be mindful of is that on Indie Hackers only 12 people out of 17,000 in the community got to $10k MRR. https://www.indiehackers.com/post/holy-heck-this-is-hard-8ebe864174 https://www.indiehackers.com/post/holy-heck-this-is-hard-8eb... Granted, this is Indie Hackers, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think the general idea still applies. Getting to $10k a month, let alone making $250k a year (so ~$20k/month) is really hard, probably about as hard as making $250k a year as an employee, maybe even harder.

ferryman 2y ago
When you say taking this with a grain of salt, do you mean the success rate would be better outside of Indie Hackers?

johann8384 2y ago

Because I am happier as a great employee. I have a large family and have chosen base salary over stock when it comes up for example. I make a great salary and we can afford to have a lot of fun. We took four months and traveled in an RV. I have 7 lids and they all have a sport so we do lots of Soccer, Field Hockey, Softball, Baseball, etc. That is expensive and time consuming but I am at 99% of their games. I can't do that as well while starting and running a company.

karolist 2y ago
That's a lot of lids.

rco8786 2y ago

> so much effort to optimize being a well-paid employee It seems like you are vastly underestimating the effort (and risk) it takes to start a successful SaaS that brings its founder $500k+ annually. You're right about everything if you can actually start and grow that business, but you're glossing over how difficult that actually is to do, and the fact that you have to start from $0 income.

y-c-o-m-b 2y ago

I don't think this works out well for most people anymore. I mean that was true a few years ago when things were booming even, but now you're almost guaranteed to have a very hard time. I know someone that is over-employed and has over half a dozen jobs (yes you read that right, and it's been verified); most of them are at entrepreneur owned companies and they are all struggling right now, hanging by a thread with a skeleton crew.

localfirst 2y ago

[dead]

randomdata 2y ago

> will instead put in so much effort to optimize being a well-paid employee, instead of learning how to start and run a business. Being an employee is still running a business. The separation you are trying to draw isn't meaningful. That particular line of business is one of the few businesses out there with a near-guaranteed customer base, though. That's a highly attractive trait for someone operating a business. With small risk comes small reward, of course, but it is no surprise that most businesses venture in that direction.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

> It's interesting how so many people have an aversion to being a business owner / entrepreneur I like coding. I don't want to run a business, and these are very separate skills. This is like asking why an IC doesn't want to become a people manager.

sakopov 2y ago

Nothing interesting. No matter what people say, starting a business is incredibly difficult and takes a certain amount of luck. I've done 3. Failed at all 3. Made $0. Some people aren't cut out and are better off being employees.

borroka 2y ago

A comment, the one I am responding to, that would fit much better in the "hopeful" bucket than in the "realistic" one. I, like many others, hold a white-collar job in a technology company, not FAANG, with a salary between 300 and 400K per year, with lunch breaks, paid vacation days, good health insurance, and the opportunity to work from home at least 75% of the time. At the end of my workday, which I have not found to be stressful in at least 3 years, I am fresh, hydrated, and ready to spend late afternoons, evenings, and nights pursuing my interests, taking care of the kids, and maybe learning French at last. I see guys running fairly successful local businesses, both physical and digital. Assuming you have a choice between the two paths, a brief look at the physical condition and a conversation with me and the business owner would quickly lead you to prefer one of the two paths. I might be privileged, lucky, in an unusual situation. But the same is true for the successful local entrepreneur running a plumbing business with profits equivalent to those of experienced people working in tech.

John23832 2y ago

It's not as simple as "start a business". You have to find a business that makes sense for you (you know it, you want to put up with it, etc). You then have to execute. All the while hoping that you don't get struck by lightning (something kills your business), while also hoping to get struct by lightning (you become wildly successful). God forbid you need job security (family, health care, etc.). Contrast this to going into a job, where what you do is laid out for you, you just have to execute. With insurance. With job security. Even as someone who has run a startup and still has the itch, it's a no brainer.

paulcole 2y ago

> These salaries listed are great salaries, no doubt, but they are not dramatically more than say, a guy running a successful local plumbing business What about all the guys running unsuccessful local plumbing businesses?

sidcool 2y ago

Some people want to do cool technical stuff while getting paid well, and not interested in managing a business. Most researchers are like that.

satvikpendem 2y ago

One is basically guaranteed, as long as you learn and play the game; the other, to put it simply, is not. It takes an order of magnitude more effort and savviness to make a successful business than grind Leetcode and work at FAANG for 30 years. And even then, the FAANG employee is likely to outearn you.

Noneofya 2y ago

> It's interesting how so many people have an aversion to being a business owner / entrepreneur It’s not like nobody wants that, the scarce thing is having a good business idea unless you want to go into consulting. > And the ceiling is limited as an employee, whereas it's virtually unlimited as a business owner. That’s kinda stretching it. Higher FAANG-level salaries are enough to reach financial independence, which is pretty much „unlimited“ territory for most normal people. On the other hand, most businesses are not hyper successful. It‘s not like becoming a millionaire entrepreneur can be taken for granted. It’s interesting that you don’t seem to understand this. Survivorship bias or something else?

greenie_beans 2y ago

everybody saying this is a bad idea, which gives me hope that it might work out.

ligic25061 2y ago

[dead]

red-iron-pine 2y ago

> but they are not dramatically more than say, a guy running a successful local plumbing business. I know a guy who ran a successful plumbing business around Northern VA. Took home around 300k per annum. I used to bang his daughter. He worked hard, though, and had a couple of other guys working jobs independently under him, on top of his work. He was mostly corporate and construction work, but a couple of those guys under him also did residential, and he mostly supervised. I'm far less than his TCO but also don't have to get elbow deep in shit and work remotely from my basement. Respect the hustle, but I think I'm winning in terms of work-life balance and QOL.

madeofpalk 2y ago

> instead of learning how to start and run a business. Maybe people want to be developers, and not managers/CEOs/business owner/entrepreneurs? They're completely different jobs. Why would you expect everyone to aspire to the same thing? We don't look at nurses and say "its funny how so many nurses have an aversion to become a multinational pharmaceutical CEO"

aniix 2y ago

What type of SaaS? Any ideas?

1290cc 2y ago

There is an opportunity cost to starting a new business. Depending on market and your experience it can take several years before you get anywhere close to earning the same level of income as a mid to senior level FAANG employee. There is also the time commitment to dealing with everything outside of being an IC (taxes, healthcare, finance, marketing, disputes, legal). To anyone exploring starting a new business I would keep the day job and suffer until you get to a point where the business is on a good clip and you can dedicate all your time to it. Otherwise spending 20 years at FAANG and enjoying your life is really not a bad way to live, in fact its a dream to 99% of the planets population.

999900000999 2y ago

I want to rest and vest. I've gotten to final stage interviews with FAANG. I want the get the job, put in my 9-5 and go home. Plus running a business takes a lot of money and luck...

datahack 2y ago

Everyone is a genius for taking the safe employee path until we have a bad economy and the layoffs come. It’s been a LONG time since that’s happened. Just remember that.

neupsh 2y ago
I feel like layoffs are easier to ride through with just a limited amount of money saved. A barely new small business will have tougher time surviving a bad economy.