

Why I Stopped Selling My Time for a Living - sherm8n
http://blog.goodsense.io/2013/10/26/why-i-stopped-selling-my-time-for-a-living/

======
matthewmacleod
This makes me feel pretty uncomfortable - maybe it's the sense of superiority
the author puts across. A couple of the more irritating snippets:

 _In a regular 9-5 job you’re selling your time to an employer_

Or, to look at it another way, you are collaborating with a number of
colleagues to develop and sell software, and you are all sharing the income.
See how that's the same thing, phrased differently? Attitude matters.

 _You can do whatever you want now. Everything is under your control. It’s not
dependent on your boss, co-workers, or other departments. You decide what
projects to work on. You decide when you want to work on them. You even decide
whether or not you want to get out of bed every day._

You're not dependent on anything - except your customers or clients, your
investors, your employees, third parties… the list goes on. Sure, you could
choose to stay in bed, or leave for a week and do no work - but you'd have to
consider what the implications would be for your services, your family, staff
and so on. Sometimes, the illusion of freedom is more dangerous.

 _You get to put all your time and effort into only things you’re truly
passionate about._

Nope - all of the grunt work still has to be done. Need a stupid feature for a
large client? You'll probably be doing it. And you'll be doing all of that
sysadmin stuff you hate too.

 _Selling your time for money to an employer will put a cap on the amount of
money you can make... You are generating more money for their business than
they’re paying you. That’s the only way they can run a profitable business.
Which means you’re getting screwed._

It's a trade-off, isn't it? I think we can all accept that the self-employed
will keep more of the value they generate. But the other side of the coin is
that they're exposed to more risk. Not a bad trade-off, especially if you've
got a family.

 _Most of the software you write at a company doesn’t ever ship._

I can count on one hand the number of features I've ever developed which
didn't ship, and quickly. Maybe if you work at a dysfunctional company, this
could be the case.

tl;dr: don't take a job at a rubbish company you're not interested in. Enjoy
what you do - have you seen what the market is like for "developer time"
recently? You can have your pick of companies, developing software for almost
any imaginable market, and earn an impressive salary doing it.

Okay, maybe this works for you - and that's great, I'm all behind people
finding work that suits their lifestyles. But I've got an awesome 9–5 job,
where I am paid very well to work with great people on interesting products.
There are a lot of other people in that situation, and I don't think that it's
quite a clear-cut as the author makes out.

~~~
dragonwriter
> _In a regular 9-5 job you’re selling your time to an employer_

> Or, to look at it another way, you are collaborating with a number of
> colleagues to develop and sell software, and you are all sharing the income.
> See how that's the same thing, phrased differently?

But it is clearly _not_ the same thing phrased differently. The first is an
accurate description of a wage labor relationship, the latter is an accurate
description of the relation between members of a labor cooperative. You can
imagine that the latter relationship is the case when you are in the former
relationship, but self-delusion probably isn't useful or healthy in the long
term.

~~~
cgag
Yes, I find this kind of self deception about the nature of a job much more
disturbing than having a negative attitude about having someone else tell you
what to do and when to do it. You're collaborating with colleagues to build
software for someone else to sell, over which you retain no rights, and you
receive a flat rate in the face of growing profits.

~~~
matthewmacleod
That's the result if you work for a bad team, sure. In my case, I develop
software that _my colleagues_ sell and support (and they're nice guys.) I have
input into what we build and how we do it. Yeah, I don't retain the rights,
but I do get to publish a bit of open-source. And I know first-hand that I'm
not alone in having a good working environment with an employer.

Your argument seem to be that it's better to be in charge - and sure, I think
we'd all ultimately like that. But that comes with costs—in some cases, pretty
large ones—and it's a mistake to gloss over them so lightly.

~~~
dragonwriter
> That's the result if you work for a bad team, sure.

It's the result if you work for wage labor, period. You're not "sharing the
profits", you're paid a negotiated rent for your time which is not dependent
on the profits. Even if you get some kind of equity or profit-sharing
_component_ of your compensation, the basic relationship is still of time
rent.

> And I know first-hand that I'm not alone in having a good working
> environment with an employer.

Having a good working environment with an employer doesn't change the basic
relationship from "selling time to an employer" to "sharing the income", in
the same way that having a good working environment with a slave master --
which undoubtedly there were slaves who did -- doesn't change the relationship
from "being someone else's chattel" to "selling time to an employer".

And if you have to tell yourself a comforting lie about what the basic nature
of the relationship is to be happy about it, I think that may be a signal that
the "good working environment" isn't so good.

If you are really happy with what the relationship _is_ , that you wouldn't
need to misrepresent it.

~~~
matthewmacleod
>And if you have to tell yourself a comforting lie about what the basic nature
of the relationship is to be happy about it, I think that may be a signal that
the "good working environment" isn't so good.

Okay - I'll bow out here. I think you've probably latched on to a minor detail
that's not really relevant — my main point being that focusing on "selling
time to an employer" is only one interpretation of the employee-employer
relationship. Maybe I could have described it as "charging a fixed rate to a
client and doing interesting research" – the point is, in a market such as the
current one for software developers, employment is as much under the control
of the employee as the employer.

To be clear, I don't have any intention of misrepresenting or lying about my
work environment, so please don't make such assumptions.

------
jmadsen
Seriously - this guy was paid a full-time salary and most of his time was
apparently free to use as he chose - and he chose to spend it preparing for
lunch & browsing the internet

His problem was he had no drive or personal work ethic. Where he could have
been learning just about anything, he seems to have just frittered his day
away.

So his solution is: He's going to start a business where he can take vacation
anytime he wants? Based on his 2 years experience surfing cat videos?

I don't think we'll be hearing about his IPO any time soon.

------
DerpDerpDerp
This seems to only be true for very, very few start-ups, all of which are
small, ie, single employee.

The moment that there's a second person, your life begins to depend on their
schedule, involve their input in plans, etc. Even if you're the boss, it's a
terrible habit to just declare you're leaving without taking in to account how
it will impact other people. I'd argue you're probably /more/ restricted in
many start-ups than you are in a typical office environment, where you're just
one of many, because of how important you, personally, and your involvement is
likely to be to the whole team/company.

Many of the points also only apply to people who are doing software for
execution on servers or apps or similar projects. If you're working on
embedded hardware, for instance, it becomes much, much harder to just take
your laptop and work somewhere else.

~~~
sherm8n
I can only speak in the context of software companies. But there are many
companies who have completely distributed teams and thrive. My favorite is
Buffer's story: [http://joel.is/post/54284926855/questions-i-ask-myself-
about...](http://joel.is/post/54284926855/questions-i-ask-myself-about-
working-as-distributed)

------
mlangdon
I have a tough time relating to the attitude toward being employed (as a
programmer) that gets thrown around here. I know many employers are
exploitative. But you don't have to work for an evil mega corp.

I work for a company where I can count the employees on one hand. All my code
is used (unless I throw it away or refactor it). The work is interesting, the
problems are challenging and semi-novel. I get to learn things every day.

What I'm saying is, I actually love my job. If you get paid to program and
you're not loving it, you can go find a company doing something interesting
without a lot of corporate crap. There's also the possibility you don't
actually like programming, so.

This is not to say a startup is not an option, but there are plenty of other
options with less skin in the game.

~~~
jaggederest
> I know many employers are exploitative.

By definition, they're all exploitative, even the one you work at.

If they gave you the proceeds of your labor, they'd be out of business, and if
they don't, they're exploitative.

The only 'logically fair' form of organization of labor is a cooperative, and
that only when everyone contributes according to their share.

~~~
mlangdon
You say I'm being exploited; I say you have adopted a viewpoint designed to
create maximum unhappiness in the reality I live in.

Potato; potato.

~~~
jaggederest
I'm not saying you should be unhappy about it. Hell I do the same thing. Just
don't go in with rose colored glasses like they employ you out of charity.
Businesses are there to make a profit, and being employed entails giving up
some of that profit.

------
Nursie
I do sell my time for money. Directly. As a contractor I have an hourly rate
and people take me on as needed. The money is good, I like meeting new people
and what I really, really like is working on a project, seeing it ship and
then going on to something else entirely.

Although it's also awesome that I get paid for every minute I work, if the
client wants overtime I get paid more, if they don't I'm out the door at 5. I
set my own vacation allowance and when an email comes in from a client at 3am
to tell us how awesome the product is _I don 't care_.

So IMHO, go the other way _start_ selling your time for a living. Stop
pretending you give a crap about anything but yourself and cold, hard cash, go
contract!

~~~
sherm8n
Well, as a contractor you can start selling outcomes instead of selling time.
So for example, you're able increase sales for a business by 9% in a month.
That's a whole lot of freaking money. Suppose it only takes you 5 hours of
work. Maybe you're an expert at conversion rate optimization. Your client
won't blink if you tell them it will cost $X0,000. That's way better for you
than charging $200/hr for 5 hours.

~~~
zanny
Charging by the hour, as the basal form of hourly wage employment or in
contracting, is just the worst case scenario when you have no other metrics to
effectively predict and judge performance on.

But that means you have to take the fall if you aren't good at whatever
alternative payment criteria you agree to. It just ends up being the default
because it is somewhat safe, but if I were ever doing contract gigs I'd
definitely rather charge by feature than by hour.

~~~
Nursie
That's up to you. There's a well established contract market here in the uk
that does not work that way.

------
phaer
It might be off topic, but I read some posts about people working while
traveling around. How does that work with taxes? I am currently working in
another country, but still in the european union, and quite a hassle to get
all that bureaucratic stuff done for just 3 months. I imagine it must be more
complicated if you don't even have a work permit at start. Do you just do it
illegal/unregistered? Are tax laws more tolerant at the places you choose?
Doesn't it matter?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Depends on how you do it. Are you working for yourself? Or for an employer? If
its an employer, yes, you're going to have to handle a bunch of tax red tape.

I'm a US citizen. Assume I have a webapp. I develop this app as I travel, have
paying customers, etc. It doesn't matter I'm in the middle of nowhere Africa,
because I'm accepting payments with Stripe into a US-based business checking
account, which I then run payroll from into a US-based personal checking
account. I then pay my taxes electronically from this account.

In that case, your taxes are pretty straightforward.

~~~
gamblor956
I hate to burst your bubble...but it does matter. Not for purposes of U.S.
taxes, but for purposes of whatever countries you are in while you were
traveling. If the app is even moderately successful, those countries could
treat your app's income as wholly or partially subject to their income taxes.
(This is not much of an issue with Canada, EU nations, China, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, or S. Korea. It is very much an issue with most other countries,
especially South American and African countries.)

It depends heavily on the tax laws of the countries in which you are
traveling, the type of work you perform, and the amount of such work in
proportion to work performed elsewhere.

There's a reason that so many multinational companies hold their board
meetings in the Caymans, with a quorum of directors physically present. It's
not because the Caymans are a great vacation destination (they are) but
because they must hold the board meetings there to satisfy location
requirements arising from the company's tax structure. (See e.g., the Dutch
Sandwich structure and the Double Irish structure.)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> If the app is even moderately successful, those countries could treat your
> app's income as wholly or partially subject to their income taxes.

How would you suggest they treat it as income if your business is incorporated
in US (Delaware preferably)? It doesn't become foreign income based on where
you wrote the code.

Also, how are countries in South America or Africa going to know where your
business income is derived from when all your financial transactions occur
with the US?

~~~
gamblor956
The issue is that performing business activities in a country, under current
intentional tax conventions, gives that country jurisdiction to tax the income
arising from that activity. So yes, under international tax law as it
currently stands, your app's income _does_ become foreign income based on
where you wrote the code.

In practice, most countries require a certain "level" of activity to subject a
foreign enterprise to taxation (i.e., the US and all EU nations). And at any
rate, we have treaties with most countries worth visiting which generally
define the type and extent of activities that could give rise to taxation in
the foreign country (see, e.g., "permanent establishment"). Thus, it is
unlikely that simply writing some code for your app in the EU would result in
an EU nation trying to tax your app's income.

However, not all nations require a substantial threshold before they try to
tax business activity. Such countries will tax income arising from _any_
activities performed in that nation by a foreign entity. (For example, Peru
and Venezuela have both generated headlines about this recently.) Worse, these
countries will frequently try to lay claim to _all_ of the income that arises
from the activity, even if only a minor portion of it can be "sourced" to
activities performed in that country. This isn't usually a problem for a US
resident/company--U.S. courts won't enforce such foreign tax levies--however,
many nations _are_ willing to enforce the tax levies of other countries.
Netherlands, in particular, is a danger on this front. The Netherlands has
friendly relations with a good many countries which the US is not friendly
with, and a Dutch judgment enforcing a foreign tax lien stands a good chance
of being enforced by other member nations of the EU.

As for your second point: say you blog about how you traveled while coding the
app...or you give an interview to that effect. All it takes is one person in
that country's tax authority to stumble upon the blog post/interview, and
they'll try to go after you. (This doesn't mean they'll go as far as seeking a
judgment, or that such a judgment would succeed, but foreign legal
difficulties aren't something you'll ever want to deal with if you plan on
letting your app get acquired.

------
inovator
This is seriously a first world country's software engineers problem. Anyone
of my friends who is not currently employed as software engineer would do
anything for that schedule and $100k/yearly salaries. I think sometime people
just take too much things for granted; we are just happened to love what we do
and get paid/spoiled a lot by this industry. Imagine this industry is not
needed; I am sure you would be begging to have this flexible office hours.

From my point of view, work is the place I get PAID to learn something news
from other. Someday, I stayed until 8pm or work on weekend. Does that mean I
was forced to or get paid overtime? No, I stayed because I have the urge to
learn and solve the problem. Now, if you think about work from that
perspective then it wouldn't be so bad now, would it?

FWIW, I am not criticizing anyone but just simply giving my point of view and
how fortunate I felt to be pampered from this industry. And just maybe, my
view is different from others because I just graduated from college and always
eager to learn.

Love what you do and do what you love!

------
agibsonccc
I think there's something to be said for the general concept. Something to
consider is risk vs reward though. If you're comfortable doing sales and the
technical part or maybe even harder good at delegation and have some financial
resources, you might be able to pull this off. A job is pretty consistent
though and frankly can be less demanding even if you are learning new skills
or working with smart people.

That being said, I think collaborating on open source still can give you that
part of work you might be missing. There are positives and negatives to both
lifestyles. Some are better at certain parts of the field than others.

I personally had a product take off, and and now backpacking in the valley for
as long as I want. I've been able to meet one new customer a day (literally)
for the past few weeks.

What they DON'T tell you is what it can take to get to that. It's ok to talk
about the idea of not selling time for money AS LONG as you don't
sensationalize it. Everyone has their preferences.

------
Kynlyn
Oh stop it. Get over yourself, already.

I've run my own software business for over a decade now and I still have a
boss. It's called The Free Market.

I can decide I'm above doing certain tasks, but my customers can also decide
to go to my competition if my company isn't taking care of their needs. And
sometimes my customers need things that I really don't feel like doing.

But I do them..because they are my customers; they pay the bills. They are the
boss.

------
austinz
If I felt competent enough to call myself a "10X developer, marketer and
entrepreneur", I'd consider becoming a consultant. But I'm not anywhere near
that stage yet, and there's a lot I can learn (and am learning) where I am
right now. So, the argument can be a decent one (self-employment brings
certain benefits that are inimical to working for a salary), but there are
also trade-offs involved.

------
peferron
The beach again? It must be the 5th time I see the beach presented as some
kind of ideal workplace and I just don't get it. I'd rather spend my time at
the beach resting, swimming and reading a good book, and then get the work
done in a place with consistent lighting, real mouse & keyboard, fast and
stable internet, a second screen, whiteboards, etc.

Also, startups are hard. Making twice your corporate salary by working on a
laptop at the beach with a spotty internet connection sounds like a scam ("my
aunt makes $5000/week on the laptop") and there's a reason why it does. It's
not impossible - not much is impossible with startups really - and you might
just make it if you're very lucky and very talented, but you're stacking the
deck against you in a game already more than difficult enough.

Finally, how are you going to fund all these travels and living expenses
unless your startup is profitable from day 1? With all this money saved from
the evil corporate job I guess.

This is way too black & white.

------
benwerd
I'd actually kill (almost) for the schedule on the T-shirt. Which isn't to say
that I disagree with the post, but the author had it pretty good!

~~~
sherm8n
Jeez, what's your schedule like?

~~~
ramchip
I think it's common to work 9:00-19:00, 9:30-20:00. That's my schedule
(working at a bank). Sometimes I also have to connect in the middle of the
night if there's a problem in some other time zone. I haven't ever heard of a
programmer working 9-5 in Tokyo.

------
rfnslyr
I would be fired if my day looked like that. I can understand how you feel
after working a 9-5, or in my case, a 9-8 because I work at a bank, and
anything lower, you look lazy!

6am wake

6-7 - shower/prepare for the day

7am breakfast

8am prepare 6 meals for the day (bodybuilder)

9am leave for work

10am get in

10 - 10:30 - check mail, prioritize mail, i dont get much mail

10:30 coffee run - everyone in the office sees this as their last opportunity
to fuck about for 15 minutes

11 - 8pm - literally just code, if I get up, it has to be accounted for

8pm - 1am - go to classes to finish a useless degree i dont need because my
employer requests it

Then at about 1am I like to fantasize about creative ways to kill myself, then
sleep.

I can't wait to save enough money for 3+ years of funding my own shenanigans.
T-minus one year to go!

Good luck OP. Technologists are the modern day bohemians.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> 11 - 8pm - literally just code, if I get up, it has to be accounted for

> 8pm - 1am - go to classes to finish a useless degree i dont need because my
> employer requests it

This right here would be making me look for another gig ASAP.

~~~
rfnslyr
The money is really great, I work with people that are also really great, and
the job is actually really fun. It's more impressive than any other gig I
could find. I'm learning faster than I have ever before as well.

I wouldn't drop this gig for another in the world, at least not until my
contract is over.

~~~
toomuchtodo
To each their own. I could never imagine needing to account why I'm getting up
from where I'm working. IT/developer jobs are a dime a dozen for the
foreseeable future.

