Hacker News Reader

Comment by fastball | Hacker News Reader

You don't think an electrician in a big city with their own business is pulling down six figures?

Business owner != electrician.

My wife is a doctor of physical therapy who owns her own business. Most of her job is marketing and paperwork.

If you want to throw the title Business Owner in front of a career title, I'd still suggest Electrical Engineer business owner over Electrician business owner.

When I say "electrician that owns their own business", I generally just mean an independent contractor that has structured their personal finances as an actual business.

I wasn't really talking about someone who employs lots of other electricians.

Not all of them have their own thriving businesses. The people working for electrician companies probably don’t make six figure.

Sure they can and do but the EE is going to be pulling six figures much sooner and have a more stable and less physically and mentally taxing career path than the electrician.

That electrician with his own business could probably do better with a MBA though.

But could he do enough better [than hiring business advisors] to make up for probably a 15+ year delay in starting the business (due to time spent in college and postgraduate work PLUS the debt incurred in schooling)?

Edit: thanks autocorrect.

Depends. There have been exceptions you can point to, but many small businesses fail because the owner doesn't spend enough time in the office. "Joe Electric" works when "Joe" and one assistant is the extent of the business, but "Joe" - if he is in a good location - will soon have more business than he can accept at which time it is temping to expand, and then the MBA skills are needed or Joe's poor handling of the office work ends up killing the company.

If Joe was good at business he could keep 200 electricians busy with jobs that pay about as much as they would earn on their own, and no need for them to do all the book work in the office, and ultimately Joe makes more money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com