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Comment by baz00 | Hacker News Reader

Whoever is paying you is your boss. There is no escape, only a change in the illusion. If you're a sole trader, it's your customers. If you're a corporate wage slave, it's your line manager. If you're a startup it's whoever gave you capital. Even if you're CxO it's the other board members and investors.

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Multitude of customers as a “boss” is a much different situation than having one boss. So much that the analogy breaks up.

A customer firing you might affect 2% of your income. A real boss firing you will cut 100% of your income.

Also, if you are the founder and CEO of a startup you have to answer to the board and investors, but there is much less power imbalance. Sometimes a CEO being fired is financially better than continuing to work. Think of the founder of WeWork.

“You always have a boss” is a bland phrase that doesn’t account for all the very important nuances of the matter.

Definitely not an “illusion”. There are very practical differences between the different types of bosses.

The difference is that some bosses are more easy to say no to than others.

The real ease of saying no to bosses of any kind comes from financial security, no matter its origin. There are certainly plenty of small business owners who are struggling enough that they can barely afford to so "no" to any customer/ Conversely, there are plenty of employees who manage to tell their line manager "no" just fine. Whether you can afford to do so does not depends on the type of boss but on the ease with which you can bear the repercussions of doing so.

In a typical employment scenario, your line manager can cut off 100% of your revenue.

In an ideal SaaS scenario, your customer can cut off a tiny percentage of your revenue.

Comparing "typical" vs "ideal" is always going to tip in the direction of the "ideal" case.

There are plenty of companies, SaaS or otherwise, in which a single "whale" customer makes up so much revenue that losing them would instantly make the company unprofitable. Similarly there are plenty of employees who can handle being fired perfectly well, financially speaking.

If your SaaS can be killed by a single customer leaving, then you don't have a SaaS; you have a boss for whom you are developing bespoke software.

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