Which forums? Not everyone uses the term the same way. I stopped saying "self-employed" and started calling myself "entrepreneur".

When I said self employed, people either heard "unemployed" or "marginal freelance person, barely made ends meet". When I switched to entrepreneur, people heard "successful businessman". The change was uncanny.

Now, my activities didn't change. So the questions to ask are:

  1. How did the people complaining about self-employed mean the term?
  2. Does that match what you do?
  3. How should you brand it so that the person hiring you understands it correctly?

I never had a problem with other entrepreneurs or managers. We spoke the same language. I even got some unsolicited job offers when working for myself, which never happened before.

In general, I think it's seen as a positive thing, as long as you're talking about the kind of self-employment we mean here on Hacker News. Fairly lucrative, manage your own schedule, no shortage of clients, but more overhead and uncertainty than a job and a need to focus on non-technical stuff. The latter two points explaining why someone might want a job instead of self-employment.