amiuba

I think both options are used. You can either be an employee with a set termination date when starting, or a contractor invoicing for your hours.

Contractor should have a higher hourly rate than employee because taxes, benefits, etc., but doesn't short term employment also carry a premium because it's uncertain compared to regular employees?

I updated the OP. I don't mind big gaps between contracts, another reason why I'm considering contracts is because I feel like 2-3 weeks of vacation a year is way too little.

> I can help you with some ideas if you want.

Sure, I'm always curious to hear ideas! Thanks

> But once you've seen what you've seen, you can't unsee it.

What do you do then?

Definitely doing this already, but there is still several years to go.

I've done staff augs before, I hope to never do staff augs again. You are not respected, and have to absorb all the cost of poor decisions made before your time.

Aiming for FI only means that you'll eat the same shit but for much less time (i.e. 10 years vs 40+ years)

> a 100% sane assessment of his situation. Nothing could be a more accurate picture of most of our working lives than the OP's post

To be fair, it is extremely hard to tell, even for me (OP). Sometimes I feel like I'm nuts because everyone else seems to get by and just deal with it. Am I so special or fragile that I can't just suck it up and do like everyone else?

No matter what angle I look at it though, I don't see how this could not make anyone at least a little bit sick. Spending 40 years (or 10 years if you're aiming for FI) using your life and health away to make some stranger even richer while the best you can hope for is keeping your job. It's absurd, and I can't understand how a lifetime of taking one for the team doesn't make people revolt.

But maybe we're the crazy ones because we're the minority, and can't adapt. I honestly don't know and struggle with this question.

I'm far from an expert, I'd say intermediate. There are people I work with who know far more than I do.

The company specializes in a couple of frameworks so yes they sell expertise in that sense, and they've done a lot of work developing the brand.

But yes, there are more jobs than people to fill them, which is pretty much any software development job that isn't gaming related or movie related. My company always has open software dev positions and they can't fill them fast enough despite being very well known in the industry.

What domain is your consultancy in?

Thanks, your blog has pretty good posts, I enjoy reading them.

Can you do it though? Public sector men's that you're paid less, a third of your pay is out away in a pension you cant touch until you turn 65 (if it's still there then). I've always wondered about it because I'd rather work at making people's life better and it feels like it's what most of government jobs stand for.

That's the thing... I've worked at many different places (startups come and go fast), and I've never worked on something that I felt very strongly about. I was always solving someone else's problems while making someone else money.

If I had enough money to live, I would quit writing software for money instantly. I have a few side projects in various states of neglect and I'd much rather work on these for free than solving yet another meaningless corporate or business problem.

But I can't do that yet, because I like sleeping in a bed under a roof and eating food.

I get the risk/reward thing, but I think that one side has too much power and reaps too much profit from it.

That's the thing though: how do you start? Where do you find clients? I obviously can't go after any of my current employer's clients, I don't have friends who studied CS and work at prestigious companies... How do you get started?

I negotiated my initial salary well (from talking with other colleagues who also shared their salary), but the only thing my company does is an annual performance review and a raise based on that. The raise is a few percents and that's it. No bonus or profit sharing.

I have yet to work somewhere that gives bonuses. Based on my experience, it isn't that common here it seems (Canada). My current base salary is a tad more than the median household income for my city.

You make a good point that while I'm employed, I'm getting paid to learn some of the skills I'll need to become an independent developer. What I still don't know is how to go from employee to independent: where do you get clients?

Value provided to my employer is more or less known: they sell my time for about 5x what they pay me (software consultancy).

The stress is over issues that the client is pressuring us to solve before a deadline, that usually requires overtime. I always refuse to do overtime, and try to work less rather than more. This creates a situation where my colleagues resent me because it feels like I'm not doing my share since they roll over and do whatever it takes to meet the deadline. And the client never learns, expecting overtime.

As a result, my last performance review wasn't great because my employer would prefer that I worked as much or more than my colleagues while only paying me 40h (clients are billed by the week, not by the hour.) I'm not in the top performers at my job either, I'd say I'm average at best. I don't feel like my bargaining position is particularly strong at the moment with this employer, and I negotiated my initial salary well from what I gather from colleagues I've discussed comp with.

I have considered freelancing, but I don't know where to start. The only place I know of is fiver and elance which have pretty bad reputation and where I couldn't charge enough for it to be viable.

Any insight on how to execute the shift and find your first customer?

Thanks for the input. Like WaxProlix, I'd be very interested to hear more. How to shift to freelancing (fiver/elance/whatever it's called today doesn't seem too good), and how does a co-op work in practice?

How did you get the gig? It seems my local and national government (Canada) only hires FTEs. I've applied before but was never successful.

FI/RE is a tremendous idea, and that's the thing that motivates me. I've been working on it for a few years now, but it's still far away.

But it feels like it's not enough, I don't know that I can keep eating sh*t for another 7 years. We're saving about 55% of our net income after rent, we're pretty frugal to begin with in a high col area (not in the US).

It's definitely part of the solution and I can't wait to quit working but it's not enough to carry me on its own. If it were I wouldn't feel this way.

Do you have this sentiment too?

Haha yes, I love this joke. I've heard it before and that's how it feels.

> changed my focus to collecting as much money from the wealthy bosses as I could while providing as little value as I could.

I thought about this and tried it this past year. It didn't go well and my performance review was abysmal. Some of my colleagues hate my guts because they feel like they're doing all the work and I'm not.

For example, I never do overtime especially when it's to meet unrealistic arbitrary deadlines. But they do and we meet the deadline, and this is why we keep having those deadlines: management knows they can keep doing it and someone will roll over to make it happen. "attaboy, great job on giving your life away this week, thank you for the new Porsche"

How do you pull it off without your colleagues hating you?