It's interesting to see someone else talk about this. Becoming something like independently poor has become sort of a goal of mine. It's a little surprising to me to realize how hard this is. There are so many organizations eager to give me a high salary for full-time development work, which has a high probability of keeping me feeling unhappy and trapped. But if I only want to work 30 hours a week, and I only need to make about $25 an hour to live - so far that seems like a harder situation to find. It's like, I'd be happy to give up all this extra money for more time and less stress, but there aren't as many takers for that deal.
>But if I only want to work 30 hours a week, and I only need to make about $25 an hour to live - so far that seems like a harder situation to find.
My experience is that finding consistent independent work is "easy" up to $50/hr. Beyond that, and I need to go through agencies where they expect me to pretend to want to be full time.
I have manged to leverage that to get a part time gig that paid better; e.g. I got a high paying gig through an agency, proved myself difficult to replace, /then/ suggested they let me go part time on the same hourly rate. Worked okay for a while.
But yeah, my experience is that you can demand $50/hr from random craigslist gigs. There is a /lot/ of remote work available at $25/hr. I remember in the early to mid aughts, I supported myself for a few years this way; I had a primary gig that gave me a retainer that was large enough to cover rent (I think I was charging them $35/hr for retainer hours, and $45/hr for hours above that. I mean, I was in my early to mid 20s, so it wasn't great money, but it wasn't terrible. ) then I would take random gigs over and above that for more money; I had about three regular clients that I didn't have "retainer" agreements with, so there was always enough money.
Hm. I wonder if it's easier as a SysAdmin, because it's very clear that my work is going to be required on an ongoing basis? Some people seem to think that after the project is done, they won't need the developers. But most people understand that you need a sysadmin ongoing.
As a sysadmin, the major problem is if two clients happen to have emergencies at the same time (DDoS, phishing hack, hardware failure, or something else that's hard to mitigate in advance without more money than such a client is prepared to spend).
>As a sysadmin, the major problem is if two clients happen to have emergencies at the same time (DDoS, phishing hack, hardware failure, or something else that's hard to mitigate in advance without more money than such a client is prepared to spend).
You resolve this with your 'retainer' agreements. Client agrees to pay a monthly fee, I agree to a certain level of availability, and to prioritize said client over my other clients and/or my personal stuff.
I've also tried to set a schedule when I was available, then if you wanted me outside of that schedule, you had to agree to pay a incident fee to wake me up. But, I haven't had anyone bite on that idea. I think the retainer thing is more traditional.
Even with a retainer, of course, you can't get real 24x7x365 coverage with one person. that's just not how the physics of the situation work.
And in that case, I only had one client that had a retainer. Without a retainer? Sure, when shit breaks, the client is going to call and whine and cajole and threaten, and sure, I'm going to try to help him or her out, but... any pre-existing agreements I have come first.
The bare truth, though, is "I'll get to you after I clear up this other mess" is "good enough" for most things. Especially for employers who are picking sysadmins up off craigslist for $50/hr.
Agreed. We hire folks that have their own businesses or projects. One of our employees likes doing contract work and helps run an annual tech conference. He didn't want to be tied to a specific schedule; sometimes he works a lot, sometimes he works a little. He knows he has a steady paycheck, though it is smaller than it would be if he were working full-time for us. We've known him for years, and knew he was working on our Open Source stuff already, for free, so we know he's got the interests of our users and software in mind.
There are flexible positions out there. Another option is to start your own company. That's what I did when I wanted freedom. I made the mistake of starting a hardware company the first time...the second time I made it software, and made sure nothing about it required me to answer phones or be in one place for any length of time.
Decent developers routinely charge $40-$50/hour on remote work sites like eLance - and these are ones in foreign countries who don't speak all that well English - so you can compete easily. I don't work on it since I can charge two to three times as much in person, but it sounds up your alley. It's common to specify a number of hours per week, or do project based pay and have the contractor fill out time sheets.
I've got several colleagues considering this. As their children move out of the house and the mortgages get paid off. They've qualified for the pension (collected at 60? 55? I can't remember, it's far enough off that it doesn't affect my planning much here). They're only in their late 40s or early 50s, so if they switch to 60/80% time they'll take a pay cut, we'll have money left to hire more people. We'll retain their knowledge base. They can ride to retirement comfortably with long weekends every week.
I've lucked out in finding an organization that's just like that. The founders are all older married guys with kids, who want to be their own bosses and also not spend too much time at the office. They're not hypocrites, so no one has to spend too much time at the office. We work about 35 hours a week, but I'm fairly sure that if someone wanted to reduce that to 30 or even 25, it would be fine, so long as they got plenty of work done at work. The pay is right around the amount you mentioned, as a starting wage. We treat each other and our clients well. It does exist... www.radarhill.com.
If there's still the expectation that they "[get] plenty of work done", then that's pretty much the opposite of what the parent/article are talking about. You're talking more about a company that has flexible office hours and just focuses on results, but still expects a full-time amount of "results" per person. The article, on the other hand, is talking about delivering fewer results, for less money.
Move to Amsterdam; we all speak English and 24-hour work weeks are perfectly normal here.
I'm not sure if it's possible if you use the US-NL immigration agreement, but you might even get innovation subsidies in which case you can become an independent consultant, work 4 months of the year and spend the money you earned tax-free in the other 8 months.
I think only 500 hours/year in some cases, but even the full 1225 is doable with the 4 months on 8 months off schedule.
But yeah, get them through one of the subsidy offices. It'll cost you 700 to 1200 Euros but increases the chances you'll get it and is definitely worth offloading the administrative hassle.
There's plenty of info one Google search away, but easiest is probably to just ask one of the providers that will handle the registration for you.
I use subsidiefocus.nl, but feel free to shop around. Just keep in mind that there are sharks out there that will get you to pay E2000/yr and bind you for multi-year contracts; so shop around and be wary of AdWords advertisers.
Oh yeah; also make sure you inquire about the RDA subsidy which is not that big, but is often available on top of the WBSO subsidy.
Have you considered taking on freelance/contract work? I worked on remote contracts for one year at ~20 hours/week. It covered expenses while I got to work on my own products, travel, spend time with family, and relax. It was an amazing experience.
(3) Recruiters - most deal with full time employment, but they usually have some clients that want contractors. Some firms even offer subcontracting arrangements (they take a % of your rate, but even then it's usually much more than $25/hour)
(4) Old co-workers/bosses - usually the best way to get contracts since you have a connection
The first one or two contracts might be difficult to find. After that, referrals start kicking in. Plus you might find a client who requires long-term part-time work (that's what happened for me).
You may be dealing with the flip side of being overqualified. If you are looking for the type of work that'd pay you a high salary for full-time development work it's unlikely you will find many $25/hr 30 hour a week job. But if you lower your sights to more mundane work -- perhaps in an associated field rather than in full on development -- I think you'll have a lot more success.
Of course, those jobs may well be less fulfilling professionally, but that's just another trade off along with the money.
Even young, given current salaries for software developers, this is very viable. I was earning ~$80,000/year as a newly graduated bachelor of Computer Science working 40-hour weeks at a flexible consulting shop before I started my Masters degree.
Given my living arrangements and lack of dependents, it didn't require any effort at all to save 50% of this money and put it into long-term (retirement) investments. Ten years of a similar arrangement would ensure a very decent nest egg, assuming I kept living below my means. Given that skills and salaries increase quickly, after a couple of years it would almost certainly be possible to scale back 25% and keep saving more or less the same amount.
As long as you are in a position to plan ahead, this shouldn't be a problem. It helps to view the glass as half full rather than half empty; many people will only see the negativity in any suggestion. Money is often a subject where the naysayers talk louder than the rest.
I'm with you 100%. Although, in terms of planning ahead, you might want to have a family or girlfriend/boyfriend in the future which will eat into your cash flow considerably. Also, you'll probably want nicer shit as time goes on. Living in a shitty apt in some crappy part of town loses it's novelty when you know you could easily, for a little bit more a month, get a better place.
Depending on the area you live in, with a salary like that and that level of savings, you can own a house by your early to mid 30s. A decent house here can go for as low as $100k (middle Georgia). Lower if you're willing to accept older homes and the issues that usually entails (asbestos, will need more in upkeep costs earlier, 60s/70s stylings for the interior). A single professional can make in the upper 5 to low 6 figures. After retirement accounts, you can pay off that mortgage in 5-10 years. If you don't go for the ludicrous $500k homes (or higher) that we have around here, you can live nearly debt free (in this case a mortgage no worse than rent at the decent apartment complexes). And by your 30s be debt free (I was late getting into the job market after a failed attempt at grad school, so for me it'll be late 30s, but close enough).
