Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working, but for the last two remote jobs, the offer letter I received was more than what I verbally agreed on with HR. Since I am also 70 years old, I take this as good evidence of how pro-worker the job market is right now.

I offer free mentoring (see my web site) and always talk about the importance to having a beginner’s/learner’s mind. I think that what companies want is: prioritizing the company’s interests, being flexible, and being observant looking for opportunities to improve the business. Fairly straightforward strategy.

Good luck reaching your financial goals/salary number but also please remember money isn’t everything, and is much less important than our relationships with other people.

"Professionally there is nothing special about me except that I really enjoy working"

I think you may be underselling yourself a touch here ;)

Someone from HN just emailed me about this HN thread, and I will make the same comment to you as I did in an e-mail: “”” Every morning first thing, I spend a minute or two thinking of everything that I am grateful for, and having a useful job is on my gratitude list.

If I don’t do this, then sometimes I find it more difficult to be motivated at my remote job.”””

A feeling of gratitude gives me energy to keep learning and maintain curiousity.

My personal philosophy is similar and I very much love the work I do.

1. My role is to help the team.

2. Stay humble. There is always a better way to do something and we're very lucky to be in our position.

3. Practice not talking. Let others have the experience of figuring it out for themselves. Interject if you can help get them unstuck.

4. Always be learning.

The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with and still be competent.

I can see that by the time I retire, the knowledge I have spent my adult life acquiring will be useless historical trivia. It's depressing. My plan when I retire is to have nothing whatsoever to do with software. It can't come soon enough.

The pace of change is faster than the average person can keep up with each change, but because more and more new technologies and niches are being created, there are more and more opportunities to be competent in a certain niche.

It's also so much about your mindset. Seeing the difference in positive and negative mindset between you and the comment root is eye opening. When you think everything is "useless historical trivia" and is "depressing", of course anything you try to learn will be useless, tiring and depressing.

One of the things I'm trying to really improve in my own personal life is my mindset. I have/had a mindset similar to yours (I'm much younger too) and I've noticed how draining it is to my overall mental health. I'm trying to be more optimistic and positive about things. Life is too short to be depressed and upset about something you spend 1/3 of your waking hours doing.

I'm only 35, but until now I feel the opposite is true.

I've started to learn C, HTML, CSS, Javascript when I was a teenager more than 20 years ago. The knowledge and skills I learned then are still as relevant today as they were then.

Sure, there's flexbox now instead of tables, but the basic idea of HTML vs CSS vs Javascript is still the same, I can still make a basic website for a project in a few hours. Vertically centering something on the screen is still harder than it should be.

C now lets me declare variables anywhere, and there's a nicer syntax for initialising structs, but pointers work the same as they did 20 years ago. Knowing C is still as useful today as it was then.

My main focus for some years has been Mac desktop development. While a lot of new things was introduced in the last decade, it has all been mostly incremental changes, and even if you skipped a few years of progress catching up isn't that hard.

It helps to be aware of some general trends. I've read about async/await years ago when it was introduced in C# I think? and now it's coming in Swift. Sure, it's a slightly different way of thinking about concurrency, but one or two new concepts every 5 years should be doable.

Also, you don't need to learn everything. For example, the whole Reactive / Flux technologies with event sources and subscribers sounded really interesting, but I never really was able to get into them (you can probably tell by the fact that this paragraph makes no sense), and I'm doing just fine.

Me too friend... It's also quite exhausting to see things change so much when the overall results and methods are mostly just ways of doing the same things that were done before (Since Ajax) and they're also becoming more complex than the methods used before to implement with no major added value and just an alternate set of unresolved issues to work around.

For new gigs, frequently get vague job descriptions which at the end of the day mean that I'm pretty much boing everything by myself and reporting to 3-4 useless managers that know buzz words, but don't know tech at all.

I've pretty much had enough, if we weren't stuck in a pandemic currently I'd be on a beach somewhere exotic, but at least I moved out of the expensive & stressful city work hustle.

I'd say the answer is to move up the career ladder. Let the new people learn the new framework, your value add is you know the types of mistakes people make when working in a new framework (programmer mistakes and manager/planing mistakes), and with your support the younger team members will be 10x as productive. Your steady hand gets the project delivered on time/budget despite the massive underestimation of technology risk.

And you can do this w/o moving into management.

Is that so bad? I expect the more important thing are the results that the learning allowed you to render. If the knowledge has a half-life but you contributed to or built something meaningful that endures, isn't that what matters? The knowledge and skills are like the scaffolding that allow you to arrive at a certain height or build something of value. And at the end they can be taken away and you're left with the fruits.

Unless, of course, your intention is to have knowledge that you can pass on to future generations via writing/training.

I’m a mechanical engineer by training and my “knowledge” is as concrete as it could get besides something like physics or pure mathematics. In theory I can design and create wonderful things in the physical world instead of random API’s on a server somewhere. Does it matter? Not one bit!

Useless historical trivia like why we used x tech stack or why that engine sounds a little funny at 3250rpm are what provided value at the time, but times change and that’s okay.

I suspect no matter what career we pursued there would always be some part of it that seem frivolous to us.

The question is what do you want to do? What's important to you? All knowledge will be obsolete or obvious. The question is what do you want out of life?

I'm blessed to be doing fun stuff with amazing people. Definitely grateful for this amazing life even though it's short. We're all going to be dead much longer than we're going to be alive. Think about what is important to you and go after it.

It is one thing to do what I find happy, it is another thing to take care of others.

Just think how the US workforce would look if people could do what they love, versus working only because of the benefits.

I like and enjoy several programming languages, but I don't consider new languages and frameworks to be paradigm shifting. Still interesting though.

As someone else here mentioned, there are so many new tech niches being created; learn one or two.

Having work life balance is super important, but I find that skipping watching movies or TV a couple evenings a week gives me plenty of off-work time to learn new stuff. My wife accepts that a few evening a week I don't join her in watching a movie after dinner (we sit in the same room, and she puts on earphones).

I hold great hope that one day I'll be able to spend 5-10 hours a week learning.

Im interested in writing books but i cant seem to have enough time to make it a top priority for me

also how do you keep healthy at 70?

would you also say that in your case, tech is one of your primary hobbies?

also any advice on writing your first patent outside of your employer?

Re: health: I try to walk or hike five to 8 hours a week, if I have time. I am mostly a vegetarian. I try to get a lot of sleep. Also, my Dad is 100 and in good health so maybe I got lucky in the gene pool.

My hobbies are cooking, reading (I have been going nuts with Chinese sci-fi recently), and hiking.

Re patents: there is no way I would try for a patent on my own. My patents were all team efforts with the help of highly skilled corporate patent lawyers.

Sir, I think that's the most difficult part of being a worker as most can fulfill the technical requirements for a work with practice but investing in relationships is something I feel few can do successfully.

And I'm not one of them, I don't like talking and I've almost cut real time-communications completely. Due to which I refuse to indulge in great offers almost every week, As not many would entertain the idea of employing someone who communicates only via email.

Besides the pandemic induced remote work has made real time-communication via chat, video calls the de-facto mode for official communication. The stories of managers forcing employees to be online on teams during work hours and most of the day spent on useless online meeting-calls are stuffs of nightmare for me.

That said, I do take long periods off work which is when I do a lot of writing.

Thank you for making the world a better place.

If your work improves the productivity of 100+ other people, you're surely worth the price.

If your work saves $500k+ in annual costs, you're surely worth the price.

If hiring you cripples key competitors, you're surely worth the price.

If you can enable new revenues streams through knowledge that only you have, you're surely worth the price.

If hiring you does not increase productivity, reduce costs, fend off competition, or bring in more revenue, then you'll be fighting an uphill battle to justify that salary. But if you do, talk about it. People gossip and those companies who have the biggest multiplier to benefit off your work will be working hard to reach you.

In my opinion, remote or not is less important than you think. The key decisions will be based on whether hiring you at that price is a net positive for the company or not.

EDIT: And if you're outside of the US, set up a local LLC so that US-based companies can treat you like an independent contracting business. That'll make it much easier to hire you across borders. And at that price, you can surely afford the $1000 annually for a tax advisor retainer.

> If your work saves $500k+ in annual costs, you're surely worth the price.

This is only half of the story, though.

The real question is whether or not the company can accomplish the same thing at similar quality in a similar timeframe by hiring someone with a lower compensation request.

The value you produce for a company sets the ceiling for your compensation, but not the floor. The floor is set by market rate compensation that other developers are asking for the same job. Developers also tend to forget that the features they code and ship require input from a lot of other people along the way: Managers to manage it, QA to test it, security team to review it, devops to help monitor it, designers to design it, and so on. If you look at a single feature, estimate the revenue, and then assign 100% of that upside to your own work then an experienced hiring manager is just going to roll their eyes at the hubris.

What you really need is an ability to show that you, specifically, have a track record of accomplishing these things better, faster, and with less headaches than the other people applying for the job. A track record of professionalism, upward movement through notable companies, and references helps greatly.

The key isn’t just to show that you can do these things. It’s to show that the company will benefit significantly by hiring you, at a premium, relative to hiring any one of the tens or hundreds of average developers they can find who will do similar work for less. The ideal highly paid candidate is one who can show a track record of self-managing and big picture thinking as much as possible. If I’m paying someone a premium salary, I expect they will require less hands-on management time and will streamline their interactions with the rest of the team, saving us both time and money. Find a way to show that in the interview.

In short, they save me time and effort because I don't need to babysit them where cheaper and less experienced developers would need my planning and guidance.

If you join a company in a position to impact the productivity of the entire engineering org, then getting $250k base and full-time remote is reality.

Getting an IC position at those comp levels is far more difficult.

In my experience you shouldn't need to do this. In fact, I suspect doing this creates both a taxation and legal nightmare.

You should have a registered company (or any other trading entity) so you can bill as an independent contractor. However, it should be registered in your country of residence. Services like Deel exist specifically to facilitate this sort of arrangement, it's a breeze.

If you register a company in the US, you can't just arbitrarily transfer the money to yourself internationally. You'd need to pay yourself as an international independent contractor anyway. Except then you create legal issues, since there are likely legal issues with a company you run hiring another company you run. Additionally, by operating two companies, you're presumably filing two company tax returns, and paying yearly registration fees for two companies.

Have worked with both arrangements. Much easier to deal with a US based LLC than anything that is managing payroll. For the contractor the LLC arrangement may end up being better, too because at least in the US corporations pay tax in arrears, and individuals have money withheld in advance.

> Except then you create legal issues, since there are likely legal issues with a company you run hiring another company you run.

For a simple business, this is actually simple (at least the US part of it). Revenue - Cost yields a very modest profit in the US so there's probably not going to be a lot of tax liability. Not sure what the nightmare is. For the group I used, their books were super simple in the US, and equally simple at home.

However, you need to pay tax in your country of residence still. You also need to file with the IRS for the corp indicating zero profit. Plus US registration fees.

You also need to maintain a legal paper trail i.e. the money coming into the US corp needs to be paid out to an international company anyway.

Admittedly, we're based in Australia, and there are Australia-US tax treaties that make the whole arrangement a bit simpler.

I've worked for american startups, and the contract/invoicing was through them

remote.com is another such similar service.

By local, do you mean a US-based company (eg delaware), or local to where you are?

https://www.doola.com

Now, whether you can get around this by being fully remote and effectively saying "no, CaliCorp came to Nevada to do business with me, not the other way around" -- that's an interesting question.

The best advice to "what state should I form my LLC in?" is: - IF you live in the US: form in the state you live in (to avoid the foreign qualification in another state). - IF you don't live in the US: you can choose any state. The most popular states we see at doola are Delaware and Wyoming but Wyoming is the most popular due to the lower ongoing annual fees ($50 to WY vs $300 to DE) and Wyoming has demonstrated it's willingness to innovate when it comes to regulation (like the DAO LLC legislation passed on 7/1/21.)

For more on DAOs check out this blog post: https://www.doola.com/blog/what-is-a-dao-llc-your-complete-g...)

And for a complete answer to "Best state to form an LLC in" check out this blog post: https://www.doola.com/blog/what-is-the-best-state-to-form-my...

As long as your corporate residency is in check, you file annual reports and pay taxes you are 100% in the clear.

As to justifying the cost for our plan, if you factor in the cost of having a lawyer/CPA do your IRS filings (there can be heavy fines up to $25K for not filing or incorrectly filing form 5472 https://www.doola.com/blog/filing-requirements-for-foreign-o...) and certain CPAs can charge well upwards of $1000 for this filing alone + your annual report with the state + registered agent, US address, our entire perks and rewards database (https://www.doola.com/rewards), and access to us on a monthly bases for free tax consultations, LLC amendments etc, we've heard there is lots of value BUT we are always on the lookout to add more and as a little sneak peek, stay tuned for some bookkeeping, payroll + banking stuff we have in the works (note we can help with all three of these things now but we do it through partners, we have some ideas to more tightly integrate / embed this in to our offering to provide even more value and a better customer experience).

They take advantage of people that have an initial negative reaction to doing anything that sounds "legal-y" but really all they are doing is submitting 2 forms (certificate of organization with the state, application for EIN with IRS), giving you some template document for an operating agreement, and then once a year filing a one-page form to keep the company in good standing. If you're paying more than $100 for this, you're being taken for a ride.

EIN is free. You can do all above, in less than 30 minutes.

Not to defend, atlas, or this or any other service, but if they act as an agent or offer a virtual address, they may be why the cost is high. You do need a physical office address, even if it's a virtual office, for service, and paperwork.

You should be able to find the agency/agency of incorporation for the state - https://corp.delaware.gov/howtoform/ this is for Delaware, and right there #2 is registered agent.

Depending who you go to for virtual office, it may be $50-200/month.

Now, is it a business idea to offer this service yourself, rent a space, and also have an accountant, - yes.

--

But it's pretty cheap in general, other countries in the world, the cost of doing business for this meta/paperwork is double or triple.

In Indonesia, Doing a PT. PMA, sort of similar to a LLC, minimum setup cost is about $4000, but it nets you a visa.

Japan, requires $50,000 fiat, getting a hanko - and while it gets you a visa, is much more complicated.

We work with many different banking and payment partners (https://www.doola.com/rewards) and not only help folks go from 0 -> bank account but also keep the LLC compliant in the background (annual compliance, IRS tax filings, and more!)

edit: They also helped me open a Mercury bank account

1. https://stripe.com/atlas

2. https://mercury.com

To be clear, in the US, that would also limit dealing with any LLC who's beneficial ownership is sanctioned.

I've also talked to a bunch of people who have done contract work for US companies, and they all just have a business registered in their home country.

Noone wants to be subject to US taxation voluntarily.

This has to be one of the top ten best pieces of advice I have seen on HN.

I’m seeing two strategies that are friends are using to get to $250k+ right now and much more…

1. Several have left for left/right coast former startups companies that are publicly traded. Their base comp is $160-180k but they are also receiving a large pool of equity that vests in tranches of $75-100k a year.

2. With everything being remote, several senior engineer friends are working two jobs at the same time. Some are telling their employers and others are not.

Companies are desperate for senior engineers and many are unable to compete with the “we’re remote, have free beer and no vacation policy.”

Be accurate when it comes to the truth but not necessarily the facts.

In the US resume fraud is a thing. Some companies like telecoms selectively check resumes for accuracy. Resume fraud can be a fireable offense.

Omitting isn't the same. If you ask for references, I probably won't list people who will give me a bad reference, either.

In the US employment is at will and can be terminated for cause or no cause at all, no need to go to court. Omitting important facts about employment history can be in violation of company policies. Some telecoms ask you to explicitly submit information for "employment history verification" as a condition of employment.

You can easily lie by omission.. The root of it is deceitful intentions.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/at-will-e...

Anything (or nothing) in the US can be a fireable offense, so I wouldn't worry too much about what you put on a resume.

It can be tracked during your background check (using SSN). They will make you sign a form that you authorize them to perform such a check. Fail to sign the form - job offer is rescinded. Again, depends on employer.

Can you show me a background check service that offers a list of previous employers found by SSN? I did not know that exists. Unless they're consulting the IRS, I don't know how it could exist.

Background checks as I understand them, tend to check things like: credit score, contacting references (that you provide), criminal records etc. Primarily publicly available information.

You can check your own for free. Employers buy in bulk. Mine is completely accurate and includes full and accurate W2 info, i.e., salary and bonus (not stock grant) history to the dollar. Lying on a resume is generally a bad idea.

So it doesn't matter if it's fraud or the employer just doesn't like the employee. The implications are the same.

They get to do that too, but it means they can get taken to court because of it.

If someone’s the kind of person to work 2-full-time jobs simultaneously then I think they’re the kind of person who’s OK hiding some of the facts on their resume.

https://theworknumber.com/

You sign the contract and then never show up anymore?

My current company has interviewed 3 ppl in 6 months, lack of candidates. Someone good, but in the wrong timezone would be a compelling hire.

1. The position was actually recently filled. We likely will have another opening soon but the posting is not yet up (perhaps will be in a month or two).

2. It would be personally identifiable

Trying to even find examples of such job postings... I think there is a market fit for a new job search website, it should be far, far easier to find these kinds of jobs postings. I'm not sure how a person can find these things without a recruiter contacting them.

remoteworkhackernewstempemail@gmail.com

Feel free to email me, I would be happy to refer someone. The pay would be somewhere in the $140-$170k range. It is a good company, tiny team working in biotech and oncology. Feel free to email me and I can share details.

I have a side client that I met 11 years ago that I charge $150 per hour for remote development. They feel lucky to get that rate! Most people around us charge $200 per hour but since I work full time for someone else and can’t always be available I give them that discounted rate.

I don’t think they’re hard to find at all for consulting. Being a full time employee for $250k, I agree with you that those are more rare. In my experience you have to possess an in-demand specialty for that or get into management.

In my thirties I worked in many different countries for many different companies. Going new places with different cultures and being able to enjoy my time there was always the main driver: i.e. experiences & work/life balance over salary.

I would never trade these experiences for early financial independence at maybe age 50. I think there is a best before date for some experiences in life.

Maybe now it is possible for a select minority to have both. But most of of my friends in their 30s who work 'normal' jobs and have this early financial independence aim it doesn't hold true.

I.e. they will simply not have made these experiences when they reach that goal. Few have ever managed to leave their country of birth for anything else but holidays.

Some personal examples:

Living & working in Japan and thereby traveling the country on weekends or going to a cool club in Tokyo. When you're 35 vs when you're 55. Would you even do the latter at that age? Would it be the same?

Living and working in India and thereby going for a weekend hiking trip in the western Ghats were you're sleeping in an abandoned train station in the middle of the jungle. When you're 35 vs 55. Would you even do the latter at that age? Would it be the same?

Living and working in Sydney, going to a party of friends on a yacht on Friday after work and on a diving excursion to the Great Barrier Reef on Saturday morning when you're 35 vs 55. Would you even do the latter? Would it be the same? I was still hung over when I put on the diving gear but it was ok. With almost 55? You would simply have to skip the diving trip.

None of the above are made up. The pandemic-related lockdown made me realize what rich tapestry of experiences my past life choices have afforded me.

I have four people in my circle of friends who are actively working on early retirement. They do 'compensate' a lot on the weekends and when they go on holidays but that is not the same as the above.

But still pitiful and anti-health, on first principles. "Normal" though it may be in a workaholic and ideology-driven country like the U.S.

If it's a trade-off you choose to accept in exchange for early retirement, though, that's another matter.

Average professional job has about 8-9 paid holiday days, plus vacation time on top. My worst number of vacation days was 10 at my first job right out of college (they had to change after they struggled to attract employees) but every other job has been more than that.

But only accounting for 10 unpaid days per year would barely cover minimum federal holidays, so it’s not realistic. It’s equivalent to saying you’re never going to take time off unless the company is shut down for a federal holiday.

Of course good companies typically don't offer only the minimum.

In general you work 272 days a year and the rest is vacation and days off (this is also the reason we get a different amount of days off every year).

I have about 40 working days off, of which the company can choose the dates of 10.

People whose work is counted in days get special "extra vacation days to catch up" (this is more or less the real name), around 15 per year I think.

I love my current job, the people, the work, the challenges. I still need an occasional break, and I still like seeing different things.

The worst deal I would sign is a day rate (no logging hours) but fixed scope/duration is far better.

Hourly is a good choice for contracts where they are looking to buy labor. Which is a common model, because they often see contract labor as a substitute for employee labor.

The other models you mention can be much better, but also require the contractor to have both particular skills and enough relationship power to make them work. I have seen well-meaning developers absolutely get screwed on fixed scope contracts. And I've also seen less-well-meaning developers absolutely screw their clients on fixed price contracts. This is an area where blanket statements are harmful.

How do clients get screwed with fixed fee? Clients should pay for value, not hours sat in a chair.

Now that you have shipped the technically correct but not very useful thing, you collect the fee and then start accepting "change orders" at a punitive rate. At this point switching to another contractor will be even more risky and expensive, so they'll probably just suck it up. Or if you're really good at the game, you then negotiate a whole new fixed-fee contract with a higher price tag, and the deliver what they now think they want.

Bonus points if, as I've seen a big-name global contractor do, you deliver something not even barely working but possibly conforming to specs, and then just walk off the job. Even though the client has contractual obligations that they can't fulfill if the software doesn't work. At that point, the client realizes that a) they still need the software, b) the big-name contractor is the only who can deliver in time, and c) suing is risky, will take years, and anyway the big-name contractor can afford more lawyers. In this case the client signed another multi-million dollar contract with the big-name contractor, easily doubling the "fixed" fee. I lost touch with my contacts there before the thing ever worked, so I don't know how many times the big-name global contractor pulled this off on the same job.

Many large companies absolutely refuse agile delivery and require fixed scope and cost to get anything done.

Yes, waterfall is a bad choice. But no, clients aren't to blame for trusting a vendor to do right by them.

Why use quotation marks for something I didn't say? Nothing I've said means "fuck the clients" unless you are maliciously taking the worst possible interpretation.

A change that takes a massive amount of time and effort isn't something I should do for free.

I'm more than happy to build a backlog, refine it, and build until there's a RC... so few enterprise clients want to subscribe to the perceived risk, they'd rather spend months specifying everything upfront to make some senior person happy whether that delivery methodology has been proven to work or not.

I think the implication is that if one party is capturing the excess value produced disproportionately, that is screwing the other side. Particularly if this occurs because of information that is asymmetric in negotiation.

If my SAP implementation is going to save over 1 million per year in increased manufacturing efficiency, how should I price my services? The floor is set by the cheapest contractors in my market, the ceiling is how ever high I can negotiate.

The client will capture far more value than me over the lifetime of the product. I also don’t want to charge by the hour because there’s a conflict of interest and I want to detach hours worked from fees charged otherwise I’m just slaving away.

Hourly is for blue collar work, it’s not professional at my and your level.

Of course, there are a number of professions (law, accounting, etc.) where hourly charges are absolutely the norm. I've done some legal work and it was in some ways very nice to get paid whenever you were "on the clock."

Most of the work we did in general was for specifically scoped deliverables and we actually tried very hard not to do day rates, much less hourly rates, but this was one case it really wasn't avoidable--and, of course, was the way the white shoe law firm operated.

But yes, you did some law work and they want you to charge hourly rather than based on value.

I actually get six weeks vacation at my full time US job and I use part of that to work in my part time consulting job.

I have "3 weeks" but it's only 15 days.

I only give the discounted $150 per hour rate because I work full time at another company.

Since someone else brought up tax advantages - I don’t pay social security tax on my self employed income. Because I max it out on my full time job. I also have an Individual 401k plan that I can contribute 20% of my self employed income as the employer contribution. I can’t contribute my self employed income as the employee contribution though because I max that out at my full time job.

Having combination W2 and 1099 income gives a ton of tax benefits.

I imagine he has covered his business development expense by now.

This is how I do it too, by the way. Long term relationships with good companies. It's more like contracting, but without the 40h expectations of a contractor. ( Unless I feel like working 40 hours in a given week for some reason).

It sounds like he’s basically been employed by this one company for 11 years, albeit on a contract basis.

These positions exist, but they’re not all that common. Usually if a company is paying a single person a premium for many years they’ll just hire a full-time person and be done. The average freelance contract you find should not be assumed to be a decade-long opportunity.

That's not too surprising, and depending on what you are doing might be a great deal for everyone. Usually contracting work out is done at 1.7-2x the rate you'd pay an employee. This is because the the consultant has costs and risk that an employee does not. Costs like insurance, accounting, legal, personal benefits (i.e. savings to allow for vacations, healthcare), sales overhead (consultants have to keep finding new clients). Risks like contract cancellation and getting paid on time.

You said you found your $150/hr 11 years ago. How many other $150/hr clients have you met since then? What makes you say that it’s easy to find them?

I think it’s easy to say that consulting is easy when you’ve had a single, long-term client that pays well. In practice, it’s much harder to find these clients when starting from 0, unless you have such luck to find the dream client right out of the gate.

It’s easy to find clients - one of the best ways I did it was to go to computer stores and tell the salespeople if they got me a new client I would pay them $15 per hour in perpetuity for every hour I charged the client. I had 3 people that made more from me than their regular job.

Then there are chambers of commerce, LinkedIn messages and frankly just putting yourself out there. I met my long term side client studying for a certification while my oldest son was at a baseball clinic. My client saw the book I was reading and walked up to me and said, “Are you in IT?”

However if your goal is to work to replace your employment you should start out looking at the full picture, and pricing your work accordingly.

Nearly Every highly paid SWE in the US takes a significant amount of their pay in equity. As an anecdote - I take around 70% of my pay as equity and so does everyone I work with.

And in pre-IPO companies that’s the norm, but that’s beside the point.

I have never seen an offer from a public company that has a # of shares attached to it. Only a dollar amount. Then it converts based on market value at conversion time.

Edit: Not sure why people think otherwise. Maybe they are used to companies where you have to pay money to get those stocks? Big companies gives them to you for free, there is no exercise cost.

Say you are granted $600k that vests over 4 years. Well lucky you, the stock has 1.5x after year 1, doubled at year 2 and tripled by year 3! That means you've cumulatively vested $225k at year 1, $525k at year 2, and $975k at year 3. If you had cash only compensation, you would have received a total of $450k for that same time period.

That said, if I can choose between receiving $600k in cash today, and receiving $600k worth of public company stock today with restrictions on when I can sell it, then I will choose the cash, because it is worth AT LEAST AS MUCH as the public company stock (because, again, cash is freely exchangeable to public company stock without restrictions, and the opposite does not hold true in this hypothetical).

If you get $600k in cash, and you immediately exchange that into $600k in company stock (with no restrictions on when you can sell that stock), how could that possibly be a worse deal than getting $600k in company stock with restrictions on when you can sell?

1. A grant at $Xk, converted to shares on start date and vesting proportionally over 4 years

or...

2. A salary bump equivalent to the grant in (1), paid out ~bi-weekly at (1/104)*$Xk. 104 being the amount of bi-weekly pay periods to occur over a 4 year span.

> getting the $100k worth of stocks a year is at least as good as just getting the cash

I am arguing that getting $100k worth of cash is always at least as good as getting $100k worth of stocks. You're saying that it's not realistic to have the option to get cash instead of stocks, and that's true but it's besides the point.

It's a free call option on the stock. If it goes up you keep vesting at the new stock price which might be way above market rate for you position and if it goes down you get refreshers at the end of the year to bring you back to a market rate salary.

Let's say you know you will get a bonus that pays out end next year worth 10k. You can chose to receive 10k cash or 10k of google shares at today's prices. Most would trade the risk for potential upside.

You can also have your broker automatically sell.

It is pretty close to cash.

Sure, but specifically in the direction where cash is always at least as good as stock, not in the other direction.

Want to know how I know? Because I'm working at my 3rd company where my 6-figure stock grant is vesting at 7-figures due to appreciation.

I mean this scenario only happens at just about every startup if you read peoples experiences though I don't know if there are or if its possible to have a study done on this since the data is likely private.

Bottom line, with stock payment, you have a say in their ultimate value. Do good work, company value invreases, you enrich yourself.

Statistically speaking, they're correct.

Recently learned this from the excellent and very pithy Michael Batnick blog https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2020/09/10/most-stocks-suc... who was citing https://wpcarey.asu.edu/department-finance/faculty-research/...

If you can’t afford a single but if variance then I guess RSUs won’t make you happy. But for everyone else they work just fine (unless your company goes down in flames, in which case you have bigger problems and are probably job searching anyway)

The vesting schedule is where you need to be careful.