I am a professional web developer (edit: actually i'm selling myself short with this title as I speak multiple programming languages, do UI and a host of other things) and haven't had a fulltime job in over 4 years. I try to get remote contracts that last from 1 to 6 months (3 months is the norm) and then I spend a month or two off self educating and making video games (trying to transition to indie game dev). I'm exponentially happier than when I had to wake up and head to a 9 to 5 even though I have less money and live much more sparsely.
Edit: She's at my house more than her mother's because her mother works full time.
I'm guessing that the implication is that a kid makes things too difficult in terms of money or perhaps time.
On money: I just don't buy a lot of stuff.
On time: I'm awake by 4am and asleep by 9 or 10pm every night. I don't watch much TV / play many games (Netflix and bf4 / gta5 binges do happen though). I try to read myself to sleep each night. The vast majority of my free time is spent working on my games (of which I have yet to finish one, though I've only been going hard at the game development as of late... the last couple of years were spent more on learning and less on producing).
Not incompatible, but less compatible. When you don't have dependents you can afford quite a bit more risk which goes hand in hand with a less structured work life.
I can imagine it would be extremely stressful to lose an income stream with high expenses, but we have gone to great lengths to reduce (financial) risk. We live in an apartment on the lower level of our house and AirBnB the upstairs, which more than covers the mortgage. By contracting part-time at higher rates, I have more free time to devote to spending time with my son, which I think lowers other kinds of more meaningful, less quantifiable risk. If the contracts dry up, it's no big deal - we're saving heavily while the getting's good and I use the dry spells for professional development and to go do the things we enjoy.
I also have kids and a company but I can recognize the risk I am/was taking. Without kids I can live in 2 square meters, eat cheap, be healthy, etc. With kids I pay the best education, the best health plans, etc. Not the same.
Kids plural is much hard than kid singular as well I think.
My daughter is already in a much better place than i was at her age. I was homeschooled until college (yes, my family are a bunch of hicks) and I didn't have insurance until I was 22.
I was also raised in an incredibly restrictive religion which I have since abandoned for science and reality.
I'm not saying I don't want a better education and better insurance for my daughter than she currently has, but she's on a better path than I was on by a long shot (she gets As in science for starters... hell, she has a science class!).
Yeah, I certainly understand the drive to provide the "best X, Y, and Z" for kids, but I'm pretty satisfied with reducing expenses and providing "good enough X, Y, and Z" for my son in exchange for not being stressed out and being able to spend more high-quality time with him.
I feel the same way - and that's no judgement on the other end. If a person is capable of dealing with the high stress and feels that quality time is less important, or is able to maintain a good balance and can provide that quality time regardless of FT employment, then I think it's an excellent choice for their life. I don't think there's a one size fits all option for this sort of thing.
Mind if I ask where you get your contracts? Mine have almost all been recommendations from past clients / colleagues. I also joined gun.io a while back but haven't been able to drum up work from it.
The conflict for me is between providing the best opportunity and life for my children (by earning more money) and convincing your kids not to be a slave to money by example (by doing things for passion/love not money).
The problem for me was this - I was spending more time working in an office than with my daughter or on anything I actually wanted to achieve. For 10 years I worked for various companies as a full time employee. The last company I worked for broke me - I was there for 4 years, pulled a few all-nighters, got in at 8am, left at 6pm, worked through holidays, worked some weekends - the whole "good employee" gambit.
Meanwhile, the more money I made, the more I / my ex-wife spent. By the time I quit that job (and jobs in general) I had almost nothing to show for myself outside of knowledge and experience (which is very valuable in its own right of course).
I had very little in savings - and yes this was due to my own money management problems and not with being an employee (my daughter's old school was almost $20k per year, rent was the same), but that's irrelevant when life is staring you in the face.
Also, I had been bouncing between jobs and job titles for nearly a decade - this was prior to anyone really using the term "fullstack" to describe what I was doing (I can't even count the number of conversations I had where I was told to choose either frontend or backend work), and I was constantly struggling with management who wanted to pigeonhole me and push me towards a specific career path... that of me becoming a manager.
More of my time was wasted on office politics, water cooler talk and socializing at bars with my coworkers than I care to admit as well.
I came to realize that I hated the lifestyle associated with being a fulltime tech employee. I hated the free meals in the kitchen, random mid-afternoon beer breaks, and all the other "perks" that I now view as carrots on a stick.
As a contractor I can easily make $12k+ per month if I find the right client (I've done this multiple times). In the last 9 months I made $90k (reduced my prices in order to get clients easier)... but that's only if I'm working 8 hours a day with steady contracts which almost never happens (like I mentioned, I don't bother looking for steady contracts)... and these types of contracts are typically for very demanding clients so they're very stressful.
I value variety more than stability, and frankly I don't want to die with the realization that I only helped upper management and owners pursue their dreams while mine died a quiet death.
I too want my daughter to have the best opportunity and life possible, but I'm not sure how working for $110k per year for 10 hours a day in an office with people I hate is going to give her better opportunities than what I'm doing now. She's still getting an education, she has all the tech she could possibly want (minus a cellphone), and she's a smart kid. I would prefer to get her out of the public education system, but it actually seems to be working better for her than her private school did.
side note: i only went to college for 2 years and it was to get a graphic design degree. i taught myself how to program when i was 8 years old on qbasic - video games was always the motivating factor, I fell into webdev by mistake and then got good at it.
Comments
I am a professional web developer (edit: actually i'm selling myself short with this title as I speak multiple programming languages, do UI and a host of other things) and haven't had a fulltime job in over 4 years. I try to get remote contracts that last from 1 to 6 months (3 months is the norm) and then I spend a month or two off self educating and making video games (trying to transition to indie game dev). I'm exponentially happier than when I had to wake up and head to a 9 to 5 even though I have less money and live much more sparsely.
The challenging question is: do you have kids?
One kid, lives with my ex-wife.
Edit: She's at my house more than her mother's because her mother works full time.
I'm guessing that the implication is that a kid makes things too difficult in terms of money or perhaps time.
On money: I just don't buy a lot of stuff.
On time: I'm awake by 4am and asleep by 9 or 10pm every night. I don't watch much TV / play many games (Netflix and bf4 / gta5 binges do happen though). I try to read myself to sleep each night. The vast majority of my free time is spent working on my games (of which I have yet to finish one, though I've only been going hard at the game development as of late... the last couple of years were spent more on learning and less on producing).
FWIW, I do, and I do essentially the same thing as OP. Your comment implies that the two are incompatible: why do you think that is the case?
Not incompatible, but less compatible. When you don't have dependents you can afford quite a bit more risk which goes hand in hand with a less structured work life.
I can imagine it would be extremely stressful to lose an income stream with high expenses, but we have gone to great lengths to reduce (financial) risk. We live in an apartment on the lower level of our house and AirBnB the upstairs, which more than covers the mortgage. By contracting part-time at higher rates, I have more free time to devote to spending time with my son, which I think lowers other kinds of more meaningful, less quantifiable risk. If the contracts dry up, it's no big deal - we're saving heavily while the getting's good and I use the dry spells for professional development and to go do the things we enjoy.
I also have kids and a company but I can recognize the risk I am/was taking. Without kids I can live in 2 square meters, eat cheap, be healthy, etc. With kids I pay the best education, the best health plans, etc. Not the same.
Kids plural is much hard than kid singular as well I think.
My daughter is already in a much better place than i was at her age. I was homeschooled until college (yes, my family are a bunch of hicks) and I didn't have insurance until I was 22. I was also raised in an incredibly restrictive religion which I have since abandoned for science and reality.
I'm not saying I don't want a better education and better insurance for my daughter than she currently has, but she's on a better path than I was on by a long shot (she gets As in science for starters... hell, she has a science class!).
Yeah, I certainly understand the drive to provide the "best X, Y, and Z" for kids, but I'm pretty satisfied with reducing expenses and providing "good enough X, Y, and Z" for my son in exchange for not being stressed out and being able to spend more high-quality time with him.
I feel the same way - and that's no judgement on the other end. If a person is capable of dealing with the high stress and feels that quality time is less important, or is able to maintain a good balance and can provide that quality time regardless of FT employment, then I think it's an excellent choice for their life. I don't think there's a one size fits all option for this sort of thing.
Mind if I ask where you get your contracts? Mine have almost all been recommendations from past clients / colleagues. I also joined gun.io a while back but haven't been able to drum up work from it.
It's similar for me. Pretty much every quality contract I've had has come from friends or former colleagues.
The conflict for me is between providing the best opportunity and life for my children (by earning more money) and convincing your kids not to be a slave to money by example (by doing things for passion/love not money).
The problem for me was this - I was spending more time working in an office than with my daughter or on anything I actually wanted to achieve. For 10 years I worked for various companies as a full time employee. The last company I worked for broke me - I was there for 4 years, pulled a few all-nighters, got in at 8am, left at 6pm, worked through holidays, worked some weekends - the whole "good employee" gambit.
Meanwhile, the more money I made, the more I / my ex-wife spent. By the time I quit that job (and jobs in general) I had almost nothing to show for myself outside of knowledge and experience (which is very valuable in its own right of course). I had very little in savings - and yes this was due to my own money management problems and not with being an employee (my daughter's old school was almost $20k per year, rent was the same), but that's irrelevant when life is staring you in the face.
Also, I had been bouncing between jobs and job titles for nearly a decade - this was prior to anyone really using the term "fullstack" to describe what I was doing (I can't even count the number of conversations I had where I was told to choose either frontend or backend work), and I was constantly struggling with management who wanted to pigeonhole me and push me towards a specific career path... that of me becoming a manager. More of my time was wasted on office politics, water cooler talk and socializing at bars with my coworkers than I care to admit as well.
I came to realize that I hated the lifestyle associated with being a fulltime tech employee. I hated the free meals in the kitchen, random mid-afternoon beer breaks, and all the other "perks" that I now view as carrots on a stick.
As a contractor I can easily make $12k+ per month if I find the right client (I've done this multiple times). In the last 9 months I made $90k (reduced my prices in order to get clients easier)... but that's only if I'm working 8 hours a day with steady contracts which almost never happens (like I mentioned, I don't bother looking for steady contracts)... and these types of contracts are typically for very demanding clients so they're very stressful.
I value variety more than stability, and frankly I don't want to die with the realization that I only helped upper management and owners pursue their dreams while mine died a quiet death.
I too want my daughter to have the best opportunity and life possible, but I'm not sure how working for $110k per year for 10 hours a day in an office with people I hate is going to give her better opportunities than what I'm doing now. She's still getting an education, she has all the tech she could possibly want (minus a cellphone), and she's a smart kid. I would prefer to get her out of the public education system, but it actually seems to be working better for her than her private school did.
side note: i only went to college for 2 years and it was to get a graphic design degree. i taught myself how to program when i was 8 years old on qbasic - video games was always the motivating factor, I fell into webdev by mistake and then got good at it.