Ask HN: Tech people who are self employed. How do you do it?
6 throwaway_owe98 3 6/17/2025, 10:07:45 AM
I have realized that I love building software, and I suck at marketing. I'm trying to escape waged job, and switch to being self employed with more flexible times. I don't mind working long hours, but I have problem with 9-5, and being a wage worker.
However, as a techy, I can't seem to build useful things, or things that generate money.
Are there any tech oriented people who were able to quit wage work and turn into self employed? What did you do to achieve this?
Self-employment can mean selling time and expertise in the form of freelancing. Or it can mean building products you sell. It can lead to a combination of both -- building products and then selling time/expertise to customers. The biggest SAAS companies (think Oracle, Salesforce, etc.) make considerable revenue from services along with licensing their software.
I freelanced for a long time, selling expertise sometimes (not always) measured in time spent. A lot of successful freelancers bill in terms of deliverables, or on regular retainers, rather than charging per hour like a salaried job.
The main value derived from working for an employer, especially early in a career, comes from developing a professional network and accumulating business domain expertise. Building software to sell frequently fails because of poor understanding of the target business domain, which gets wrongly interpreted as a marketing problem. Businesses don't need software or code in the abstract -- they need and pay for solutions to business problems, something that adds value, decreases costs, improved efficiency, yields competitive advantage.
-> it's not marketing you suck at, it's building for someone else that you do
>However, as a techy, I can't seem to build useful things, or things that generate money.
-> build something for someone else, don't think about revenue. Even if you build for 1 person, something will click when you see they're using what you build and only then you will figure it out.
Think of it like this:
-> do you have someone close that calls you when they have a problem where you're the expert in(something computer i'm guessing) - if yes, do the same thing, but build something after you understood their pain, iterate until they cannot live without your solution(big/small whatever it is) - don't let them design their solution - you're the solution designer, you need to understand their pain.
Split any revenue with marketing but be sure to always retain control over your source code and development.