The tech I build and deploy for myself vs. employment in tech
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2023 3:38 pm
I build tech for myself all the time, like a hobby. When software development became my job I slowed down and even stopped building and publishing. I was paid a lot of money at work and used it to do other things.
Now that I have time but not much money again I build tech for myself again. Does the pattern repeat when I am well paid again? Hard to say. Another part of the pattern is freelancing before I get a regular full time W2 job. Why do I stop self-employment and revert back to regular employment? In terms of the Cashflow Quadrant I'm moving backwards. I was raised to believe that a cushy job was the end goal. Do that and get drunk every night like a king (does on TV or whatever).
In some ways employment with a fat salary is nice. It feels more stable than self-employment where you're finding your own leads and making your own deals, but it's an illusion. With restrictive clauses like Intellectual Property ownership of all creation that regularly step beyond the bounds of what's legal in the contract jurisdiction, and in many cases non-compete clauses that may or may not be enforceable depending on the state, there is no peace of mind in creating side projects. People do it, no doubt. I'm not the type of person who can just not worry about it.
Depending on how much leverage a person has they can get those clauses struct from an employment agreement before they sign it. More power to people who can do that. Depending on the type of job, they may not have that type of clause. A government job probably doesn't have those clauses, but then we're getting out of fat salary territory and losing that benefit. They pay is still fantastic compared to washing dishes, so that might be the sweet spot. I booked from my state government job when I was like 22 for something 'faster paced'... at the time it was still probably the right move, whereas if I landed a gig like that in a geography where I wanted to live I'd probably be pretty happy.
Anyway, my past moves of stepping from self-employment to employment were also probably good moves at the time, but today I'd probably make different moves. The big thing employment gives is skill transfer and to a lesser extent networking. If one lives in a geography with lots of career events like Silicon Valley / San Francisco then self-employment is extremely easy because the deal pipeline is so easily filled by going out a few nights per week. In the Midwest self-employment is a lot harder because there just isn't as much opportunity floating around, and in 2023 there is a lot more talent competing for the same opportunities.
Not building tech isn't an option for me. It's more like an art form than a vocation, although I've also proven I can follow directions and do things I don't want to by getting a degree from a pretty good school. As long as I feel like what I'm doing is an investment in myself or someone I care about I can put my emotions aside. My upbringing where I had to suppress various emotions during neglect and get fulfillment by building Lego and later tech is probably what so strongly programmed me to feel this way. Building platforms for connection and self-expression might not have been pure chance, given what I probably felt inside. Tech was a great enabler of Agape love at a distance... my friends were from all over the country and even world at times; of course I wanted to build platforms for us own and better connect.
So back to the Cashflow Quandrant, I'm a little more financially literate and aware of my options and the rules of the great game these days. In some ways my biological clock is ticking, impossible to say how much of a force that is on my thinking. But at this point I really see employment as the bottom of the ladder and I know I have experience higher up the ladder in self-employment. And in terms of employment options, there's a huge gap between the two paths that are available and make sense. a) service and labor, pays like $15-20/hr, I can scrape by living in my car but as soon as I get an apartment I'm pretty much a slave there; even more so if I get a place without room mates. b) tech, pays like $80/hr for a person without much leverage like myself and I become a lesser slave there in terms of intellectual property and freedom to build my own self-employment and business paths that I own free and clear.
Aside
I know these posts are kind of directionless. If I had an editor we could make them make more sense. I think what's going to happen is I'm going to keep posting to this forum and doing live streams / short videos whenever I can like I've been doing for a few years. When I get A.I. figured out or an editor, I can feed them all my content and we can produce coherent ideas that we post to a more polished website. Many people enjoy the raw stream of consciousness format as well, so I hope those people get something of value from my posts. But the people I really want to be working with appreciate much more concise and actionable nuggets or hard data. The idea is those can be extracted from these daily spooges over time. Thanks for reading.
Now that I have time but not much money again I build tech for myself again. Does the pattern repeat when I am well paid again? Hard to say. Another part of the pattern is freelancing before I get a regular full time W2 job. Why do I stop self-employment and revert back to regular employment? In terms of the Cashflow Quadrant I'm moving backwards. I was raised to believe that a cushy job was the end goal. Do that and get drunk every night like a king (does on TV or whatever).
In some ways employment with a fat salary is nice. It feels more stable than self-employment where you're finding your own leads and making your own deals, but it's an illusion. With restrictive clauses like Intellectual Property ownership of all creation that regularly step beyond the bounds of what's legal in the contract jurisdiction, and in many cases non-compete clauses that may or may not be enforceable depending on the state, there is no peace of mind in creating side projects. People do it, no doubt. I'm not the type of person who can just not worry about it.
Depending on how much leverage a person has they can get those clauses struct from an employment agreement before they sign it. More power to people who can do that. Depending on the type of job, they may not have that type of clause. A government job probably doesn't have those clauses, but then we're getting out of fat salary territory and losing that benefit. They pay is still fantastic compared to washing dishes, so that might be the sweet spot. I booked from my state government job when I was like 22 for something 'faster paced'... at the time it was still probably the right move, whereas if I landed a gig like that in a geography where I wanted to live I'd probably be pretty happy.
Anyway, my past moves of stepping from self-employment to employment were also probably good moves at the time, but today I'd probably make different moves. The big thing employment gives is skill transfer and to a lesser extent networking. If one lives in a geography with lots of career events like Silicon Valley / San Francisco then self-employment is extremely easy because the deal pipeline is so easily filled by going out a few nights per week. In the Midwest self-employment is a lot harder because there just isn't as much opportunity floating around, and in 2023 there is a lot more talent competing for the same opportunities.
Not building tech isn't an option for me. It's more like an art form than a vocation, although I've also proven I can follow directions and do things I don't want to by getting a degree from a pretty good school. As long as I feel like what I'm doing is an investment in myself or someone I care about I can put my emotions aside. My upbringing where I had to suppress various emotions during neglect and get fulfillment by building Lego and later tech is probably what so strongly programmed me to feel this way. Building platforms for connection and self-expression might not have been pure chance, given what I probably felt inside. Tech was a great enabler of Agape love at a distance... my friends were from all over the country and even world at times; of course I wanted to build platforms for us own and better connect.
So back to the Cashflow Quandrant, I'm a little more financially literate and aware of my options and the rules of the great game these days. In some ways my biological clock is ticking, impossible to say how much of a force that is on my thinking. But at this point I really see employment as the bottom of the ladder and I know I have experience higher up the ladder in self-employment. And in terms of employment options, there's a huge gap between the two paths that are available and make sense. a) service and labor, pays like $15-20/hr, I can scrape by living in my car but as soon as I get an apartment I'm pretty much a slave there; even more so if I get a place without room mates. b) tech, pays like $80/hr for a person without much leverage like myself and I become a lesser slave there in terms of intellectual property and freedom to build my own self-employment and business paths that I own free and clear.
Aside
I know these posts are kind of directionless. If I had an editor we could make them make more sense. I think what's going to happen is I'm going to keep posting to this forum and doing live streams / short videos whenever I can like I've been doing for a few years. When I get A.I. figured out or an editor, I can feed them all my content and we can produce coherent ideas that we post to a more polished website. Many people enjoy the raw stream of consciousness format as well, so I hope those people get something of value from my posts. But the people I really want to be working with appreciate much more concise and actionable nuggets or hard data. The idea is those can be extracted from these daily spooges over time. Thanks for reading.