It's been about two years since I became a full-time solopreneur. I’ve done several things: consulting (mostly), teaching and building products.
Recently, I’ve taken a lot of time off and had a chance to reflect. Below you can find a series of observations about my goals and values, most importantly, how they changed.
And I’m writing it for a reason: things can change drastically when you become independent, so if this is something you want to do in the future, you may need to adjust your current goals and plan ahead.
Before, I dreamed about building and working with a great technical team1. Nowadays, I think about what I can build solo2.
Before, I dreamed about working in a top-tier Big Tech company. Nowadays, I don’t want to be employed at all. The idea of working for someone seems irrational to me.
Before, I could spend months preparing for interviews. Nowadays, I don’t need to and don’t want to prove anything. The inbound clients I get don’t question my skills or expertise.
Before, I could move for the right opportunity. When I interviewed at Netflix, I seriously considered moving to the Bay Area. Nowadays, I’m okay with travelling if the client needs me to, but I’m not going to leave Vancouver (or Canada) anytime soon.
Before, I worked 9 to 5, sometimes evenings and weekends. I worked with the same intensity year-round (aside from occasional deadlines when things got even more intense). I designed my year around work; took 3-4 weeks of vacation. Nowadays, I choose how much to work, and I embrace seasonality. I worked ~3 days a week during the summer. I also worked ~6 days a week for a few weeks in April. And my workdays don’t always mean 7-8 hours staring at a screen. I took almost a month off during August/September. Your pace of work can be different!
Before, I was frequently on the on-call rotation. I was proud of it: I truly believe that engineers must be responsible for running their software end-to-end. Nowadays, I still enjoy debugging and performance investigations, but I’m no longer required to be ready to wake up at 3am to fix something.
Before, my income was mostly the same throughout the year. Sometimes I had the opportunity to get a bonus or a raise. Stocks (via RSUs) could grow (and they could also fall). But all these are mostly out of your control3. Nowadays, my income has no ceiling. And once I learned about value pricing and retainers, my income doesn’t necessarily depend on the hours spent. There is a correlation, but it’s not linear.
Before, I could spend some of the days mostly in meetings, especially when working in larger orgs. This is an important alignment tool. I also enjoyed mentoring a lot. Finally, many teams use meetings for different rituals. Nowadays, a week with 1-2 meetings is considered a busy week to me. The ability to focus and work for hours without interruptions is very precious to me.
Here’s what I’m trying to say: the professional goals and values that you have when you’re employed will likely change when you become independent. So, for example, maybe you shouldn’t spend months grinding LeetCode, cause this skill won’t be useful in the future.
Which I believe I’ve done.
In a good way! I’m not antisocial. I just consider working solo as a way of doing things for now.
You could work really hard, but a raise/promotion could be limited by many factors, e.g. budgeting.