Thought your comment on helicopter rides to the summit of Everest was interesting so I looked it up, only 1 person has ever achieved it (twice) and set the world record in doing so:
At almost 1ghz slower, 2 less usb-c ports, no gpu, 1600mhz vs 2133mhz ram and only available in silver. They've gimped the non touchbar version on purpose so those of us that want a top spec MacBook have no choice but to go with it.
What do you do with the other 9 months of the year? side projects? travel? Id be interested to hear how your lifestyle is with all the free time.
I've considered this approach myself too but more 6 months on, 6 months off. Scala in particular seems to pay extremely well (£600-£650 /day) so easy to make the money to live a comfortable lifestyle in 3 or 6 months per year. I think other dev contracts are usually around £450 in London which is still more than enough.
Id love a permanent 2-3 day a week job too for work/life balance but those seem non existent for devs unfortunately.
Hi Matthew, my rate is £400 a day, I'm a tech writer. Most contract developers I know are on a lot more than that. Double mostly. They do Java/Scala/Perl. That is probably just the niche I have been in though. My very first contract wasn't particularly high £260 a day, but you get known and you can charge more once you've got people who will vouch for you.
With regards the 9 months. I write code (Python), read (a lot), watch movies, relax, listen to music. The point for me is I have to do this. Many years ago (I'm 55 now) I got very, very depressed and considered suicide. I was totally and utterly burnt out due to never ending work.
I spend quite a lot of time in Philippines and Thailand - mostly for the diving. My partner and I are keen divers (she's a nurse - but only does contract work now too). I also like photography, hiking, camping, biking and so on. I am studying for mountain leader exams.
I read Hacker News too but rarely comment. Just today and yesterday. Probably today will be the last day!
p.s. I used to work with a guy who negotiated a four day week. He is still doing that to date as far as I know. You might be able to negotiate fewer days but it's not easy.
I'm so glad you posted. I'm a 57-year-old tech writer (UK-based) who followed a similar pattern to you for 10 years.
Then I got sick of static daily rates and now work as a permie (2 days in Birmingham, 3 days from home) for a US based tech company.
My first contract rate in 2004 was £350 a day, and now I'd probably struggle to make that again. Maybe £400, but above that, I'd need some special USPs. And from where I live, it's £50 a day to get to London, not to mention the extra 4 hour journey times!
Great to know you've found a perfect formula!
PS: Topping was also on my agenda until I reached 50.
I've worked a 6 month contract before, 3 months would have been ideal I think as after that it was starting to drag on a bit but I don't see many contracts that short. Unfortunately the company didn't really utilise my time very well until I was almost at the end of the contract. Id rather hit the ground running but I guess each contract varies.
It's hard to know what we'd all do with so much free time and I think some people would be a bit lost, but it certainly sounds like you make the most of it and live a nice lifestyle. Particularly all the outdoor activities is something id like to spend more time on myself.
I’ve been doing remote consulting for the past three years - product design & development - but over the last several months I decided to bump up my work rate from the usual 2-3 days per week I had. Realizing now that I prefered the more leisurely schedule I had before.
I’ve been to the Philippines a few times and strongly considering working from there next year to avoid Canadian Winter for at least a few months of my life. Just good to hear more references about expat life there. :)
haha - I'm more like Mr. Shoestring Mustache. MMM has several hundred thousand a year coming in from his blog alone. He also had I think a million bucks in the bank before he retired. He also has a couple of rental properties I believe. I don't have anything like that.
I live in UK so healthcare is free here. Many years ago I had some mental health problems and the NHS here literally saved my life. I am so grateful for that. I also have a private medical plan that covers myself and my partner but it only costs about £1k a year, and I only have that because it can potentially reduce waiting times. I am considering just doing without it though.
> I also have a private medical plan that covers myself and my partner but it only costs about £1k a year
I know you pay for it in other taxes and what not, but... for comparison, we're paying more than half that per month, and it doesn't cover any expenses until we spend $10k in a year. We are in a really crazy situation here.
What about preexisting conditions? Would anything prevent someone who was just diagnosed with cancer (but not bed ridden) from migrating to the UK, paying this $300/year, and receiving full coverage?
They call this "health tourism" and its a fairly regular subject that comes up whenever NHS budgets are discussed, in reality though I believe latest figures put it at about £300m /year (0.3% of the NHS budget).
I don't know how easy it is to do what you describe but some people evidently do it. I imagine if you're an EU citizen you can come right in but if you're non EU you might have some more difficulty.
I've got a 2.5 day a week job as a developer in the south east of the UK, but got it by originally working there full-time and then later applying for flexible working (I have kids so had a legal right to request flexible working, although employers are allowed to turn down such requests on certain grounds). I do suspect that word of mouth would be the only way to get such a job from scratch.
From product launch. The point is to launch something that you can imagine selling $10k/month; that you have some kind of plan how to get to that level of sales; and that you'll hold yourself accountable after three months if it fails (and figure out what to do next, not just stick to the thing that wasn't working).
$10k MMR sounds like a lot of money, but it is not. Most people who have never run a business fail to realize how much overhead there is - costs that the business has to pay that isn't labor or obvious materials. If you make a widget from iron it is easy to calculate the cost of the iron in the widget. Did you ever consider how much toilet bowl cleaner is in each widget though, what about your time to clean the toilet? (once you are making more money you pay someone else to clean the toilet, but you still have to account for your time checking that they actually clean it) $10k MMR sounds like a lot, but after overhead I would expect it would give you the equivalent of $50k/year in salary - I think most people reading this make more than that.
To answer your question: The day all your other investment dries up in the worst case. If you have no job or savings you can probably live 3 months on things like your credit cards and not paying the landlord - after those 3 months you better have enough income to start paying your personal debt. That is you need to send the landlord a check for at least 1.5 months rent and with a promise to pay the rest off soon. Likewise you need to be able to buy your groceries with cash and pay down the credit card dept you ran up. It should go without saying that in those 3 months your personal bills should be just enough to stay alive.
Note that the above is the worse case. If you are in month two of the above situation and realize that you won't make the $10kMMR number you should cut your losses, declare bankruptcy and find a day job.
You probably have some savings to live off of though. This means that you have some flexibility. If you are in month 2 and realize you won't make the 10kMMM you can decide if you cut your losses now or not. You have an idea of what your overhead is, who your real competition is and what your leads are (and thus likely future MMR - though don't get over optimistic), if you think things will get better continue, if not cut your losses: you can probably sell to a competitor for a small price and make everyone happy.
If you have investors who are any good at all they have considered your business plan. Sometimes they will insist on the 10kMMR or they will exit, other times they will agree to fund a plan that won't make money for months - but the plan covers that and you have enough income from the investors to live.
There are always other considerations to. 10kMMR is a good number, but you have to figure out how it applies. If your target market is snow plows you should expect your entire income to come during the 3 winter months, and 0 the rest of the year. Thus in winter your MMR needs to be at least 40kMMR, and you need a savings plan of some sort to get through summer.
Don't forget that you can sometimes moonlight. Maybe your ideal is only worth $2kMMR. If you can support this business working only 8 hours a month you keep (or find) a day job for most of your income. That extra 8 hours a month works out to $100/hour after overhead. This again changes the calculations.
When you say for clientside you would want to stick to the full Visual Studio IDE, do you mean web clientside or clientside as in traditional desktop apps?
If you did mean web clientside could you expand on that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Delsalle