Did we read the same Reddit thread? Most of the respondents making good money didn’t seem to be knowledge workers, but ordinary small business owners.

I don’t envy anyone running a small HVAC installation company or whatever. The work is boring, the paperwork mindnumbing, the hours often grueling. When one of your three employees gets sick or goes on a drinking binge, you’re the one who has to figure it out.

If I had to choose, I’d rather work as a librarian even for 0.1x the salary. But of course we’re very lucky that there are so many interesting and well-paid knowledge jobs today.

I have zero ability and interest in managing client out reach and lead generation. As an independent shop, I would make close to $0/mo.

I love my job as it allows me to solve puzzles and get paid for them. It’s worth letting someone else take a cut to bring me the puzzles so I can focus on puzzle solving.

Because the hardest part is finding clients.

I could say good buy to my (comparatively) low guaranteed salary to "setup my own shop", but my current employer wouldn't take me as consultant since we have a rule about size of companies we deal with. So I would have to start looking for new client(s) from scratch without any guarantee I will find even one.

I think this is it. Surely almost everyone aspires to do it at some point, but finding and winning the right type of customers is very difficult.

And to note, by the time you're well versed enough to set up shot you likely have life obligations that prevent you from living for no income for a few months to kick the tires.

And also there's a big difference between doing and making money. Not everyone knows how to sell themselves. I certainly don't.

You are getting an awful amount of downvotes for a would be hackers and painters forum. Your statement is true, but crabs would rather you get back in the bucket.

The only was that statement is true is if you believe the entire success of the tech industry is the code.

Nothing else in the business - marketing, client relations, PR, finance, business strategy, etc.

That’s a pretty absurd assumption.

Yes, I'm wondering. I thought HN was a startup forum.

If only YC members (or hopefuls) frequented these forums this would be a dead place

You don't have to be a YC member, but I'd go so far as saying HN is startup-hostile nowadays. Remember the indie hacker making $45k a month recently getting torn down for his work?

Too many fixed mindset types around here, thinking that chasing jira tickets is the type of problem solving that matters or that plumbing apis is puzzle solving. Forum might just as well replace hacker with worker and call it worker news. The only types of problems some want solving is how to increase taxes on those that solve actual problems and how to release yet another ai to leech off of other people's hard work. All while being ordered to return to offices like herds to a barn. Nothing hacky about it frankly.

100%. Mostly wagies crunching through JIRA tickets and earning a comfy enough salary with strong opinions on how business works, having never done anything close to it.

Out of curiosity what problems are you solving?

HN is not only not a forum - it is a news aggregator, but also not only about startups

It is mostly about interesting things with emphasis on tech and business

It serves as ad place for jobs in yc startups

Most are comfy employees I'd say from the general vibe of the comments.

It's European time currently. So, crabs time.

It's mostly my fellow Germans, being honest.

The HN community hasn't been about startups in a looong time.

That's right. Large majority of people on here (and especially reddit CS/programming subreddits) are employees and simply comfy in their corporate job.

It's not even that most won't start their own shop (which is perfectly do-able), it's also that they will actively attack even the mere notion of it.

And its usually using "isms" like "its hard to get clients", "its risky", "multiple clients mean multiple bosses" and "90% of businesses fail in the first 5 years" and other nonsense.

Edit: then the economy takes a turn, mass tech layoffs happen and it makes some people think.