Also, part of working smart is owning meaningful equity in a business likely to generate meaningful returns. Startups are high risk, high reward, and if the GP doesn't care for how their luck has played out at startups, there are many other lower-risk opportunities to build equity: writing books, teaching, consulting, a bootstrapped SAAS app... and plenty more outside of the software engineering landscape.
Most books don't pan out and if I don't turn myself into a marketing personality good luck. I say this as someone who's marketed books professionally as a web product across all major publishing platforms. I'm a nobody and prefer to focus on my engineering.
> teaching
Sure - because there's tons of money in teaching? Uhhh...?
> consulting
I've made a killing here and am likely going into my next 1099 tomorrow so yea. No arguments here. It DOES take a solid network though to do consulting so if you're not sociable you're likely screwed in this arena. I have two sales people who are my guardian angels hawking my services for top-dollar so I'm incredibly blessed in this department.
> bootstrapped SAAS app
Currently working out licensing with two corps on one of these myself as well. Finding the foot in the door for industry, then collecting user data on problems to solve, then pushing through solving them, and then gambling on the problem you solved is INCREDIBLY risky.
Plus - if you're the startup engineer things fall near-100% on your shoulders unless you're willing to play the outsourcing game. Which I have and my god that's a FT job itself even for the most menial of applications.
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All-in-all I am actually the guy who pulled myself up by the bootstraps to probably 10x what my parents made in small town Iowa. So yea. But all of my original comment absolutely stands. It was hell on earth and I worked my entire 20's away hustling my BUTT off to get out of the trailer park and out to California.
I still absolutely posit that my story of "just pull yourself up by the bootstraps" is the exception and shouldn't be sold as "anyone can do this if they work hard enough!!!" Most people can't.
Your list makes it seem like those things are easy - and as someone who has experience in them (minus teaching)... it absolutely isn't. Those are all serious endeavors that take time, commitment, failure, getting back on the horse, and ultimately years of pursuit/work.
