[eldavido]

Current job: leading four-person, client-focused software development/design company. I'm the "managing partner" and spend ~80% of my time writing code/technical architecture and 20% on personnel/payroll/admin/marketing/etc.

I'm trying to take the best parts of a law firm (explicit focus on mentorship, got-your-back partnership mentality, treating people like skilled, autonomous professionals, good pay) and apply it to software dev. I expect a lot out of people but give them the tools and space necessary to get things done. We're going to build a product in 2016.

I have about 8 yrs experience as a working dev. Last job was at a startup that grew explosively but had massive tech/architecture problems of its own making. I wore a lot of hats at this place over 3 yrs including dev, ops eng/head of ops, and some product management on our API (we were a developer tools company) but ultimately got sick of shoveling shit behind repeated poor decisions made over many years. I was a founder before that for a company that had a small acquisition, and before that I worked at Microsoft for a while.

Favorite kinda depends on what you value. I get the most professional satisfaction out of my current job; we do things at a reasonable, sustainable pace, and don't have "crunch time". OTOH there's a thrill at "up and to the right" you get in venture tech that's hard to replicate. You'll probably make the most money in bigco tech, but if you save and invest well in your 20s, you can start to replace a lot of wage income with investment income pretty rapidly in your 30s.

[pinkunicorn]

Curious, what % of time do you spend for admin/payroll/personnel? Would something like Zenefits/Gusto reduce the time?

[eldavido]

I spend approximately 5 minutes per month on payroll - Gusto user (former Microsoft officemate/friend is eng hire #2 there). There may be better tools than Gusto, but it's good enough that I don't think about it.

Another point: running any kind of client service business, to a first approximation, is 100% about getting the right kind of clients. I spent a while a few years ago doing "contracting" for bottom-of-the-barrel Craigslist wannabes and other jokers and it was horrible. Going from being a pure dev employee to contracting because you 'hate office politics' is a route to failure; it requires a lot more planning, especially over cashflow, and client relationships.