[DominikR]

I'm doing exactly that, I'm self employed and take care of everything myself or at least I have someone taking care of it in my place.

Of course I charge much more than a normal employee would, I make around 20k Euros per month. (pre-tax)

Sounds like a lot - almost to the point where I sometimes feel like I have to excuse myself for it, but you also have to take into account that I have 10 years of all-round experience and I'm working harder and more focussed than most normal employees and spend a lot of time in improving my skill set in my spare time.

Not only the higher income is a good reason to be self employed, the other thing is that once you work remotely for someone, it's less likely that you will count a lot for that company.

So by letting that company employ you, you basically take a lower pay with less job security while making everything more complicated for that company. I'd rater be self employed and have a much higher than usual pay that offsets the lower job security.

[charlesdm]

And right you are. Once you account for all the taxes and expenses that you have to pay yourself, you lose a significant amount of money each month.

Most people just read the 20k number, and think, "he's making 20k a month!!!1111".

[DominikR]

Yes, I pay a 50% tax here. Additionally one has to consider that you might have some down time between two projects where you don't have any income.

But still I'd encourage anyone interested to try. You'll not just improve your tech skill set, but if you make it work you'll also learn how to sell and to negotiate, which is a generally helpful skill to have in all areas of life.

[charlesdm]

Where are you based?

[danmaz74]

Thanks for the very interesting data point. If you can share this, may I ask you how many hours you need to work per week to get that amount?

[kyriakos]

out of curiosity what kind of jobs you take up that pay off so much?

[DominikR]

Native mobile development for big businesses like banks or telcos. No startups as they often have lower budgets.

But I know much more self employed professionals working on Java Web backends for big companies that earn equal or much more than I do.

[vfc1]

But that's not remote, right?

[DominikR]

Depends on the project. For banks it's less likely that you'll be able to do something remote, but for telcos it's less of a problem as they rely less on security by obscurity and both use and give back to Open Source projects a lot.

Also the financial sector doesn't consist only of banks, there are many well funded areas one could work for remotely.