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Tread carefully, very carefully. The next level looks enticing when you are looking at it from the distance. But once you arrive, it can quickly turn into hell. I have been in both sub-contract situations and setup a consulting firm with team of engineers, etc. The "next level" means that you spend a lot of time selling, negotiating, billing, collecting monies, managing your team, etc. Once you get to the level of 5+ engineers you are running a business full-time and won't have time to do any technical work. What burnt me out was that clients are slow to pay, demand changes, nit pick, etc and I still had to pay my employees. With a payroll, insurance, biz costs of $120,000+ a month, things went south very fast. If you hire the best staff you can get, then you pay a lot. If you try to hire cheaper staff then you end up having to fix up their mistakes, shortcomings. These days, I sub-contract through companies that I have long-term experience and relationship with - they handle all the biz stuff and I can focus on the technical work. Their markup is worth it in terms of the work-life balance that I enjoy. |