| DEAR HACKER NEWS: 5 years ago, I was lucky enough to start a non-public SAAS for a large global company. Before I showed up, they were doing things manually, spending > hundreds of man hours per month and outsourcing totaling 200K USD/year. After working like crazy the first two years, pulling all-nighters and automating everything as much as possible, I've shrunk their entire workforce down to 1 person (myself) and after a lot of optimizations now I only work ~15 hours a month earning 100K USD/year. What they get is better quality than before, 10 times faster turnaround, and their budget slashed in half. Not to mention all their internal staff and facilities are free to work on other things. I tried approaching potential clients in their same niche market. But it seems like the other players don't specialize in this area as much as the biggest player. So I've concluded this is a deadend road for me, this task is at 100% optimization, effiency, and quality. But I find no use for this core technology in any other area except for this one company. So I'm sitting on my ass and earning a good yearly pay while doing nearly basically nothing. What worries me is what should I be doing now? P.S. No vacations to pat myself on the back, cuz basically it's a vacation at home for me everyday... and it's been like this for quite a while so I'm getting bored. I'm eager to work like the first two years and getting excited again... it's a rush for me to encounter a complex problem but to find a simple elegant solution. I find the process of writing code and learning new technologies enjoyable also. Especially when you're not sure and testing things out and suddenly IT WORKS! Sincerely,
DOING NOTHING AT HOME (for now) |