[contingencies]

Nothing protects you from management except running your own company, and generally the further you are from business the less value you can obtain. The best you can hope for as an employee is a good manager to shield you from hassle. I have friends who stuck with low level work and they are either aging in security jobs that ceased to stimulate them or relegated to a shifting sands array of temporary employers with minimal financial security.

[nicoburns]

> Nothing protects you from management except running your own company

And then you're at the mercy of your customers!

[adzicg]

> And then you're at the mercy of your customers!

Not necessarily. With consumer-facing products, especially if they're mass market and the price of a single subscription is low, the customers can't make any big demands (in fact, they can, but you can safely ignore them).

I'm part of a very small team that has a reasonably successful SaaS product aimed directly at consumers. We intentionally priced it very low so we can stay in control of the product, and not be at the mercy of our customers.