| I'm guessing "do my own thing" looks something like: -- Control my own schedule -- Control my financial success So maybe you think you'll become an entrepreneur. As a developer, apart from any other skills, one really only knows how to make things for other developers. So then you think maybe you either need to find a bright idea or you need to partner with someone with a bright idea. One of these involves giving up control, and the other one involves becoming something you aren't at the moment, IE: an expert in something else. So maybe you think you'll contract / be a consultant. But that also involves giving up control and can devolve into being an employee by a different name. You might even come to the conclusion at some point that you really like developing things... but not for other people. At which point you have to ask yourself whether software is really the career for you. So to go back to your original question: There are two ways to be independent as a developer: -- Be a hobbyist who builds things for themself. -- Be an entrepreneur with a product that you control yourself. |