[dieselgate]

Strictly speaking about software/coding businesses all the people I know who make it work are contract devs. The most stable way is to just get an x-month contract and then rinse and repeat as needed.

From people I've spoken to/worked with who do this they mention a pay increase due to handling their own insurance etc.

Even if you "work for yourself" you still will have a "client" - the client can just be another Company.

Of course there's the "product path" you mentioned but that's less reliable and consistent. Feel free to ask more questions if interested, this is a good topic for HN and a lot of people seem interested in the topic (myself included)

[freelancelot]

Thank you confirming my suspicions. The whole startup culture seems very product focused, but it's really hard to find more information about the self-employed contractor style of work.

As a newbie to this world, the biggest questions I have are:

- how do you seek out new clients, are there job boards/discussion boards for these types of jobs? Or perhaps you just reach out to companies that seem to be doing interesting work?

- how do you prove to them that you can earn their contract?

- how do you even begin to match the project requirements and what you can bring to the table, and if needed, bring / integrate an additional member/team/contractor? Is that handled by the project manager at the company?

I have many questions, but basically, if you know a good place to get a primer on this, please share! Thank you.