[wooyi]

I was part of a mobile dev boutique "shop" for a few years. We had maybe 10 projects a year, and the majority of the projects were your run of the mill projects (ie, me-too projects, simple apps,..etc) . It became just like any other job except that you had 10 bosses instead of 1. Everyone's experience is different. But my takeaway was that it's better to define your own passion projects and make it work than to be someone else's mercenary.

[jakejake]

I agree with you which is why I stopped consulting after five years. I started to feel like I couldn't focus on anything because I always had 5-6 projects going on at once.

Another thing is that you really begin to feel the pressure of having all time on the computer being billable time - in order to pay your bills (or in my case meet payroll for employees). So that leads to not being able to do much exploration of new technologies. For example I would stress out if spending a week learning something new because that would be a week that I would have no revenue.

[gurkendoktor]

> But my takeaway was that it's better to define your own passion projects and make it work than to be someone else's mercenary.

That's the beauty of being able to set your own price! You can increase your hourly rate/project estimates until some clients will decline, and then spend the free time to work on your own project. It took me some getting used to it, though, because losing out on a project feels like a defeat, even when it isn't.

[semi-extrinsic]

I like how you say "boutique shop", that has to be one of the most american redundantisms I've seen in a while.