Decoupling time spent from value provided as a software developer
As software developers, we are uniquely positioned to create something and give it a life of its own, and then barely having to support it anymore. We can sit in our living rooms in our fancy fluffy pink loungewear (what, you don’t have that?!) and create products that touch and empower thousands of people. So why are so many of us content to clock in and sell our time, 19th century factory style?
I spoke of this already in My super secret spaghetti business plan: I don’t want to do this anymore. At least not 1:1, selling my time at an hourly rate. That way, I can only scale my business one way, which is by working more time. There are only so many hours a day to do this, and I’d also rather not die of exhaustion.
Couldn’t I just increase my hourly rate? Well, yes. To a certain point. But it becomes cultural and political quickly, and there’s just a ceiling for how much you can charge per hour to most businesses. If you’re lucky and skilled at negotiating, that ceiling can be quite high. But still, I believe there’s much more value to be unlocked if you don’t do it this way.
It’s not that I don’t like consulting, I do. “Consulting” is just a different way of saying that I help people using custom-built software, and I like helping people and I like building custom software, so, win-win. But I want to have my share of their business income for doing that, not just a fixed rate potentially much, much lower than that. If I can build something for them that increases their revenue by X, and I can charge X/10, they’ll walk away with roughly 9X/10, and both parties will still be as happy as two dogs conjuring delicious treats out of thin air.
