Crossroads of seven roads, or the choice of the path for the programmer

Very often you can hear a few typical statements.
- I do not want to work for my uncle, so I left for freelancing.
- I do not want to work for my uncle, I go to my business. Gone for the future share in a startup.
- Opened his own business.

In fact, each of the options has its pros and cons, and you need to clearly understand why you are making a choice.

I worked as a freelance programmer and was very successful, I had my own studio, I started a number of startups and as a result I now work as a project manager. I want to share the experience for those programmers who have not tried it yet, and to reveal other aspects of the issue than programming. I do not claim for universality, IMHO only.

If you find yourself - share in the comments!

Freelance

pros
- work from home, from any place. geo-independence
- your income depends only on you, and there may be many times more salary work in the office
- you can choose your customers. as a matter of fact, now you have “uncle” not one, but many, and you can choose them
- free choice of schedule, rest, vacation yourself
')
Minuses
- up to 80% of the time it takes to communicate with the client and the performers (designers, layout designers)
- Often money orders are not so interesting, and they pay very little for interesting tasks (or even do projects for yourself)
- programming is not enough, mostly organizational issues. if you want to earn a lot, from $ 3,000 per month, you have to create your team. either be like a designer and take $ 1,000 for each sneeze, but it’s hard to earn such authority and find customers
- accounting, taxes, contracts - everything is boring for you, even with powerful automation, like My business (in my time in 2007-2008 this was not)

I initially freelance by acquaintances, then on sites and for money I got on the Weblancer in the top five, and according to reviews I gained only dozens. Always did a project to work out of the box. Basically, all sorts of directories, directories, admin panel, that is, custom programming (for km and shopping sites are not taken, because it is not interesting, although monetary). He also got partners and major customers dropped them for 10%, for example, they even tried to buy an order for sape.ru clone.

Own studio

pros
- much money
- income can come in while you rest and watch a movie

Minuses
- it is very difficult to create a steady stream of customers
- cash orders are almost always uninteresting
- organizational work eats 99% of the time
- all questions of the business - a set, control, dismissals, competitors, the market. about one management perfectly written "13 reasons not to be a manager"

We did sites on MODx, on a number of other engines. There was a designer, coder, copywriter, someone on the salary, someone piecework. For half a year they worked powerfully, then I closed the shop. It became uninteresting.
And it was created after the flow of orders to my sites, when I was just a programmer, and did not pull simple business cards.

Your startup for a share

pros
- interesting job
- all buns "work in the garage" - the atmosphere, coding for days

Minuses
- money is tight
- a lot of risks: the startup does not take off and everything is new. or partners throw, etc.

He made different startups. City portal with the integration of forums, maps, directory (I think many people go through this). Unique business directory on B2B sites with complex search. Online store of knives. Its admin engine and CMS, the framework that was sold. And of course, sites for people with adsensom on them :)

Project Manager

pros
- Much money

Minuses
- work on "uncle"
- the same organizational work, but to a lesser extent

Now I work in a large office, currently I manage five development groups. In fact, I lead the department of internal automation. It looks like a business incubator, we make startups for a ready-made audience (employees of the company), interesting and new areas, with all questions such as salary, design, etc., recruiting provided by the company. Very inspiring, I wrote an article recently.

Conclusion

You need to understand what you want.
Key in business, whether it is a startup, freelance or studio - customer service. And in programming - creating code for the necessary tasks . That is, in the first case you will have business tasks, and the quality of the code will not be the first (rarely even the second). And in the second case, what I loved to program for is the main one, and nothing prevents you from cutting the perfect OOP code. Besides the manager, haha ​​:)

And if you, like me, love to serve customers - then choose a different path, rather than being a performer. Do not want to do extra work - become an expert in programming.

If you are satisfied with the work of an employee, but simply do not have enough money or conditions - it is not a fact that you need to become a freelancer. Crank up professionalism - and go abroad. From $ 120,000 earn good ordinary developers in the world's largest offices.

If you want a steady income - open a reliable in terms of income outsourcing office and a studio for the production of sites. And programming of complex things, and sites will be needed for a long time.

If you want to take risks and are not afraid to start a new project every six months, take hold of a startup.

Question to experienced programmers, share in the comments, did you find yourself? How did you choose to choose a case like? How did you manage to combine interesting work and good income?