If you’re solely in the defense contracting space for the money, there are easier paths to take.
1. Get job at a defense contractor, get a high level clearance
2. Be invaluable to your government client. Tech skills are good but also having a good relationship with the client and having an eye for business needs is even better. The bar is low here.
3. Once you’re invaluable become an independent sub-contractor. Can flip your job or find another gig and collect most of the bill rate. If you make 150k you could bill between between 120 and 180 per hour likely.
4. Get your prime contractor to sponsor your company for a facility clearance.
5. As vacancies on the contract come up, hire people in your network. On a straight time and material contract you can probably make around $40k-$60k per person.
6. When you have a big enough company you can bid on smaller contracts and become a prime.
If you’re interested I wrote a book on the first phase of this plan (becoming an independent contractor). Currently have 6 employees and a business partner. Working on growing it so I don’t have to billable work anymore.
I think the easier route has changed now. This advice was definitely true 10-15 years back, but I think now the entire sector is open to startups.
I would advise that startups team up with a larger player who can actually win contracts as a prime, and push out product together with them. It's sort of the middle ground between contracting and going alone. So I would suggest starting straight from #2 above up to #5. The biggest con is that you're completely dependent on the big company for survival, so you'll have to make them equally enamoured and dependent on your tech/product.
For a niche book, self publishing and distributing it yourself seems to yield the better return. Combined with a higher price point, you can "earn back" any money you invested much faster.
- I have sold about 50 books at a $100 price point.
- My cost to drop-ship print and ship, transacation fees, sales tax, etc. cost about $25
- This leaves $75 gross profit / book, or a 75% gross margin
- Gross profit over 1.5 years has been about $3750
- I have spent about $2000 for someone to help with generating the PDF, Shopify Fees, ConvertKit e-mail sub-scription, etc.
- This leaves me about $1750 so far in profit.
The amount is trivial, but here are the other potential benefits, both from a monetary and non-monetary perspective
- It was a lot of fun to write the book. Writing a daily newsletter for marketing purposes is also fun
- There is still a decent amount of financial potential. I can see a path to selling 10 books a month in the near future, and maybe 50 books a month in the medium term. A few thousand per month in side income would be cool!
- It's fun talking to readers
- I could see this turning the book into an online course or something
- I'm learning some new skills (next task is to tinker with LinkedIn advertising)
- Very rewarding to get positive feedback
Overall selling a book online feels much more rewarding than billing another hour to my clients, even though I'd have to sell like 2 books an hour to match the money.
But, I'd also caution I probably wouldn't have written the book if I didn't get a sense that I could make a significant amount of money. Writing into the void is the most frustrating thing for a writer. So I also mitigated the risk by writing a guest post on a few relevant websites and asked people to e-mail me if they were interested in an "upcoming book" on the topic. I got about 20 or so e-mails before I decided to write it. Small number, but enough to make the time investment.
I self-published a book about becoming a solo 1099 federal sub-contractor.
It's about 60,000 words, full of typos, has a boring cover, and is on an ugly looking shopify site. Oh, and it costs $100.
BUT, I knew if I waited to catch all the typos, add in additional material that would be useful but not necessary, and build a beautiful website, it would never launch.
So I published it and just mentioned on the website that you shouldn't buy it for all the reasons I listed above and described exactly what was in it.
I've only sold about 50, but the feedback is good and already people are implementing the strategies and techniques in the book with successful results.
If you have something of value to offer, it's also easy to forget that someone else is potentially NOT getting that value now if you decide to perfect it and keep procrastinating on launching it.
The "About the book" page is below in case you want to see how I described the book and all its flaws:
I think people would prefer to watch the 1:45 Youtube video that shows in wobbly greenish mobile phone video exactly which bolt you need to remove to get the thing apart and how, than a slick 10:07 video shot in 4k with lots of "don't forget to like share and subscribe" that only mentions it for about a second.
Thanks for your post! I’m also starting the self-publishing journey this year. Trying to keep in mind the old Reid Hoffman quote, “ If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.”
I love that you’re a) charging a premium ($100 for a beta version), and b) explicitly calling out all the shortcomings you foresee so prominently on your “About” page. That combination of transparency and chutzpah is inspiring.
I’m a bit allergic to marketing that tries to cover up weaknesses and I feel much better just telling the truth. Then people can make their own decision.
As far as the price I agree it is premium but with such a niche audience and focused value proposition I thought it was worth it.
It is a barrier for some though but no one who was initially worried about the price and then bought it regretted it.
> As far as the price I agree it is premium but with such a niche audience and focused value proposition I thought it was worth it.
I hope my comment didn't sound like a back-handed compliment. I genuinely think you're making the right move charging a premium. I read a lot of posts from Patrick McKenzie (patio11 on HN), and he's always urging folks to charge more. It feels like very few people take his advice, so props to you for doing so!
> I’m a bit allergic to marketing that tries to cover up weaknesses
100% agree. I'm actually planning on releasing my full book in blog form on my site, a bit like Michael Hartl's "Ruby on Rails Tutorial" [1], so people can judge for themselves whether it's worthwhile to pay for premium features like a PDF copy or video screencasts.
> What’s the topic of your book?
The plan is to do a soup-to-nuts walk through of popular, lynchpin open-source codebases. I'll take newbie developers from "this codebase is too intimidating, only 10x engineers would grok it" to "oh, that's all there was to it?". I'm a software engineer from a non-traditional / bootcamp background, and I want to help people who are suffering from impostor syndrome to feel like they too can become 10x engineers. I'm starting with a Ruby version manager called RBENV and progressing toward open-source codebases from unicorns like Gitlab, and eventually even the Ruby codebase itself.
I've already walked through the entire RBENV codebase on my own, and written 500+ rough pages in a Google doc (over 100k words that I wrote during COVID lockdown). I'm slowly but surely editing it into something that I can show people, but my immediate issue is that a) I don't know anything about the skillset of launching a product, and b) I feel like I only have one shot at a launch, and if my thoughts and words are disjointed, people will write off not only my idea but also me as an engineer and teacher / mentor, and I won't get a 2nd shot at launching. My head says that's BS, but my heart isn't so sure.
I've always appreciated the approach taken by https://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html which has different depths of analysis and scope and gives the user the option of diving into different types of programs. I usually recommend it to friends /colleagues as a foundation when they've had to write networking or other tight performance applications. Evaluating design decisions and process of app evolution is just as important as where a modern piece of software is because it can help provide similar context around getting the product out there now, rather than perfect later.
Also the world is constantly changing so trying to make a perfect product is partially an evaluation of how long your solution will even be relevant or how isolated it is from external change.
I'm sad that grad school got really busy and I had to drop out from being an editor on POSA, but it was absolutely fantastic to work with so many fantastic developers and get into their heads a bit. I think Tavish might be hanging around HN too.
> a soup-to-nuts walk through of popular, lynchpin open-source codebases
This sounds fantastic. I'm a self taught developer in largely the situation you describe and this book sounds like something that would be amazing for someone like me. Please post it on HN when it's presentable!
Ambitious and cool project! Over my head as I’m not a coder but I think one bullet you should emphasize is the impostor syndrome part. I think that would resonate strongly.
You might like Rob fitzpatrick’s write useful books:
Some do! But the more typical route is people find me through a few articles I wrote for another website (job boards for folks with security clearances).
I tried Google ads but the terms I wanted to use had such low volume that I literally got 0 traffic from those.
I started off as a soloist in the government contracting space which is a bit of a different beast.
But, I would focus on business development efforts where you have a good existing relationship with the customer and if possible, the person who had enough pull to make the admin weenies and middle management bring you on.
In government consulting, that would be the program manager for the contractor.
I’d also focus my efforts on companies that have previously brought on independent consultants. In your case maybe web development agencies. They will take a cut, but you can use that to get relationships with the end clients too.
You might want to do a little business admin like form an LLC and such but prioritize getting leverage via relationship building with potential clients and identifying companies that you know work with soloists.
If you happen to get in the government contracting world I wrote a book on the topic. A few people who are not I. The industry have found it useful for general freelancing/consulting advice as well.
I’ve been working for myself in the government contracting industry. Started off with a job, switched to 1099 sub-contracting, and now still bill myself out with a few employees.
If you have tech skills and a clearance you could probably bill around 200/hour for full time work which would be pretty healthy income.
I work in the cleared DoD contracting space with my own small biz. If you’re even a little better than those other guys just sitting around doing nothing, you should go out on your own as a 1099.
Feel free to ping me dale@1099fedhub.com if you’re curious about going down that path.
The article acknowledges that tax rates are significantly higher in Sweden in order to pay for these benefits.
Has anyone modeled typical take home income (after taxes) over a lifetime vs the costs of procuring similar parental services in each country (daycare for example)?
My hypothesis would be that in the US, you’d probably still come out ahead in net income even after paying for these services. Could be wrong of course, but that’s my best guess.
If healthcare is any indicator I wouldn't be so sure. The US is consistently ranked at the bottom of most-efficient healthcare systems. You guys pay so much more per capita then any other nation on the planet [1]. So your taxes might be lower, but you still need to spend the money via other channels.
If coming out ahead means having to put a 3 month old in daycare. And worrying about losing your job as you would also lose access to healthcare for the 3 month old.
And coming out ahead means pumping breastmilk, when it’s vastly inferior for the mother and much likelier to cause her to lose her milk supply.
Edit: the top 10% do very well in the US. The next 10% are hoping to become part of the top 10%. The bottom 80% don’t have a better option.
Which claim? Federal law gives 3 months off from work (if employer has 50 or more employees). There’s like 8 states with 4.5 months off, and 6 weeks for dads. Also might be subject to minimum employer size.
And the vast, vast, majority of people don’t work for a high margin tech or finance company with generous leave benefits so I don’t see what the point is talking about them.
You’re either part of the group making passive income so you’re not worried about losing your income source, or you’re not.
Claim 1: Parents have to put their 3 month old in daycare.
My response to Claim 1: (Parents have options, one of them is daycare. Another is to have a parent stay at home with the child. Extended families can pitch in. Many range of options here. Those are just examples.
Claim 2: The bottom 80% of Americans don’t have better options.
My response to Claim 2: Not sure what better options you’re referring to or what evidence you’re providing to support that the bottom 80% (by income?) have no better options.
Claim 3 (from your most recent comment): If you’re not making passive income, you’re worried.
My response to Claim 3: Most families make something work without having passive income. One or both parents may have a normal job or jobs.
Assumes there are two parents in the household. For two-parent households, assumes it can cover its expenses from the labor of only one of them. This option also doesn't address the fact that taking an extended break from working often has a long-term effect on one's income and career; this could change if doing so was more normalized, particularly for men.
> Extended families can pitch in
Assumes parents have extended family, that its members live close enough to do the work of child care, assumes the extended family members (including grandparents) are not also working and therefore unavailable, assumes they are capable and willing to provide free child care.
Federal law only guarantees you can't lose your job for taking that amount of leave, it does not require employers to pay you for that time off.
I suspect they were asking for evidence of your claims about the harm caused by pumping breast milk instead of an infant feeding directly from the breast.
Note: Responding to your post addressing my response to the claims I was curious about. For some reason I can’t respond to that comment directly.
I’m not making the claim that all parents can have 1 parent stay home or that there is no risk to a career for doing so, or that everyone has extended family that can help.
I was only trying to counter the claim by the other commenter that daycare at 3 months was the only option.
Overall, there is not going to be a perfect situation where you can mitigate the risk of losing your job, still get paid a high percentage of your salary, and be at home.
But, there are high costs associated with the Swedish model as well as risk. Some are explicit, like the higher tax rates. Others costs and risks might be less so. For example, maybe there are less higher paying career opportunities in Sweden because of the high risk to employers that they have to guarantee employment for new parents for a significantly long period of time. Or consider that people that don’t want to be parents will have to subsidize parents, both directly though taxes and most likely through picking up the slack of the parent on leave.
I asked my original question about any studies or models about net income in the US vs Sweden after childcare costs because I want to know to what extent a US household could replicate the benefits of the Swedish system with their extra income, if any. If you have an extra 100k after 10 years of working life when compared to Sweden, you can “pay yourself” 50k for a year while you don’t work and have at least a few years of daycare expenses saved up.
Now, I genuinely don’t know whether that is close to reality, which is why I want the data.
I come from Europe and moved to USA. After taxes and everything I get for my taxes back home, USA and EU are roughly the same in “things you have to pay for to have a normal life”
The problem in USA is spiky unexpected cost of health care. Even with good insurance you never know when a random huge bill might come. Best avoid doctors unless you’re literally dying
I agree that paying for all health care with insurance leads to quite a bit of surprise billing and opaque pricing.
That being said, I’m not sure how often the average person deals with a bill that they are on the hook for beyond their deductible.
I’m still not sure what average medical costs per person over a lifetime are in the US compared to a Swedish person’s costs if you’re counting the proportion of their taxes that go to paying for national healthcare.
I pay 860€ per month for health insurance, which covers me, my wife, and our two children. There’s no deductible. Everything is covered, except for tooth replacements that are covered only at between 20% and 50% I believe. You’ll never get a bill from a doctor or hospital in Germany, except for those tooth replacements.
The most I’ll pay is a small copay for drugs, usually about 5€, but only for adults — drugs for kids are covered 100%.
Probably a bit simplified, but the above has been my experience so far (I’m 40).
That is more or less what my US based health insurance plan is like, if a bit more expensive ($1200/month for me and my wife, $1500 if adding 1 child).
No deductible for in-network care, usually just some small copays of $20.
Is this supplemental insurance to national healthcare or the standard cost based on your income?
The latter, it’s based on a percentage of your (taxable, I think) income, capped at what I’m paying (percentage-wise I’d be paying more if it wasn’t capped).
FWIW, there’s no notion of “in-network” or “out-network” here.
I'm happy to accept your hypothesis that US citizens will come out on top for lifetime net income, but this article was about the human costs, like having children or not.
What cost is forgoing having a family? Is that even calculated? My hypothesis is that it's not and all those people that simply weren't able to have a child because of work and healthcare costs are simply, and conveniently, ignored.
It's ok though, we can always import more fresh meat into the great American Dream.
It’s thinking like yours on the “uneducated” politicians part that leads to polices like the US has today. Income and money are not everything. But alas, untraveled and relatively speaking closed minded citizenry sees their way as righteous as they are honest and hard working people. It’s a pretty bad side effect of being honest, law abiding and hardworking that you feel your way is the right way and perhaps even justified because of ones struggles. It’s a cycle the promotes more of the same - status quo.
- Americans are uneducated and under-traveled
- There are other values other than money
- I think my opinions are correct and Americans are deluding themselves
Responding to quieththrow’s response to this comment:
1. My thinking was basically posing a question about take-home income of an American vs a Swede and to what extent a higher take-home pay can buy some of the same benefits.
2. Don’t know why choosing policies that do not force Americans to pay higher taxes in exchange for government-mandated benefits makes legislators “uneducated.” Seems like you simply disagree with the preference for lower taxes and less social benefits and are calling people who disagree with you “dumb.”
3. I’m not sure why you think traveling will make Americans think like you. Also not convinced that Americans travel less than others. Happy to look at any evidence you supply.
4. No one claimed anything about righteousness. Personally, I find left-leaning folks always speaking in moral terms “evil capitalists/rich, stealing form the poor, etc.” I’m trying to gather quantitative data (net income) to help further the discussion.
It’s thinking like yours: families come out ahead by 100k or so
on the “uneducated” politicians part: that persists in today’s legislators
that leads to polices like the US has today: laws that do not mandate parental benefits.
Income and money are not everything: pretty self explanatory.
But alas, untraveled and relatively speaking closed minded citizenry: it’s sad that Americans who have not seen diverse perspectives on what else is possible and how others live due to lack of travel (American geography plays a huge role here too)
sees their way as righteous: holding the belief that you don’t get parental benefits and yes it’s a hard life but it is what it is and people who don’t agree are lazy (Europeans) and/socialist.
as they are honest and hard working people: holds the above mentioned belief very strongly as they are fundamentally people who are had working and honest and hence consider their way makes sense (self confirmation bias)
It’s a pretty bad side effect of being honest, law abiding and hardworking that you feel your way is the right way and perhaps even justified because of ones struggles: when one is honest, hardworking , law abiding and plays by the rules a side effect of that is the strengthens of their belief and values whole sale. Which means seeing and accepting a different perspective is harder for them (look at our political divide today for example)
It’s a cycle the promotes more of the same - status quo: the cycle of hardworking, honesty, civil obedience that begets strengthening of believing that acceptance of way the things are and change is not needed which reinforce hardworking honesty civil obedience which begets .... you get the idea. This is precisely the reason why change in this country takes a very long time. Almost any big change dosnt happen till after a generation and half has passed.
If you have an hour to spare highly recommend watching a documentary about the differences between America and Sweden. If you have amazon prime it’s free to watch on prime video.
Yes, let’s sacrifice the best child bearing years of our lives so that we can outcompete someone else who didn’t sacrifice the best child bearing years of their lives, and then increase the probability of spending a good portion of those savings on fertility treatments.
There can exist a balance between investing in one’s future versus enjoying the present. Nature doesn’t make each day equivalent to the next, and it’s crazy to see so many in the rat race in 20s and 30s so that they can “relax” in their 50s and 60s, because they’re competing against others willing to sacrifice their 20s and 30s.
What I gather from your comment is that you believe Sweden is superior to the US in the sense that culturally, they are not as enamored of the rat race and reinforce their preferences for a more balanced life with social policies funded by relatively high tax rates (when compared to the US).
Whereas in the US, we are more into “getting ahead” in our prime years and this is reinforced by our social and tax policy allowing Americans to keep more of their money and make decisions on their own that support the individual’s values.
My original comment was simply asking if anyone has as data that can show what the net income of an American vs a Swede after paying for the costs associated with raising a child. I made no value judgements there, simply wanted to source the data.
Pretty sure that data is uncollectible, due to the amount of work it would take to normalize taxes across many decades and the difficulty in simply sourcing it in the first place.
But at the end of the day, what matters is how secure a new mother and father feel and how much time they get to spend with their child. Obviously, one can sacrifice this in the pursuit of income, but who would want their children to have to choose between future financial security and bonding with a newborn?
Some study indicated American parents are extremely stressed out in comparison to most parents in most developed countries and are less happy overall because of it.
I'm not sure I could find the study again. It was posted on Metafilter some years ago. I'm banned from Metafilter and have zero plans to spend my time trying to dig through Metafilter to find it.
Been doing intermittent fasting for a long time now and have been doing ADF for the last few months.
I lost fat and retained lean muscle while
- eating between 3000-6000 calories on eating days
- running 30-35 miles per week
- weight lifting 3x per week
Here is a reddit post about my progress with some documentation including pics of recent DEXA scans.
I train 3-4 times a week (calisthenics). I tried 5 days of intermittent fasting for 5 days.
I was DYING for food in the morning even on the 5th day, I drank way too much coffee, and in the end what really convinced me I had no reason to keep on doing this was HOW BAD AND SICK my (normally fine and healthy) breath smelled. Like, friends felt compelled to actually ask me why that was the case (yes, good friends will tell you if you have smelly breath).
I suppose it was because I quickly went into ketosis, but overall it wasn't a pleasurable experience. I went back to my regular balanced breakfast as part of my varied vegetarian diet. I guess IF just doesn't cut it for me and maybe I don't have the patient to turn myself into a smelly monster just to follow some popular nutrition fad, especially considering I'm well into my weight and I have low body fat. Just my 2 cents. Internet doesn't convey smells yet, and that's great news for all the crowded fasting online communities out there, I guess.
Congratulations on your accomplishments. Can I ask how you manage to choke down 6000 kcal on eating days? Even when I'm really hungry I can't physically force myself to eat that much. It makes me feel sick and my digestive system is at the limit.
I’m one of those people that eat quickly and a lot, so I’ve just become accustomed to eating big meals.
That being said, I also eat significant amounts of junk food. Slice of cake is like 500-800 calories. No problem. I can do that x 3 after a meal of normal stuff. Junk is easy to throw down and calorie dense. Also, its fun to eat.
Now 6000 calories of salad and lean meats? That would be difficult...
Regarding exercise during IF, does it have a negative effect on your performance if you don't eat some carbs BEFORE exercise? How do you prevent the body from eating itself up for energy during exercise?
Pretty much no impact. I’ve done 18 mile runs after not eating for 36 hours and without consuming calories during the run. I feel tired but no more than usual. Also weight train fasted, no issues with performance.
The goal kind of is for the body to eat itself...eating body fat.
As for maintaining muscle mass, it seems as if keeping protein intake high while lifting heavy weights does the trick.
I'm not a programmer, nor did I graduate from college (2009) with any technical skills.
However, one option you may consider is taking a non-technical job someplace and using your programming skills at your non-technical job to impress the hell out of your boss/company.
For example, a few years ago I joined a government human caiptal consulting firm. I basically learned Excel and al ittle VBA to automate some really tedious tasks, and also learned enough to do some interesting analysis.
I impressed a few clients with my work and I became an independent consultant making far more money just because I work in a field that doesn't have many "technical" people in it.
Being a big fish in a small pond that doesn't expect you to be a big fish could lead to some interesting opportunities. Analytical/technical types in non-analytical/technical fields is a good way to do that.
One way to “get around” this is work it as a 1099, charge a high bill rate, and then just work less overall.
But, if you’re trying to move outside of a major contracting area like DC, youre probably better off just getting a remote private sector job.