You make it sound so easy. I've ran small businesses for most of my career and I've never made more than a quarter of what I currently make working as a contractor (ironically, for a business I once started, now owned by someone else). And most of the time I earned 5-10% of that.
Good to get your message, I have some of the same experience.
I do better as a consultant/contractor for a client who is a previous customer from when I had my own facility. Fundamentally I used to provide the paperwork (the deliverable/invoiceable product) and supported everything needed to generate it, including any free advice which goes along to smooth the flow. Now I'm paid to help their paperwork achieve and maintain value with none of mine in the mix at all, but I'm basically doing a lot of the same stuff when I'm on site.
As a contractor aren't you now a small business operator of a different type, perhaps much smaller?
I would estimate in more of the exact same business in so many ways very few ever come close to that.
Maybe even doing some of the same things under different degrees of ownership and responsibility, and this could be a good example of way different compensation when the only difference is the underlying arrangement.
I'm not sure how I made it sound so easy, because presumably getting a 250k job at a FAANG isn't easy either. Which is what my point was - if you're going to deal with the time and stress to get one of the most desirable jobs, why not use that same time and effort to build a business?
Except, it kinda is for people that have the right background and are well suited to it. That is, the reason I think you're getting a lot of pushback is that many folks are just inherently risk averse. There are people who are smart, know how to work hard, and know that if they have a path laid out in front of them, they can succeed.
For entrepreneurs, there is simply much more variability. You can be smart, work hard, do everything right, and still fail in unexpected ways due to things outside of your control.
I don't think entrepreneurship is bad at all, but it's not surprising at all to me that people who want to go the FAANG route aren't well suited to starting their own business.
Getting a 250k job at FAANG is P hard. There is a finite set of tasks that you have to execute to get a job at one of those.
Starting a business is NP hard. At the end of the day, you have to convince people to give you money in some form and way, and that is not a guarantee. You could land on a lucrative idea, or you could do trial and error, failing every time.
Furthermore, once you have either, maintaining a FAANG job is much easier than maintaining a business.
Because it's a lot more predictable. Put in the necessary effort and you are almost guaranteed to get a FAANG job. And the best part, it's completely clear where that effort needs to be directed. Yes, you need to have the smarts, but for a business that pays as much you need to have a lot more than that, plus luck. I'm all for entrepreneurship and personally couldn't work for one of those companies, but with FAANG salaries being this high I don't think those people are making an irrational choice at all.
