Independence Motivation

30/1/2022

Hello there. This is the first installment in a hopefully ongoing series, in which I will be documenting my journey as a self employed software consultant in Denmark.

In this article I will try to explain my thoughts on why going the independent consultant / contractor route makes sense to me, as opposed to working at a consulting firm. To put things into context, I have a masters in Software Engineering from Aalborg University and 2.5 years of experience at a medium sized danish consulting company, which specializes in cloud-based IT systems. I am 30 years young.

I see full time employment as a kind of package deal. This package includes the following:

So what are the drawbacks in exchange for all this goodness?

That is all I can think of right now. I am really enjoying learning what it takes to run a company and what you can do with it. Overall, it is more “modular” than salaried work. You can go completely bare bones and basically not pay for anything, or you can spend some money to try to get the perks of salaried work that you want (I pay for an office that I go to every day so I can get some socializing in and good cantina food)

Another thing: by necessity, you are negotiating your rates with clients more often as a consultant. This should ensure that you are continually being paid about the market rates, if you are not short selling yourself, and get more experience overall being “near the money”.

With all being said, even with all my complaints, I wouldn’t recommend jumping into independent consulting without the experience from a job. The experience and network I gained on the job are invaluable, and I was learning all the way to the end (I quit basically when the learning slowed down, which I took as a sign that I was more or less ready).

Hope it was an interesting read. Next, I’ll get a little more practical and talk about how my companies are structured.

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