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Good point. Here is a comment that was posted on the MiniMSFT site, which echoes your own comments.

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I have my own business, growing, and profitable. I know that many of you are “thinking” of starting your own business/start up. Here are some thoughts/comments to think carefully before taking the leap. You have heard these many times, but here are the real twists.

1. I answer to nobody, but myself.
Truth: You answer to everyone.
Your customers, your employees, the city, the state, federal govt, your vendors, your suppliers, your family, the competition, your allies, your friends, your enemies, your community, and the wonderful thieves.

2. I make my own hours.
Truth: Sure, after you take care of your customers, your employees,
the “man”, your vendors/suppliers, family, business planning. Employees calling sick, irate customers, the “man” hassling you,
your vendors/suppliers not following through.

3. I make money from my own efforts.
Truth: After you pay, See answers #1 and #2.

4. I am happy working for myself and following my own dreams than following someone else’s dream.
Truth: 100% correct. If you are not thinking this every 30 minutes (even after working 16 hours a day for 7 days straight), then you are not ready for your own business/start up.

Selling the app to Daniel :-)

When I first started doing shareware I used to hate things like marketing, etc. But over time I grew respect for them and it’s even gotten to the point where I actually have fun with the various tasks that make up indie development (not all, but most and that’s where the outsourcing you mention helps).

For me personally, I just couldn’t go back to the grind of corporate development where I’d just be coding all day. The variety is what really makes this career interesting to me and jumping around from project to project and task to task keeps it all fresh and enjoyable.

If you truly love what you do, it makes it a lot easier to be successful at it. Otherwise you’re just fighting it and the constant struggle gets in the way of progress.

I personally spend only 10% of my time doing actual coding (including research for the coding), the rest being support, marketing, website and Warcraft III-ing.

I think as you grow older, you get a sense for what business is more like from working at companies, where you notice the world around you and take part in more of the company. I do at least. I also have a desire to be in control of the direction of a company and work for it to be a success. It is a big shift from being a basement hacker coding and learning new things about coding to building and ensuring the success of a business venture.

When my business is up and running, hopefully this just won’t be ramblings of yet another vaporware vendor ;)

- Good engineers are often promoted to being managers without showing any talent or interest in management.
- Engineers scoff at managers, thinking they are too stupid to understand their job and feel that managers believe they are more important than the engineers.

The truth is that a good team needs a leader who appreciates that all members of the team, including themselves are equally valuable.

When you’re working on your own you have to have a good business head, a good engineering head and have the discipline to trust & listen to your own boss.

That was by biggest concern when leaving a real job. Fortunately there are online communities that you can hang out with, whether it be the #macsb IRC channel, or something do with your personal interests outside of work. They can provide you with the same opportunities for banter and information exchange. That’s the start and perhaps enough for some techies. Of course you take it from there, meet these guys at conferences and user groups, find out who is in your area and meet up with them. You just have to adjust to the new way of personal contact.

The good news for developers is that our biggest talent is often our laziness. The minute we find ourselves doing the same thing twice, we can’t help but write a script. The business aspects are no exception. They can be broken into tasks, many of which the machine can do for us.

So while it is daunting to assume all the responsibilities of a corporate climate, at least we do so with a huge advantage over most folks. We know that once we teach the machine, we can forget about it and move on. With this ammunition comes confidence. Every business challenge becomes a programming challenge. And that’s what we do best.

Ever get lonely, just being by yourself all day? And do you feel like you’re missing out on the growth/learning that comes with working with other talented engineers, or for a great manager? Those are the two things that give me pause whenever I get the itch to work for myself (and I think any passionate software developer probably gets that itch from time to time).