Comment by Vijay Thirugnanam on "Why I Quit a $500K job at Amazon to Work for Myself"

CommentWhy I Quit a $500K job at Amazon to Work for Myself

Vijay Thirugnanam

Inference Service @ Cerebras

Mar 1, 2019

I am also a freedom fighter. Right now, I am freelancing. I am a small-time freelancer which means I make enough money to take care of my current expenses and some savings for the future.

What motivates my freelancing career is similar to your views. I get the freedom to work with the "right" clients. I have freedom to do my work my way. I don't have to deal with company politics. If I smell politics, I don't work with a client.

I have my own way to screen potential clients to check if:

I have freedom to do my work
There is never more than 1-2 stakeholders to report to
I have freedom to do production releases
I have freedom to make silly mistakes and not feel bad about it
There are no deadlines

To enable my freedom, I lower my hourly rates to just $30 /hr. Since I live in India, a low-cost country, that is sufficient to take care of my current expenses and some savings for the future.

Emil Moe

Senior Data Engineer

Mar 1, 2019

No deadlines at all? Or just"soft" deadlines? I usually promise to finish during a given week, month or quarter

I meant soft deadlines. There are clients, especially in India, who have this sense of urgency even when they begin a conversation. Here is a sample note I got today:

Hi Vijay, I have a webapp development that is currently in limbo and requires completion as a first step, followed on by future development.

The webapp is a combination of es6+Firestore+nodejs in terms of tech/language while the project is a e-commerce+custom app.

I can discuss further if you would be available to take a look at this and assist further. Time sensitive and needs someone with good experience.

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