errantember

So I'm in the process of becoming an independent contractor, and one of the major thing I'd like to do is web programming. My technical knowledge is a little stale, but I can catch up on that fairly quickly. The main reason I'm doing contract work, though, instead of full-time is that I want to have more control over my schedule. And there's one *big* issue with programming that doesn't fit well into that model, and that's support. I completely refuse to create an ever-increasing support burden on myself simply because I've done more work. I've worked in software for ten years, so I understand the necessity to have *someone* support the software, and I fully intend to write high-quality, well-tested software to reduce the support load, but unless there comes a day when I can say "This project is done forever," the entire exercise is a waste of time.

The easiest solution I see to this is to find a support organization that will work with me to take the software off my hands once it's done.

I'd like to hear from any software freelancers in the crowd as to how they deal with this.

...so most people have experienced some degree of frustration from the fact that the people working in big company are interchangeable cogs and that their individuality doesn't matter to the company. Well, it turns out this isn't just a side affect. I'm reading Rich Dad's Guide to Investing, and the book is talking about building a business as a road to making money. It points out that any dependence on the individuality of any employee undermines the entire idea. The goal is to create a set of systems that make the business go, like a machine, with as little dependence on the individual characteristics of any one employee as possible. So it's like you're trying to create this giant, mechanical thing with all these specialized hamster wheels. As long as the hamster in wheel 24601 knows accounting, and the hamster in wheel 78704 knows manufacturing, etc, etc, the system will run and produce money (and, preferably, happy customers.) McDonalds is a perfect example. It's a monolithic business system feeding millions (for better or worse, go see Super Size Me) making billions for the shareholders, and it's run by *teenagers*. So when you sell the business, what you're really selling is the system of hamster wheels, not the people in it. In the case of, say, a franchise, you're simply buying the system, then hiring individual cogs to fill it.

So, you're *not* just imagining it. People *are* creating huge, soulless machines that take the labor of the masses and convert them into profits for the rich. It's not an accident, it's by design. It doesn't mean that there's no ethical use of the idea, but it definitely means your dealing with something that's designed to be inherently unappreciative of human individuality, and it's hard to care about the Collective when the Collective doesn't care about you.