Software Engineer Choices: Permanent Employee vs. Contractor vs Micro-ISV, Part 3: Micro-ISV

For ambitious software engineers who desire to work for themselves.

(2023–08–30), A Book Changed Me
(2023–09–04), An Event Changed Me to Work for Myself: Attending One Former Colleague’s Funeral

Three work choices for a software engineer:

• Permanent Employee
• Contractor
• Micro-ISV (Independent Software Vendor)

3. Micro ISV

For software developers who want to build their own apps, make sure you are at least 10X more productive than your peers first. A simple reason: Developing a thorough app individually is a challenging task that demands significant productivity.

It’s important to bear in mind that ISV work isn’t the same as contract work. A previous business partner of mine, who was a contractor, had a mug with the phrase, “Don’t rush me; I get paid by the hour.” Working for your own business means a totally different mentality. You need to be highly-efficient on many tasks.

I started building my apps after realizing I am a 100X developer. Find it hard to believe? Check out my case study: Real “Release Early; Release Often” ClinicWise Development. First production release after 40-hour development; Then Daily Production Releases). Still not believing that’s possible? You probably are not ready to build a Micro-ISV yet. OK, you believed and wondered How? I can only share my experience: start learning Ruby and End-to-End Test Automation first. Check out my other articles.

Practical advice for a senior developer: if your current project consists of 3 developers, 4 manual testers, 2 business analysts, 1 UI designer, 1 infrastructure engineer and 1 project manager, then you must do things with much higher productivity for your own start-up, as there probably will be, for a long time, just one person for doing all the work: YOU. Any technologies or processes, such as
* programming language, e.g. JavaScript,
* Web framework, e.g…