Ask HN: Do you have side income as a software engineer?

10•andrewstetsenko•2w ago

Yesterday, I had a long call with a friend, a tech recruiter with over a decade in the field.

She was tired not from resumes or interviews, but from engineers, still negotiating like it’s 2021.

The “golden bubble”.

Where every frontend engineer was a unicorn and every offer had quadruple-digit equity, that bubble still shapes expectations. But the market today is more like… reality.

It’s not that talent isn’t valued. It’s that value has changed shape.

The engineers who bristle at lower stock grants or extra days in office aren’t wrong to want fairness… they’re just anchoring to a world that no longer exists or might quickly disappear.

I don’t believe in surrender. I believe in recalibration.

What happens when we stop pretending the market is unchanged, and start asking: How do I create a career that isn’t a bubble-dependent bet? What do I build that isn’t tied to a single job title or company’s stock price?

The most interesting people I talk to today are already thinking in parallel streams: mentoring, writing, consulting, advising, building side projects, diversifying, not out of fear, but because the old narrative of one job = stable identity doesn’t hold.

I’m curious: do you have side income as a software engineer? If so, what’s worked (or not) for you?

Comments

PaulHoule•2w ago

I do sports photography for one of the most active organizations in my community, I pass out a lot of business cards [1] and will probably get more work

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/up-8.bsky.social/post/3mcy6m4eos22k

al_borland•2w ago

That sounds like a recipe for burnout, or workaholics trying to justify their drug of choice and push it on others.

Normalizing having a dozen streams of income as what one needs to get by will end up leaving us with economic results that leave this as a requirement, rather than a nice to have. A similar thing happened with the two-income household. As the idea was pushed, it went from a way for some to make ends meet, to what a majority feel they need just to get by. Is this the world we want to create?

Your job doesn’t need to be your identity. That is true with one job, the same as it is with having 10 jobs. If you’re looking to diversify where your identity lies, other prongs to that base can be rooted in family, friends, and hobbies. We don’t need to be monetizing every second and aspect of our lives.

harryquach•2w ago

I've been investing in low cost index funds for decades. Although not "income" in the spirit of your question, these funds distribute quarterly dividends which is income. This is truly passive income.

sometimes_all•2w ago

Today, if I had to do a regular job, which demands more and more out of me while slowly giving me less and less, then I better have a very solid offer to consider it, otherwise it's not worth the hassle, considering half of what they'll offer will be rug-pulled after some time anyway; we've already seen that happen across multiple companies.

I quit a couple years ago, had enough funds saved from the "golden bubble". Took a nice break, and now I'm doing a bunch of different things, a few earning me enough income to live a decent life.

> they’re just anchoring to a world that no longer exists or might quickly disappear

Good engineers aren't blind. If "value has changed shape" for the employers, then it has changed shape for the employees as well. Enough have figured out that they need to diversify out anyway, since companies today cannot and should not be trusted. Only the most desperate will stick around empty shells of regular jobs - there are enough options for talented people to pursue.

andrewstetsenko•2w ago

Valid point and well summarised.

I'm curious what direction you drive for your different things, still internet-related or more grounded and connected to the real, physical world?

sometimes_all•1w ago

Given the current state of global work, for me the more lucrative stuff is internet-related, since it's possible to get developed country rates for software work. I do volunteer in the physical world, so that I can be connected to my local environment.

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