Why I Stopped Working for Other People

I didn't leave traditional employment out of frustration. I left because I did the math.

I've been the technician who gets called in to fix the architecture nobody wants to admit is broken. The staff engineer who outpaces the team but can't outpace the org chart. The consultant who knows more about the product than the people who own it. That's a useful role. It pays well. And it has a ceiling.

The ceiling isn't salary. It's impact. When you work for someone else, your best work belongs to them. The systems you design, the teams you build, the problems you solve at 2am, those become their assets. You move on. They don't.

At some point I ran out of patience for that trade.

Building my own things is slower. Messier. Nobody is paying you to figure out the hard parts, you just have to figure them out. But the work compounds for me now. Every system I build, every problem I crack, every product I ship is equity I own.

I'm not anti-employment. I'm pro-ownership. Those are different things.