After 20+ years in the business, I can't take it anymore in the corporate setting. I work for a successful startup that became large (1000+ people), and I have been there over 5 years. I ran the infrastructure, which is all cloud-based. I became less hands-on over time, focusing on building teams and standards and leading architecturally at a high-level.
Now I hate my life. HR, bureaucracy, meetings, lying upper-management, and the fact that I am already fully vested, make it a chore to get up to get to work. I am in my 40's in a very big city in the northeast U.S.
Before I quit everything and hide out in a third world country avoiding ever working again, can anyone tell me if my idea to try to strike out on my own as an Cloud Infrastructure Consultant is a stupid idea?
I have a year or two of savings, I'm renting with no kids. My expenses are very high but minus rent and soon possibly COBRA, I can reduce it.
I don't think I can be an FTE anymore, it's utter misery. Having lost autonomy (with a new corporate culture of intense micromanagement from the senior level), meetings (60-70% of the week), losing work from home to take the crowded subway just to come to a loud-ass office where someone always has a cold, having pay remain static after inflation (it didn't matter before stock all vested), and believing that the people above me are buffoons... means that it seems the ONLY option is to do consulting.
LinkedIn is pretty dry - I seem to be sent only low-paying IC roles, or extremely senior executive roles, whereas I am a middle manager.
Sincerely,
Desperately Seeking An Echo Chamber
In 2020, during peak pandemic, we had to organize clases for a team of 500 profesores and teacher assistants. One day, I expend a whole morning replaying emails about a moodel server and an email server that we didn't control. It was useful, but after a whole morning of "bureaucracy" I really had to stop and do some "real" work, Whatever, write a midterm or think about a research item that has no hope of success. I remember the pain.
Back to your problem ...
Sorry that I can't help, but my general recommendation is to read whateverpatio11 wrote about that https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/ Perhaps https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick... and https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick...
Now everyone working in tech has cloud experience. AWS offers a support contract to all accounts at sign up time, it also has a consulting business that will integrate with clients teams, and the LLMs are not great but getting there.
If you’re single go to Europe and get a masters degree in mechatronics instead.
If posting to HN represents the level of effort you are willing to expend, you have nothing but slimmest luck between you and failure.
Building a business is more work than working for someone else, not less.
Building a business is almost entirely about sales and customer development and doing the thing the business sells is pretty much rounding error...you can hire people to do "the thing," you have to sell "the thing yourself."
culture of intense micromanagement from the senior level
Senior executives are more constrained in regard to micromanagement than clients...with the added problem of clients ability to not pay you.
believing that the people above me are buffoons
If you can't navigate people, you will struggle with sales because sales is a people business.
To put it another way, assume the market for what you want to do is efficient. Good clients have working relationships with consultants and those consultants are working hard to retain their good clients and are better capitalized socially through established relationships and possibly better capitalized financially because they have good clients. So nobody is likely to beat down your door just because you hang a shingle.
meetings (60-70% of the week)
Starting out, sales will be 100% of the week and the mental space of the week will be close to 24/7/365. Good luck.