Quiting the day job and going for it | Hacker News Reader

Quiting the day job and going for it

cozysystems.com

21 pointsMrSafe20 comments

A lot of these "startup as self-help" threads seem to draw a false distinction between entrepreneurship and full-time employment, framing the latter as some kind of moral cowardice.

While it may not make you feel like a Nietzschean superman, there are compelling reasons to consider finishing your degree and getting a normal job - for example, the chance to work with a large team of experts who know what they are doing, or to have access to world-class infrastructure, or to work in a field that you'd never be able to enter as an entrepreneur (steering Mars rovers, say).

It's fun to take a risk and pursue a dream (even if you don't appear to have any clear product idea), but there are reasons beyond risk avoidance why many people don't choose to go that route.

There's nothing false about the distinction between working for someone and being an entrepreneur. They're extremely different. One is financially low risk/low reward and the other high risk/high reward. I don't think it's cowardice to choose to get a full time job, but it definitely is brave to turn down a high salary and start a company, when you don't already have money.

Your examples are of people that want to do other things, more so than being an entrepreneur. Those people obviously should do whatever makes them happy. For the people that want to be entrepreneurs, above those other desires, there's nothing worse than getting a regular job.

The world is full of people who wanted to be entrepreneurs, but got tied down in full time jobs. Some of those people manage to break free, but as a percentage it's probably quite low.

Amen. I've actually read people explicitly state that entrepreneur's are "different" (with a definitely implied better) and that they should only associate with their own kind, or risk being brought down by the "normals."

That shit pisses me off. Einstein and Feynman weren't entrepreneur's, and they did almost infinitely more than most of us will. Sometimes being part of a team in order to achieve something big is better than being your own leader to do some small, unremarkable thing.

Please insert the missing T in "quitting" before my OCD brain gnaws its way out of my skull.

Actually, it's missing an "L", not a "T". :-)

Dude, no. It's exactly this type of humor that makes my wife laugh at me, and not with me. I LOVE it!

Two classes and a thesis away. I'd finish the grad degree and try to get some of the groundwork for the startup set while in grad school.

I finished an MSc and made Feedback Army and started on After the Deadline at the same time. If both failed, I would tell myself "at least I have the degree"

Two classes and a thesis is still at least 3 years away.

I’m sharing everything with you. You’ll get to observe how much money I’m starting with, the things I have to buy, the documents I have to fill out-all that is involved in starting up. You’ll be the first to know when I biff it.

This concerns me. If OP has enough time to "share everything", he's probably not spending enough time on the real work he has to do. Worse, the "sharing project" can easily expand to consume most of OP's time without him even realizing it.

OP, I admire your initiative and look forward to hearing about your success. But I'm willing to wait. I'd rather have you focus 100% on the task at hand and share with us later. I care less about the timeliness of your reports than the quality of your results. Best wishes!

Knowing that he's going to be telling everyone what he's doing is probably good motivation to do well, so he doesn't embarrass himself.

Actual time spent on this is probably not worth worrying about. If he's like most people, procrastination and mistaken decisions will likely sap far more time from him than anything else ever will.

While I agree with you to some extent, the other side of the coin reminds me that it's far easier to document your code as you go, then to go back and and do it all at the end.

Documenting the startup process is a valuable endeavour, for both the author and his reader, which may not be done well, or at all, if left to the end.

I'm quite excited at the moment as I am doing a similar thing! I'm putting together the background necessary to leave my job at the end of March and work on my personal projects.

It's a great feeling to be making the leap!

OP, Usually, I recommend putting the "going for it" part before the "quitting the day job" part. They don't always have to be mutually exclusive. I admire your resolve and wish you great success. Let us know how it goes.

Where is the data I've read that says most people are better off (in terms of lifetime earnings) as wage slaves? I want to examine it closely to see to whom it applies.

Do you have a Twitter account that I could follow? Interested in following your story but I killed my RSS reader a while ago.

Why did you decide to quit RSS? Distraction, not enough bang for your buck?

Mostly because it took too much time for me to scan through my RSS reader instead of using Twitter.

If I see something I like on Twitter, I go to the actual website to read the article (which I assume the author appreciates).

Also, using an RSS reader created a lot of subconscious pressure for me to read all the unread entries because it was just another "inbox". Twitter lists is a better alternative for me because it's just a stream.

Hmm, but the thing about Twitter is that it really only gives you interesting things to read within your existing group of followers (At least for me).

Intelligent readers like Google Reader can recommend you new feeds that you might be interested in based on your existing subscriptions and the people you share your 'shared feeds' with.

On cruft, maybe its time 'inbox zero' applied to your RSS reader too? I tend to drop more informative feeds into a single folder and read from there.

Hey, what does Cozy Systems do? Besides "Makers of all things good and sometimes software"

Good Luck, but like edw519 said economize your time. :)

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