If you follow that course, you'll never quit. Because nothing stops you figuring out what you really want to do with your life like being continually busy, chasing someone else's dream.
Time flies when you're busy.
Back when I was young and inexperienced I took some bad career advice and pushed myself through a degree in a medical profession, and then postgraduate training. With 20/20 hindsight I was utterly unsuited to the profession, temperamentally. But I was too busy to see that I was making myself unhappy (and doing a second-rate job in the process). It took 18 months of post-qualification work to get around to the idea that I ought to bail, write off the previous six years, and go back to square one, and another year to put the plan into effect. Why? Because I was busy. In the end I wasted seven years on a mistake that was clear by the end of my first year at university.
You only have one life. Use it wisely. If you find you're doing something that doesn't agree with you, think very hard before you push on indefinitely: nobody's going to give you those years back.
At 30 miles away, I'm about as close as I can afford...I live in Los Angeles, the 2nd most expensive city in the US. Unfortunately, it also has the worst traffic in the US, and a complete lack of public transportation. It can take an hour to drive 10 miles sometimes. That 30 mile commute at 7am takes around 45+ minutes, and at 4pm, 1.5+ hours.
Time flies when you're busy.
I have to concur with that. My latest project ending early is probably the best thing that ever happened. I have quite a bit saved up as "runway" but now the clock is ticking. Before, the best time to start was always "later."
My number 1 reason for quitting is I want to get off the addiction of the constant paychecks. It's easy and safe, but the trade off is the predictable and unbearable daily routine. Everyday on my way to work, I know exactly which lanes to switch to on 495 for the optimal travel time. I log on and off the computer at work at roughly the same times. Once back at home, it's sad to look at the reflections of myself and the clock in the bathroom while washing my face and know that the same action happened at exactly the same moment yesterday. As for long term, I know exactly where I will be (in the best scenario) in the next 15-20 years if I continue to work for this or any other big companies.
That's no way to live life if you look at the short time we have here. That's why I take the year off to travel, not only to break the daily routine, see new things, and meet new people but also to taste the danger of having no financial security to motivate myself to act.
Before quitting, I've consistently worked 2-3 hours everyday after work on side projects. But the passion and focus cannot be there after being exhausted by 8 hours of work and knowing I will still get the next paycheck even if my projects fail. So now I'm excited to have my 8 hours back. Let's see how this foolish thing will work out.
I was in a similar situation as you are; running a small programming team at age 27, with no real commitments. I decided to stay because the opportunity seemed too good to pass up, but I'll never know where I'd be now if I took a risk back then. Over those three years it seemed like everyone I interviewed ran their own project. Many popped back and forth between working as part of a team, and running teams several times in their career, so it's not as special an accomplishment as I'd thought at the time. Now it's three years later, and I've gone part time and started telecommuting so that I can travel wherever I want and have time to figure out what I want to do next. Your choices may vary. Good luck!
Settling down was NEVER a consideration for me until I met my wife sometime around when I turned 31. I thought that I would always have plenty of time to change careers, explore interests, etc. (How wrong I was.)
It sounds like we're both fortunate enough to live in cultures in which changing careers and pursuing interests is a possibility. Don't dally! You can always take up paragliding again. You can always be a team lead again. Time you can't get back.
This is interesting... it reminds me of what I tell people when they ask if I'm going to finish college.
I can count the classes I'm missing on one hand, so I often get asked when I'm going back, and they're shocked when I say I'm not. Basically, at this point, a degree will only stop me from getting boring, corporate jobs. I don't want those. But if my startup were to go under, it'd be real tempting... and then I'd get caught in a tarpit. I'd just rather not risk it, and make it harder on myself to get boring jobs.
And after years of C and Perl, getting used to have to do all of my assignments in Java was extremely frustrating. Especially as I was picking up other languages in my free time.
(I just voted you back up to 1, by the way. Dunno why someone would downvote an honest question...)
But to do it almost and not quite? I'm giving you advice based on my own rationale ("Hey, steve, do what I did!"), but you should go back. Finish it. It's 3 months, and it doesn't close any doors to you.
It sucks to jump through Java-shaped hoops when clearly Perlythonjureskell would be the best language, but unless you're in greenfield projects your whole life, it's one more harsh reality.
You might want to do greenfield projects, but a degree won't close those opportunities to you.
> but unless you're in greenfield projects your whole life, it's one more harsh reality.
I'll go back to making pizza before I take a Java job. I don't need much money to be happy, and I'll hate my life a lot less. I can still enjoy programming in my free time.
But, ignoring the time already spent (which is already wasted), there's a 3 month period between you and the bump to employability that comes with a bachelor's degree. Nobody's making you take a Java job afterwards.
Sometimes the scarce resource is not money, but free time and mental availability. "Randomly walking around" could increase his chances of bumping into a hidden opportunity. I say go for it.
I have plenty of savings, and plenty of earning potential - if I really get stuck (I don't believe likely) I can always pick up another job. Money is a means, not an end.
I think this is the key. You have two years of runway to figure out what to do next (according to the blog). That money in the bank is a lot more security than any job can offer, by itself. Staying in your job for another two years might be the greater risk, when opportunity costs are taken into account.
I've never seen entrepreneurship as a means to escape a tedious, loathsome working life - it is a means to achieve my dreams, not a refuge from boredom. IMHO if you're striking out on your own solely because you hated your job, perhaps you worked for the wrong people, and your problem isn't with employment in general, but with your employer.
I dislike the author's tone on a few points:
> "A job is working on someone else’s dream."
Bull. I'm working on my dream right now (one of many, but I digress). It's high-impact, and can't be done on my own (even with funding) by sheer virtue of inertia and existing infrastructure. We fought for the idea, proved its worth, and now we get to work on something game-changing, making all the important calls along the way. It's freedom, working with smart people, on your dream, with deep pockets, and the support of an army of equally talented people.
> "A job is selling your time."
Since when? There are lots of jobs, particularly on this side of the country (um, the west) where your performance is judged by your work and not the time on the clock (if you're even clocked!). I have no "competing motivations" - perhaps an artifact of, oh, working on things I actually desire to complete.
I applaud the author for doing things his way - but I wish he didn't have to resort to denigrating the concept of employment to justify his own lifestyle.
I've found that most places expect at least an eight-hour day out of you, whether you're formally "clocked" or not. I think often that a salaried position is seen as an opportunity for exploitation by bosses. My last job was like that, and my co-workers just ate it up; the bosses demanded ten-hour days and other concessions and everyone just went along because since we were salaried it meant we had to do whatever they said (we were even taken to the boss's house one day to help move furniture) without any prospect of fair compensation, or something like that. I don't really get it.
There may be a bit more leniency with breaks and that kind of thing at a salary job, but if you're not there before 9 and you're not still there after 5, and this happens even rarely without prior approval, your bosses aren't going to be pleased.
I agree that a job can provide a way for an employee to work on "his dream", but such a situation is incredibly rare, and even rarer is the situation where, when this dream is realized through your work, you'll get due credit and compensation.
Working for the man is just an all-around bad deal if you're looking to control your own life or do something big. That's just my opinion. If you're OK with a work-a-day routine, OK with even the possibility of eventual bullying from the bosses, OK with getting paid 1/4 or less of the value you actually generate, then working for someone else permanently may not be so bad, but that's not how I am, and I presume that many of us on HN have similar aversions.
I say permanently because I think working for other people can be a good experience, and it's nice to get a significant amount of it under your belt; it helps you understand human dynamics and politics, can accelerate your skills and force you to learn new things, introduce you to cool people, etc., so a job isn't all bad, but I have a very hard time with the idea that I would be stuck working for someone else for the next fifty years.
I don't understand the people who let their bosses push them around and then complain about how much employment sucks. Anymore, at least - at my first job, I thought that way, and it was miserable. Then I left to found a startup, and then rejoined the working world after it failed.
The best thing the startup did was give me perspective. I realized that if I took a job and hated it, I could just do whatever I needed to do to make myself not hate it. And if my boss had a problem with that, the very worst thing he could do is fire me. Which would put me back in exactly the same position I was in before I took the job, except I'd be somewhat richer, more experienced, and would have accomplished more.
There's no such thing as "permanent" in this economy. I don't really understand this either/or dichotomy, where you're either a salaried employee or an entrepreneur. Most really good hackers I know have done both. Take the best opportunity open to you, regardless of whether it's your own company or someone else's.
People who enjoy working a rewarding job are "rationalizing their addiction"?
[edit] Specifically, I object to the false polarization of this topic: working a job means bowing to The Man, working on boring crap with stupid bosses, and other such nonsense. It does a disservice to both people who work at a job, and people who are in business for themselves by generating false expectations.
Entrepreneurship is not a silver bullet to your boredom, nor is it a guaranteed ticket to working only on things you love. Nor is employment a silver bullet solution to stability and consistency. This polarized portrayal of either side really just adds noise to the discussion.
tl;dr: Working at a job doesn't mean you don't work on things you are passionate about. Working for yourself doesn't mean you get to avoid all the tedium you used to deal with on the job.
I treat my employees like people, and valuable resources, and experts in their job. I defend them from outside distractions and criticism, taking all the crap on their behalf, and giving them ALL the glory. I don't get to make decisions, I HAVE TO make decision with the best intelligence at my disposal, which includes my Employees expert opinions. I'm paying them for that; I'd be a fool to ignore it.
The idea that you can work a regular job AND start your own thing is a common misconception. Nothing to do with whether your job is rewarding or not; either way it precludes striking out on your own. The hours in the day prevent it.
The addiction is to the soft life. Lots of ways to explain why you enjoy that - and I understand completely. But its not going to get you anywhere but where you are.
When somebody has this level of emotion, I like to ask: if you were going to die in a year, how would you spend that time? And then: what are you waiting for.
I think it's not so good that you think so linearly. I'd argue that one's entire life is a lot of "randomly walking around trying to figure out what you want to do".
Also, you are dangerously placing undue importance on obtaining some "idea" to pursue to justify quitting. Most ideas don't work out without substantial pivoting, which basically moots your supposed advantage. I'd also argue that "I want to do something other than work here" is a justifiable enough idea.
Lastly, sometimes you gotta put the cart before the horse.
/ end idiomatic spree!
Then you don't know Xavier. I do ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4588097990/in/set-7215... He's not your conventional hacker by any sense of the word. If you're in the US and interested in Ruby and DB's maybe you can check out his DBIYF tour ~ http://www.dbisyourfriend.com/
Every stripper and/or prostitute, the story goes, plans on quitting once they make enough money to go to school/open that greasy spoon/move somewhere else.
In reality they end up `quitting' when the system is done with them and tosses them out.
9-5ers often live out the same lie.
You talk about rational choices, but what normally happens when someone has a comfortable, non-challenging job is that they start to compensate for missed excitement by filling their life with expensive habits (whether it's drugs, addiction to games and electronics, expensive cars, the cottage, etc). Soon they are completely bound to their job, those golden-handcuffs demolishing any potential they might have had.
Anyways, I've got to go off and look at a new car. My current one is 2 years old and is getting a little embarrassing.
I think it's just one way a consistent low level fear manifests itself in our lives. Breaking out of that secure routine is not just scary by itself -- it'll dredge up a host of un-faced fears we carry around trying to avoid. I have the luxury of pointing this out from my desk in my office as I look forward to lunch hour.
I remember quitting one job (giving proper notice and doing everything right to strive for something better) and one of my coworkers lauded my bravery. It struck me because I didn't see it as bravery at all. More cowardly of rotting away in a 9-5 boring position.