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yesno

Here, let me give more "less painful" advise:

1) Don't quit your job, start consulting on the side

2) Don't quit your job, start a product on the side

Both options won't cut paycheck. Take calculated risk. OP is no longer a 24 years old super smart developer.

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Your advice is sound and it will definitely create security. However, what it will not create is "a sense of urgency". Follow both steps 1 and 2 and ten years from now you will find yourself still employed (by the same people?) and in the same situation.

My advice would be:

1) Make sure you have at least 6 months worth of savings. 2) While you're still in your day job try to land a freelance or contract job. 3) Once you have a gig, THEN quit your job. 4) When the freelance/contract job comes to an end, look for a new one.

Now point 4 will take some time. Maybe a few weeks sometimes more than a month. In that time-frame you can work on your project/product full-time. You might have to go back to contracting, but at least you can put in some decent time to work for project.

Relying the situation to motivate you seems... um... very risky and not quite strategic.

I noticed that some people weren't born to become Jason Calacanis, Zuck, Gates, Hsieh. For these type of people, they have to play a bit safe or else they will regret their choices by cutting the oxygen lifeline and hoping by 1 year things will pick up.

Let me rephrase that: following your 1,2,3,4 steps, 10 years from now he'll probably end up either jobless, have less money in the bank, or even in less favorable situation (working for less money, worse jobs, etc).

We're using the same assumption correct? that either consulting or the product were not successful.

One gig is definitely not enough. Consultant needs to build portfolio in order to get more gigs so that they can rely less from their networks. That is to assume the OP have a pretty good connections that could help him land few gigs.

People always said that "make sure you have X-months worth of saving".

People say the following phrase quite often as well: "money is not a problem". I'll add one word to that phrase... "...yet". Money is not a problem yet (so far).

Once you started to realize that money becomes an issue, your mind will have hard time to focus and concentrate. From that point onward, whatever you'll do won't be optimal.

To sum up my advise: make sure you have a fixed stable income. Once that's taken care of, your mind will have more capacity and effort to focus on something else.

Yeah, quitting your job is a poorly planned out idea, but it does sound like freelancer is your best bet. It gives you the ability to work on different problem sets, as well as upward mobility without having to leave development behind. Many will suggest architect, but in my opinion if you love the code you will not like drawing boxes all day. most of the people that I know that ascended to architect, did not like the position. The recommendation to start consulting on the side is probably the best option. Growing a consultancy while having a steady source of income is a lot easier than trial by fire of popping right into it.

So I can't speak to his particular situation. But in general I disagree with this. I think quitting the job is the most important part. Consulting is the safety.

"Leap and the net will appear" - John Burroughs

Agreed. We can some how manage to make our living on consulting and cutting expenses, but if you are still in day job, it will take up major part of your time and energy. Also, some companies will have employment agreement that you will not work for any other thing

That is assuming everything will go well: this person will get a few customers ASAP, within 1 week or 2, to stay a float for at least 1 - 1.5 years.

Consulting requires networks and connections. If the person stick too long as a "Senior Software Developer" and rarely meet non-geek human being (potential customers), it'll be a while before the person can get a well-paying less-stressful consulting offers.

First, if he quits he might be able to consult for the company he just quit from. They, presumably, know he's good and can do the work. So they could hire him back as a consultant (where he'll probably make more money and perhaps do more of the kind of work he's really after).

Second, if you work in the technology field, meeting geeks is a great way to find potential clients. People in the technology field tend to move around a lot from company to company and from position to position. So the developer you meet at one company today may well be a manager or even a CTO at another company tomorrow. They will probably be the very people who'll need to hire consultants at some point in the future. Make a good impression on them and keep in touch, and you'll have a nice network of contacts for consulting work down the road.

As a senior developer, I bet he's already made plenty of such contacts. Now it's just a matter of getting in touch and letting them know he's looking for consulting work.

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