Ask HN: How to succeed without working full time
I've been suffering from chronic pain for a few years now and have stopped working for ~ 2 years because I could not bear it anymore (kind of a pain-related burnout). After having started again recently, in the same company, but part-time. I don't think I will be able to work full-time in the short-medium term, and I feel like I can't really evolve in my career because of this. I'm sure there are a lot of people with a lot of different reasons to work part-time, and I would like to know how you handled your career choices.
My original plan (before the pain was incapacitating) was to work 2-3 years at this company, eventually work for another company with a higher pay for 1-2 years and finally start my own company. But now I feel there are two main problems:
- Is it even possible to build a startup when fulltime ? The people I talk to try to dissuade me because as a company, you need to be fast and it can't be possible if you don't work half the time.
- As I'm working part-time, I'm not learning as much, I don't really have opportunities to take more responsabilities on the project I'm working on.
So here is the question: how do you succeed (either in your career or as a startup) when you can only work part-time ? Should I resign myself I'll never be more than an average developer ?