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Comment by WA | Hacker News Reader

Make your own software product. Requires to be a jack of all trades. Coding, marketing, writing, customer support, design. Because it's only you, you don't have to feel like "being the smartest person in the room". Downside: Takes quite some time to take off.

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Additional downside: may never take off and leave you financially ruined.

Find an easy job you like and work on your project on your spare time. That's what I do.

Easy salaried job puts you in control of your hourly rate. The less hours you need to put in to stay above board, the higher your effective rate is. Even moreso when you're remote since you don't have the unavoidable cost of commuting & office attendance.

It won’t leave you financially ruined if you treat it as a side hustle and keep your main job as a source of income until you get customers.

And if it never takes off, so what? At least it will be a great learning and self-growth opportunity, which is exactly what the OP is asking for anyway.

Thank you for your comment. I often feel that a part of HN judges jobs only based on income and blames you for not focusing on one or the other and thereby losing out on income or business growth. However I, too, think that it's completely valid to stay at your main job while also working on side projects. Maybe you won't be the richest person in the room or turn your project into a huge success but being able to do stuff you love while not risking your peace of mind is worth something as well.

The former, sure, the later: Not really. Avoid insane risks and keep your skills in shape. You can always call it quits and join the machine again.

Nobody with that skillset in modern labour market can be "ruined" financially. Yes, you may loose all your assets and even get into some debt, but as long as you're capable of working, you won't be really ruined.

Sure that’s easy - all you have to do is get funding, create a product that people want, market it and make money.

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