Ask HN: How do you know you're ready to quit your day job?
I'd love to quit my day job to pursue working full time on a project I've been working on with a couple of people for more than half a year now, but I don't quite know at what stage that's generally not too crazy of an idea. Obviously if I were to do it right now, I'd be without any income whatsoever, which is a fairly bad idea, even though I don't have any dependents. I imagine I could quit if the seed round was sufficiently beefy, but it's my understanding that most people end up waiting until they have real customers and serious income and then they actually jump ships.
I honestly don't know how long I can continue doing the whole 80 hour weeks for, if half of that is spent on a drudgy dead-end job (I'd honestly be ok with spending that much on my own company), and as I found out it's pretty hard to keep the two separated if so much of your energy is drained by the "secret project". I feel management will eventually catch on to what's going on heh.
Do you have similar experiences to share? Any tips? Any rules of thumb?