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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

I second this. Another option is the one Manish Pabrai took: do just enough work to not get fired, and spend the excess time and energy building your own business.

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I think it's important to consider the downside risk here; your current employer could consider your code and business that you made while being on their payroll as their own intellectual property and fight you in court for that. Even if you have an airtight contract, they can still litigate it, and spending time in court will detract from your business and cash flow. Meanwhile, taking some time to go interview at other companies is much lower risk, but can still yield a large increase in pay.

I'll also suggest treading carefully with "just start your own business". My read is that the first 3 months will be "program 14 hours a day and make something awesome", and the rest of your life will be meeting with customers and preparing slideshows for your board. If that's what you want out of your career, you should definitely do it. If you just want to be locked in some basement writing a lot of code for a lot of money, you probably want a non-customer-facing engineering role at FAANG.

This is only a good advice if your own business works. If not you are wasting your time.

Also you dont know where the "enough job" is going to be rated. Your manager will determine that

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