Ask HN: Quitting a well paid job | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Quitting a well paid job

15 pointsthrowaway838320 comments

I currently make around $300k/year in a software dev job that is unfortunately soul crushingly boring and bureaucratic.

I'd love to leave and have a go at a startup or possibly move into freelancing, but I keep putting it off almost solely because of the money.

How do you guys who have made the jump make the decision to leave a situation like this?

Within 1 or 2 years I could be very well set up for life, but at the same time, you're a long time dead and I don't want to wish away years waiting to get back to something I'm passionate about.

I'm asking here because I'm sure a lot of talented entrepreneurs etc have the high opportunity cost of leaving full time employment.

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Within 1 or 2 years I could be very well set up for life

As a guy that walked from a similar situation (next in line for CTO of a fortune 100). I would say stick out the two years. While the market is exciting right now, and yes my life has been exciting since I walked, there are times where I could have used that money. If you are two years out I would grin and bear it for that time, it will put you in a far better position when the time comes to pursue your own thing. HN and other sites can be a filtered bubble where only the success get's echoed. But the overwhelming odds are that any venture you embark on will fail. Failing is a lot easier if you have a bank account to fall back on. If I had it to do over, I would have built up my cushion a few years and then embarked on my own.

+1 for giving him very good advice. If it were 10 years to economic independence, the advice would be different, but two years is worth it. My wife and I stuck out corporate jobs just long enough to have very long term financial security (with a modest lifestyle) and the flexibility of being able to do (mostly) just what you want is well worth it.

Working a few extra years to get a 1/2 million dollar sports car: NOT worth it!

Working a few extra years to get flexibility and independence: worth it!

Stick with it. 300k a year is obscene. Cut your living expenses; for instance I am paid a fantastic amount of $21k-$22k, it hurts but I am able to pay my mortgage, bills, put food on the table(and still eat fast food), add to my 2 savings accounts, internet/netflix, daughters college savings, and put her into a local private school; simply by living frugally. The good thing is I'm comfortable in my living conditions, I've found that 'balance' and so any pay increases from here on out will be adding to my financial situation not adding to my bills.

I sucked away over a year of my life doing sales; it was soul-crushing but it gave me a very strong business-sense; I gave the Marine Corps 6 years of my life, that was soul-destroying but I came out a better leader. You have to make sacrifices to put you where you want to be. And a year, two, three, four isn't really that long; it's much better than being hungry.

tldr; Work the 300k job, live frugally/save, take what traits you can from the job, working on creative jobs can wait.

Did it, launched product that crashed and burned. Crawled back to corporate job. Doing startup part-time now... another 3 years before I can launch full-time again. Lessons learned: more $ for more runway. test product viability before dropping job. It will always take longer than you think: have a plan B. Do it part-time if you can, to test viability.

Do you have a specific startup idea? If you do, you could use some of the money you earn and something like elance.com / crowdspring.com to get a Minimal Viable Product up and running. Then you can start testing it out, while still keeping your job. If things are working out, take the plunge, if not, you won't go broke.

If you don't have a specific idea, you could go to hacker meetups, colleges and find groups of people with an idea and a team and join them. Offering to do some work and pay for food, servers etc. - I could sure use someone like that right now ;)

Finally if you already have 4-6 years of a similar role under your belt then you can probably move back into a similar role anytime you wish. But if not, you probably need the years on your resume in case you want back in.

Moral of the story - it's not a binary decision, you can be doing both at the same time.

I'd probably wait it out for another 12 months. You can use your bored time to make more concrete startup plans; it sounds like you don't have a startup planned out that you're desperate to attempt. There is no reason why you can't plan what you want to do for a startup while you're still employed.

Having the money will presumably give you significantly more opportunities after you do quit than if you do it while having to worry about how to make money, so it's not like sticking it out is damaging your future startup or freelancing -- it's probably helping it.

Actually, I'll make a rephrasing: I'd wait for around 12 months or until I wake up one morning with a startup idea that I can't imagine not trying out, planned in a significant amount of detail. Whichever comes first.

IMHO

1) Time to jump

As long as you ask question "when should I do it", you are not ready. From my own experience,when you feel it, you know it is right time. That "feel" is a natural conclusion of a lot thinking, researching, preparing and prototyping. It is like you need to eat when you are hungry -- you will not ask "when should I eat"

2) Freelancing

Start something takes a lot of time and effort. Freelancing may take your time and energy away. I did that trying to start something on the side, which I considered a mistake.

BTW, are you hands on developer, or development manager? $300k for developer sounds high to me -- maybe you are super-star developer...

If you are that close, then wait. If the job is that boring and slow (since you said bureaucratic), then you should be able to automate it all away, and spend some time at home thinking about your future. You could make significant progress with the design of your product, culture, and entry strategy while securing your financial future. When you have your product ready to go and market tested (shh...), then jump. Maybe start paying some people on the side to help get things set up for you!

Good luck.

(..sounds like you work at Google, eh?)

Both myself and my co-founder left well paying (not as well as yours though! :)) jobs to create our startup. It was definitely worth it and we plan on doing this as long as possible.

I love programming and always have. I realised I needed to leave my job after I started considering changing careers. The place was completely soul crushing. I've been doing it for almost 6 months now and the funny thing is I could go back to my old job any time if I wanted to. I have no intention of doing that though.

Within 1 or 2 years I could be very well set up for life

Don't bet on this. If it happens, GREAT! If it doesn't, at least you won't be crushed. Success doesn't always happen the first time around. Sometimes it takes multiple plays before the jackpot lands.

But putting all of this aside, don't do it for money. Money is an important factor but as others have echoed on here, do it because doing what you enjoy/love outweighs what you make. Money is icing on the cake.

It's been made hard for you because you're making so much money. It's an easy call for me because I don't make nearly as much as you... the whole "tax breaks for job investors" arguments.

If you're unhappy, confident in yourself, and have enough money to be financially secure in the short term, quit. Sometimes all you need is a little incentive to do something extraordinary.

Also, if you're looking for a job in a few months, send me an email.

Have you tried or considered launching your business until you have customers and are back in black, then make the transition? also - leave as many doors open as possible. Much success!

Agreed with kls. I no longer believe that "having a go at a startup" is worth it. Quit when you're ready to have a go at changing the world.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1225179

Also, where are you making 300k a year as a "software dev" that you're bored? That's like lead scientist status.

Google or Facebook?

Describe your current job.....it may help give a better understanding for advice

the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence

"How do you guys who have made the jump make the decision to leave a situation like this?"

For me it was easy. It's about the freedom, not the money. I would rather make 60K working for myself than 300K working for someone else.

I hate having to ask someone (like when I was a kid) to have a day off or go on a vacation. When I finally made the switch 3 years ago, my life changed for the better. I love waking up every day and working on my own projects.

If you have a family and no savings, it's a different story.

If you are making $300k/yr then I can say you are providing some real value to the company otherwise it wouldn't pay that obscene amount of money to an employee. I will take cjbprime's suggestions. 1. Do you have a specific plan carved out what to do once you leave your job? If not then take some time to plan while in the job and see if you can start something in your niche expertise. Find out that if you have sufficient networking in place to hire few good people from your industry. 2. Have you found any pain point to solve? And how and where to attack? If not, then you can spend next 6 months to do and even if your 8 hr job is soul sucking you still have 16 hrs of your life to make something challenging and fun.

I'm not that experienced but that's what I would do.

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