Comment by leros | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leros | Hacker News Reader

I'm in a similar position. I think one of the challenges is that you can get a guaranteed high salary working full-time in tech. A great success in entrepreneurship might mean acquiring your previous salary after several years of working hard and making little money. Of course, you might also strike it right, but you might not.

I'm currently working part-time on retainer, which allows me to work less than full-time and still make enough money to live (definitely less than a full-time job, but enough to live comfortably). This leaves me time to build my own thing while not living off my savings.

I don't know what I'm doing, but I might suggest something like this. Stay at the job for now. Use the financial security to buy a house and get a good mortgage. Then start working on taking part-time work on top of your full-time job. This will suck at first (full time plus extra work), but once you feel comfortable about being able to get part-time work, you can feel comfortable leaving the full-time job.

> I'm currently working part-time on retainer, which allows me to work less than full-time and still make enough money to live (definitely less than a full-time job, but enough to live comfortably).

This is probably the way to go. Having _some_ income drastically improves the equation in your favor (due to tax laws and compounding growth).

Unfortunately, when I did this, I struggled balancing my time between the work as well as wondering if my startup failed b/c I half-assed it working part time or if its just not a viable business..

I can totally feel the 'half-assed' part. One of the real reasons I am avoiding getting a well-paid job is because it feels that it's impossible keep it and dedicate enough time to anything else really, let alone building a business on the side.

I'd caution you about giving up a well paid career.

In "The psychology of Money" the author warns the reader to don't make bets that need to go perfectly to plan. Creating a project every month until somethings sticks, requires that at least one of them can become a sustainable business. But if you can't achieve that, its very difficult to catch up to your peers or re-enter the workforce.

I spent the last 5 years working in Big Tech and have a large amount in savings where I plan on leaving, not b/c it make sense financially, but I just need something fresh in my life. Even if that fresh thing fails horribly, I have more than I need for retirement due to low lifestyle costs and careful saving.

Why not just work part time, seems a no brainer to me. Work 10 less hours a week, you'll keep up with your peers easily, and you'll have fresh time and projects on the side

8 years ago, the startup I worked at folded with an eng team size of 8. I spent 3 years working part time and side projects, my coworkers joined big tech (LinkedIn and Airbnb). They road the 2021 boom and ended up 1-2 levels higher than me with 3-5x more pay. 5 years after returning, I’m just now catching up to them.

TL;DR: part time basically pauses careers.

Thats unfortunate I'm sorry to hear. But it is also a sample size of 1.

My experience, working part time for 6 months, is that my side projects have differentiated me from other candidates, and get me a foot in the door for interviews. They usually say most candidates are the exact same, and the only way to differentiate and get an edge is: Perfect GPA; Successful projects; Sought after niche skills; Leadership experience.

But I've also had 2 relatively successful side projects (and tens of failed ones), so without those I'm not sure how I'd go

I’ve seen this advice before but I don’t personally know anyone who’s done it.

What makes it so hard to reenter the workforce?

I have a few friends that left tech for personal reasons and layoffs.

The ones that stayed out for a while, lost their ‘drive’ to reenter. They tasted the good life of no leetcode or on-call duties.

They make enough to support themselves but still less than half of what they could make in tech.

They realize their good life isn’t on the right trajectory and would like to reenter, but just don’t want to put in the effort, especially since the roles available to them are behind their friends that didn’t take a break

There are a few "The Psychology of Money" books/talks including by Charlie Munger. Which one are you referring to may I ask?

Take an "easier" but stable job. In this market, one needs stability over high income.

Spend your 30-40 hours at your job, drop to part time (3 x 10 hour days if you can) up-skill at your job, and use the extra 2 days to build stuff. Its very do-able

Thank you for your reply.

Re this: >I'm currently working part-time on retainer, which allows me to work less than full-time and still make enough money to live (definitely less than a full-time job, but enough to live comfortably)

That's quite a good position to be honest.

> Then start working on taking part-time work on top of your full-time job.

This is what I've been doing for the past 3 months but only to save some extra money as our main income is 90-100% spent on necessities every month. I charge per hour probably within the 50-70 percentile bracket in my location. But I can't see how I could charge more without being much more specific than just doing regular software engineering.

As a qualified engineer and owner (in terms of responsibility), I quite often get compliments on how well I handle things - with attention to detail, without oversight, pushing things to the completion, etc. This made me think that probably I'm lowballing myself with this (shitty) startup job.

But on the other hand, I don't know where else I could 'remain myself' in the way of not becoming a professional SLOC cruncher or, God forbid, the ultimate PSC-driven developer.

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