What I wish I knew before I quit my job | Hacker News Reader

What I wish I knew before I quit my job

michaeldrogalis.substack.com

67 pointsdillonshook47 comments

Quitting to quit working is a different feeling. You may spend time in the first month untangling your role and your ego. I had no idea how important the status was to me until I was just a guy, at home, that no one needed. It was a valuable lesson about self worth, and one that stayed around after I rejoined the work force.

"Untangling your ego" - Thank you for verbalizing that. I've not been working for almost 2 months now, and there has definitely been a process of disconnecting from who I was when working to who I am when I am mostly free to do whatever I want for a few months/years.

I've been trying to express to other people who have lost jobs that this is the positive side of it: Letting go of it all, thinking about who you really are and where you really want your life to go before making decisions on your next move. I'm trying to encourage people to take time to go through this process before just jumping straight into new efforts.

Like the article said, good ideas can sound bad, and bad ideas can sound good, so those of us who have the luxury of living in limbo for a while should take this as a golden opportunity to let all that shake out before committing to a new direction.

It was an important lesson for me to learn. I read "Ego is the Enemy" by Ryan Holiday, which covered a lot of these thoughts, and helped me understand why I worked.

What happened later was also interesting. I rejoined the workforce, matched and then quickly surpassed the level I'd left, and did in part because I'd decided to be who I wanted to be instead of what I thought the role dictated I should be.

your employer doesn't need you ... or did the company go broke after you left? your employer uses you. big difference. your parents, your friends, your siblings, your pets need you. think about it.

The role parent comment is talking about isn't necessarily tied to an employer. They can be built of external expectations on e.g. what your career path and role should be.

parent is connecting self-worth with his work ... very bad :/

>I had no idea how important the status was to me until I was just a guy, at home, that no one needed.

Interesting, considering that every company goes to great lengths to let everyone know they are easily replaceable and not needed.

They need someone in the position. When you are that particular someone, you are needed.

That doesn't mean you can't be replaced.

I'd say that's a bit nihilist. There are certainly companies I've worked for (and now work for) where there is genuine care for the individual baked into the culture, though it does tend to scale inversely with size.

Quit his job to start a company. Probably different from quitting with the intent to look for another job, or take a break, or retire.

Yes, this is "what I wish I knew before starting my first startup".

Which is an interesting topic, but very different from just "quitting my job and going back to interviewing", which is its own thing. I need a stable job (so no startups for me), but I've come to dread interviewing. It's not lack of experience (either job or interviewing), I'm experienced -- and my experience tells me they are dreadful.

I might be unfair, but "quitting to start my own startup" to me reads like the person doing this is: financially in a good place, in order to take the plunge (or alternatively: no family and responsibilities), and also very confindent that they can find another job if their startup doesn't pan out. This immediately puts them in the minority of engineers worldwide.

I hate the whole interviewing process so much, that I have sat on the one and only job I have had since I graduated university. It's been 8.5 years now, and still counting.

Do I want to leave now? Sure, but the amount of effort and motivation required is insurmountable. At least, for me. I've never been a type-A kind of person, and I sometimes envy those that are. I just wish "career trajectory" and fancy titles actually meant something to me, but I couldn't care less. I found no glory in this field, but rather ways to placate one's ego.

I quit a hell of a job (in the good sense!) kinda out of nowhere at a point in my career where I was in a great upward trajectory to go on an "indefinite sabbatical" (turned out to be 7 months).

I did not quit to start a company, but the sense of multiple plunges does resonate.

From my perspective:

- It's very hard to detach yourself from stable (and growing) personal finances

- The comparison aspect is always there, you just need to learn to manage it

- The most rewarding bit was re-adjusting my metric of what's sufficient/enough in life

- I was not familiar with that video, but, indeed, I did learn to ask myself "would you rather be doing something else?" and the answer was no

- I learned to dream again

- As soon as I pulled the trigger on the decision I was flooded by a sense of insecurity even if I was really certain of it

I wrote stuff about it at the time but never published it.

Why did you quit?

My boys will be in college in about 6 years. My wife and I have been talking about what comes next for us. I would really like to make a significant career change but, yeah, it’s pretty scary. My current job is pretty secure, good pay, good benefits but brutally hard. I work leading delivery in consulting for very large projects. Pretty much the hardest role in the most cutthroat industry. It takes a toll.

This is why spouses sometimes divorce anyone leaving a high pay industry to rest. They have to act quickly to lock in high alimony/child support to maintain their standard of luxury at high imputed income so the spouse will go to jail if they don't continue their stressful job.

Man, this is a misanthropic take on things. Do you have any data for this?

If you want the mountain of data showing correlation of divorce with shutdown of plants, unemployment etc I will find it. But it's common knowledge. You only have a couple years to easily lock in imputed income at their high earnings.

Even if you provide that data that divorces spike due to shutdown of plants or unemployment that won't directly prove your case.

Looking around the internet, I see sources ranging from 20-60% of divorces being caused at least partly by financial issues, and that makes sense, to be poor is to be stressed, and to be unemployed is to be stressed, and to be stressed is to fight, but that doesn't provide strong evidence for a "they are locking them down to force them to work so I can live in luxury" narrative.

I really struggle with believing it as being a widespread phenomena.

You're not convinced, that's fine. You're open either possibility and asking for proof. To prove something happens at least sometimes I need at least say 2 anecdotes, which I could scrounge from some forum. But you have already decided it's misanthropic without proving that either, you are just rigging the game to play the fuck fuck game where you want it proven to some level of scientific rigor beyond what's quickly communicated on a tech bullshitting forum, while simultaneously claiming misanthropy without the level of rigor you demand for claiming so.

There are claims made by divorced people. Sometimes is not any exact percentage. The peer reviewed studies have conclusions like "the results [ of studying post earnings loss divorce ] are, however, consistent with role theories, in which the husband’s attractiveness declines if he fails to fulfill a traditional role as a breadwinner."

What would be hard to believe is that people _dont_ sometimes use the courts to lock into income streams they are loosing. That borders on extraordinarily improbable.

I'm unsure what the "fuck fuck game" is, but I honestly think HN tries to be more than just a "tech bullshitting forum". I think there's hope that you put some thought into what you say and how you say it.

Sure, there are certainly marriages for financial convenience, but you presented this like a widespread phenomena, so much so that you felt like you wanted to warn people about it.

You said so yourself, it's well documented that spouses divorce because of a change in finances and you could provide the evidence yourself of that, but, to my knowledge, not well documented that it's a common reason that spouses divorce because they want to force the unemployed high earning spouse into miserable work.

I'm not looking for a direct scientific study, but it would be nice if you could provide some sort of news article or the like about this phenomena. I'm sorry that I didn't just uncritically accept your anecdote as being true.

What level of proof do you demand to show something happens sometimes? Because you keep changing it to strawman like 'common.' And to be clear, unless it is zero, you've not applied same to your misanthropic claim.

Misanthropic is not a claim I'm making based upon data. It's not possible to validate independently, but a judgment by myself. Your claim sounds misanthropic to me - it sounds like, if we are high earners, we should distrust our spouses because they are just out for our money and will demand we work miserable jobs to make sure they have enough, and if we don't they'll divorce it and demand the money of us. That's bleak and distrustful of people.

I'm not expecting a Cambridge study, but I was hoping you had some sort of news article or something rising above an anecdote in a forum about how some guy's wife forced him back into his job. You seems to feel you should warn people about in this forum, so you believe that it happens at a rate such that it could happen to any of us. So in that case, "common" seems less "strawman", and more "correct usage". You don't have it, that's fine, but if that's the case, why do you believe it?

Alright I will switch to easily proven facts. Child support and alimony are usually based on imputed income, meaning what a judge thinks you can earn. Voluntarily taking lower pay is strong evidence you could earn higher.

Finance linked divorce is common, support is common, and throwing people in a tiny cage for not coming up with a fraction of imputed income sometimes happens. We can squabble over why it happens, but when you are locked in a cage after taking a lower stress job the reason may not matter, and the fact I could be wrong about motivations will not get these people out of jail.

Sure, and that's why I feel it's a misanthropic take.

Yes of course. People are magically different in divorce than every other litigious aspect of society and totally don't sometimes use the courts to lock in an elevated income stream at the expense of someone else. This sober view can be characterized however you like, but it being wrong defies precedent in an extraordinary way.

Someone says they're looking at what to do after their kids go to school and your reply is basically "well, if you think you're going to quit your current job, just so you know your spouse might divorce you for the money before you get a chance to quit".

Wow.

It happens, sometimes, as i said. Probably not to them, nor did I claim it would.

You didn't directly say "this will happen to you", but you are certainly implying that it is something the parent commenter should be worrying about.

It's weird. It's like telling random strangers, who you know nothing about, that they might get cancer. Is it true? Sure, cancer happens, sometimes. But it's weird to remind people about it unsolicited.

If someone has the power to have a judge order you to pay 20+% of your income, and that income is imputed meaning a lower income may leave you in an impossible position, it is smart to always keep it in mind. I also keep cancer screening in mind.

"Kind of the same" here. I'm being laid off for economic reasons and I'm lucky that my country helps me. My salary is maintained at ~70% tax free for a year while I'm searching for a new job or following trainings.

This means that I have a "sabbatical" year ahead of me if I want to. I'm planning on 2 months before working again and in the meantime I'm learning Rust (coming from Typescript), although I don't think I'll land a job for it.

What's the most frightening are:

- the personal finances (I've got a house to pay!)

- I'll need to calm down on my hobbies

- the comparisons with other developers

- will I find a job? I may be lurking /r/recruitinghell to much...

I've been working for 10 years in the industry already but there's always doubt. Should I continue programming? TBH I don't see myself doing something else and I'd miss WFH too much.

Ahhhh...

You can build a shack in a year. Take the pay and learn masonry, build a 10x20 block shack. At the end of the year you have a house and no mortgage. Its what I did.

It's different when you do it to found a company/startup/product.

Me - I quit being a permanent employee decades ago, and only do consulting contract engagements - no regrets. (Admittedly - I am in a country where my basic healthcare needs are provided - and I can purchase reasonable coverage for things that are not)

And one that manage to succeed. History is written by the victors. On hindsight every move was right or at least not so bad if you ended winning, and wrong or plagued with mistakes if losing. Even if they are all mostly the same in both cases.

I sort of did the same. Quit a job and joined a start-up consultancy as a partner. The politics of that were a little tiresome after 6 years (and that was probably due to the post dot com crash year or two).

I then moved to Canada, consulted for a couple years with legacy American companies and then got enticed to take an executive gig at a Canadian "start-up" (that basically turned in to a consultancy). 8.5 years of that and I was pretty unfulfilled and very stressed.

So I went back to consulting. I will say that Canadian health care made that decision easier, but in 2022 I started my move back to the US.

Still consulting, but for sure, that health insurance bill makes me take projects that remind me of why I left the executive gig.

That said, I've never wanted to fully "retire". I like the work, I just don't like the unreasonable parameters most engagements have, and I'm hoping that in a couple years (when mortgage and some other expenses are over) that I can go back to maintaining healthy boundaries with clients and work.

Because, I do like the work. I just don't like the grinding.

-s

I love a good 'I quit my job to start my own business' story, but this one doesn't have much detail. Fair, everything is not written for me or this audience, but would love to know more about the particulars.

Hey, author here. I write a short weekly blurb (like this one) about how my startup is going. The origin story starts here: https://michaeldrogalis.substack.com/p/im-launching-4-startu...

Let me know if you're wondering about any topics in particular and I can dig up the right week's links.

Thanks!

I love your work Michael Drogalis, I remember when you made onyx (didn't it start with a different name?) in clojure! I still to this day suck at clojure and never managed to get a job to work with in and I'm stuck doing Ruby, how about that!

Have been following your journey and hope you are successful on it. At least in term of a software developer I'm sure you are best class :-)

Taking the plunge is very difficult, hope you at the end feel like it was really worth it. "Your friends making more than you" isn't a really big deal if you feel that despite this, you are still more satisfied than working in a day job.

I do work in a day job and don't even make that much, but also lack the courage to run my business, as you've seen, even being a great and outstanding software engineer like you still (and smart overall) will still have no assurance of success.

Given that life will eventually end no matter if you have money or not, what matters is living life to the fullest and scratching those itches & desires before we're too old, sick and tired to be able to those things. Just like you did.

Hey there, thanks so much for the kind words. :)

Was it Joel Spolsky who first marketed his company to techies by giving advice? Or was he just the first wildly succesful person with that strategy?

I always fantasize about leaving this job and creating my own business, even if it is "just" consulting or contracting rather than a project / product.

But it seems super scary and I struggle to find any information on how to even sell stuff. So at the end I just convince myself once more how great I have it with my stable income.

Author here. It's scary for everyone at first!

I have a couple of newsletters about selling, of which this is probably my favorite: https://michaeldrogalis.substack.com/p/week-13-what-i-learne...

Happy to answer any other questions that come to mind.

I have a divided opinion on this one.

On one hand, when I used to treat my side project as, well, a side project, alongside my job, I barely had any progress. There is always this voice inside of your head that whispers “well, maybe it’s not that bad to be an employee forever, the money is definitely good”. In addition to that, if you want to have any social life, and avoid health issues, the amount of time you can dedicate to your side project is limited.

In six months of unemployment I achieved more for my business that in years of “side projecting”.

Having said that, there seems to be an aura around “quitting my job and working on my business” mentality. For many it seems like the only reasonable option. But nobody is talking about the other side of it: you need money to live; your product might suck; and after you finished building, you suddenly need to do marketing and I ain’t ready for this shit!

So to each their own I guess. :shrug:

Yes for me building was the easy part, marketing and sales, not so much.

It's an incredibly difficult thing and for many, myself included I'd love to be able to work for myself, and actively try to do so. But the limited time between work and family make it incredibly hard.

There's also the part of me that knows even if I do quit, I'm immediatly going to be thinking about a second project, because what if the first one fails, what if someone comes along with a better product and takes my customers, etc.

It puts you into a state of permanent worry and decision paralasys, not knowing what to focus on, if its a waste of time, if its going to be enough, etc.

For most of us, sure we can build something - that's totally meaningless though if you cant get people to use it, and despite what everyone likes to say that right there is the bit thats near impossible for most.

Woah, woke up surprised to see my Substack posted here. Happy to answer any questions!

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