Ask HN: No work at job, not paid enough to quit, can't start a side business | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: No work at job, not paid enough to quit, can't start a side business

3 pointspicolas11 comments

I’m stuck in a frustrating situation and would appreciate advices or shared experiences.

I’m a full-time employee (permanent contract), but I’ve had almost nothing to do at work for weeks—sometimes months. I spend most of my days waiting for my manager giving me work, and it’s becoming demoralizing.

The problem is, I’m not paid enough to comfortably quit and bootstrap a startup. I have ideas and energy, but not the financial runway to go solo.

To make matters worse, my contract explicitly prohibits me from having any kind of second job or running a business on the side—even on my own time.

So I’m stuck: bored at work, unable to grow something on the side, and not in a position to quit.

Has anyone here faced something similar? How did you navigate it? Are there any creative, ethical (or gray area) paths forward?

Thanks for any insights.

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Look at it as a blessing. You have the time to learn anything you want. Instead, train for the job you want, on the company's dime. Prepare.

For example, many businesses need a multi-tenant database. Learn all about that. Or user interfaces perhaps. Learn marketing, or double-entry bookkeeping? Whatever floats your boat, or learn them all. They'll be useful when you move on, or start a business.

Don't worry much about the contract, unless you are thinking of creating a business related to the current one. In which case you should be more careful. Keep important research on your own computer at home, and never access it at work. Wait a full six months post employment before debuting anything publicly. Doing a forced reset on any code repos to eliminate previous dates might help, though it's very unlikely to come to that.

Especially if this is going to continue on for a long time, it seems like have a paid opportunity to do a job hunt, looking for something better, rather than rotting at "work". If things seem like they're going south, you want to get out of there.

In the meantime, before jumping ship: Are there other teams that you could try to transfer to? Other products within the company? Do you have a skip-level manager you could talk to about your concerns? You say you have "ideas and energy". Would any of that be applicable within your current company? Anything that you could start building that would either help out the state of things, or at least get some positive attention for yourself?

A lot of people get away with violating the no side business thing. If it doesn’t affect them, they probably don’t care —- if you hit it big you owe them but you hit it big, so it’s OK.

I worked at one place where there was a no side business clause but when I had an unemployment claim the judge looked at the contract and found that clause was so badly written it didn’t make sense and wouldn’t have been binding.

I also had a no compete that said I wouldn’t go to a competitor — well I did anyway and never got in trouble, I worked there for a summer but quit because there was no health insurance and my COBRA ran out, after I left the new place the old business folded and my former boss wound up working at the new place.

Second this. I got away with a lot during my career. For most companies if you are not impacting their business (by being too distracted or actually competing) they won't bother you. Be careful though.

I've yet to see someone get caught where it wasn't their own fault. They opened their big mouths and told someone about it. You can block your data on The Work Number, you can hide your LinkedIn profile, and craft an entirely fake job history of self employment. No reason you can't work multiple jobs in this climate.

It's exhausting but I learned programming languages (C++20 when we were doing C++11) and had some fun with side-projects handled like real projects (branching strategy, kanban, releases...)

I should have tried some MOOCs at the time too.

Do you expect this situation to stay like this?

What constitutes a "business"?

I think publishing an app or game isn't really a "business" except in rare cases where they can grow to support ongoing development and multiple people. Same with many open source projects.

Passion-projects like solo-games can take years before they manifest as anything public too, pretty easy to keep something like that private. If "pre-launch" projects were also considered a business.

I agree with this. Create a MVP for a side business, build your email list of users, and iterate, iterate, iterate with improvements until people are beating your door down to pay for specific pro features. Offer to put people on a pro-version waiting list (for a specific dollar amount) and you'll know if you can expect enough money to make your exit worthwhile.

If you aren't comfortable quitting, and it sounds like you aren't, consider using the time you have to learn skills that might be relevant to ideas you want to pursue. Ideally also relevant to your current role if there is overlap.

Boredom sounds like what you primarily want to address at present.

The alternative is to look for areas where you can contribute more to your current role, but sounds like you have already tried that.

I don’t see any option for you but to give your boss the finger and take back control of your life. Better to be broke and pouring your blood, sweat and tears into something that matters to you than sitting idly, like a dog waiting to be let out of the house.

Look for a job that doesn't limit your options?

It doesn't sound like there's any other option.

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