hnjm0101

I dunno, maybe I've completely missed the point in his writing, but I just tried reading "The Wisdom of Insecurity" and it seemed like almost complete nonsense to me. There were definitely a few passages that were very insightful, but the other 90% (at least to me) was incoherent rambling.

Thanks for your response. I think everyone can agree that your situation sounds much better than working a 9 - 5 job :). I'm a bit more interested in the year or so that sucked, though. My main concern is for the few people I know who are thinking of quitting their day jobs to start a business, but whom I feel are not going in to it with their eyes open (in their view, everything about starting a business is better than working 9 - 5, whereas in my view you're giving up quite a bit in the short term in hopes to gain in the long term).

Yeah I would never ask anything crazy like "implement a binary search tree" in an interview. Our hiring is more like, look at someones resume, and if their skills generally fit what we're hiring for and they actually know the things on their resume and they don't seem extremely lazy/arrogant/(whatever personality flaw that is hard to work with), then hire. A lot of the time we bring them in to the interview and they don't actually know the things they say they did on their resume. For example, if you claim to be experienced in object oriented programming but have no clue what i'm talking about when I say words like inheritance or polymorphism, you do not actually know object oriented programming. You should also know how to do it in one of the languages you say you know on your resume (I don't care if it is the language we're hiring for, syntax can be learned quickly enough).

Thanks for the response. So in my view, all of these points can be resolved by simply having more money in the bank and it is much easier to earn a decent income by working 9 - 5 as a software developer right now (at least where I live) than it is to start your own business. Having a decent amount of savings/disposable income allows you to:

- Feel less pressure to work longer hours. Worst case scenario, you work 8 hours a day, your boss fires you because they seem to think you should be working more and you find a new job within a few months

- Allows you to take some time off work unpaid if you wish and travel wherever you want

Of course this all relies on your take home pay being greater than your expenses, but this should be possible if you have no aspirations to own a fancy home/car (I don't really either). If you want a lot of money at the expense of taking on higher risk and likely working more hours with more stress and you think you can achieve this with your idea, then I think starting your own business makes sense.

Ugh, that commute sounds rough. Good luck with the job search.

Thanks for your response. I guess I've been coding long enough now that I just view it as work and not fun (although I do enjoy other aspects of my job). I do remember when I enjoyed coding just for fun so I can see the appeal of your argument there.

I'm surprised to hear that supply is outpacing demand where you are. Where I am (in Toronto), we always have a hard time hiring good people and it seems to be getting more difficult.

Curious why people here hate 9 - 5 so much. I can understand starting a business if you have an idea you're passionate about and you're confident you can make you more money than you can make working for someone else. But most software development jobs actually allow you to have a lot of autonomy (flexible hours, work remotely, etc), a place to socialize with people who are likely going to have a lot in common with you and good pay with a nice safety net. Venturing out on your own and starting your own business has none of these things.. at least in the beginning, you are likely going to work more, for less money, by yourself. I understand why the small subset of business owners start their business for the reason I mentioned above, but I get the impression a lot of people working 9 - 5 are just assuming the grass is greener on the other side...