I was given the exact advice few years back. If I could go back in time, I would have given myself a couple of years more at the job while trying to carve out a

I was given the exact advice few years back. If I could go back in time, I would have given myself a couple of years more at the job while trying to carve out a earning-product on the side. I followed the consulting path, but now I would caution against the consulting/freelancing path, unless one was building a consulting-agency. Theoretically everything sounds good, but has many problems in practice. 1. If you are successful at consulting, it means money (and potentially a lot of it). It takes stupidity, insanity and courage to leave the money on the table when work keeps pouring in. For last 6 months, I have halved my work hours to 20-25 per week to work on developing products. That was not an easy decision ( I still work total of 50-60 hrs per week). I had a few ideas that fizzled out quickly and now I can't say what exactly I'll be working on - I still have a few good ideas that I need to try. But last 6 months part-time consulting did make me miss out on the money and opportunity cost. And the pressure mounts every day because I gave myself 1-1.5 years to try out. I might be trapped too because if I fail at products it makes sense to start a consulting agency instead of searching for a job. 2. You might think - "I'll earn from consulting and invest in products". Really! That did not work for me. Bad hires, management-stress, and lack of focus was pretty evident. Not saying it won't work for others - but less likely to work if you don't invest focused time in products. I just let many go(in a nice way) and decided to start afresh. 3. I worry constantly and this also pushes me hard to do more work. I haven't made a successful cut into products, I am losing out my years and the opportunity cost is way too high compared to being an employee. My life is much better as a consultant-freelancer in absolute material terms, but this is not what I headed out for. 4. Hard to do justice to consulting project and product both. When I was doing multiple consulting projects, it was easy to switch between those. But now for some reason, its hard not to think about my product when I am also developing someone else's product. On one hand you want your customers to be successful and on the other hand you envy them and crucify self because you made the product work for them but haven't done it for self. That is just a feeling, but it hurts! There are positive points for consulting - One gets exposed to the world of business, paces up, upgrades self, learns stuff like selling and negotiating. These can be done as an employee too (but slower). If one starts on the side as an employee, there is only one issue to take - Getting out of the comfort zone and focusing on one thing. Employee is very comfortable in that setting and finds it easier to blame others/circumstances for failures. As far as that attitude can be avoided, starting up while being an employee is still a better thing. P.S: Freelancing/Consulting is not a bad path - its wonderful, just check priorities.