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If I understand the timeline: - July 2019 - start first full time job - early 2020 - 6 months unpaid leave - June 2020 - quit job to start company - August

If I understand the timeline: - July 2019 - start first full time job - early 2020 - 6 months unpaid leave - June 2020 - quit job to start company - August 2020 - blog post about how to quit your job So someone with less than a year of full time experience who seemingly hasn't actually built a business is giving me advice on how to successfully quit my job? I guess that's the part they've succeeded at so far.

dangus 6y ago
That’s hilarious, I was about to respond in some grumpy fashion about how it’s basically impossible for anyone to get any useful information or advice out of this article. I didn’t even notice this timeline. Not even year into a career and the author already doesn’t like it. I mean, it’s entirely possible that your first job just sucks. It’s entirely possible that your first company just sucks. I’d just look for a different job if it was me. Dropping everything and becoming a particularly vague brand of entrepreneur isn’t going to work. A huge percentage of companies who have really serious complex business plans and even seed capital still fail. And here’s a junior-level person thinking they’re just going to start a successful business in a selection of vague categories (e.g. email marketing - I don’t know if the author has any clue how mature and complex this product segment really is. You can buy some fantastically complex email marketing software for like $20/month). But I’m trying not to be grumpy. Good luck author. I’m guessing we’ll be seeing you in the cubicle in 6 months.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  I'm 28 and virtually every single male I talk to in their 20s has this deep resentment of working for a corporation. It personally used to resonate with me, but it turns out I like money much more than freedom.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    "You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me, buddy, you've got nothing to apologize for." - Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates) Advice given to a main character who's (spoilers?) smart and thoughtful enough to be deeply bored by and unhappy with anything like a normal career, while also easily doing well at such a job while hardly trying, but who also believes deeply that he's meant for something more artistic and intellectual and adventurous but is both entirely unmotivated to actually make that happen, and also probably not that smart. And yes I felt attacked when I read the book :-)
  - dangus 6y ago
    Entrepreneurship is far less free, too. If you own a business, can you really just take two weeks off and ignore your customers? Can you just clock out after 8 hours? Can you get sick or go on maternity/paternity leave and just come back to work to a functioning business? Salaried work is highly appealing. It really doesn’t have to feel like corporate slavery.
    - sushshshsh 6y ago
      Right? It's very hard work being an entrepreneur and if you take time off and that results in your customers going unserviced, then you certainly will feel the consequence of "setting your own schedule". If you have everything automated and your business is growing and customers are happy and loyal, well then you can take time off because by all indications you've put in a lot of hard work and intelligent design to achieve that. For me, I actually enjoy the grunt work and the meetings and corporate BS in exchange for a quite stable paycheck and societal approval. It only leaves me with just enough free time for personal projects so that they can forever remain theoretical and unfinished and unfocused, as they deserve to be, because actual implementation into a robust and profitable platform is a quick way to kill personal interest in a subject ;)
cheez 6y ago
How to become an entrepreneur (from someone who has actually done it): - Get income from other people via job - Learn - Come up with idea - Test market in 2 weeks for < $100 - Rinse and repeat until market test gives positive results you can't ignore - Quit job - Release version 1 in 2 weeks - Have income by 4 week mark - If no income by 4 week mark, u fucked up, get a job
- skynica 6y ago
  How high should the income be though? A few existing clients of mine were willing and did change to my platform, but how do you know if the business is scalable/will be competitive against other large businesses?
  - cheez 6y ago
    IMO, it should cover company and living expenses. The rest can come later.
  - stingraycharles 6y ago
    While helpful, I do believe these types of “rules” should not be followed as if they’re set in stone. Adapt them to your own situation. In my case I had success with a fairly complex big data platform, there would be no way a version could be released in such short a time. This didn’t matter, as I followed a slightly different strategy. A different way of looking at things is thinking about what can do wrong, and working back on trying to mitigate things. There’s a big, big difference in strategy you need to take if you need, say, a thousand paying clients in order to be “ramen profitable” vs one big client. I work in the latter space, and we managed to find a way for our first customer to partially fund the development of the platform, the money they would get back once the “monthly payments” would otherwise be arriving. Totally different approach, but it’s one hell of a validation of an idea without taking on too much risk!
    - cheez 6y ago
      Well said. Yes of course those rules aren't set in stone but the idea is remove as much risk as possible, as cheaply as possible.
michaelbuckbee 6y ago
Well, they're quitting a salaried position to try and take on freelance or small agency type work. Aside from that - this really reads more of like a "journal" entry than an advice piece.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  It is explicitly a journal entry.
vp8989 6y ago
Welcome to the Internet.
mratiebatie 6y ago
Although the article highlights that in the last year I started to work full time, I’ve been working as a programmer for 7 years during university. I had mentor which taught me a lot about programming which I’m eternally grateful for. I’ve worked before as a freelance developer and liked it pretty much. Although I do understand it sounds like an impulsive action I just wanted to share how my thought process was in the last months. I never ask you to do the same or follow my steps, I simply share them. I hope you do what you love cause in the end that matters the most.

dangus 6y ago

That’s hilarious, I was about to respond in some grumpy fashion about how it’s basically impossible for anyone to get any useful information or advice out of this article. I didn’t even notice this timeline. Not even year into a career and the author already doesn’t like it. I mean, it’s entirely possible that your first job just sucks. It’s entirely possible that your first company just sucks. I’d just look for a different job if it was me. Dropping everything and becoming a particularly vague brand of entrepreneur isn’t going to work. A huge percentage of companies who have really serious complex business plans and even seed capital still fail. And here’s a junior-level person thinking they’re just going to start a successful business in a selection of vague categories (e.g. email marketing - I don’t know if the author has any clue how mature and complex this product segment really is. You can buy some fantastically complex email marketing software for like $20/month). But I’m trying not to be grumpy. Good luck author. I’m guessing we’ll be seeing you in the cubicle in 6 months.

sushshshsh 6y ago
I'm 28 and virtually every single male I talk to in their 20s has this deep resentment of working for a corporation. It personally used to resonate with me, but it turns out I like money much more than freedom.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  "You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me, buddy, you've got nothing to apologize for." - Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates) Advice given to a main character who's (spoilers?) smart and thoughtful enough to be deeply bored by and unhappy with anything like a normal career, while also easily doing well at such a job while hardly trying, but who also believes deeply that he's meant for something more artistic and intellectual and adventurous but is both entirely unmotivated to actually make that happen, and also probably not that smart. And yes I felt attacked when I read the book :-)
- dangus 6y ago
  Entrepreneurship is far less free, too. If you own a business, can you really just take two weeks off and ignore your customers? Can you just clock out after 8 hours? Can you get sick or go on maternity/paternity leave and just come back to work to a functioning business? Salaried work is highly appealing. It really doesn’t have to feel like corporate slavery.
  - sushshshsh 6y ago
    Right? It's very hard work being an entrepreneur and if you take time off and that results in your customers going unserviced, then you certainly will feel the consequence of "setting your own schedule". If you have everything automated and your business is growing and customers are happy and loyal, well then you can take time off because by all indications you've put in a lot of hard work and intelligent design to achieve that. For me, I actually enjoy the grunt work and the meetings and corporate BS in exchange for a quite stable paycheck and societal approval. It only leaves me with just enough free time for personal projects so that they can forever remain theoretical and unfinished and unfocused, as they deserve to be, because actual implementation into a robust and profitable platform is a quick way to kill personal interest in a subject ;)

cheez 6y ago

How to become an entrepreneur (from someone who has actually done it): - Get income from other people via job - Learn - Come up with idea - Test market in 2 weeks for < $100 - Rinse and repeat until market test gives positive results you can't ignore - Quit job - Release version 1 in 2 weeks - Have income by 4 week mark - If no income by 4 week mark, u fucked up, get a job

skynica 6y ago
How high should the income be though? A few existing clients of mine were willing and did change to my platform, but how do you know if the business is scalable/will be competitive against other large businesses?
- cheez 6y ago
  IMO, it should cover company and living expenses. The rest can come later.
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  While helpful, I do believe these types of “rules” should not be followed as if they’re set in stone. Adapt them to your own situation. In my case I had success with a fairly complex big data platform, there would be no way a version could be released in such short a time. This didn’t matter, as I followed a slightly different strategy. A different way of looking at things is thinking about what can do wrong, and working back on trying to mitigate things. There’s a big, big difference in strategy you need to take if you need, say, a thousand paying clients in order to be “ramen profitable” vs one big client. I work in the latter space, and we managed to find a way for our first customer to partially fund the development of the platform, the money they would get back once the “monthly payments” would otherwise be arriving. Totally different approach, but it’s one hell of a validation of an idea without taking on too much risk!
  - cheez 6y ago
    Well said. Yes of course those rules aren't set in stone but the idea is remove as much risk as possible, as cheaply as possible.

michaelbuckbee 6y ago

Well, they're quitting a salaried position to try and take on freelance or small agency type work. Aside from that - this really reads more of like a "journal" entry than an advice piece.

staticassertion 6y ago
It is explicitly a journal entry.

vp8989 6y ago

Welcome to the Internet.

mratiebatie 6y ago

Although the article highlights that in the last year I started to work full time, I’ve been working as a programmer for 7 years during university. I had mentor which taught me a lot about programming which I’m eternally grateful for. I’ve worked before as a freelance developer and liked it pretty much. Although I do understand it sounds like an impulsive action I just wanted to share how my thought process was in the last months. I never ask you to do the same or follow my steps, I simply share them. I hope you do what you love cause in the end that matters the most.