4 ms·

It works if you don't have many responsibilities. I recently lost my only source of income and that became crippling to my overall performance when it comes to

by drra 5y ago

It works if you don't have many responsibilities. I recently lost my only source of income and that became crippling to my overall performance when it comes to side projects that could eventually replace that source. It was really surprising since I expected to head full forward with my projects. It used to be the case when I was a student capable of living on a shoestring budget.

lowercased 5y ago
> It works if you don't have many responsibilities. Yep. Single person with minimal responsibilities has more freedom/flexibility than someone with a family (for example) - kids/spouse mean your time is not just your own, and your decisions have direct (often immediate) impacts on those around you.
xwdv 5y ago
Throw a wife and two kids into that mix and let’s see what happens to your side projects.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Yeah, it goes from 16 hours a day to MAYBE 16 hours a week.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Or -16 hrs a week (made up by borrowing from sleep or other necessary time), which just isn’t sustainable.
  - czbond 5y ago
    I have a lot of experience pushing forward stuff with wife / kids. One must learn to delegate. Yes you can do "programming whatever", but you don't have the time. If you believe in the project, allocate.... $100,$500,$1k a month for a few months (whatever is your threshold) and outsource! It doesn't need to be in "expensive React with microservices".... you can do v1 in Laravel and a purchased template. (as example). If one does not feel comfortable paying someone to do some of the work - it is a key tell the project may not be worth continuing. Momentum is key as projects natural state is "trending towards death"
    - xwdv 5y ago
      This advice used to work years ago but user expectations have risen massively and you can no longer get away with a shitty cookie cutter MVP. You must do the big work upfront and come out very polished out of the gate, or else users will sense you don’t really have much skin in the game and not bother investing time in your niche project. This often means you must leverage the latest and greatest tech to get an edge, such as React. Users have been burned too much by “lean startups” and “mvps” and have become wiser to their tricks.
      - czbond 5y ago
        If the value proposition is common, then yes it is hard. If it is novel, then no. Agree design is much more important than before. But you can still pay a designer $1k or less and it looks pretty nice. Maybe not "uniquely different", but nice. Agree the days of "simply put it up and get users" is probably gone. One has to work it, which is what distinguishes a project from a business. Developers may be good at one, but not both.
        nosianu 5y ago
        The problem with this advice is the same as with most advice for how to get ahead: It just does not scale, not even a little. It only works for a few. If more people follow it, it's just more stressful and/or expensive for everyone. I mean, if this is the kind of society that any poster of such advice has in mind than I won't complain. Who am I to dictate what the end goal is? If people want a society for winners, so be it. I just wish that advice givers were aware of that and would show it. As it usually sounds like such advice is given without any thought for scalability. Or you subscribe to the idea that a huge number of people could indeed have this 0.1% super idea. I can't really disprove that this would be possible I admit, a huge number of people suddenly having crazy good ideas all at once, and all or most not requiring a lot of resources (which they would compete over, and with all the old industries).
        lazide 5y ago
        Blindly spending $100mln to make an awesome app without getting a MVP out to validate an idea for way cheaper is just ‘making up losses at scale’. It also doesn’t scale.
spookthesunset 5y ago
> It used to be the case when I was a student capable of living on a shoestring budget. It blows me away how easy it is to grow your expenses right along with your income. I started in this industry making like $60k/yr and somehow managed to live and go on trips. Now that I’m older I make substantially more than that but somehow my expenses grew right along side. Car payment, expensive apartment, Uber eats, fancier groceries, lavish travel, expensive hobby stuff… shit adds up. Not to mention I’ve got graduate level student loans, maxed retirement, etc… I dunno… I know for sure if push came to shove I could do away with a large portion of that. But man can your expenses blow up so easily if you don’t pay attention to them.

by drra 5y ago

lowercased 5y ago

> It works if you don't have many responsibilities. Yep. Single person with minimal responsibilities has more freedom/flexibility than someone with a family (for example) - kids/spouse mean your time is not just your own, and your decisions have direct (often immediate) impacts on those around you.

xwdv 5y ago

Throw a wife and two kids into that mix and let’s see what happens to your side projects.

datavirtue 5y ago
Yeah, it goes from 16 hours a day to MAYBE 16 hours a week.
- lazide 5y ago
  Or -16 hrs a week (made up by borrowing from sleep or other necessary time), which just isn’t sustainable.
- czbond 5y ago
  I have a lot of experience pushing forward stuff with wife / kids. One must learn to delegate. Yes you can do "programming whatever", but you don't have the time. If you believe in the project, allocate.... $100,$500,$1k a month for a few months (whatever is your threshold) and outsource! It doesn't need to be in "expensive React with microservices".... you can do v1 in Laravel and a purchased template. (as example). If one does not feel comfortable paying someone to do some of the work - it is a key tell the project may not be worth continuing. Momentum is key as projects natural state is "trending towards death"
  - xwdv 5y ago
    This advice used to work years ago but user expectations have risen massively and you can no longer get away with a shitty cookie cutter MVP. You must do the big work upfront and come out very polished out of the gate, or else users will sense you don’t really have much skin in the game and not bother investing time in your niche project. This often means you must leverage the latest and greatest tech to get an edge, such as React. Users have been burned too much by “lean startups” and “mvps” and have become wiser to their tricks.
    - czbond 5y ago
      If the value proposition is common, then yes it is hard. If it is novel, then no. Agree design is much more important than before. But you can still pay a designer $1k or less and it looks pretty nice. Maybe not "uniquely different", but nice. Agree the days of "simply put it up and get users" is probably gone. One has to work it, which is what distinguishes a project from a business. Developers may be good at one, but not both.
      - nosianu 5y ago
        The problem with this advice is the same as with most advice for how to get ahead: It just does not scale, not even a little. It only works for a few. If more people follow it, it's just more stressful and/or expensive for everyone. I mean, if this is the kind of society that any poster of such advice has in mind than I won't complain. Who am I to dictate what the end goal is? If people want a society for winners, so be it. I just wish that advice givers were aware of that and would show it. As it usually sounds like such advice is given without any thought for scalability. Or you subscribe to the idea that a huge number of people could indeed have this 0.1% super idea. I can't really disprove that this would be possible I admit, a huge number of people suddenly having crazy good ideas all at once, and all or most not requiring a lot of resources (which they would compete over, and with all the old industries).
        lazide 5y ago
        Blindly spending $100mln to make an awesome app without getting a MVP out to validate an idea for way cheaper is just ‘making up losses at scale’. It also doesn’t scale.

spookthesunset 5y ago

> It used to be the case when I was a student capable of living on a shoestring budget. It blows me away how easy it is to grow your expenses right along with your income. I started in this industry making like $60k/yr and somehow managed to live and go on trips. Now that I’m older I make substantially more than that but somehow my expenses grew right along side. Car payment, expensive apartment, Uber eats, fancier groceries, lavish travel, expensive hobby stuff… shit adds up. Not to mention I’ve got graduate level student loans, maxed retirement, etc… I dunno… I know for sure if push came to shove I could do away with a large portion of that. But man can your expenses blow up so easily if you don’t pay attention to them.