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the same author has also published an interesting series of "annual review" blog posts summarising his progress trying to get different software businesses off

• Etheryte 2y ago
  A good highlight of what quitting your job can look like: > Six years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company. For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. The best of them earned a few hundred dollars per month in revenue, but none were profitable. We often hear about the successes, and it is easy to be loud with success, but it's important to keep in mind the ground truth: most companies fail. It's nice to see that for this author, three years in he did manage to find something that made money, but realistically most people don't have that much runway to keep at it without generating income.
  • nostrademons 2y ago
    It's an interesting reality check that in 2023, six years into his journey as a bootstrapped founder, Tiny Pilot made $225K in profit on ~$1M on revenue. For 2021 and 2022, it made roughly a $5K profit; the rest was all losses. He quit Google because he couldn't get a promotion presumably from L4 to L5, but $225K is less than what an L4 makes. This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in America, because looking at this experience, the optimal strategy for revenue is to blow smoke up the ass of a wealthy corporation until they give you a fat stock grant, then claim credit for the work of others so that they give you more.
    • WalterBright 2y ago
      At one point Musk was within $100,000 of personal and business bankruptcy when Tesla ran short of funds.
      • ouddv 2y ago
        I would bet a substantial sum that Tesla was insolvent early in the m3. They suddenly were firing people all over the place and not paying many vendors, and paying others quite late. Additionally, the finance pros kept quitting right then.... I think it went bk, but Musk bet that he could hype up the stock enough to raise cash in the next offering and then pretend it never happened...
        • WalterBright 2y ago
          If you're that interested, read the Musk biography I linked to in this thread. It's a good read.
      • oblio 2y ago
        Based on which source? Musk?
        • WalterBright 2y ago
          The biography "Elon Musk" by Vance. https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Billionaire-SpaceX-Shaping/dp/0753555646/ https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Billionaire-SpaceX-Shaping/...
    • rvnx 2y ago
      A big factor for early employees (not N. 1 or 2, but the first XXXX) is purely being lucky to be in the right place at the right time. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/stroke-of-luck-for-masseuse-who-found-millions-at-google-400082.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/stroke-of-... This was 2007. Now worth 15 times more. The Chef as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Ayers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Ayers paid 26M USD in 2009. Now worth 15 times more. So half a billion USD for this. (same for Nvidia or OpenAI employees just riding the wave)
      • away271828 2y ago
        I did "reasonably" well for a couple decades and then I did, if not spectacularly, well for a decade+ that certainly set me up for retirement. And I might have even retired earlier absent COVIVD. Not spectacular sums but certainly reasonable amounts given owning a house and modest travel sums.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • teaearlgraycold 2y ago
      You really shouldn't quit Google if your plan is to get rich. You should quit if you don't care too much about money and want more interesting work than being a cog in a lucrative machine.
      • matwood 2y ago
        Yeah. Google or any of the big techs are the lowest risk paths to economic stability and independence. Anyone with the ability to work on one should absolutely take it.
        • saagarjha 2y ago
          Those who have the ability to take such a path often have other paths available to them that they can take with more risk–because the low risk path is always available to them as a fallback.
    • fullshark 2y ago
      Same as it ever was. The company man is hardly a new phenomenon.
    • lotsofpulp 2y ago
      > This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in America, because looking at this experience, the optimal strategy for revenue is to blow smoke up the ass of a wealthy corporation until they give you a fat stock grant, then claim credit for the work of others so that they give you more. That has always been the case. If anything, software development opened up a brand new avenue for people to get rich other than stuffy “elite” colleges that feed into NYC/Chicago/Boston into finance/law/medicine.
    • pkaye 2y ago
      There is no guarantee of success. There is a lot of luck involved. Look at Robert Pera who founded Ubiquiti Networks. He was working on an idea his bosses ignored on he own during nights and weekend and then founded his company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pera Jensen Huang said when they started Nvidia at one point they were thirty days from going out of business. Also compare the TinyPilot (at $399) to the open source JetKVM ($69) which is supposed to come out soon. https://jetkvm.com/ https://jetkvm.com/
    • I_AM_A_SMURF 2y ago
      > This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in America, because looking at this experience, the optimal strategy for revenue is to blow smoke up the ass of a wealthy corporation until they give you a fat stock grant, then claim credit for the work of others so that they give you more. I mean getting a job as a SWE at Google is hardly a good strategy if you don't enjoy writing software. But yes once you're there is very hard to justify doing anything else, there's a reason why they call them "golden handcuffs".
    • sangnoir 2y ago
      > This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in America I know it's topical, but I really don't think the working class on America is pissed because they are struggling to increase their annual income from $350,000 to $500,000 at their Big Tech job. That's an elites-problem; or whatever you choose to call anyone in the top 5% earning bracket.
      • avereveard 2y ago
        Side of the same coin. Salaryman earning millions are still salaryman. You're bounded to the whims of the employer, and can lose it all from the ups and down of the personal relationships that surround you. The American dream is not the rich employee, is moving out to that relationship and build something you own. Building something that is bounded to the marked at large and can weather the individual change of whims is increasingly harder as megacorp are capturing more and more value in every corner of the market. The entire mechanism that elevated the working class to entrepreneurship is broken and the effects do include a working class increasingly repressed, at ever income bracket.
        • amrocha 2y ago
          No they’re not. A “salaryman” earning millions has financial independence in 5 years maximum if they so choose. Most people are forced to work or starve. These are not the same.
          • avereveard 2y ago
            > has financial independence well yeah the dream is not the salaryman lifestile, but the financial independence, thanks for agreeing with me
            • amrocha 2y ago
              The “salaryman lifestyle” necessitates low wages. It’s a “lifestyle” because you can’t quit it. You make barely enough money to sustain your family, so that you’re forced to keep working against your will. If you’re making millions of dollars, you’re not a salaryman. You’re making a choice to sell your labor, but you can always quit and the impact to your livelihood will be minimal.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • whack 2y ago
      > This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in America, because looking at this experience, the optimal strategy for revenue is to blow smoke up the ass of a wealthy corporation until they give you a fat stock grant, then claim credit for the work of others so that they give you more. Here's an alternate take. A competitive free market has squeezed corporate profits so much, that most would-be-capitalists would be better off joining the working class instead. Consider the alternative where anyone who doesn't have the financial means to build their own company, is relegated to a sub-par quality of life.
    • Narhem 2y ago
      [flagged]
  • rvnx 2y ago
    (Not saying it for this person, as I don't know), but there is a case also where you can be a very average performer, just hiding in a large corporation (or retiring, as some people even say), then you will be very well paid, and highly considered. Then once you leave to create your own projects or join a small start-up, reality hits.
    • rozap 2y ago
      Ain't this the truth. So many mediocre people hide in a giant company, learn how to hit their kpis and think they're crushing it, but get smacked in the face by reality when they leave. My experience at a small company is that I always feel mediocre :)
      • disqard 2y ago
        I assure you that Imposter Syndrome is a daily reality even for Senior Engineers at Google.
        • I_AM_A_SMURF 2y ago
          I thought once I reached Staff at Google it would go away. It in fact made it even worse now that I have a whole slate of incredible peers to compare myself to.
          • cmrdporcupine 2y ago
            The internal culture at Google outright fosters it. Everything from the interview process on. My mental health is 5x better since leaving.
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    It's a lot harder to found a business successfully than most people imagine.
    • cromagnum 2y ago
      Incorrect. In fact YC’s (i.e. the website you’re on) whole thesis is that it’s a lot easier to found a business successfully than most people imagine. Yeah, they’ve drifted from their roots a little but I think it’s been proved out. The irony is killing me.
      • WalterBright 2y ago
        80% of businesses fail within 5 years.
        • cromagnum 2y ago
          Well, less than 1% of lifeforms are born as humans but that doesn’t seem to scare people into not having babies.
          • snicky 2y ago
            Interesting, but I don't get it. Are you saying people aren't scared of having babies even though they can randomly give birth to an ant or an elephant?
      • Swizec 2y ago
        It’s incredibly easy to found/start a business. It’s incredibly hard to build that beginning into a profitable money machine.
      • theptip 2y ago
        How many have you founded? Important data point for such an opinion.
  • Simon_ORourke 2y ago
    > It's nice to see that for this author, three years in he did manage to find something that made money, but realistically most people don't have that much runway to keep at it without generating income. Precisely this, and while I completely support the original author in their quest to find their own bootstrapped business, I keep wondering what the "what if" would have looked like had they stayed earning the big bucks in Google.
    • sgerenser 2y ago
      You don’t really have to wonder, Google (really all big tech) stocks mooned since 2018, so he’d likely be far wealthier.
• yard2010 2y ago
  I love the part of the story in which a guy in a windbreaker knocks on his door on Sunday morning and tells him that he has to come with him since a sprinkler popped in his office. I know really few people that can write such relatable and honest content like this guy. I've been stalking him for years now. Great inspiration source