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If you code, you should be building a business on the side. Especially if you are early in your career and its becoming harder to land a stable job. you need

If you code, you should be building a business on the side. Especially if you are early in your career and its becoming harder to land a stable job. you need to learn how to market your skills, get clients and deliver. No more excuses to sit in a job and do nothing. This is going to be critical to survive. Eventually I think companies are going to be much smaller entities than they once were which means your have to really buid your own biz.

keeptrying 2y ago
the most importat skills to learn: 1. Sales = learn to knock on a 100 doors to get one sale. 2. Marketing = learn to communicate your value prop to specific companeis and hiring managers. 3. Delviery = learn to deliver products/projects end to end with all the management that goes in between. If you know all 3 you'll never be in a position where you don't have income. It takes about 4 years to really get a grasp of all 3 so start now ... don't just do a 8 hour job and go home and watch tv. Keep trying to sell your services to others ... at least 2-3 hours after work to other companies/startups/other industries. Its a big world - smeone needs your services - your survival depends on finding those people nad packaging your skilsl so that they buy.
- rwyinuse 2y ago
  Good advice if you don't have a family. Utterly impossible for someone with small kids and a wife who is also working.
  - travelthrowaway 2y ago
    time-management and sleep deprivation, should write a book with that title 0600 - 0900 Your project 0900 - 1600 Corporate job 1700 - 2100 Family & free time (you need to learn how to make the most of it so that you can recharge as well) 2100 - 2300 The low-CPU low demanding part of managing a business paired with some interesting background content goes here
    - creativenolo 2y ago
      4 hours in the evening, nicely compartmentalised. If only. Where are the wake ups, the pickups & drops, the tidying, the admin, etc.
      - jodleif 2y ago
        Yeah it’s pretty simple. Just teach your kids to walk and the importance of no sleep interruptions, then they can get themselves to kindergarten and make their own food. /s
    - coldtea 2y ago
      >2100 - 2300 Yeah, your kids are gonna love that quality 21:00-23:00 time...
      - actionfromafar 2y ago
        I think it's meant to be Family 17-21
      - ropejumper 2y ago
        The formatting is off, family time is 17:00-21:00 in GP's comment.
    - nunobrito 2y ago
      Some people will criticize but I follow a similar time management schedule. It was only when I've built my first startup that many of those skills had to be learned and to be quite frank, I only wish to have started earlier rather than being throw into for making enough money. Nowadays that schedule is accurate and I'm a family person with two young kids in the house. I just don't wake so early but that is mostly because I keep working on my personal projects until midnight~1 AM. The good thing is that I'm no longer so attached with my employer company. Mismanagement, demotion or those issues don't affect me so personally because my professional value is no longer just defined by the company where I work. My work outside company hours is valued by many others, albeit not profit-driven it serves as a good backup whenever falling into unemployment situations.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    Having a wife who is working takes some of the financial pressure off. My children were four and eight when I started my business and it wasn't a problem at all. In fact I would say it made many things easier because I had a more flexible schedule.
    - benhurmarcel 2y ago
      This thread is about doing this on the side, while still keeping a full time job.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  This will not work if the status quo actually changes to a degree that a significant portion of developers have to do this. It'd very quickly saturate the people willing to give you a chance. This was a good advice 10-2 yrs ago, but going forward? We'll have to see, but my gut says this will become just as likely to succeed as becoming a successful influencer... By which I mean that a few will occasionally make it/succeed, but it'll only be such a low fraction of the people trying for it that it rounds to 0.0%. and the ones succeeding will generally have been able to leverage an opportunity that most trying the same never had. (Not to discourage people from trying - without an attempt you won't even have the chance to grasp such an opportunity. I'm just looking at it from the perspective of an observer)
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Yes is just that easy. You don’t actually have to have anything to sell. If that’s all it takes, why do only 1 in 10 startups succeed and that isn’t even counting all of the people who are struggling in obscurity.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    ...they didn't learn to sell well enough /s
  - keeptrying 2y ago
    Start with ecommerece. Buy on Alibaba for $200 and sell it.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      Anything easy to do margins tend toward $0.
      - keeptrying 2y ago
        Dude just try. Stop talking yourself out of everything!
        scarface_74 2y ago
        I have a good paying job. But everyone is talking about “This one Trick” that will make as much as even an entry level CRUD developer.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- latexr 2y ago
  > It takes about 4 years to really get a grasp of all 3 so start now That 4 years number sounds like an ass pull. What’s your source? Everyone is different and some of those skills come naturally to some people, so I sincerely doubt that number is even close to universal. Honestly, your whole suggestion seems straight out of one of those generic self-help scams that ignore the realities of life and always blame the user: “You gotta do the thing. If you’re not successful it’s because you didn’t want it enough, not because we’re dispelling the same dated advice to everyone”. Note I don’t think that’s what you’re doing, you’re not selling anything. I’m just saying I question the helpfulness and quality of the advice.
  - keeptrying 2y ago
    Buy $200 of anything from Alibaba. Sell online. Max Cost of experiment: $200 + hours put in. You'll learn to sell. None of my advice is expensive in time or money. But it requires effort and ability to learn from failure. The learning from failure is the key part. Everything else is just qualia.
    - kcb 2y ago
      Just get a second job at Walmart. Same quality of advice. Anyway, the real advice is not to always preemptively work a second job. It's use your high engineering salary for as long as you have it to save, save, save and invest, invest, invest. This is how you shield yourself.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      And will your advice make enough to pay the average person’s bills?
      - zelda420 2y ago
        Why do you hate the idea of someone trying to start a new business so much that you make 15+ comments on this thread? This is ycombinator, you know the startup accelerator.
scarface_74 2y ago
Yes because it’s harder to land a stable job, it’s much more realistic to start a business that is going to convince enough people to pay you enough to support yourself. Also you have to convince companies to do business with you instead of a well known company. Oh and to be competitive you need to have some type of funding. And you need to make enough to pay for health care.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Yes because it’s harder to land a stable job, it’s much more realistic to start a business In a slowed down market, both get difficult, the latter many times more than the first.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    In general yes, but there are always extra opportunities to start a business when times are down, because some things will be more in demand then.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      And you are also competing with everyone else thinking the same thing.
- Mc91 2y ago
  > it’s much more realistic to start a business that is going to convince enough people to pay you enough to support yourself. I only have to convince one place - Google Ads. Plus bring in the "eyeballs" with my free app, but I have accomplished that more than once. > Also you have to convince companies to do business with you instead of a well known company. Just one company in my case (actually several, but 90+% of the money comes from Google) > Oh and to be competitive you need to have some type of funding. I have to be competitive enough to make a few thousand a month, and with my programming (and database design, and UX, and SRE etc.) skills, I have achieved that. > And you need to make enough to pay for health care. In the US you do.
tonyedgecombe 2y ago
I do wonder about that. If you had it in you to start a business then I doubt you would have been sitting around waiting for the next downturn to do it.
dzonga 2y ago
100%. people wanna blame companies for laying people off, doing leetcode, having ATS systems that don't parse resumes correctly. if people realized - aimed at software engineers - that the same company you're applying for - someone went through the pain of creating the initial product, marketing it, selling it. I'm sure you can do the same - maybe not at the same level but at 80%. unlike in zero-sum games - real life you can have multiple winners - 80% will get you there.
saagarjha 2y ago
A lot of companies will frown upon such things.
- keeptrying 2y ago
  Don't tell them. Buy on Alibaba - $200 of anything that you think would sell. And then sell it. Not rocket science but most people are their own biggest wall.
edanm 2y ago
> If you code, you should be building a business on the side. This is incredibly far from being the universal claim you say it is. 99% of software developers work for someone else, not at their own business, and most are perfectly happy. By all means, building a business is great for many reasons, sometimes including financial reasons, and you should do it if you want to. But not wanting to is not an "excuse" and you shouldn't feel pressured to do so.
- speakfreely 2y ago
  I think OP is saying that it's more of an insurance policy than something to make you happy. If you asked any software dev 5 years ago what their career security looked like, I'm sure most would tell you that they feel extremely confident. A lot has changed in 5 years. Being good at one thing and expecting that to support you for the rest of your life is a risky strategy in the fast-changing world we live in. Tech people felt immune from that, but the facade is starting to crack.

keeptrying 2y ago

the most importat skills to learn: 1. Sales = learn to knock on a 100 doors to get one sale. 2. Marketing = learn to communicate your value prop to specific companeis and hiring managers. 3. Delviery = learn to deliver products/projects end to end with all the management that goes in between. If you know all 3 you'll never be in a position where you don't have income. It takes about 4 years to really get a grasp of all 3 so start now ... don't just do a 8 hour job and go home and watch tv. Keep trying to sell your services to others ... at least 2-3 hours after work to other companies/startups/other industries. Its a big world - smeone needs your services - your survival depends on finding those people nad packaging your skilsl so that they buy.

rwyinuse 2y ago
Good advice if you don't have a family. Utterly impossible for someone with small kids and a wife who is also working.
- travelthrowaway 2y ago
  time-management and sleep deprivation, should write a book with that title 0600 - 0900 Your project 0900 - 1600 Corporate job 1700 - 2100 Family & free time (you need to learn how to make the most of it so that you can recharge as well) 2100 - 2300 The low-CPU low demanding part of managing a business paired with some interesting background content goes here
  - creativenolo 2y ago
    4 hours in the evening, nicely compartmentalised. If only. Where are the wake ups, the pickups & drops, the tidying, the admin, etc.
    - jodleif 2y ago
      Yeah it’s pretty simple. Just teach your kids to walk and the importance of no sleep interruptions, then they can get themselves to kindergarten and make their own food. /s
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >2100 - 2300 Yeah, your kids are gonna love that quality 21:00-23:00 time...
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      I think it's meant to be Family 17-21
    - ropejumper 2y ago
      The formatting is off, family time is 17:00-21:00 in GP's comment.
  - nunobrito 2y ago
    Some people will criticize but I follow a similar time management schedule. It was only when I've built my first startup that many of those skills had to be learned and to be quite frank, I only wish to have started earlier rather than being throw into for making enough money. Nowadays that schedule is accurate and I'm a family person with two young kids in the house. I just don't wake so early but that is mostly because I keep working on my personal projects until midnight~1 AM. The good thing is that I'm no longer so attached with my employer company. Mismanagement, demotion or those issues don't affect me so personally because my professional value is no longer just defined by the company where I work. My work outside company hours is valued by many others, albeit not profit-driven it serves as a good backup whenever falling into unemployment situations.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  Having a wife who is working takes some of the financial pressure off. My children were four and eight when I started my business and it wasn't a problem at all. In fact I would say it made many things easier because I had a more flexible schedule.
  - benhurmarcel 2y ago
    This thread is about doing this on the side, while still keeping a full time job.
ffsm8 2y ago
This will not work if the status quo actually changes to a degree that a significant portion of developers have to do this. It'd very quickly saturate the people willing to give you a chance. This was a good advice 10-2 yrs ago, but going forward? We'll have to see, but my gut says this will become just as likely to succeed as becoming a successful influencer... By which I mean that a few will occasionally make it/succeed, but it'll only be such a low fraction of the people trying for it that it rounds to 0.0%. and the ones succeeding will generally have been able to leverage an opportunity that most trying the same never had. (Not to discourage people from trying - without an attempt you won't even have the chance to grasp such an opportunity. I'm just looking at it from the perspective of an observer)
scarface_74 2y ago
Yes is just that easy. You don’t actually have to have anything to sell. If that’s all it takes, why do only 1 in 10 startups succeed and that isn’t even counting all of the people who are struggling in obscurity.
- coldtea 2y ago
  ...they didn't learn to sell well enough /s
- keeptrying 2y ago
  Start with ecommerece. Buy on Alibaba for $200 and sell it.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Anything easy to do margins tend toward $0.
    - keeptrying 2y ago
      Dude just try. Stop talking yourself out of everything!
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        I have a good paying job. But everyone is talking about “This one Trick” that will make as much as even an entry level CRUD developer.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
latexr 2y ago
> It takes about 4 years to really get a grasp of all 3 so start now That 4 years number sounds like an ass pull. What’s your source? Everyone is different and some of those skills come naturally to some people, so I sincerely doubt that number is even close to universal. Honestly, your whole suggestion seems straight out of one of those generic self-help scams that ignore the realities of life and always blame the user: “You gotta do the thing. If you’re not successful it’s because you didn’t want it enough, not because we’re dispelling the same dated advice to everyone”. Note I don’t think that’s what you’re doing, you’re not selling anything. I’m just saying I question the helpfulness and quality of the advice.
- keeptrying 2y ago
  Buy $200 of anything from Alibaba. Sell online. Max Cost of experiment: $200 + hours put in. You'll learn to sell. None of my advice is expensive in time or money. But it requires effort and ability to learn from failure. The learning from failure is the key part. Everything else is just qualia.
  - kcb 2y ago
    Just get a second job at Walmart. Same quality of advice. Anyway, the real advice is not to always preemptively work a second job. It's use your high engineering salary for as long as you have it to save, save, save and invest, invest, invest. This is how you shield yourself.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    And will your advice make enough to pay the average person’s bills?
    - zelda420 2y ago
      Why do you hate the idea of someone trying to start a new business so much that you make 15+ comments on this thread? This is ycombinator, you know the startup accelerator.

scarface_74 2y ago

Yes because it’s harder to land a stable job, it’s much more realistic to start a business that is going to convince enough people to pay you enough to support yourself. Also you have to convince companies to do business with you instead of a well known company. Oh and to be competitive you need to have some type of funding. And you need to make enough to pay for health care.

coldtea 2y ago
>Yes because it’s harder to land a stable job, it’s much more realistic to start a business In a slowed down market, both get difficult, the latter many times more than the first.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  In general yes, but there are always extra opportunities to start a business when times are down, because some things will be more in demand then.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    And you are also competing with everyone else thinking the same thing.
Mc91 2y ago
> it’s much more realistic to start a business that is going to convince enough people to pay you enough to support yourself. I only have to convince one place - Google Ads. Plus bring in the "eyeballs" with my free app, but I have accomplished that more than once. > Also you have to convince companies to do business with you instead of a well known company. Just one company in my case (actually several, but 90+% of the money comes from Google) > Oh and to be competitive you need to have some type of funding. I have to be competitive enough to make a few thousand a month, and with my programming (and database design, and UX, and SRE etc.) skills, I have achieved that. > And you need to make enough to pay for health care. In the US you do.

tonyedgecombe 2y ago

I do wonder about that. If you had it in you to start a business then I doubt you would have been sitting around waiting for the next downturn to do it.

dzonga 2y ago

100%. people wanna blame companies for laying people off, doing leetcode, having ATS systems that don't parse resumes correctly. if people realized - aimed at software engineers - that the same company you're applying for - someone went through the pain of creating the initial product, marketing it, selling it. I'm sure you can do the same - maybe not at the same level but at 80%. unlike in zero-sum games - real life you can have multiple winners - 80% will get you there.

saagarjha 2y ago

A lot of companies will frown upon such things.

keeptrying 2y ago
Don't tell them. Buy on Alibaba - $200 of anything that you think would sell. And then sell it. Not rocket science but most people are their own biggest wall.

edanm 2y ago

> If you code, you should be building a business on the side. This is incredibly far from being the universal claim you say it is. 99% of software developers work for someone else, not at their own business, and most are perfectly happy. By all means, building a business is great for many reasons, sometimes including financial reasons, and you should do it if you want to. But not wanting to is not an "excuse" and you shouldn't feel pressured to do so.

speakfreely 2y ago
I think OP is saying that it's more of an insurance policy than something to make you happy. If you asked any software dev 5 years ago what their career security looked like, I'm sure most would tell you that they feel extremely confident. A lot has changed in 5 years. Being good at one thing and expecting that to support you for the rest of your life is a risky strategy in the fast-changing world we live in. Tech people felt immune from that, but the facade is starting to crack.