There's a false adversary here, in the 12-hour days and 7-day weeks associated with startups. If you're not a founder, don't work more than 40-- possibly 50 on

There's a false adversary here, in the 12-hour days and 7-day weeks associated with startups. If you're not a founder, don't work more than 40-- possibly 50 on occasion but only for a project that benefits your career in a major way. Giving your all to a company in exchange for 0.02% of something without a well-defined value is a chump's game. On the other hand, most passive income material smells more like an old-fashioned pyramid scheme than anyone else. Yes, there are terrible startups out there that expect extreme hours. It's easier to leave one of those, and get a better job, than it is to generate a passive income stream from that point. Take the first step first. Get a better job first. Get some security and sanity in your life. Then, start to think about passive income. It's hard to come up with good ideas when there's a gun in your face, which means that having a really bad job (e.g. the 84-hour-per-week startup gig) will make it almost impossible to build something that people will pay for. However, I wouldn't advise quitting wholesale for most people; if you end up with no job, then you have a different gun in your face, which is that you're rapidly running out of money. I'm not going to argue that it's easy to generate passive income while working full-time; only that it's not easier for most people to just quit their day jobs and "magically" come up with the golden iPad app.