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It's great that the author has taken the plunge and I hope things work out well for him. I'd caution others away from such a drastic move though. 6 Months is a

• basicallydan 13y ago
  I'm sorry to hear about your debt and hot water heater. I do hope that such stuff doesn't happen to me, and believe me I did not take this decision lightly. I think even if shit hits the fan, I hopefully will still be okay. Thanks for your good wishes.
• lhnz 13y ago
  This was fairly similar to my experience - 4 months into my time off I received a letter from the government saying that due to a problem with my employer last year I owed them thousands of pounds of tax. I might not be that risk adverse but this shocked me, and as soon as you see the end of your runway it becomes difficult to concentrate on a startup. Also, London is expensive, remember that. Edit: I will rinse and repeat but I definitely recommend getting a product to MVP stage before cutting your cord, as well as also having the necessary funds for this funemployment strategy to make sense - are you expecting to immediately start making enough money from the project to bootstrap it or are you going to go and get investment with your team? Also I recommend getting into the habit of being honest and quantitative with yourself, which means getting into the habit of knocking out an excel document for your own living expenses and the commercial viability of any ideas you have. Personally, I found myself ultimately fighting far too many battles many of which I was untested in, creating an iOS prototype while: sitting in cafes running customer development (I spoke to at least 50+ people), arranging meetings with people in the industry I wanted to disrupt, trying to attract the attention of Angels that I had connections to, getting my friends to help out with design/tech work, etc. It's a hard game and probably worth it for the experience. Something I realised was that you can't be perfectly self-sufficient - you might be an A player at a couple of things and a quick learner in others (which is how I felt) but you're going to be trying to hold so many things together that you will need a structure that supports you: finance, friendship, focus, partners. I fragilized myself by not being fully prepared for this - and also didn't have the financial situation to bide my time. There are pools of water in the desert but you need enough water to reach them.
  • basicallydan 13y ago
    > Edit: I will rinse and repeat but I definitely recommend getting a product to MVP stage before cutting your cord, as well as also having the necessary funds for this funemployment strategy to make sense - are you expecting to immediately start making enough money from the project to bootstrap it or are you going to go and get investment with your team? No I do not :) I have no team, nor any big business idea that I'm going to pursue that requires 6 months of work, like I said in the blog post. I have a few ideas, and maybe one or two will lead to something but maybe not. The key thing here is about learning a lot of new skills and becoming a bit more independent. Maybe I'll sacrifice that independence if/when I run out of money, but maybe I'll make money by some other means in a way which doesn't force me to sacrifice my newfound independence. I am a developer, and a lot of what I will be doing will be for fun and learning first, and for money-making reasons second Thanks for the advice though, I do appreciate it, and I will follow a lot of it. If I do decide that something might be something I want to make commercially viable, don't worry - I will take that part of it very seriously.
• moron4hire 13y ago
  Risk is recoverable. The (admittedly high) chance of failure is not a reason to avoid the experience. I'd recommend anyone dissatisfied with their work/life situation do attempt this, even with the full knowledge that it won't amount to a "job" or "business" or anything. Because, the risk is not a real risk. If you have friends and family who care about you, if you live in a 1st world country, you're not going to end up starving on the street. No, that takes mental health issues and a government that ignores the problem. Merely running out of cash on which to live when one is perfectly capable of working does not wind one up in the chow line. What is the worst that can happen? He has to move in with a friend for a few months and get a "real" job. Basically, he'd be back to where he was before he quit. That's not a "risk".
  • ux-app 13y ago
    > "I'd recommend anyone dissatisfied with their work/life situation do attempt this" I agree wholeheartedly. Taking 6 months off to build a project was one of the best things I've ever done. My advice for others is simply to consider asking for leave instead of handing in a resignation. If your boss accepts then great you've got your 6 months off with the added security of a job to come back to, if they say no then that's OK too because you were ready to hand in your resignation anyway. Hedging your bets is never a bad thing. > "What is the worst that can happen?" speaking from personal experience, you can end up in a deep financial hole very quickly. Some expenses just cant be postponed.
    • moron4hire 13y ago
      Heh, well, I guess I haven't ever really left places on the best of terms. Usually, I'd get to a point that I was so depressed that I had no intention of ever stepping foot back in that place. The pattern was simple and happened frequently: work hard, do great work, see my work go unrewarded, slack off, get in trouble for slacking off, redouble my efforts, do even better work, get dinged for something petty, quit out of spite. Part of that was my own fault for not picking better places to work and not managing my work-life balance better. But part of that is that common management culture thrives on exploiting people who have difficulty managing their work-life balance. But a "deep financial hole" isn't the worst of problems. The first time I did an extended time of intentional unemployment, I made the huge mistake of using credit cards. But after racking up my own 10k in credit card debt, my net worth was still significantly better than when I graduated from college. Our assessments of the dire nature of such things is all in our heads. What was the worst that would happen? My car would get repossessed? That's bad, but is it "I'm never going to recover" bad? I always thought I needed that car, but it turns out that when it was finally taken from me (by a flood, not a bill collector), it was the first step to my own, much longer-lasting independence. It felt awful at the time, but that was all in my head. Credit card debt is a problem of spending, not a problem of income. Oh, so I had a 17% interest rate that meant I was going to spend a lot more on the interest than I ever spent on the original goods. I sucked it up and took my lumps. I eventually got out of it by making my income much, much less reliable (I got rid of direct deposit and got lazy about depositing my paper checks). When bill-pay is automated, you always think you have money. When it's manual and you know you're unreliable, you never think you have money. So then you don't spend it on movies and bar tabs. You can actually force yourself into a healthier lifestyle by making other aspects of your life much harder on yourself. But that's a story for another day, I'm kind of getting off topic here.
• driverdan 13y ago
  In an industry like ours where finding a job is easy six months is quite reasonable. If things aren't going well after four or five months you just find a new job.
• whitej125 13y ago
  I too had a similar experience. I had been working with a company for 11 years. Started off as an SoE, ended as a VP/Dir. It was a great career. Awesome pay, awesome benefits, awesome people. But for the past few years I was just getting less and less happy. I'd come home exhausted, lethargic. Kind of felt like I was perpetually stuck in traffic... just slow and annoyed. In the end I just outgrew it there. 6 months ago, I too took the plunge. The way I looked at it was... this is an investment in myself. If after a year I am waddling, not learning anything, not generating (or on the path to) income... well... it's easy for a geek to become a W-2 worker just about anywhere. I could go on about what I'm doing... but what's most important is that I feel I have grown and experienced more in the past 6 months than I could have imagined in the next 6 years at my old career. And to top it off, I'm energized, I'm happy and I'm in control of my happiness.