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Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Using Wage Earnings to Support a New Business (2012) [pdf]

87 points by dotluis 12y ago

zhte415 12y ago
Use wage earnings to support an idea. Not to support a trading, or self-registered, business. Make the clarification distinct.
- obulpathi 12y ago
  True. It would probably kill to do full time job and work on side business as well.
  - mindcrime 12y ago
    Plenty of people work full-time and also work on a side business. I'm doing it right now, myself. Yeah, it's tough, but you do what you have to do.
    - kjs3 12y ago
      According to the US BLS, almost 5% of the employed workforce has more than one job. Of course, the vast majority of those aren't working a white collar job while pursuing their start-up dream on the side...
  - quaffapint 12y ago
    I thought it quite normal on here to work a full time job while we work on getting our side stuff off the ground, and I'm doing that same thing. There are plenty of people outside the startup world working multiple jobs to make ends meet and take care of their families. It's a matter of life requirements and prioritization.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
blutoot 12y ago
"Having recent wage and salary income in the same industry as the non-employer business has a large and positive impact on the likelihood of transit- ing to being a non-employer business." - isn't this capturing the typical Silicon Valley story?
otakucode 12y ago
As day jobs expand and expand, expecting more and more hours worked for less and less pay, and carrying a cell phone and checking email 24 hours a day, it seems quite implausible that maintaining a day job and ANYTHING else, whether it be a hobby or a fledgeling company, is not a wise move.
- seivan 12y ago
  I feel this way as well.
- josephschmoe 12y ago
  This depends a lot on your job. If you work as a software engineer, it's likely that you have sufficient control and freedom to work on side projects. It's still brutal though - 60 hour weeks are insane, especially when you do them continuously. It can also take years and likely multiple projects before you succeed.
  - humanrebar 12y ago
    And you'd need a fairly mundane day job so your problem solving circuits aren't perpetually exhausted.
    - vonmoltke 12y ago
      That has been one of my problems. I frequently come home so drained that I don't have much capacity left for the day. That exacerbates my motivation/procrastination problems.
      - kekket 12y ago
        Get up early. You have to make sure to do the important thing first in the morning and chip away at it day by day. This is very hard, but still possible by slowly building up a routine (even if your an 'owl'). Spend your best brain-time on your own stuff, get to work and try to manage the dayjob with the leftovers. Be a B player, fuck them.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
I'm mixed on this. I have a full time job and have a growing side business that I am going to be transitioning to my full time job in December. On the one hand it is critical for myself and my family to have income while we bootstrap. Our business is in the position where we need money to go full time but can't get money till we are able to devote full time effort to it - and even then it's not a guarantee that we will make enough in the first few months to sustain my family and my co-founders families until we have a market breakthrough. Oh the flip side, not only is your life insane but nobody really wants to touch you because you can't be 100% devoted right then. Investors don't like part-time people, partners don't like part time people and you have a hard time recruiting people to work part time on the side. Not only that but there is a constant nagging feeling in the back of your head that "you're late to the party" and some competitor is going to eat your lunch simply by putting in more hours. So there are goods and bads and I think the answer is that it depends on your life situation and what you are trying to build.
- ipedrazas 12y ago
  I totally agree with you. it seems that having a family is aliability for the startup world, however, my experience is that families give you a special resilence than others don't have. Keep up and good luck ;)
- tieTYT 12y ago
  > I have a full time job and have a growing side business that I am going to be transitioning to my full time job in December. Are you allowed to do that? Every full time job offer I've read forbids outside work.
  - tonybaroneee 12y ago
    The company I work for allows it as long as you sign a Conflict of Interest Disclosure Statement. It states that the side job can't directly or indirectly compete with the company you're working for, nor can you use company resources for it. Also, it can't affect your performance during your regular work hours.
  - 12y ago
kjs3 12y ago
I've done this. It can work, but it's a huge commitment. YMMV. Protip: make sure you understand (as in, have your own employment law lawyer explain, not rely on what you think, or what HR tells you) exactly what any explicit or implied employment contract says about this. This will prevent any number of more or less unpleasant surprises down the road.
angersock 12y ago
Notice that all of the top-level comments so far on this are basically "Don't try and be uppity and make your own business at the same time as you hold a job." In many cases, sure, but it's interesting to see such an anti-Labor position here. We're all being bought and enslaved, bit by bit, paycheck by paycheck. Don't fight the system, the company cares about you (lol).
- icedchai 12y ago
  Yep. I've had a side business (consulting, small software projects, some mobile apps) ever since I've started full time work about 15 years ago. I considered it normal.
- grayclhn 12y ago
  I think you're reading into it. I read the comments as "straighten this out early so you're not sued later." edit: and the replies to "I'm tired after work" seem to be "do your own stuff first and be tired at work!"
enraged_camel 12y ago
The issue I have is that my day job is fairly demanding, and by the time I get home my brain is so fried that the last thing I want is to do even more work. And even if I find it in myself to do it, the quality I put out tends to be... meh. The reason I want to quit is to force myself to abandon the safety net of a stable day job. I have enough saved up where I can go jobless for a year or so, which should be sufficient time to devote my full energy to ideas. In the end, even if things don't work out, I suspect that my batteries will be recharged and I'll be ready to go back to a steady day job. Maybe I'm just horribly wrong, though. One way to find out, right? :)
hudibras 12y ago
A bit off topic, but one of my favorite parts of any social science paper is when the authors describe how they developed the dataset. In this case, it's a clever linking of tax forms, Census Bureau surveys of business owners, and state unemployment insurance databases. It's a neat solution that the authors are justifiably proud of. But since it's considered passé to talk about your data too much at the expense of your results, it only gets a couple pages (pages 9-10) of the paper even though I'm sure they spent many man-months compiling and cleaning up the data.
mmanfrin 12y ago
Questions to those of you who have done this: how do you deal with exhaustion keeping you from working on side projects after work? I have a bunch of ideas I want to try to work on, but I never seem to have the will to do them when I get home.
- shyn3 12y ago
  Not successful at it but I find if you work on a project not related to your day-to-day it helps relieve some of the tension.
- tieTYT 12y ago
  Become really good at breaking down tasks into 15-30 minute increments and work on at least one increment per day. You may not get much done per day, but over time you will.
ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
It's very do-able. I work 30-40 hours a week at a Law Firm (weekdays) + Target retail store (weekends). My little mini business is selling my inventions and products at http://ChrisNorstrom.com/shop http://ChrisNorstrom.com/shop . Only 5 are up right now with 4 new ones being added for the Holiday Season and another 2 for Spring next year. A day job allowed me to experiment and survive failures. I've had 7 products fail in the prototyping phase (costing me at least a grand) and 5 were successful. The simple ones are the ones that succeeded. What people don't realize is that it can take hundreds of dollars of experimenting with materials and suppliers to get even the simplest product just right. Selling my calendar alone took $7,000 in materials/packing/shipping/bulk orders. If it's defective you can lose thousands on the refund costs to all your customers. ● 1.5 years ago = I had 1 sale every month from ebay. ● Today = I have orders from Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, and my website come in 2-10 times a day, every day. ● I started with simple products and am expanding to Glass lamps, pebble imbedded rubber mats for showers and tubs, glass cube wall planters, and a "20" tall Leaning Tower of Piza Lamp". (I'm starting to take more risks with more profitable but harder to make products) It's growing slowly but growing none-the-less. The more money I make at my day jobs the more risk I can afford to take with my prototypes. (DO NOT underestimate the amount of space a small etsy/ebay/estore business will take up in your home. Our entire basement is dedicated to boxes, stock, and shipping supplies)
zupreme 12y ago
Maybe there is a geographic culture difference. I'm based in Chicago and EVERYONE I know in tech here has a full-fledged side business or at least has side clients.
radnam 12y ago
I think a blanket statement like the title of the article should be a taken with a pinch of salt. There a plethora of factors that come into play, e.g., what kind of day job you are working at? Do you have a family to support? What kind of new business ideas are you exploring? Personally, I think it is really hard to do justice to either your fledgling business or your day job when you try to do both. Especially when you have a kids.

87 points by dotluis 12y ago

Use wage earnings to support an idea. Not to support a trading, or self-registered, business. Make the clarification distinct.

obulpathi 12y ago
True. It would probably kill to do full time job and work on side business as well.
- mindcrime 12y ago
  Plenty of people work full-time and also work on a side business. I'm doing it right now, myself. Yeah, it's tough, but you do what you have to do.
  - kjs3 12y ago
    According to the US BLS, almost 5% of the employed workforce has more than one job. Of course, the vast majority of those aren't working a white collar job while pursuing their start-up dream on the side...
- quaffapint 12y ago
  I thought it quite normal on here to work a full time job while we work on getting our side stuff off the ground, and I'm doing that same thing. There are plenty of people outside the startup world working multiple jobs to make ends meet and take care of their families. It's a matter of life requirements and prioritization.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

blutoot 12y ago

"Having recent wage and salary income in the same industry as the non-employer business has a large and positive impact on the likelihood of transit- ing to being a non-employer business." - isn't this capturing the typical Silicon Valley story?

otakucode 12y ago

As day jobs expand and expand, expecting more and more hours worked for less and less pay, and carrying a cell phone and checking email 24 hours a day, it seems quite implausible that maintaining a day job and ANYTHING else, whether it be a hobby or a fledgeling company, is not a wise move.

seivan 12y ago
I feel this way as well.
josephschmoe 12y ago
This depends a lot on your job. If you work as a software engineer, it's likely that you have sufficient control and freedom to work on side projects. It's still brutal though - 60 hour weeks are insane, especially when you do them continuously. It can also take years and likely multiple projects before you succeed.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  And you'd need a fairly mundane day job so your problem solving circuits aren't perpetually exhausted.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    That has been one of my problems. I frequently come home so drained that I don't have much capacity left for the day. That exacerbates my motivation/procrastination problems.
    - kekket 12y ago
      Get up early. You have to make sure to do the important thing first in the morning and chip away at it day by day. This is very hard, but still possible by slowly building up a routine (even if your an 'owl'). Spend your best brain-time on your own stuff, get to work and try to manage the dayjob with the leftovers. Be a B player, fuck them.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

I'm mixed on this. I have a full time job and have a growing side business that I am going to be transitioning to my full time job in December. On the one hand it is critical for myself and my family to have income while we bootstrap. Our business is in the position where we need money to go full time but can't get money till we are able to devote full time effort to it - and even then it's not a guarantee that we will make enough in the first few months to sustain my family and my co-founders families until we have a market breakthrough. Oh the flip side, not only is your life insane but nobody really wants to touch you because you can't be 100% devoted right then. Investors don't like part-time people, partners don't like part time people and you have a hard time recruiting people to work part time on the side. Not only that but there is a constant nagging feeling in the back of your head that "you're late to the party" and some competitor is going to eat your lunch simply by putting in more hours. So there are goods and bads and I think the answer is that it depends on your life situation and what you are trying to build.

ipedrazas 12y ago
I totally agree with you. it seems that having a family is aliability for the startup world, however, my experience is that families give you a special resilence than others don't have. Keep up and good luck ;)
tieTYT 12y ago
> I have a full time job and have a growing side business that I am going to be transitioning to my full time job in December. Are you allowed to do that? Every full time job offer I've read forbids outside work.
- tonybaroneee 12y ago
  The company I work for allows it as long as you sign a Conflict of Interest Disclosure Statement. It states that the side job can't directly or indirectly compete with the company you're working for, nor can you use company resources for it. Also, it can't affect your performance during your regular work hours.
- 12y ago

kjs3 12y ago

I've done this. It can work, but it's a huge commitment. YMMV. Protip: make sure you understand (as in, have your own employment law lawyer explain, not rely on what you think, or what HR tells you) exactly what any explicit or implied employment contract says about this. This will prevent any number of more or less unpleasant surprises down the road.

angersock 12y ago

Notice that all of the top-level comments so far on this are basically "Don't try and be uppity and make your own business at the same time as you hold a job." In many cases, sure, but it's interesting to see such an anti-Labor position here. We're all being bought and enslaved, bit by bit, paycheck by paycheck. Don't fight the system, the company cares about you (lol).

icedchai 12y ago
Yep. I've had a side business (consulting, small software projects, some mobile apps) ever since I've started full time work about 15 years ago. I considered it normal.
grayclhn 12y ago
I think you're reading into it. I read the comments as "straighten this out early so you're not sued later." edit: and the replies to "I'm tired after work" seem to be "do your own stuff first and be tired at work!"

enraged_camel 12y ago

The issue I have is that my day job is fairly demanding, and by the time I get home my brain is so fried that the last thing I want is to do even more work. And even if I find it in myself to do it, the quality I put out tends to be... meh. The reason I want to quit is to force myself to abandon the safety net of a stable day job. I have enough saved up where I can go jobless for a year or so, which should be sufficient time to devote my full energy to ideas. In the end, even if things don't work out, I suspect that my batteries will be recharged and I'll be ready to go back to a steady day job. Maybe I'm just horribly wrong, though. One way to find out, right? :)

hudibras 12y ago

A bit off topic, but one of my favorite parts of any social science paper is when the authors describe how they developed the dataset. In this case, it's a clever linking of tax forms, Census Bureau surveys of business owners, and state unemployment insurance databases. It's a neat solution that the authors are justifiably proud of. But since it's considered passé to talk about your data too much at the expense of your results, it only gets a couple pages (pages 9-10) of the paper even though I'm sure they spent many man-months compiling and cleaning up the data.

mmanfrin 12y ago

Questions to those of you who have done this: how do you deal with exhaustion keeping you from working on side projects after work? I have a bunch of ideas I want to try to work on, but I never seem to have the will to do them when I get home.

shyn3 12y ago
Not successful at it but I find if you work on a project not related to your day-to-day it helps relieve some of the tension.
tieTYT 12y ago
Become really good at breaking down tasks into 15-30 minute increments and work on at least one increment per day. You may not get much done per day, but over time you will.

ChrisNorstrom 12y ago

It's very do-able. I work 30-40 hours a week at a Law Firm (weekdays) + Target retail store (weekends). My little mini business is selling my inventions and products at http://ChrisNorstrom.com/shop http://ChrisNorstrom.com/shop . Only 5 are up right now with 4 new ones being added for the Holiday Season and another 2 for Spring next year. A day job allowed me to experiment and survive failures. I've had 7 products fail in the prototyping phase (costing me at least a grand) and 5 were successful. The simple ones are the ones that succeeded. What people don't realize is that it can take hundreds of dollars of experimenting with materials and suppliers to get even the simplest product just right. Selling my calendar alone took $7,000 in materials/packing/shipping/bulk orders. If it's defective you can lose thousands on the refund costs to all your customers. ● 1.5 years ago = I had 1 sale every month from ebay. ● Today = I have orders from Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, and my website come in 2-10 times a day, every day. ● I started with simple products and am expanding to Glass lamps, pebble imbedded rubber mats for showers and tubs, glass cube wall planters, and a "20" tall Leaning Tower of Piza Lamp". (I'm starting to take more risks with more profitable but harder to make products) It's growing slowly but growing none-the-less. The more money I make at my day jobs the more risk I can afford to take with my prototypes. (DO NOT underestimate the amount of space a small etsy/ebay/estore business will take up in your home. Our entire basement is dedicated to boxes, stock, and shipping supplies)

zupreme 12y ago

Maybe there is a geographic culture difference. I'm based in Chicago and EVERYONE I know in tech here has a full-fledged side business or at least has side clients.

radnam 12y ago

I think a blanket statement like the title of the article should be a taken with a pinch of salt. There a plethora of factors that come into play, e.g., what kind of day job you are working at? Do you have a family to support? What kind of new business ideas are you exploring? Personally, I think it is really hard to do justice to either your fledgling business or your day job when you try to do both. Especially when you have a kids.