Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#121

Post by lacbuddah » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

amorphous wrote: post #117

streetlight10 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

care to share how you come to that conclusion?

Chasing the "dream" of having my own business without realising what that actually requires. Then when it got difficult or boring, the next freelancing job is so much easier (and way more lucrative). Back and forth with spending savings on projects that never amounted to anything. Slowly realised that nowadays, for us techies, there's a much better way of having a good life. Just find the right job (look long and har…

I could have written this exactly - lived it. Combine that with the crappy economy of 10-12 years ago, vomit.

Kids, you think you're dreaming now. Just imagine how much you'll be regretting later. Just quit your job, take some time traveling then go find another job. You'll feel better eventually.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#122

Post by jammygit » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

fouc wrote: post #47

You could try doing something similar to Pieter Levels' "12 startups in 12 months". He only managed to get to 5-6 startups, but from that arose nomadlist.com and remoteok.com where he's making $83k/mo now after 4 years ($10k from user subscriptions and the rest from paid ads/postings). Forcing yourself to launch/ship a few products each within a month could be good training to not get stuck in idea phase or coding ph…

Thanks for the recommendation

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#123

Post by jammygit » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

accrual wrote: post #71

zaqwsxcde12 wrote: post #64

Take that 60K, go travel the world, it will go a long long way if you are thrifty about it. See how you feel about your project when you come back or work on it while traveling. Bet you will feel different whether your projects survives or not. Ignore all this you need to buy a house garbage, do you want to spend your life investing for your retirement, for when your dick wont work or live now, that is the question.…

This comment resonates with me. Is there a good resource for packing up your life and traveling for a while? Background: I have a great and interesting remote job but the workload is high relative to the salary. I have 1 years salary saved. I could ask for a raise, but I would much rather spend a year traveling and improving myself.

I was visiting somebody recently who told me they just slept in ditches in their 20s in order to travel. They lived on peanuts and saw all of Europe. Basically, it just depends on how satisfied you can be with less luxury. Stoicism is all about that

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#124

Post by croh » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

achingtooth wrote: post #116

croh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love to know more about you. Anyway to connect or blogging ?

I've never found myself interesting enough to start a blog. I might write a post on what I've been doing/how to survive as a 'digital nomad'. I think I'm in a unique situation since I've been doing this since I was 18. I was inspired by https://levels.io/eighteen/ , but I know when I made the decision I wish there was more info/people talking about how they do it

link is great. thanks for sharing. pls lmk if you write anything.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#125

Post by gwbas1c » Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

jammygit wrote: post #48

gwbas1c wrote: post #42

Been there, done that. Honestly, it depends on your life goals and motivations. In my case, I tried starting a business for the wrong reasons, and realized that I'd rather be an early employee in someone else's startup; or be a co-founder in a very small team. When I was single, a full time job and side projects were perfectly fine. Once I met my wife, I didn't have a lot of time for side projects. The relationship j…

What were the wrong reasons?

Everyday I want to get up and have no employment obligation to anyone, and work on whatever I feel is interesting to me at the moment.

I was under the illusion that I could be in that situation merely by founding my own company.

The only way to really do that is to be financially independent, because once someone is paying you to do something, you can't walk away when you get bored.