Ask HN: How did you try, but fail to escape 9 to 5?
(to fight the survivors bias)
Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
131–140 of 181 posts
Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#132Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#133Put simply: Being in control of my own time, day rate, and outgoings. I grew up in a very entrepreneurial environment, so after university I took a full-time job for 12 months (as a junior dev) then went freelance. I started cheap and upped my rate by £50 for every new project I took. During the 10 years I've been freelancing I also came up with my quality of life ratio, which is: How long does it take me to earn a m…
You don't happen to be related to Stephen Charnock the puritan minister of London are you (b.1628-d.1680)? He's one of my spiritual mentors I look up to.
That communal warehouse community sounds cool! What's the name of that place? I sometimes think about finding a place like that to do work in, but we don't have anything like that in Southern California where I'm from.
Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#134Curious why people here hate 9 - 5 so much. I can understand starting a business if you have an idea you're passionate about and you're confident you can make you more money than you can make working for someone else. But most software development jobs actually allow you to have a lot of autonomy (flexible hours, work remotely, etc), a place to socialize with people who are likely going to have a lot in common with y…
Well here's why...... The benefits you listed, "flexible hours, work remotely, etc" Are, indeed, nice, but they are actually far more rare than you'd expect. Many places still require 100% "facetime" despite being able to commit & deploy code and take calls remotely, and some that don't require "100%" still will hem and haw over days that you are not in the office. Not everyone is sitting in an (over)funded startup w…
Thanks for your response. I guess I've been coding long enough now that I just view it as work and not fun (although I do enjoy other aspects of my job). I do remember when I enjoyed coding just for fun so I can see the appeal of your argument there.
I'm surprised to hear that supply is outpacing demand where you are. Where I am (in Toronto), we always have a hard time hiring good people and it seems to be getting more difficult.
Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#135Curious why people here hate 9 - 5 so much. I can understand starting a business if you have an idea you're passionate about and you're confident you can make you more money than you can make working for someone else. But most software development jobs actually allow you to have a lot of autonomy (flexible hours, work remotely, etc), a place to socialize with people who are likely going to have a lot in common with y…
I don't have an issue with 9 to 5 if the time is used wisely. You're paying me a salary per year. Is that salary to get a product out of me, or to fill a seat? My issue is the time waste. It's been exacerbated recently because of having too move and my daily commute going up from 20 minutes to 5 -> 5.5 hours. I work on the transit as much as I can. My current contract I was hired to create a new software team, but re…
Ugh, that commute sounds rough. Good luck with the job search.
Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I ask how many videos you made, until you started to make enough cash, for example to pay the rent? Thank you.
I don't remember the number of videos, but my goal was 200,000 subscribers before leaving my day job. Subscribers aren't views (and they mean less now than they did when I started) but that was my estimate on how big of a base I needed to be confident it would work. 200,000 subscribers wasn't paying me as much as I earned as a full-time teacher but I knew the lines would cross.
Just curious, how many videos do you upload? From what I am seeing, maybe 5 minute video 1 per month? How long do you spend on this in total (research, sponsors, video editing, etc...)?
Again, this is amazing to me that people can make a living off of youtube.
Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this the article you are referencing? http://www.feld.com/archives/2011/10/be-on-fire.html Cause that picture is now my new wallpaper... Also it sounds like you have a similar path to mine. Launch stuff, fail, launch again stop mid way when no traction, launch, fail. Mind if I ask what you are doing that having 5 clients is all you need to be self-sufficient?
Yes that's the article! I love that picture too. I am doing media monitoring, I collect vast amounts of data on social networks, p2p, rss, webscraping ... then built reporting tools on top of it - high level trend reporting, customer segmentation for acquisition and brand targeting, planogram computing based on collaborative filtering, an entire media and brand intelligence platform. I also do Forex trading with Tens…
> I also do Forex trading with TensorFlow
This is the second time today I'm reading about "solving X with TensorFlow", which I find very interesting. It's not, "solving X with machine intelligence/AI/an application I wrote". I don't really have a point, just thought it was interesting!
Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#138I essentially used the 4 hour workweek script and am somewhere in the middle of that timeline, setting up my business now. 1. Figured out how to get all of my work done super fast 2. Started taking days off and working remotely using my above efficiency skills to put more and more time into my side project while still meeting all of my deadlines and obligations 3. Negotiated a remote and part time contract that only…
>> 1. Figured out how to get all of my work done super fast
I always assumed that, as developers, we couldn't afford to automate writing code (as Tim's proposition is originally to automate the income), and so you do your work faster. Can you comment how you do that, how did you buy your remote time from that, etc.?
Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! Definitely gonna check this out! Out of curiosity did you do the 'paid' or 'audit' version of this? I can't really tell if the 'paid' version is worth it. I can't imagine the certification being useful.
I always just audit the courses. I'm doing them for my benefit, not for a certificate. I might buy the lecturers' book though as a thank you. Pro tip: Use the mobile app, download the videos and watch them at 2x speed to save time :-)
Pretty easy to download on a desktop as well: https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl
Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?
#140Curious why people here hate 9 - 5 so much. I can understand starting a business if you have an idea you're passionate about and you're confident you can make you more money than you can make working for someone else. But most software development jobs actually allow you to have a lot of autonomy (flexible hours, work remotely, etc), a place to socialize with people who are likely going to have a lot in common with y…
Since I am the one that made this post, I will answer you.
- If I work at my 9-5 8 or 12 hours a day it makes no difference in the money I bring home. You can say that theoretically I will get promoted but there are limits.
- I do not control my fate. Case in point today AFTER I made this post the company I work for laid off 16 people, it's a company of 180 so close to 10%
- I don't want to have an expensive house / car. I just want to financial be able to support myself and my family
- Freedom. Freedom to not work for a day and not have to explain myself. Freedom to travel somewhere and not have to worry about it. I realize the contrary to this, perhaps having my own business is not really freedom. I will still have clients, or people that need things from me.