Ask HN: How to start a business while working a 9-5 coding job?

Work as an independent contractor. You are not an employee and even if you create IP for your client, they do not own your off time. For example, if you had two clients, they would not own the others ip.

If they send you a blanket ip agreement as a contractor, modify it to only agree to the created ip during working hours.

Rules are: Not on company equipment Not on company time Work on projects not related to your day job

Being employee status is trickier than a independent consultant though.

So long as you work in something completely unrelated to your job, never talk about it at work, never bring it up at work, don't even google it. Don't work on it, don't use their equipment, don't take their equipment home, or use any resources. Don't partner up with any coworker or ex-colleague, you should be fine. If it turns into million dollar idea, you could be sued, but then you can afford a lawyer, if it doesn't turn into something big, you probably won't be sued.

If you are one of the best who can do all the developer work fast and the business rules, go for it, little by little.

I am on the other side of the fence. I'm trying to build something for myself but from time to time I dream to be employed. Even when I took a job, not it IT, the employers could see that I was not totally into that job, and I think that was the reason why I left some jobs or I was fired at other times. No one likes an employee who lacks motivation.

I suggest to wait for the right time if you care so much for the current job and dont want to loose it. Once you start a project your mind will be all the time at that. If you dont believe me, I'm telling you I was driving my employer by car and my mind was just not there, I was not going to stop at red at traffic lights, but I did because my employer did shout. And I worked other jobs also but my mind was not there.

After you've gotten a lawyer to look at your current agreement, you may find it's enforceable and actually prevents you from building a side project.

If that's the case, you do have the option of finding a new job. Some companies have more lenient IP agreements. And if you're a desirable enough candidate and it's a small company, you can negotiate a custom IP contract.

I've done that twice!

If you negotiate an IP contract and you get back "but our lawyer says the contract is cool", what you do is have your lawyer propose amendments. Often it's not so much the content of the changes that gets pushback, just the effort and cost of the process. So if you pay your lawyer to do the legal work it can make it a lot easier.

(I hired Rex Baker - http://www.rexbaker.com/ - he's great.)

More broadly, negotiation is a key career skill, whether or not you want to be starting your own business. E.g. you can also negotiate a shorter workweek so you have more time for your side business.

I go into this a bit more in an email course I wrote on getting to a sane workweek (https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/), a very abbreviated version of a book I'm working on.