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Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

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Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

#81

Post by ryandrake »

Almost all of these replies involve growing a side project at home while remaining employed. I was under the impression most employers (at least in tech) do not allow this. Aren't you worried that your former employer will come knocking when your successful, asserting ownership over what you built? Where do you find companies that are cool with this? I've asked about tolerance of side-projects during interviews and have always got very clear, unambiguous "Work on only our company's stuff or GTFO" responses.

Also curious about how many of the "saved percent of my salary for years" stories happened in the Bay Area with its impossible cost of living. And if so, did you do this with a family? How? I consider my lifestyle extremely frugal, yet I couldn't imagine saving enough capital to start a business in 10 or even 20 years.

Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

#82

Post by codegeek »

hbhakhra wrote: post #78
codegeek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, my field which is tech (duh!!). I am actually an addict when it comes to sites like flippa, feinternational etc. Both are mostly useless but every once in a while, you get a real gem there. I found one. It was funny because I was accidentally browsing flippa that day (labor day weekend and I had to stay home which was not the plan originally). I liked what the seller described and the way the seller described it…

Do you have any more information on how you filtered business and what made the one bought stand out?

No specific information but I have written a blog post on this topic and some general guidelines that I followed. Feel free to read the post (linked in my profile)

Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

#84

Post by pkd »

ryandrake wrote: post #81

Almost all of these replies involve growing a side project at home while remaining employed. I was under the impression most employers (at least in tech) do not allow this. Aren't you worried that your former employer will come knocking when your successful, asserting ownership over what you built? Where do you find companies that are cool with this? I've asked about tolerance of side-projects during interviews and h…

I think a lot of people renegotiate that clause so that they continue contributing to open source etc. I think companies are open to it as long as you do not use company resources to build what you are building.

Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

#85

Post by djsumdog »

ryandrake wrote: post #81

Almost all of these replies involve growing a side project at home while remaining employed. I was under the impression most employers (at least in tech) do not allow this. Aren't you worried that your former employer will come knocking when your successful, asserting ownership over what you built? Where do you find companies that are cool with this? I've asked about tolerance of side-projects during interviews and h…

Employees don't have any control over what you write on your own time. I think some older IBM contracts claimed they did, but if you sign one of these today, you're an idiot (and they're not enforceable).

Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

#86

Post by pre »

ryandrake wrote: post #81

Almost all of these replies involve growing a side project at home while remaining employed. I was under the impression most employers (at least in tech) do not allow this. Aren't you worried that your former employer will come knocking when your successful, asserting ownership over what you built? Where do you find companies that are cool with this? I've asked about tolerance of side-projects during interviews and h…

I've refused to sign employment contracts which push all "IP" into the employers ownership saying things like "You don't get to own my graphic-novel or my band's songs or whatever just coz you pay me to write some web-app"

I've never had them refuse to amend that clause in the face of that. Maybe it's different outside the UK.

If they did refuse to amend, I'd continue the job hunt basically. I probably don't wanna work for a company that inflexible anyway.

Also, contracting works well for owning your own IP. Contractor clients appreciate you have other clients too and don't usually even try to demand exclusive ownership of the product of your mind.

Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

#88

Post by Negative1 »

codegeek wrote: post #2

My story. I worked my ass off for 10+ years, saved a little bit of extra cash after paying off most loans and then bought an online business that I was interested in. I tried doing both for 2 months in parallel. One day I woke up and said "F*k this. I am done. Gotta quit". I then went to my boss and gave him the notice. I did calculate my risks as the business was just bringing in enough to keep me floating (with 2 k…

I've heard Health Insurance is pretty expensive if you are self-employed. How did you deal with that? Is your wife also employed in which case you are just able to share hers?

Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

#89

Post by bitwize »

ryandrake wrote: post #81

Almost all of these replies involve growing a side project at home while remaining employed. I was under the impression most employers (at least in tech) do not allow this. Aren't you worried that your former employer will come knocking when your successful, asserting ownership over what you built? Where do you find companies that are cool with this? I've asked about tolerance of side-projects during interviews and h…

Noncompetes are illegal in at least one state (California), difficult to enforce elsewhere, and usually severely limited in scope. For example if you worked for Uber, you could be barred from starting your own taxi or rideshare app on the side, but not from starting a healthcare services business or game studio.

I did have one company try to get me to sign a 10-year noncompete, upon pain of having to pay twice the market cap of the competing company. I am not shitting you. I tried pointing out why this was outrageous and unenforceable (what if I worked for PayPal?!) and they didn't seem to get it. So I told them to gtfo.

Re: Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5?

#90

Post by djsumdog »

I'm on my way out. I had a break in a few years back and lost everything. So I sold what I had left, took my savings and went backpacking for a year:

http://khanism.org/perspective/minimalism/

I had dreams of getting into grad school, but that didn't work out and I ran out of money ($20k NZD) so now I'm back in America working software. It's soul draining.

I'm not an entrepreneur. I have no desire to start my own business. Right now I'm saving until my lease expires. Then I plan on selling everything and doing something crazy again.

I might look for writing residencies. I have a film I'm self-funding a demo for in order to crowdfund the rest. I'm looking at fellowships. I'd like to get the film started while still employed and quit work once it's funded and I'm over 50% done with its development.

If all else fails, I'll buy a car and live of my savings, driving around America for a year or so while perusing some of these things mentioned. The 2nd major option I'm thinking of is getting another Australian work visa and taking another dev job or finding a writing residency there.

The thing is: I have no kids, family or debt. My parents came from poverty and my father spent ever dime on making sure his kids had a debt free college education. I feel like these things artificially limit others, but they shouldn't.

If you're religious (I'm not), missionary work is something you can do with your family. I also have a close friend teaching English in Germany and just allows her college debt to grow (we'll have forgiveness eventually. Either that or she'll eventually get her German citizenship and renounce the American one).

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