No post body was provided.
Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#2I've been working 2 weeks now full time, and been trying to work on my own startup on nights and weekends. I didn't know how hard it was when people talked about it until now. And I thought school and startup was hard. To illustrate, I come home at 6pm, fall asleep until 8pm, code until 1am, sleep from 2am to 8am, and start all over again. I guess this is called moonlighting.
I am going to stop this moonlighting stuff and work full time on my startup with a new appreciation in about a week. I'm saving about 1k per week, which is about my monthly expense. I'm almost done with the beta (after 6 months), and I think the reason I'm not at full time is because I'm afraid of failing. But it doesn't matter now because I just paid $500 to get inc'ed and I got enough to last until the end of summer.
A side note, from my full time job, I've learned that lunch breaks are a boost to productivity.
If you moonlight too, or did before, please share your insight.
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#3[deleted]
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#4I've been working 2 weeks now full time, and been trying to work on my own startup on nights and weekends. I didn't know how hard it was when people talked about it until now. And I thought school and startup was hard. To illustrate, I come home at 6pm, fall asleep until 8pm, code until 1am, sleep from 2am to 8am, and start all over again. I guess this is called moonlighting. I am going to stop this moonlighting stuf…
Yes, that's pretty much how it goes. Keep three things in mind: 1. Software projects take longer than you estimate, even if you consider that when you make your estimates. 2. Expenses tend to exceed budgets. Think of one-off expenses that can raise your expenses beyond your estimated budget. 3. The beta version will, pretty much, tell you if the idea is successful or not.
So, considering the above, and since it doesn't seem that you have a lot of savings, and you're close to releasing the beta, then you might as well do that quickly while keeping your day job. If it picks up, then quit and focus on it. This will actually push you to release faster. If you have the whole summer, your work will expand to fill that time. Just a thought.
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#5I've been working 2 weeks now full time, and been trying to work on my own startup on nights and weekends. I didn't know how hard it was when people talked about it until now. And I thought school and startup was hard. To illustrate, I come home at 6pm, fall asleep until 8pm, code until 1am, sleep from 2am to 8am, and start all over again. I guess this is called moonlighting. I am going to stop this moonlighting stuf…
wow, I admire your being able to work so hard.
try to find a cofounder to share the load (I dont have one myself, gave up looking).
some jobs allow you to work from home; makes it easier on you, but one must be honest to give them value for money.
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#6I've been working 2 weeks now full time, and been trying to work on my own startup on nights and weekends. I didn't know how hard it was when people talked about it until now. And I thought school and startup was hard. To illustrate, I come home at 6pm, fall asleep until 8pm, code until 1am, sleep from 2am to 8am, and start all over again. I guess this is called moonlighting. I am going to stop this moonlighting stuf…
Two weeks? Wow. And those eight hours of sleep you get seem brutal...
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#7I'd echo the "find a cofounder" sentiment. Sharing the load is good and a co-founder is a good energizer/motivator.
I'm not entirely clear why you incorporated.... Definitely something you want to do, but why not wait a bit and see if what you build sticks/takes off?
My last startup was an "off-hours" thing, and my current one was an off-hours thing for the last few months (and is a full-time effort as of monday). While I didn't work NEARLY as hard (generally one evening and one full weekend day), I sympathize.
G'luck!
My only advice is to brutally slash your idea down to the core-- find out the BASIC value proposition you can offer and get it out...
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#8I've been working 2 weeks now full time, and been trying to work on my own startup on nights and weekends. I didn't know how hard it was when people talked about it until now. And I thought school and startup was hard. To illustrate, I come home at 6pm, fall asleep until 8pm, code until 1am, sleep from 2am to 8am, and start all over again. I guess this is called moonlighting. I am going to stop this moonlighting stuf…
You might want to consider changing your sleep schedule to something close to a uberman polyphasic schedule. Can you nap during your lunch break? Restricting your naps to 20mins or less prevents you from entering the deep sleep stages which make you groggy and tired. Just take them more frequently, like 4-5 hrs apart.
It may sound ridiculous but i've found it pretty effective. Even though I'm moonlighting I still code for almost as long as someone doing it full time (assuming ~8hrs sleep). Work can still get in the way though so I understand your decision.
The big plus (at least early on in your project) is that it takes the pressure of worrying about your burn rate off...
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#9I've been working 2 weeks now full time, and been trying to work on my own startup on nights and weekends. I didn't know how hard it was when people talked about it until now. And I thought school and startup was hard. To illustrate, I come home at 6pm, fall asleep until 8pm, code until 1am, sleep from 2am to 8am, and start all over again. I guess this is called moonlighting. I am going to stop this moonlighting stuf…
You might want to consider changing your sleep schedule to something close to a uberman polyphasic schedule. Can you nap during your lunch break? Restricting your naps to 20mins or less prevents you from entering the deep sleep stages which make you groggy and tired. Just take them more frequently, like 4-5 hrs apart. It may sound ridiculous but i've found it pretty effective. Even though I'm moonlighting I still cod…
I've done the polyphasic sleep thing for ~3 months last year. You can forget about coding for the first 10-12 days or so while you acclimatize (or at least I found it very very hard). And if you don't initiate yourself exactly right you'll find you've wasted a whole month just getting dog tired.
While you do suddenly seem to get a lot of time it makes any kind of socializing hard since you have to sleep every 3-4 hours. Even after a couple of months if I missed one sleep session I would hit a massive wall and all coding would come to a stop.
Lack of time can sometimes be a good thing. It forces you into creative solutions. The funny thing is, although I produced more lines of code during the polyphasic experiment I think the quality suffered (not much but when I look over those pieces it always seems I could have structured it better). I don't know what to attribute that to since I didn't feel any different while coding in or out of the polyphasic state after the ramp up period.
Re: Moonlighting? Please Tell Me About It
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might want to consider changing your sleep schedule to something close to a uberman polyphasic schedule. Can you nap during your lunch break? Restricting your naps to 20mins or less prevents you from entering the deep sleep stages which make you groggy and tired. Just take them more frequently, like 4-5 hrs apart. It may sound ridiculous but i've found it pretty effective. Even though I'm moonlighting I still cod…
I've done the polyphasic sleep thing for ~3 months last year. You can forget about coding for the first 10-12 days or so while you acclimatize (or at least I found it very very hard). And if you don't initiate yourself exactly right you'll find you've wasted a whole month just getting dog tired. While you do suddenly seem to get a lot of time it makes any kind of socializing hard since you have to sleep every 3-4 hou…
Agree with everything you said (especially the difficulty socializing part).
My solution to most of the problem is to "ease" into the schedule. Keep a core sleep period of like 4-5 hrs at night but continue to take your naps. As you acclimatize, try shrinking/eliminating the core sleep gradually. That way you dont feel like you're getting hit by a train like you do if you try and jump right into it.
As far as code quality, I find mine is actually much better.. The period just after each nap I feel really refreshed and can concentrate. Theres actually research out there that proves this is true. Again, I think its all about avoiding a rough acclimation period though..