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It's OK to abandon your side-project

robbowen.digital

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Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project

#41

Post by jraph »

dheera wrote: post #37
itqwertz wrote: post #3

As long as you complete it, just keep it out there. You never know when your half-baked idea might result in a lead for something new. It’s fun to go back to old projects and finish them with new skills you’ve acquired over the years.

I have a couple Github repos with a lot of stars and a bunch of pull requests and issues. I used to work actively on them. However in the past 7 months I've been constantly being told at work that what I do isn't enough, without constructive feedback. Pretty much every single 1:1 is "you're not doing enough" and no action items, not enough compute to do what I should be doing, being left out of meetings, and no acces…

Sounds horrible. Have you tried to ask what makes people think you are not doing enough? Also, have you started looking for other jobs so you can run from this place as fast as you can?

In any case your priority should be to find a way to fix this before you burn out for good. Losing energy for your spare time is already a big deal. You are mentioning brain draining. 7 months is a long time. Your job should be supporting your life and what you want to spend your time on, not the other way around.

If you can maybe take holidays. A good break.

Good luck, you can do this.

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project

#43

Post by thrwwycbr »

naitgacem wrote: post #31
dewey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That always sounds easier than it is in reality as usually when you came to terms with abandoning your project you don't want to go back to it and spend time on making sure there's no secrets checked in or hardcoded somewhere. There's no embarrassing comments you want to have public etc.

I am now realizing an app I was working on had some "vulgar" function names in tests. they've been changed, but they're still there in version control. I just hope no one looks at the history of tests...

All the unexplainable buggy behaviors on Microsoft systems.

We understand, buddy, don't worry about it.

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project

#44

Post by brabel »

gsky wrote: post #30
shubhamjain wrote: post #23

It's a fair point, but I often see all the ideas I abandoned and realize how some of them could have become profitable had I persisted and not lost motivation. Even a tiny setback (say, no response on Hacker News) was enough for me to stop working on the idea, and start working on something new. Of course, you learn a lot along the way, but to have a successful side-hustle you need to learn to sustain and channel the…

Hacker news traffic lasts just 2 days.

And can get completely different response when posted at just the right/wrong time. I've had posts I made that got no attention, just for someone else to post the same thing a few days/weeks later and it reached near the top, with hundreds of comments.

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project

#45

Post by brabel »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #22
itqwertz wrote: post #3

As long as you complete it, just keep it out there. You never know when your half-baked idea might result in a lead for something new. It’s fun to go back to old projects and finish them with new skills you’ve acquired over the years.

What if it becomes so popular it's costing hundreds of dollars to host. Asking for a friend...

Don't think you're Google and you have money to throw away... they only do that because they do have money to throw away, but they know that this kind of expense may, in very rare cases, pay off later as they find a market worth exploring further... you don't have that luxury. Indie developers offering free services which actually cost them money only makes sense if they have proven plans to "convert" most free users to a paid plan, otherwise you're literally donating services to your "users".

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project

#46

Post by rockbruno »

shubhamjain wrote: post #23

It's a fair point, but I often see all the ideas I abandoned and realize how some of them could have become profitable had I persisted and not lost motivation. Even a tiny setback (say, no response on Hacker News) was enough for me to stop working on the idea, and start working on something new. Of course, you learn a lot along the way, but to have a successful side-hustle you need to learn to sustain and channel the…

From your description it sounds like you're placing "making money" / "success" as your main motivation for these projects, which would explain why you're losing it so easily. Extrinsic motivations are very easy to lose, it sounds like you need to prioritise more intrinsic things such as having fun or learning something interesting. Check out intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project

#47

Post by rockbruno »

bradley13 wrote: post #38

I had a "successful" side project (specialized ERP system). Successful, in that I actually sold and supported a couple of copies. I tried to make thus into a full-time job. Mistake. Selling, networking, marketing. Unless you actively enjoy those activities, which will take up most of your time it is just an ugly grind. Plus you lose income, because you aren't working.

I had the same experience. When we think about being our own boss we think it just means that we can code whatever we want, when in reality it means we are responsible for _everything_, including things we don't want to do. I too realised then that I absolutely hate selling, marketing, and dealing with angry customers.

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project

#48

Post by dheera »

jraph wrote: post #41
dheera wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a couple Github repos with a lot of stars and a bunch of pull requests and issues. I used to work actively on them. However in the past 7 months I've been constantly being told at work that what I do isn't enough, without constructive feedback. Pretty much every single 1:1 is "you're not doing enough" and no action items, not enough compute to do what I should be doing, being left out of meetings, and no acces…

Sounds horrible. Have you tried to ask what makes people think you are not doing enough? Also, have you started looking for other jobs so you can run from this place as fast as you can? In any case your priority should be to find a way to fix this before you burn out for good. Losing energy for your spare time is already a big deal. You are mentioning brain draining. 7 months is a long time. Your job should be suppor…

> Have you tried to ask what makes people think you are not doing enough?

It's complicated. For one, the culture is such that 1 out of N people need to be kicked out every year, by policy, even if all N people are doing great work. So people largely end up just clawing at each others' scope to try to not get kicked out, and stealing other peoples' work to be the first one to put their name on it. Yet others team up and protect each other, excluding other team members from meetings (which results inevitably in those team members being accused of not having done work). There is no real teamwork, nobody wants to be helped, everyone wants to be the hero so that they don't become the one that's kicked out.

Add on top of that forced RTO where if you don't badge into the office 3 times a week the system creates a ticket to your manager requiring them to explain to your skip why you weren't there. This system causes people to go to the office sick. I got COVID once and colds multiple times from the stupid RTO policy. When I was beaten up from COVID, in bed for several days, absolutely drained, unable to work, and informed my manager, the VP a few levels above me accused me of not contributing to a paper that some coworkers wrote that week, to which my manager did nothing to explain the circumstances. Meeting rooms are hard to get, and I often have to take meetings from storage closets, copy rooms, or my car in the office parking lot.

> Also, have you started looking for other jobs so you can run from this place as fast as you can?

Yes, I am doing this, thanks!

> If you can maybe take holidays. A good break.

Yeah, after taking no vacation days for a whole year (and not even having the desire to) I took 2 weeks off at the beginning of this year. Hopefully once I lock in an offer at a place with real teamwork I can take a longer break. Or maybe go funemployed for a while and take a 2nd shot at building a startup but I'm nervous about the current state of the economy.

Re: It's OK to abandon your side-project

#50

Post by stanac »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #22
itqwertz wrote: post #3

As long as you complete it, just keep it out there. You never know when your half-baked idea might result in a lead for something new. It’s fun to go back to old projects and finish them with new skills you’ve acquired over the years.

What if it becomes so popular it's costing hundreds of dollars to host. Asking for a friend...

Maybe your friend could ask for donations for hosting or find a relevant sponsor to sponsor hosting.
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