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Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

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141–150 of 320 posts

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#141

I quit in December 2019 (best time for that kind of thing). I had some money put aside and decided to put my time and effort into getting a deeper understanding of ML to find a more meaningful job (my old one was draining me so much). After a few months it looked like the job perspectives weren't as good during the pandemic so I decided to finish my side project - get some more experience, maybe even earn some side i…

One thing that helps with not having a boss is getting customers paying for your product as quickly as possible. They become a type of "boss", but one you can easily "fire" if needed. This means scoping down your grand vision to what's essential for someone to pay. It's hard, but it's worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#142
I quit my full time job as a Software Engineer in 2019 without a solid plan. I had some money saved up and knew I wanted to work on a startup, and had a laundry list of ideas I wanted to explore. But none were built or had any traction.

I've tried working on side projects and startups while fully employed in the past and never made any serious progress. It was always too easy for things to drag on for months. For my personality type, I needed the pressure and continuous blocks of focus time to make any meaningful progress.

During 2020 I went through a few ideas and eventually landed on one that has since found some traction. I found a cofounder, went through YC and am now finding our place in a competitive market.

All-in-all, it was a great decision, and one I would do again in a heartbeat.

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#143
I had a grand but I had a friend. Moved to another state with a suitcase of stuff. Took some time off, tried to freelance didn't happen. I was living on lentil soup and rice. Eventually had to work at a factory/restaurant/till I got into a web agency job. Before that I was doing data entry and before that dishwashing. My finances imploded (like 300s credit score, was sued by JDBs) and yeah it was really dumb on my part but I was able to recover. I crashed my car too (in a parking lot doing dumb stuff eg. drifting, not bad just busted a tie rod) and yeah, I rode my bike around like a dumbass for a few years. Still poor but in a better place and helping my families out. I've built my CL back up it's nice to have.

A cool thing is I had so much time, like months of time to learn. I dove into web development, I didn't know what a CSR was, how to get a server to work, learned about XSS/sql injection, etc...

This was in 2016 left from NY moved to Missouri/KS.

I still have that fear of "what if I go homeless" but I've also learned not to get too attached to my possessions I can in theory sell them on the spot at 70% of their price to get immediate buyers. It's not great but guarantees me cash. I can do computing on second-hand stuff, in a better position to freelance. I have a burn rate of my net worth based on assets/cash/CL divided by my monthly needs so I know how many months I can live for ha not to get dramatic.

I shouldn't be poor now, I make more than I really need but I also keep saying yes to my families, I've given away $30K so far which is a lot for me. Funny I could have paid off my student loans with that money or I could have saved that. Oh well adapt and survive that's the name of the game. Also try not to be too much of a nice guy.

I had some crazy experiences though, like riding a bike at midnight through a road cutting across a huge field (like a mile or two in length) pitch black at night that was scary.

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#144
post #12

I quit my investment banking job in 2017 and set up my own SaaS. Very tough for the first two years, making little to no money (but I had a good amount of savings). Four years since quitting, I'm better off (many times over), both financially and in terms of how much time I have to do the things I want to. Not for the faint hearted, but I definitely recommend it.

How did you know what to build?

I had an idea cooking away in the back of my mind for a few years, but never really managed to build it, as my job demanded too much of my time.

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#145
post #12

I quit my investment banking job in 2017 and set up my own SaaS. Very tough for the first two years, making little to no money (but I had a good amount of savings). Four years since quitting, I'm better off (many times over), both financially and in terms of how much time I have to do the things I want to. Not for the faint hearted, but I definitely recommend it.

What is your business model?

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#146

Traveled the world for a year and a half, then started contracting remotely while remaining abroad, making more money than I was before in NYC (I wasn't working at a FAANG type company though). Zero regrets, life is too short to be miserable, and people severely overestimate the repercussions of quitting one's job and difficult of finding employment again. Although NYC is fun to visit from time to time, I don't miss…

Are you a US citizen? Don't you get double-taxed on foreign earnings?

Many countries (and certainly Italy) have a taxation treaty with the US. To my understanding, you basically write off your foreign tax against your US tax and so only have to pay US tax if the foreign tax is less than the US (which in Italy, probably not).

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#147
It worked for me. I quit my job due to problems after a management switcheroo that shafted me, planned on applying for jobs - I specifically wanted something in FinTech, that used Elixir - and applied for four jobs, plus one "why the hell not" application I did at Facebook. If I didn't get a job, my plan was to do Recurse Center until february and then try again with a wider search. I got into RC, did not get the Facebook interview (it was a miserable experience, where they had me whiteboard over coderpad -- code running was disable, WTF seriously, what's the point? might as well code over google docs), and then I got a job at a fintech that uses Elixir. I didn't even get a tech question in my interview.

This probably won't work for everyone. I have a LOT of public bona fides as an elixir developer (I have six libraries on the public elixir repository that I pinned to the top of my github), elixir companies are hiring a LOT, and as an elixir dev, you don't have to compete as much with the market of lemons among programmers. I also had no debt, and about seven months of drawdown.

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#148

I quit in December 2019 (best time for that kind of thing). I had some money put aside and decided to put my time and effort into getting a deeper understanding of ML to find a more meaningful job (my old one was draining me so much). After a few months it looked like the job perspectives weren't as good during the pandemic so I decided to finish my side project - get some more experience, maybe even earn some side i…

I had the same experience. The other part is without a team you have to do every single low level task, which takes a lot of time you didn't really think about before.

Re: Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs without anything planned. How did it go?

#149
post #63

I quit a normal job in 2015 to do freelance consulting. I had no plan, luckily I found two clients for part time work and for the rest of my hours I created a e-commerce site that I operated for myself. That quickly escalated and made more money than in a normal job, but running an e-commerce site isn't much fun. 1.5 years later I joined a startup, with 3 other ambitious guys which was super successful. The first yea…

Just out of curiosity, what about running the e-commerce site was a drag?
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