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Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

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Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#271

Post by wolco2 »

rubicon33 wrote: post #257
wolco2 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 20 years+ experience. It doesn't have to be like this. I know exactly what happened. Changing languages and domains every few years can wear you out. If you were lucky enough to pick one language that madw it 20 years you can spend your time deep diving different domains. Bonus if the language becomes unpopular with developers but still need with business. Bonus points for picking a fun language you like. A re…

You do have a point. I would certainly agree that your best shot at maintaining your passion would be to stick with 1 or 2 languages and get really good at them. Constantly context switching does wear on a person. With that said, there are some caveats... 1) Businesses need to find that language useful and important. In other words, there must be opportunities to make money using that language. 2) The language must s…

I got into php in the very beginning. Kept learning everything else but found the limitations a fun challenge and being able to rapidly produce something kind of works with my matra of wanting to do a bit of everything.

I started with C/C++ so php was natural fit.

A good question would be if starting out today what language would I pick?

I'm tempted to pick php but I would probably go for react. The market is huge career-wise, the language is fun to develop in and the community is strong.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#272

Post by jefft255 »

hervature wrote: post #270
jefft255 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your idea that, because something can be done for 12 hours, it should not count as “work”. You also say reading is important, and yet seem to omit it when asserting that a grad student’s day of work can be compressed into 1-2 hours of useful work. I think the problem with what you’re saying is that it relies on a very abstract notion of “useful work”. I certainly can bust my ass for 12 hours at a prob…

Here is my transcript: http://www.hervature.com/Zachary%20Hervieux-Moore%20Transcri... Look at Fall 2015 where I had 10 courses worth 32 units not counting the project course where the credits are awarded the following semester. call it 35 units. Roughly, a 3 credit course consists of 3 hours of lecture and a 1.5 hour tutorial. The courses I took that have more than 3 credits typically have a lab component that adds…

Well you read me wrong! I absolutely agree with you that working insane hours is, well, insane. It only personally happens to me in short bursts. I’m only stating that many grad students work crazy hours. You’re right in questioning the productivity of those hours, and also questioning how healthy this culture is and it’s certainly not my goal to spread the idea that, to be a good grad student, you must drive yourself insane. Just because it’s not the right approach doesn’t mean that those students do not work those crazy hours. It is a myth that it’s necessary/a good idea to work this much to succeed, it is not a myth that a lot of grad student do 60 hours of work a week.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#273

Post by kerupian »

holoduke wrote: post #41

Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…

This is a nice success story. A few questions - 1. What your side project is about? (if you are comfortable disclosing or domain) 2. How did you learn sales and how to you continue to scale sales process?

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#274

Post by shrimpx »

shadowtree wrote: post #267

Given all the IPOs in the last weeks, from Doordash to AirBnB, how does it feel to have lost out on massive opportunity cost? Same skill and effort as a Director, exponential payout vs. your grind for hand outs.

In other words “why do what you love when you can be a well paid company man?”

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#275

Post by ramraj07 »

yowlingcat wrote: post #171
ramraj07 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life. I remember going to conferences,especially the really small ones, the professors and students would spend all day listening to extremely draining lectures; this one particular conference started at 8.30 am, went till 1 pm, you get…

> The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. Is that really the reality? As far as I can tell, the reality is quite the opposite -- that sustainable levels of work across all knowledge work industries drop off a cliff past 8 hours a day, and for deep work 4 hours a day. Working on a side project after work possible for short sprints at a time, but somewhat impossible if you have an engaging…

I've personally seen it again and again with numerous people that they really can keep up a level of productivity most people only dream of for more than just 8 hours a day, consistently for most of their lives. As much as you want to believe that all humans are equal, we really are not. Either you don't want to see that reality, or you've deliberately or accidentally never ventured out enough to encounter them.

In general in software Engineering (I can say with some confidence since I made the transition between) people get the idea that they're actually very smart when they are just _okay_. The easy six figure salaries which IMO are often the most undeserved (compared to other careers except entertainment) is probably to blame.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#276

Post by __turbobrew__ »

warlog wrote: post #178
dave_4_bagels wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, I have a number of non-tech related side hustles and quite frankly I prefer these to tech ones because they took maybe 50hrs each to setup and 2 hours max per week to operate. I know for a fact it'd take much more time tech wise to get something of equivalent revenue up and running. I have to question these "I spent years making $40 a month working 8 hours after hours to built but now makes $60k a mont…

Slightly off topic... But can you share your nontech side gigs? Totally curious...

Check their username

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#277

Post by macduy »

Congratulations! Great idea and the app looks very polished. I'm really excited for you as I've got a similar story: working on a project on and off for 10 years, first as a hobby offering it for free but last 3 years thought what if I could make it worth my time. I started charging this year and now at a similar MRR. Oh and judging by the currency, also living in the UK. A story like yours really gives me hope and inspires me to keep going so thank you for sharing.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#278

Post by ramraj07 »

hervature wrote: post #194
jefft255 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an ignorant comment. 1) actually paying attention to an advanced academic lecture requires serious mental effort, so by your definition it is work. It is also not useless, unless purely academic work is useless to you 2) I don’t know what kind of experience in academia you have (my guess is not much) but grad school can be very intense in terms of work. Sure you can slack off, but if you want to do well…

No it is not an ignorant comment. 1) If you missed my quotes around "work" it is because some people describe certain tasks as work equivalent to other tasks. The effort of digesting vs. producing material is about 2 orders of magnitudes for me. I took 60 hours of lectures (time spent in class) during one of my semesters of undergrad. 12 hours of lecture everyday. That is completely sustainable because all you have t…

You seem to confuse the life of a grad student and the life of a tenure track professor trying to keep their lab running. They're not the same, not even close. Unless you are/were one, or were married to one, or have actual data proving that academic professors spend the majority of their times in useless meetings, your argument holds no water. Comparing reading papers for undergrad courses or some masters experience in some compsci lab is just naive at the level where you are not even aware of a different plane of existence.

The biggest proponent of "you only need to work 9-5 and can still be a successful professor", Cal Newport, himself walked back those statements somewhat after he started going tenure track.

I'll give one corollary though, which is that there are some very successful professors who actually don't work that hard. I am friends with one; they're just simply not human. I remember reading from the same textbook with him and he finished the pages 3x faster than me. So the only way you get away with regular life in academia is to have a super human brain. The rest of us have to compensate by putting in the extra hours. It's not healthy, at least not for me, which is why I chose to leave. But many do it. And continue to do so. It's arguable if their lives are worse or they don't mind it, but it's not arguable that they are just morons who don't understand time management.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#279

Post by gnunez »

wolco2 wrote: post #250
retsi wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what real experience sounds like.

I have 20 years+ experience. It doesn't have to be like this. I know exactly what happened. Changing languages and domains every few years can wear you out. If you were lucky enough to pick one language that madw it 20 years you can spend your time deep diving different domains. Bonus if the language becomes unpopular with developers but still need with business. Bonus points for picking a fun language you like. A re…

What is this magical language of which you speak of? Sounds a lot like battle tested Java!

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#280

Post by [deleted] »

wolco2 wrote: post #271
rubicon33 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have a point. I would certainly agree that your best shot at maintaining your passion would be to stick with 1 or 2 languages and get really good at them. Constantly context switching does wear on a person. With that said, there are some caveats... 1) Businesses need to find that language useful and important. In other words, there must be opportunities to make money using that language. 2) The language must s…

I got into php in the very beginning. Kept learning everything else but found the limitations a fun challenge and being able to rapidly produce something kind of works with my matra of wanting to do a bit of everything. I started with C/C++ so php was natural fit. A good question would be if starting out today what language would I pick? I'm tempted to pick php but I would probably go for react. The market is huge ca…

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