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Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

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Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#31
Weekends have plenty of time.

But any good side hack will just make the time for itself. It's that stuff you can't not do so you stay up slightly late and will be slightly more tired at work but hey, so what, you'll feel so good about it that you can't wait till the work day is over and you can continue again. Then it'll fade away and you'll get more interested in work again until one night you figure out where you left with the side project and hey, there you go again.

Personally, I've never been in such a good job that I would always have interesting things to do. So, I've observed that my home-hacking is strictly proportional to the amount of boring stuff at work. I need my dose of programming and if I can't get it at work, I'll get it at home. This kind of takes care of side projects on its own.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#32

Another question: How do you develop a side project when your employer insists that it owns all intellectual property you produce? Edit: As far as I know this is a very standard clause in tech company employment contracts, and is perhaps the legal default even in the absence of such a clause. For example, see "Employed to invent" under http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/pre-invention-assignm... . California is an…

Start networking and lining up other prospective jobs.

When you have some strong leads, you approach your employer about renegotiating that part of your employment contract. Don't threaten to quit or hold those leads over your employer's head. Express that some of your colleagues with other companies are explicitly allowed to own all of their projects developed during their own time.

If that fails, follow through on those leads. Don't work on any personal projects until you have officially left your current job.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#33
Start small, work up to bigger projects. By small, I mean 300-1kloc. Or whatever you can bang out in a single sitting. It needs to be cool enough that you feel motivated to finish it too.

Accept that you can probably only get ~8-12hrs of good work on side projects done a week (except when you're really inspired, or when you can spend a weekend on it).

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#34
Just pick something you really enjoy and it should be feasible.

I started SocketCluster (http://socketcluster.io/) on the side about 2 years ago while working 45+ hours a week for a startup.

I still spend about 10 to 20 hours a week on it. It's been a great learning experience - The kind of experience that's impossible to get from just being a full-time developer.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#35
Projects to test technologies/patterns - try to find ways to incorporate those in your current job so you can do the learning at work.

Other side projects - work together with a friend or perhaps hire someone so you can split the workload for something you want to build?

Organise your free time in a way you have time for extra projects - ie skip TV, cut down on social media etc. But you have to really love the side project to be able to pull it through

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#36

Another question: How do you develop a side project when your employer insists that it owns all intellectual property you produce? Edit: As far as I know this is a very standard clause in tech company employment contracts, and is perhaps the legal default even in the absence of such a clause. For example, see "Employed to invent" under http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/pre-invention-assignm... . California is an…

In which country is he legally able to do so? He shouldn't be able to control everything you do... I've experienced attempts for that, but not all clauses are enforceable.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#37
The better question might be to ask what are you doing instead and why. It may be that those things are more important to you, or it may be that you are avoiding other issues.

For me, the challenge in understanding my own choices, is understanding the root of those choices. It can help if you have a neutral third party to talk to about why you choose to do X rather than Y, but barring that there are other techniques you can use.

One is to make an appointment to spend 1 hr a week on some project. When I do this I start with a fresh notebook and pick a time either before I go, or after I get home, from the office to spend on this project. Then when the time comes the first hour is dedicated to writing down in the notebook the goal of what I'm trying to do, why I'm trying to do it, and the things that will have to be true before I can achieve that goal. After an hour I close the notebook and go about my life. The only rule is that during that hour I work on the project and nothing else, and if unavoidedly interrupted I make up the time lost that same day.

The things that make that possible are; It is only an hour, same as watching a TV show or reading through the front page, the notebook retains my mental state between sessions so I don't start out wondering what the heck I was doing last week and what needed to be done.

I found that for me what I really hated was spending an hour coming up to speed on a project and then only having a few minutes to work on it. Very unproductive and very demotivating. But with a process to stop and restart a project in hand, it takes away the restart lag and so I can be productive nearly right away (perhaps 10 minutes reviewing my closing notes from the previous session). Also if my check list is good then I have a good idea of how close I am to the goal.

Time is a finite resource, and learning to budget it will serve you well throughout your career.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#38
post #27

Use your paycheck to directly pay a braindead coder with zero creativity or ambition who does nothing more than meet requirements, like you're fucking dictating to them. for added oomph they can be in a low-income country, but people with no creativity or initiative or ability to translate requirements into code aren't worth much anywhere. So rather than code anything yourself, just give htem requirements that read l…

Ya, but you could do that little bit of stuff in less time then it took to write up the spec, put up the work, sift through potential contractors and ensure what you got met your needs (going back to step 2 when it didn't). Plus you would know how it fit together since you wrote it so it would be somewhat easy to alter/reuse. As far as side projects, 40 hours a week to work isn't that much. I usually work 50+ and hav…

Coding the idea is probably the easiest part. Getting people to use your product and iterating over user feedback is time consuming. Also, "build it and they will come" doesnt work (more so in the AppStore)

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#39
post #38
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, but you could do that little bit of stuff in less time then it took to write up the spec, put up the work, sift through potential contractors and ensure what you got met your needs (going back to step 2 when it didn't). Plus you would know how it fit together since you wrote it so it would be somewhat easy to alter/reuse. As far as side projects, 40 hours a week to work isn't that much. I usually work 50+ and hav…

Coding the idea is probably the easiest part. Getting people to use your product and iterating over user feedback is time consuming. Also, "build it and they will come" doesnt work (more so in the AppStore)

Agreed. But the topic was building a side project not getting users... which is certainly the more difficult part.

Re: Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job?

#40

Another question: How do you develop a side project when your employer insists that it owns all intellectual property you produce? Edit: As far as I know this is a very standard clause in tech company employment contracts, and is perhaps the legal default even in the absence of such a clause. For example, see "Employed to invent" under http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/pre-invention-assignm... . California is an…

This is a very important question - many employers get mad when you have side projects. Tread carefully or at least work on something clearly unrelated to the business of your employer.
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