Keep the day job and build it on the side...

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1917-i-quit-my-job-applause

by dnp • 17 years ago

96 56 17 years ago

mrshoe• 17 years ago

I'm not going to turn down applause, but building something on the side isn't all peaches-and-cream.

I realize that it's not supposed to be easy to build a successful business. But if it's so hard, why should we make it even harder by pursuing our business every night when our mind is already fatigued from a full day of work?

I'm doing a startup on the side because I have to. I'm not able to take on the risk that comes with quitting my day job, especially in this economy. Especially when I like my day job. However, if I could pursue my startup full time, you better believe I would. In a heartbeat.

I do agree, however, that applause should be withheld until something comes to fruition.

Sorry if this comes across as negative, but I write this as I'm up late writing code instead of sleeping. To all of you would-be entrepreneurs thinking of starting something on the side: go for it! It's fun! :-P

bad_user3• 17 years ago

> But if it's so hard, why should we make it even harder by pursuing our business every night when our mind is already fatigued from a full day of work?

Doing it on the side is very hard, but I'm one of those people that can't sleep if I'm worrying about what I'll put on the table tomorrow ... since I have a family. I know that having a family is not an ideal scenario for starting a startup, but the support I have from my wife really helps (not to mention that we are in love, plus I have a social life that helps me relax), so it's a tradeoff.

Besides ... the real advantage of doing it on the side is that you don't have enough time. With such harsh limitations you start cutting down the bullshit and deliver the minimal functionality that does the job, improving what really matters and prioritizing your next features ... as opposed to day-dreaming pink ponies (as I usually do when thinking of a new project).

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

Maybe I'm mis-understanding you, but you are supporting his point. He is saying that people who keep their day job and build something on the side, and see it through, are just as deserving of applause if not more so.

In some senses it's the harder way of doing it. Less heroic, like getting code written to time, without bugs, without fuss, working 9 to 5, no drama.

He's saying that the room burst into applause because someone took the dramatic step of quitting their day job, and he feels that that isn't, of itself, deserving of applause.

Aren't you agreeing with him?

Goladus3• 17 years ago

Applause is easy to give. Quitting your job, despite the claim in the article, is not easy. Quitting your job is frightening and peer encouragement is very useful. That's what the applause is for.

aditya• 17 years ago

+1 - keeping your job and dreaming the dream is easy.

Quitting your job is harder.

Keeping your job and actually making something profitable is the hardest.

jonmc12• 17 years ago

A few (or even just one) examples of this approach yielding real results would have made this article worth reading. Results are what matter in startups, not applause.

patio11• 17 years ago

37Signals is a (fairly successful) product company whose products were all nights-and-weekends developments while doing client work.

I will refrain from calling myself "real results" since I don't know what your criteria for that are, but my new hobby replaced WoWing away my nights-and-weekends. Less dragons, better loot.

ahoyhere4• 17 years ago

I'd say they're more than "fairly" successful:

http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2008/02/25/37signals-is-one-...

Especially since we all know that they've turned down lots of buy offers, and only accepted an investment from Amazon to have access to Bezos. How dreamy.

Not that that proves their assertions are universally applicable, however, they certainly prove that side projects CAN be a (much less treacherous) path to success.

For what it's worth, that's what we're doing with our time tracking service, Freckle (http://letsfreckle.com). Just last week, we passed revenue of $4k/mo and I estimate we'll be able to live off it by end of January 2010.

ricardo• 17 years ago

Quitting your job is by no means easy. You'd either have to be willing to take a huge risk if you don't have any savings or you have to plan way ahead to minimize the damaage. Having a spouse and/or kids to support only makes it harder. Sure, quitting your job doesn't mean you've made anything useful but it isn't as easy as the article suggests. For most people, building something on the side requires they give up some other aspect of their personal lives. If someone has found a way to chase their dreams by quitting a job they don't enjoy and keeping their personal lives straight, then I think they deserve some encouragement.

I'm a fan of 37signals and have been reading their blog for years but the tone of their recent posts have gotten strangely negative. Just by applauding someone for quitting their job doesn't mean they're ignoring those that moonlight. I hope this post, 'The Next Generation Bends Over,' and the 'Mojito Island is a Myth' aren't indicative of a new direction for them. Every new post seems to be a defense of their business model.

bad_user3• 17 years ago

> Just by applauding someone for quitting their job doesn't mean they're ignoring those that moonlight

True. I also think that applauding can also serve (such as in this case) as an encouragement, and not necessarily as a recognition of success.

There's nothing wrong with applauding both at the start and at the finish line.

I think that the author of the post had something to express, like "starting a side-project is also courageous" and "it's nothing wrong about starting a side project", and he felt that it should be in strong opposition with the current appearances (people encouraged to quit their job). It's a little shallow, but not necessarily negative.

rapind• 17 years ago

I couldn't agree more. Quitting your job is by no means easy for most of us. While I do think you can build something on the side, he spread a bunch of crap around to make this point.

quizbiz• 17 years ago

I didn't think I would but now that I'm a freshman in college, I must admit I'm having a very hard time doing web dev part time. Any tips?

run4yourlives• 17 years ago

Get used to it?

You have the most free time you'll ever have in college. It just gets worse the older you get.

jazzychad• 17 years ago

I've been following this path. I got my first job out of school three years ago and worked on several personal side-projects at home after hours. Earlier this year I finally got to the point in one of my projects that I would either have to quit my day job to apply myself full-time to it, or abandon the idea altogether.

It has been about four months since I quit my day job to pursue this startup, and let me tell you, quitting was not easy. It was a very tough decision and honestly more stressful than it was to get the job in the first place. I don't think I deserve any applause just for foresaking a steady paycheck, but I wouldn't make the blanket statement that it is easy, either.

Finally, I will be launching my startup this week! I am up late making finishing touches to the website. I will be making a "Review my startup" post here on HN when it goes live. I can't wait.

zemote• 17 years ago

I started out keeping the day job and building on the side. After awhile it gets old and you lose all motivation for the day job. Since moving to working on the startup full time I have never been happier in my life. I wake up every day living the dream and have no plans on looking back. Unfortunately my co-founder is still working a day job, but we are close to getting him working full time on our little project.

rajasaur• 17 years ago

+1 Im not sure how someone can do justice to the day job as well as the side projects. Over a period of time, you start thinking about your side project during the day job and vice versa.

IMO, having more than one job is just going to split your thoughts and wouldnt help much in either of them.

bad_user3• 17 years ago

> IMO, having more than one job is just going to split your thoughts and wouldnt help much in either of them.

It is true that it is going to split your thoughts and it gets really, really tiring.

But it can help if in your job-related projects you start seeing patterns of what people want, how to please them, how to talk to them to get details about their business that they forgot to mention, etc ...

The implementation of your side-projects suffers for sure, but you can gain a lot of knowledge from your social interactions with clients. I used to hate consultancy work for many reasons, but the bottom line is that I learned a lot too.

I guess the answer to this question (quitting your day-job or not) is the same useless and moronic answer given to all things complicated ... it depends.

ahoyhere4• 17 years ago

I think that doing consulting while doing the side project -- which is what they did, and we're doing -- is much more manageable.

For most consulting agencies, there's no single client you always work with, so you have more variety of projects, less drudgery. And, assuming your field is related to your project, it's more likely that the consulting work will feed back into learning things that help you build your own stuff.

It's still pretty annoying, of course. Especially doing customer support for our side project is problematic.

But I personally think that doing our own projects has helped us get better, easier-to-work-with clients.

And if we had tried to force Freckle to pay our bills (there are four of us) right away, we would have had to make many more compromises than we have.

On the balance, I'd say we could be dealing better with the situation, but I certainly wouldn't have done the quit-the-dayjob thing myself.

tiffani• 17 years ago

Hahaa...that's definitely happening to me now. I find myself sneaking out to my car making calls to potential clients to schedule demos, etc. You do lose motivation and the mind wanders... :(

davidw2• 17 years ago

For every piece of cheap advice, there is an equal and opposite bit of cheap advice.

In this case, "if you're not doing it full time, if you're not fully committed, you always have an easy out. By quitting, and officially dedicating yourself to your new venture, you've given yourself a big incentive to give it your all. It's like the Greeks who burned their ships on the shore" (or something along those lines).

joez• 17 years ago

Or how some armies burned bridges behind them.

I believe in this case armies were showing that they were fully committed to your enemies. It was a demoralizing act to defenders.

The same might be said of startups. Quitting can signal to others (investors/potential employees/customers) that you are serious. However, I feel like this thread has taken an introspective slant. I'd caution anyone quitting who is trying to signal to themselves.

borism• 17 years ago

Yes, but is "burning bridges" a rational thing to do? Does it really give actors psychological advantage afterwards or is it simply to show yourself/partners/competitors how cool you are? It is very hard to measure...

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_no_return#Related_expr...

hegemonicon• 17 years ago

When Cortez burned his ships when he came to America, it was to give his men a choice between following him and certain death - failure wasn't an option.

Fear can be a powerful motivator. Of course, if things go wrong, you end up murdered by massive armies of Indians. Or something.

axod3• 17 years ago

I'm sure 37signals will come out with exactly that shortly, to drive more traffic to their blog.

tptacek• 17 years ago

That's witty and all, and we get it, axod, but they've never said anything like that, have they?

wallflower• 17 years ago

I remember something from my being exposed to network marketing days that is relevant here.

"If you treat it like a hobby, it will be a hobby. If you treat it like a business, it can be a business."

EastSmith2• 17 years ago

The downside of keeping your day job is that you are slow. Recently another start-up lunched my idea as a beta. This really hurts, because I know I've thinking and hacking this similar product for over a year. And they've got some great press, which hurts twice as much.

dagw• 17 years ago

Look at the bright side. If you consider the history of computer software, the company that launches first is rarely the company that ends up dominating. Follow your competitor closely, learn from their mistakes, listen to their customer's gripes and try to find a point where they are weak and capitalize on that.

EastSmith2• 17 years ago

Thanks, I am doing monitoring for that company and someone might mistake me as their media person: blogs, twitter, using backtype, google alerts and HN search. Lot's of feedback coming from there for sure - it's almost like I've launched on my own.

growt• 17 years ago

To me it sounds a little bit like:

Why get a divorce? Just keep your new girl on the side as an affair and see if it works out.

david927• 17 years ago

The big question is, "What will increase the startup's chance of success?" It makes no sense for me to quit my job and code when there are great coders out there who I can outsource to(/partner with) and keep the strain off the company finances. If the costs are inline with your budget, you're already 'Ramen profitable' without actually having to eat Ramen.

pclark• 17 years ago

worked for delicious

IsaacL• 17 years ago

I find it hard enough to be a student and work on projects on the side - I am much more productive in the holidays. I imagine working for 40+ hours a week would be even worse.

It reminds me of the pg essay about looking for funding - when that's what you think about when commuting, in the shower, before falling asleep, you'll lack the focus to continue building. I find my degree has the same effect, and probably most jobs do as well. An exception might be for part-time or menial jobs - I remember one blogger saying that worked 20 hours a week in a coffee shop, and spent all day thinking about what to hack on when they came home.

idlewords2• 17 years ago

Many people with tech jobs have clauses in their contract that would make it very problematic to develop an idea on the side if it could in any way be construed as competing with their employer. If you work for a company like Yahoo or Google, quitting is pretty much the only option, unless you want a cloud hanging over the project later.

ahoyhere4• 17 years ago

Yes, which is why when you sign a work contract, you should be sure to strike that clause... or not work for them in the beginning.

At most small- to mid-sized businesses, the work contract is totally negotiable. And if you're amazing enough, at big ones, too.

idlewords2• 17 years ago

In my experience, that kind of thing tends to be non-negotiable at large companies. They figure that if you are really so amazing, you're likely to have some great ideas worth keeping.

goatforce5• 17 years ago

I got my last two full time-gigs precisely because of my part-time project. Both of them were more than happy to add a clause to my contract acknowledging the prior existence and continuing independence of my side-project.

jqueryin• 17 years ago

I work on my start-up after I get home from a full days work. I've been doing this M-F for the last 6+ months, around 2 hours a night. I don't see this as work, I see it as more of a challenging hobby after I'm done work.

rooshdi• 17 years ago

Yes, even as tired as I am somedays after coming home from a long/busy shift at work, my face lights up once I finally have the opportunity to sit and focus on my special side project. I can't tell you how many times I would literally lose focus during work and be day dreaming about developing new ideas for this potential startup. This project would even actually help motivate me to make it through the rest of the long work day, due to the positive vibe that radiated through me while thinking about project.

Goladus3• 17 years ago

I disagree. Quitting a job you've had for several years and supports your current lifestyle is not easy. It is risky and takes a lot of courage. That is why others show support. That support encouraging and valuable to the receiver. Furthermore, applauding someone's decision is pretty easy, too. Certainly easier than quitting your job. So what's the problem?

If I say I am building a business in the evenings, do you feel like there will be much value in a one-time round of applause? Positive effects of your support will be minor, and will wear off long before they affect the outcome of my venture. Unless you're willing to get interested in my project and show support on a regular basis, or at some critical juncture (eg launch) it's just not that big of a deal. I certainly wouldn't find applause useful (in fact if you applaud work that isn't deserving I'll find it harmful). I need criticism, attention, resources, and frequent but pragmatic optimism.

On the other hand, if I say I am quitting my job, that means I am going through a rather dramatic change. Many of the decisions I make and actions I take in the next few days to weeks will make a big difference. A one-time bit of motivation-- other people letting me know I'm not alone and that my decision can really work out for the best-- can be very significant.

Gibbon• 17 years ago

It's like noone here has ever heard of a part time job. I work 25 hours a week and still have 80-90 hours to do whatever I want.

Considering the average startup founder works about 50/hrs a week.. there's plenty of time.

nabeel• 17 years ago

37signals seems to like this topic.. The last time they sounded off on why half-assing it is a good idea, I reacted just as viscerally as this post. Since they did a redux, I will too:

http://nabeelhyatt.com/post/130164127/instead-of-watching-tv...

csallen• 17 years ago

As many others have already done, I'd argue exactly the opposite of what's said in this article. Quitting your job to pursue your dreams full-time is much more worthy of applause than relegating your dreams to a mere "side project."

Too bad. Doing what you love on the side means you don’t have to risk everything immediately. You have a steady income so you’re less desperate. You can build it slowly until whatever it is is such a success that it justifies quitting your regular job. It’s a measured approach instead of a toss of the dice. Plus, you can easily turn around if you go down the wrong path (or lose motivation).

Maybe these “keep the day job and build it on the side” folks are the ones who really deserve the applause.

Reply

fake_pg• 17 years ago

Bottom line: what worked for them (37signals) may (or may not) work for you.

Should you drink their Cool-Aid? Only if you're thirsty.

Reply

webwright• 17 years ago

"Following through is the tough part."

I disagree with the sentiment of this post, but THAT statement is absolutely true. So much so, that "hacking" yourself to do so is a really good idea. As you say, it's easy to quit. It's ESPECIALLY easy to quit if you're doing it on the side. "Oh that side project? Yeah, I kinda lost interest in that" is easy to say and no one will care. It's a LOT harder to say, "Oh, the idea I quit my job over? It failed." because that makes you look like a failure.

Quitting your job is a similar psychological hack to fatblogging or announcing an engagement at a big party. Or burning the ships once you reach foreign shores. Being "desperate" is what can often push you through the crappy or boring parts of your startup.

Reply

Poiesis• 17 years ago

Look, a lot of folks are looking at their advice as saying "don't quit--it's too risky to your own income" That's just a side effect!

Building it on the side lets you make different decisions. You can focus on getting a small amount of revenue quickly. Can't live on that alone, but paying customers are the ultimate metric, and you can iteratively improve using that.

Reply

Keep the day job and build it on the side...

Related Stories