Work at a great company and your own projects on the side. Seems like the best of both worlds.
Ever since starting to read HN a few weeks ago, I've become interested in learning Ruby, Rails and general web development. I love where I'm at now (which is not hidden but easily found via my name and profile link) and the fact that I can spend my free time on weekends learning for the sake of learning, without the stress of having to make an income from it.
There is a great quote from Who's Your City that states you need an additional $133,000 in annual income to make up for the happiness from seeing your friends and family on a daily or weekly basis. That's a big jump for those quitting to move halfway across the country.
The quit-to-startup culture is certainly enticing but there's really no reason many of us can't have the best of both worlds without quitting a great job at a great company.
Agreed. This is definitely one of the hardest decisions I've made in the last 2 years. I did the "work in my free time" thing, albeit on another project, and had difficulty with the work life balance. In the end, the other project successful enough that I'm able to afford to quit (for a short while) and go full time on this idea. I actually finished the second edit of a new blog post earlier today suggesting that folks bootstrap their first startup for some of the same reasons you bring up.
Work at a great company and your own projects on the side. Seems like the best of both worlds.
Ever since starting to read HN a few weeks ago, I've become interested in learning Ruby, Rails and general web development. I love where I'm at now (which is not hidden but easily found via my name and profile link) and the fact that I can spend my free time on weekends learning for the sake of learning, without the stress of having to make an income from it.
There is a great quote from Who's Your City that states you need an additional $133,000 in annual income to make up for the happiness from seeing your friends and family on a daily or weekly basis. That's a big jump for those quitting to move halfway across the country.
The quit-to-startup culture is certainly enticing but there's really no reason many of us can't have the best of both worlds without quitting a great job at a great company.