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by adamnemecek 2809 days ago
I recommend quitting your job even if you don't have anything lined up. Read those books you wanted to read. Contribute to open source (people contact me with consulting work thanks to this). Learn new frameworks. You'll figure out something. Go network. I sometimes contact maintainers of open source projects I contribute to. This is the best networking advice anyone can give you. 1337 h4xx0rz don't go to meetups. However they are very willing to talk to people who help them with their projects. These are the people you should be meeting.

Take time off (I definitely needed it, my anxiety was through the roof, my sleep schedule was really fucked up). The days just seemed to be slipping away. Work was both stressful and boring. I'm actually pretty happy these days which is something I haven't felt in a long time.

I've convinced two friends to do the same, they are both very thankful.

My skills are 10x what they used to be. There is a lot of non-linear gains from working 10 hours a day at your pace, on shit you care about. There are days where in 2 days I do stuff that might have taken me 2 weeks previously.

My confidence as a programmer has also really improved. Like few things are truly impossible given enough time.

The thing to remember is that even if your thing doesn't work out, you'll be in a better position.

Hit me up if you want to talk about your plans, my email is in my profile.

Check out the project I'm working on if you feel like it http://ngrid.io.

3 comments

I built these 2 and they didn't quite work out business-wise...

https://tastory.co https://swiftlightning.io

3 months in a job search to end this retirement funds burn... Still haven't gotten a single offer. Rejected post-interviews by Triplebyte, Google, Blockchain.info, Snapchat thus far. Plenty of mid interview ghosting by startups. And with technically only 1.5 years doing iOS, plenty of companies didn't even pick-up my resume...

And gosh are these processes super slow. Maybe cuz I'm interviewing mostly remote from Vancouver BC with mostly US firms...

ngrid looks pretty cool! I've spent some time looking for something like this - combining structural editing with music. I'm not adept with music theory or production techniques, so I find many of the traditional tools do not work for me. I put my email in the form and I'd love to hear more about it.
Yeah I hate all the daws. They are good for editing audio not editing music in the note space.

Current music theory is kinda terrible. I’ve developed something that I like to think supersedes it and I’m beyond pumped to show it to the world. But it’s hard so it’s taking some time.

> I recommend quitting your job even if you don't have anything lined up.

Devil's advocate: career breaks can be toxic to your getting hired. I recall once reading that it can be comparable to a criminal record.

That’s 100 percent not true.