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by poorjohnmacafee
1811 days ago
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Have you tried creating a business? People forget this is the most opportunity-filled, complex economy in the history of humanity. The idea of "spend your career at corporations" is only about 100 years old as a result of the industrial rev. Forget it about it for a second. My grandfather launched a company in his youth and it was considered normal, he wasn't considered an "entrepreneur", he was just doing what many people did before today's career-at-corporations mentality became entrenched. You already know quite a bit about a wide array of industries. Spend some months focusing on your past experiences and where there might be a place for you to break in offering a product or service. |
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I’ve often considered entrepreneurship but always felt this wasn’t right either. Making any amount of money (let alone enough to replace your day job) is a multi year adventure of very long hours. And even then it has a very high chance of failing. So it’s a huge investment for several years with very little chance of any payoff. You’re almost always better off working for someone else money wise and across the board (unless you’re both skilled and lucky, which means well above average, which by definition excludes at least half of people)
What I’m doing now is working at an easy but mind numbingly boring job where the software quality is abysmal. It’s a tough change because I was used to startups with decent standards (unit testing, code reviews…) but it freed me to let go. I don’t care at all about the product. I don’t care if it succeeds or not (it never should but because our customers are captive vis regulations they have to keep buying from us)
I negotiated to be paid well enough (mostly based on my previous experience at better companies and the knowledge I got from it) which helps some. And I put in my 40h (I always refuse overtime), take the paycheck, save 70% of it. Working from home has been awesome because I can limit work to a few hours a day before I go mad and still not lose the rest of the time I’d normally be stuck at the office without much to do (poor planning on my betters’ part). This lets me see the end of the tunnel ins few years where I’ll be able to quit working if I want to (and I’m pretty sure I’ll want to), 30–40 years earlier than most.
All this to say that if you can write software but don’t feel like starting your own company then this could be a valid option too. And you don’t even have to play the corporate game because you’re only in it for 10 years so don’t really care about promotions etc. Where I work managers are paid 20% more (before tax!) than individual contributors but they get 10x the headaches and longer hours. No thanks.