I finally quit my job to focus on my side-projects. (Warning: verbose and cathartic)

Mahzkrieg

Mahzkrieg

New member
Nov 13, 2007
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Austin, Texas
I'm 24 and just quit my first post-uni Real Job after a year of employment. I have a meager Adsense income that will keep me afloat until something else takes off.

It wasn't until I was halfway through university (~2010) that I decided to seriously jump into programming. My goal was to be able to code any website that I could imagine -- a goal surely provoked by the helplessness of managing vBulletin forums and having to shop for "add-ons" to extend them with trivial features. (Everyone using Wordpress knows that feel)

Yet, despite three years of obsessively teaching myself how to code and despite reaching my goal of achieving this proficiency, programming has always been some side-show relegated to the glimpse of time I could scavenge from weekends or during amphetamine procrastination binges.

And when I graduated from university and thought I was finally free, I entered the workforce and found myself in an even darker dungeon: I was programming at my job and had to somehow scrape together the intellectual energy to work on side-projects when I got home.

I ended up languishing.

How can you possibly perpetuate that magical obsessive up-all-night ambition for a side-project idea that strikes you Saturday when you have to commute to work on Monday?

And then you have to sit at a dual-screen workstation and hammer out code that's not yours, the whole time your mind keeps dwelling on Saturday's ambition? How do you balance that?

I couldn't.

So, for the past year, I efficiently trained myself to ignore all of my ambitions and motivations. "Sideproject Saturday" became nothing more than a day to hammer out a small project with prudent demands since I knew if it was incomplete by Monday, I'd probably never finish it.

I couldn't live like that, where my own ambitions were toxic to my job performance, where stomping them out was the only way I could focus on work.

So I quit a few weeks ago.

And here I am. Living off some meager Adsense income that pays rent, food, and gas. It's not much.

But it buys me more than that: it buys me back the full 24 hours of the day, and it buys me the freedom to fail spectacularly.

I finally have the freedom to work fulltime on my own ideas. Between university and work, I've never had the opportunity.

Thanks for listening. It's on, bros.
 


Well done OP. That's a difficult decision to make. I did the same thing back in 2009 and it's a scary leap. Mind you I didn't have the practical skills that you were using on a day to day basis to take with me into my own new ventures. You're one step ahead of the game. It's sink or swim time now, but it sounds like you'll do fine.
 
I like it. People with these kinds of balls are the makers and shakers.
 
Congratulations on breaking away from the 9-5. Now you are ready to double down ;-) Move to Asia where things are cheap and your meager Adsense income will actually make you comfortable as opposed to just scrapping by. Take your extra money and reinvest it in new sites/extra content.

Also, if you have a handful of sites making money, make backup sites and rank those too. Once this is done, you have increased your income by ~+60%. It easier than trying to hit on another niche that provides the same ROI. Then you can branch out and experiment.

Also, make some Yahoo/Bing sites that wont be nailed by Google every time there is an algo change.

Oh and don't burn bridges. Stay in contact with your old bosses/colleagues, etc. Might get you some consulting work down the line.

Good luck
 
programmers gonna program.

Now just make sure you don't fuck around in your free time and actually bang out code like you did at work. If you have a work schedule set up already where you get up in the morning, then go to work - keep that schedule and just write the code for your own projects.

It becomes really easy to start fucking around, especially if you're working at home.
 
OP - this was me six months ago.
There is no greater thrill nor satisfaction than can be derived from self employment.

I've never been so motivated/focused. Best of luck :)
 
jorarulit said:
programmers gonna program.

Now just make sure you don't fuck around in your free time and actually bang out code like you did at work. If you have a work schedule set up already where you get up in the morning, then go to work - keep that schedule and just write the code for your own projects.

It becomes really easy to start fucking around, especially if you're working at home.
Click to expand...

This. I once spent a couple months just fucking around pretending to work. It's so easy to waste your time when you have to hold yourself accountable, and not somebody else. Self discipline goes a long way.

I'm sure you don't have a problem in this area, but I sure as hell did. Was a tough hurdle in the beginning.
 
Good for you, OP. Grab a freelance here and there if you need money. Don't think adsense is your only monies.
 
This post should be stickied for several reasons, but the part I liked best was this:

...the freedom to fail spectacularly.
Click to expand...

NOBODY succeeds without the risk- and far better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all, imho. Mad props to you for taking the shot.

I would see it as a personal favor if you would keep a small journal and let us know how you get on, mate.
 
Keep them temptations and distractions away. They call you out like a hot babe out of a porno and wont stop riding you. This was me a year ago. I started to get pumped for all the shit that i was about to accomplish, sat in front of the comp ready to code the crap out of the next best thing, one thing led to another.. a while later, i know every fucking thing about Game of Thrones.
 
Good post.

I am sure you already know this, but get off Adsense as soon as you can unless you have a big brand website, in which case you need to get off adsense as well.

Good luck to you. I am no longer "employed" myself, but have clients. I am making that step to get away from clients hopefully by first of the new year
 
Just make sure you actually code. I've been at home all day for most of the summer, and yet I'm lucky to produce 2 hours worth of code per day.

Just don't be lazy, and that's advice from a lazy guy.
 
At one point I was pretending to work for almost 2 months, and would ACTUALLY put in maybe 2 hours a day. Don't be like me. Stay focused, and remember what you do today has a huge impact on your results the following day.
 
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