Ask IH: Get a job or hustle on?
I having been hustling as an indie hacker and working a bunch of products but none have passed the validation phase. I've been wondering whether I should consider getting a remote job and work on my projects on the side until they gain enough traction for me to go full-time.
What's your take on this, fellow indie hackers ? Would you go for a job till you get enough traction or would you hustle on till you make it ?
Would love to hear your experience on this.
P.S.: Things are not really great cash wise, not bad but not great either😅
Personally, I'd get a job. As cash dwindles, it creates added pressure.
Look at yourself as a business, you need positive cash flow to stay afloat.
I have tried quitting my job for a year, tried to build a product but survive on freelancing instead, then go back to employment for another 3 years (freelance part-time), then quit again to build product + freelance, then quit freelance to focus on product, now still just ramen profitable due to some earlier product income.
The thing is there is no permanent success or failure, just do whatever is necessary or whatever you feel is right. You can always cycle back in a few years, being stronger and more prepared.
Employment is good for financial, and maybe to gain some domain knowledge and connection. The bad side is always bureaucracy and company doing stupid/inefficient things. If you can save some money and do some investment, it will definitely prolong your indie hacker runway in the future.
Indie Hacker is fun, hard and depends on luck. You might succeed tomorrow or 10 years down the road. Having a long runway helps, or you can mix and match freelance with product development. I quit freelancing because I got tired of it, but the money there is easier than product development. A product is like the ultimate dream, but not that easy, yet.
Is it even easy to get a remote job these days?
I would also say it's not as easy to land a remote gig. There's a lot of competition for remote, so it's a lot more difficult to stand out. Seems to help a lot if you have been or currently are a remote worker though.
My current remote gig is only remote because I worked locally for the first year and proved myself both capable and valuable enough that when I asked to go fully remote they were OK with it.
In my (long) experience: no, it is especially difficult now, as every hiring company thinks it's Google.
You (company) are not Google. You make glorified CRUD and need developers, not computer scientists.
I find it takes me about 1-2 months to land a new remote contract. Lots of "take home" projects for interviews, which can get annoying when there are a lot of them. Luckily companies seem to be moving away from the ridiculous "solve this unsolvable algorithm while I watch you" interview style.
FYI if you have software engineering experience, there's a company called Karat (https://karat.io) which is 100% remote and you choose your own hours. I've been working as a contractor for them for about 6 months now. It's an awesome community of people. Would be happy to make referrals for anyone interested :) Just shoot me an email, hello@wyatt.engineer
Hey thanks for the info. Just checked out the website it's awesome but they don't seem to have open remote software engineering position on their careers page.
I should've been more clear, the remote role was "Freelance Expert Interviewer" in which you do live coding interviews for SWE roles.
Definately I'd never want to run out or even tight on cash. There should be no compromise on this. hustles are experiments which can continue as side projects. What we often forget is we are living probably the best part of life and its quality shouldnt compromised as much. The biological clock wont reverse or even stop itself.
Just as 'what worked' are much told and heard about.... what didnt work is rather less talked about. But it does definately teach good lessons.
Would you mind sharing what (& why) didnt work ?
I would suggest you to get a remote job and you can save number of hours in commute or any office chit-chats and stuff like that.
P.s. checkout https://remoteleaf.com if you are looking for remote job
Yeah, you don't want to be put in a position where you're strapped for cash. That takes a toll mentally.
Try and find a remote job or a freelancing gig that will take care of your basic needs and gives you the time to work on what you want to work on on the side. There are many many more companies hiring remote (even full-time) these days than there were years ago.
Might want to check out this previous thread as well: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/which-full-time-jobs-have-been-most-conducive-to-working-on-your-side-projects-d58e682455
I work on the weekends, just enough to stay afloat, and hustle during the week. A fulltime job at a big company makes me too comfortable and bored. I believe that building businesses and selling products is probably a skill like anything else, and eventually you can become an expert at it, but only if you put in the hours and you're not wasting time working 9-5
This.
get a job and grind at weekends.
Personally, I do freelance work on the side to allow me to fund my side projects. This way I still have the freedom of not having to go to an office and have a boss, but I still have that economic security & cash flow for funding cool ideas
I assume you're a developer? Whenever I had cashflow issues starting out, I took on a few months of contract development work to replenish the coffers.
Once you manage to build something that people want (and perhaps sell it -- i.e. have a small $50 or $100k exit) you should try to reinvest as much as possible (either in the product itself, or alternatively into other investments such as stocks) to get additional cashflow and bridge times when you're not making money.