Is your job holding you back?
8 years ago, I landed a part-time job as a software developer with a startup that was growing fast.
So fast that within a couple of months, they’d offered me a full-time product management position.
It was a wild ride, and I was excited to be playing a central role in the startup’s explosive growth.
There was only one problem: my job was thwarting my aspirations to be an indie hacker.
The indie hacker playbook
There’s a tried and tested route to being an indie hacker:
- you get a job that pays the bills;
- you work on a side hustle evenings and weekends;
- your side hustle income grows to cover your expenses;
- you quit and go full-time on your side hustle.
The trouble was, my product management position took most of my time, evenings and weekends included. Even when I did have a few free hours, I was too exhausted to work on anything software-related.
And there was a bigger problem.
My employment contract seemed to suggest that everything I worked on, whether on my employer’s time or my own, belonged to them, not me.
When I talked to my employer about the overreaching clauses, they went further. They made it clear that as long as I worked for them, I couldn’t work on anything else.
Carving the world
To satisfy my thirst to be working on something of my own, I compromised and created non-software products: wood-carved maps and globes.
My employer couldn’t possibly claim that there was a conflict between wood-carving and the software work I did for them!
I knew that a craft business wouldn’t be much of a money-maker. There’s no Monthly Recurring Revenue when you have to carve each and every map and globe you sell! But it helped keep me sane.
Changing the world
Ultimately, however, it wasn’t enough.
Before I joined the startup, I’d been working on a software idea that I imagined could change the world.
I needed to get back to my world-changing idea.
So a year ago, I quit.
Now I’m all in on indie hacking.
I’m creating newsletters and podcasts: Tangled Web, The Last Theory and (appropriately enough) The Quit Work Podcast.
And I’m slowly working on that world-changing idea: Open Web Mind.
Employment isn’t all bad
I’m truly grateful for my 7 years with that fast-growing startup.
My experience there helped me become a better indie hacker. I learnt so much about building software products that sell. Crucially, I gained confidence in my ability to create such products myself.
And it did something else for me, something that’s extraordinarily important for indie hackers, but not talked about enough.
It gave me runway.
How to build a runway
Software developers and product managers are pretty well paid.
There’s a trick that’s well known in the financial independence community, but less so among indie hackers.
If you spend less than you earn and invest the difference, you can build a runway faster than you might imagine.
And if you spend a lot less than you earn, your runway can be long.
So maybe there wasn’t such a tension between my employment and my indie hacker aspirations after all: the one is now funding the other.
Thank you so much for not just being another "quit your job right this second and let your dreams serve as fuel instead of food" type posts.
I'm working a job with the hope of building a runway and self-funding a cybersecurity start up and I get so tired of people telling me, someone with two kids and a wife to support, to quit and work on it full time.
Yes, that must be frustrating. It's so easy for others to tell you to quit, so difficult, in practice, to make it work financially.
Good luck building that runway!
This was an awesome post, Mark! Thanks for sharing your journey.
I think the most popular advice is to quit your job and go all in. But what they don't realize is that this advice cannot be applicable to everyone
In the end we need enough runway if we are to stay at it without burnout for 2-3 years
I've been following a similar path. I just began my career working for a software enterprise as a software developers a year ago and now I'm bootstrapping my own product :)
Thanks Goutham!
Yes, quitting your job and going all in is really high risk for indie hackers, if you haven't built your runway first. Respect to anyone willing to take those risks, but I'm not much of a risk-taker myself!
I like your idea for Famewall, by the way. Looks simple and sharp. Good luck with it!
That's definitely relatable :)
Thanks Mark. Curious if you tried using famewall for your product?
No, I won't be able to "build trust with social media testimonials", as your web site puts it, until, er, I have social media testimonials. It'll happen some day!
My job was definitely holding me back because being a bootstrapper is a full-time gig and any other jobs are a distraction. However, there are a lot of benefits to having a job: having a salary, benefits, colleagues, etc... Many bootstrappers in the WBE Space have a main gig and are building their projects on the side...
Yes, absolutely. I think building a project on the side is the safest path.
I wish it had been open to me!
Thanks for sharing, Mark! In the last 5 years, I've been practicing minimalism in various aspects of my life, which gave me enough runway to quit my day job (one week ago). Like you, I recognize and value what I've learned from working and apply it to my IH journey.
Congratulations on quitting your job!
Being able to live below your means really is a superpower.
When I quit my job, the CEO expressed frustration that I don't have a more expensive lifestyle... that made it all the easier for me to quit and harder for him to convince me to stay!
Also, since you just quit, would you be interested in a 15-minute conversation about your experience for The Quit Work Podcast? Let me know! You can contact me on Twitter https://twitter.com/markjjeffery or on the podcast's web site https://quitworkproject.com/contact
I think that minimalism and the FIRE movements are paradigm shifts in which we can drop away from the 9-to-5 corporate jobs.
You have a great podcast. I sent you DM on twitter!
Thanks! I look forward to chatting!
Hi Mark,
Been in your position several times. In many free countries, these clauses might not be legally binding, more like a scare tactic. I would check with a lawyer. Anyway, there are several other ways to fund your bootstrapping business. I have written on some:
Bootstrapping is Possible - Building the Runway
Sometimes we want to bootstrap something we have low skills in, it would be nice to trade our high skills returns with buying high skills where we are not so good. E.g. if I am a freelance backend developer/architect for cyber security startups (and I am :) ), I can invest that high paying money in a front-end, marketing, sales, etc...
Cheers
Yes, absolutely, these clauses are often a scare tactic. And those scare tactics work!
It's not my first time in this situation, either. A job I had a long, long time ago had an illegal clause preventing me from working in my profession after leaving them. I consulted an employment lawyer, and he confirmed that they couldn't do that. Isn't it crazy that a relationship between an employer and an employee should be so adversarial that you have to consult a lawyer just so that your job doesn't end your career?
Thanks for the link! I like the term "self-funded" for what you and I are trying to do. It's not really "bootstrapped" - the business isn't supporting itself - we're funding the business with our own money earned from jobs.
Not sure I should be proud about it, but I tried every funding option in that list to varying success. The ventures themselves sometimes got to a good place but nothing I can call really profitable. At times because I was unreasonable to take buy offers (once at 150k$ plus a high paying job) and preferred to close. Ego is strange... why did I do that 2 times!? Hopefully I have grown out of this behaviour.
Good one, this is a much-needed, practical perspective on quitting jobs to pursue side projects. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! Quitting a job is such a huge step, there's so much to say about it!
I must say I agree 100% with your post... Working on a fast-growing startup and learning from different minds is always an eye-opener experience... Best of luck on your journey to change the world Mark, keep an eye on your goal ...
Thanks Hashem! Working on it...!
I’m curious where you live. No American business can claim the work you do off hours and off company equipment as their own. It would be wise not to build a clone of your employer’s product while working for them.
I'm in Canada. And you're right, in many places, such restrictive clauses in employment contracts are unenforceable.
That makes it even more of a bullying move to put them in there, in my mind.
Employers (and their lawyers) no doubt reason that they're just trying to cover themselves, by placing the broadest possible (and even broader than possible) restrictions in their contracts, to make sure they have the fullest possible protection for their IP.
What they don't factor in is the effect of this not-entirely-legal bullying on their employees. Some employees submit, but are unhappy that they can't have a side hustle. Other employees quit. Either way, not good!
Actually, some of my friends in the US have the same problem. It's like fine prints on contracts that they might skip during signing... However here in MENA, this is quite common, even some add 2 years of no-competitive business agreement after terminating the contract so you won't compete with your employer.
Yes, it's amazing what's in these contracts, when you read them!
Again, some of these clauses are illegal in some states and some countries, but they're in there regardless, and unless you're an employment lawyer, it's hard to know what's real and what's not.
Nice post! Thanks for inspiring and sharing your experience.
Thanks Gabriel! Indie hacking can be kinda solitary sometimes, so I do enjoy talking about these kind of bigger-picture things with other indie hackers.
Nice post! I'm glad that you found a way forward. I'd also like to add that sometimes the problem can also be expecting everyone around you to be a part of your entrepreneurial journey.
While this is great, it's just not realistic in most situations. I think many entrepreneurs who are still working full time need to see the job as a means to an end.
Right, yes, that's a good point about expecting everyone around you to be part of your entrepreneurial journey.
Often the advice is to hit up your network to find your first customers, and if you don't have much of a professional network, that means friends and family.
Often, friends and family just aren't your target customers, so as you say, it's not realistic to expect them to sign up to whatever you're doing!
Thanks for the sharing your experiences, Mark . I'll take a listen to your podcasts 👍
Thanks Calvin, I appreciate that! I also checked out your https://chl.st/ app, very cool (and simple!)
It's good to be able to talk about these (often unspoken) tensions between job and side hustle here on IH!
Thanks for having a look, appreciate it🤙
From my side, side hustles are great and benefit both parties. Often, employers are using a tech stack that's slightly outdated or different to a stack you want to learn. Your employer won't give you tons of work time simply to look at new tech and upskill. So I spend my own spare time working on a side hustle that utilizes a modern tech stack. This means I'm upskilling and becoming a better dev in my own time (not on company time).
Most of the skills you gain on a side hustle benefit your employer ie: the decisions you make, the code you write will always benefit the employer in some way.
As long as your side hustle isn't directly in competition with their product, I'd say go for it.
I will always encourage side hustles / pet projects (even for the dev team that I lead)
That's so true about skills! The same was true for me: so many of the skills that helped me in my job were ones I learnt outside of my job.
And you're right, it's essential that there be no conflict between your side hustle and your job. Employers have every right to insist that the work you do for them is theirs. After all, that's why they pay you!
But where there's clearly no conflict, I think side hustles can be a huge benefit to both employer and employee.
I think you've been accepted, my friend. You need to contact the HR department as soon as possible and tell them that you missed the call due to accidental circumstances. This happens, and it seems that everything has worked out well for you, and you will soon be working and earning money. But my work didn't work out so well. When the pandemic started, I was fired from my job, citing the company's low income. And at one point, I started drinking a lot, but then I realized that life is one, and I needed to move somewhere. I was able to find a website where there is information about the profession and how to build a career in a particular field. And if you don't even get hired, I'm sure There must be the right program for you on this site.