I know someone who did that and in the end he went from well-paid technical sales to homeless with serious health issues. One piece of minor bad luck followed by more bad luck with the health issues, probably a consequence of the former. Some of his former colleagues, years later, when one of them had found him in the streets, collected money to help him out.

There is a risk of stepping outside. It's not all roses. People are not afraid for no reason and it's not just "all in the head" and an attitude problem.

The people I'm thinking of weren't so much "stepping outside" as they were "never inside". They have always worked casual jobs which they enjoy, and generally have strong social networks that can help them out when they're in need.

It works if you don't have many responsibilities. I recently lost my only source of income and that became crippling to my overall performance when it comes to side projects that could eventually replace that source. It was really surprising since I expected to head full forward with my projects. It used to be the case when I was a student capable of living on a shoestring budget.

> It works if you don't have many responsibilities.

Yep. Single person with minimal responsibilities has more freedom/flexibility than someone with a family (for example) - kids/spouse mean your time is not just your own, and your decisions have direct (often immediate) impacts on those around you.

> It used to be the case when I was a student capable of living on a shoestring budget.

It blows me away how easy it is to grow your expenses right along with your income. I started in this industry making like $60k/yr and somehow managed to live and go on trips. Now that I’m older I make substantially more than that but somehow my expenses grew right along side. Car payment, expensive apartment, Uber eats, fancier groceries, lavish travel, expensive hobby stuff… shit adds up. Not to mention I’ve got graduate level student loans, maxed retirement, etc…

I dunno… I know for sure if push came to shove I could do away with a large portion of that. But man can your expenses blow up so easily if you don’t pay attention to them.

Throw a wife and two kids into that mix and let’s see what happens to your side projects.

Yeah, it goes from 16 hours a day to MAYBE 16 hours a week.

I have a lot of experience pushing forward stuff with wife / kids. One must learn to delegate. Yes you can do "programming whatever", but you don't have the time. If you believe in the project, allocate.... $100,$500,$1k a month for a few months (whatever is your threshold) and outsource! It doesn't need to be in "expensive React with microservices".... you can do v1 in Laravel and a purchased template. (as example).

If one does not feel comfortable paying someone to do some of the work - it is a key tell the project may not be worth continuing. Momentum is key as projects natural state is "trending towards death"

This advice used to work years ago but user expectations have risen massively and you can no longer get away with a shitty cookie cutter MVP. You must do the big work upfront and come out very polished out of the gate, or else users will sense you don’t really have much skin in the game and not bother investing time in your niche project. This often means you must leverage the latest and greatest tech to get an edge, such as React.

Users have been burned too much by “lean startups” and “mvps” and have become wiser to their tricks.

Eh, I think this is a major fallacy that burns a lot of potentially viable companies to the ground.

Step 1 is validate your market and produce something of value - that is the focus of the MVP.

The MVP doesn’t need to go from $0 to $bln. and it’s a red flag in my opinion of something thinks it does. If the market is already established or there are established competitors, and you’re building out more capacity then sure - but then you should already be able to build a spreadsheet with all the market variables, or you’re fooling yourself.

If you can’t do that with 1 person and random tools, it doesn’t mean that isn’t a business. It does mean it’s a higher risk of failing, and failing catastrophically, and destroying a whole lot more money in the process.

If the value proposition is common, then yes it is hard. If it is novel, then no.

Agree design is much more important than before. But you can still pay a designer $1k or less and it looks pretty nice. Maybe not "uniquely different", but nice.

Agree the days of "simply put it up and get users" is probably gone. One has to work it, which is what distinguishes a project from a business. Developers may be good at one, but not both.

The problem with this advice is the same as with most advice for how to get ahead: It just does not scale, not even a little. It only works for a few. If more people follow it, it's just more stressful and/or expensive for everyone.

I mean, if this is the kind of society that any poster of such advice has in mind than I won't complain. Who am I to dictate what the end goal is? If people want a society for winners, so be it. I just wish that advice givers were aware of that and would show it. As it usually sounds like such advice is given without any thought for scalability.

Or you subscribe to the idea that a huge number of people could indeed have this 0.1% super idea. I can't really disprove that this would be possible I admit, a huge number of people suddenly having crazy good ideas all at once, and all or most not requiring a lot of resources (which they would compete over, and with all the old industries).

Blindly spending $100mln to make an awesome app without getting a MVP out to validate an idea for way cheaper is just ‘making up losses at scale’. It also doesn’t scale.

Almost swallowed my cuppa when you called React the latest and greatest

I know it's not, but I'm trying to draw a parallel to what many market devs would probably use and cause themselves more trouble for launching

Yeah, users care about React. [Eye roll]

As a user I care enough to make some effort to avoid it such as using old.reddit rather than the new fangled version.

They don’t care about React they care about having next generation web applications with complex state, not some garbage where you click a button and refresh a page everytime to re-render the screen.

No way - users care about speed a lot but usually could care less about a page refresh. That's why React apps are getting a bad rap with users as they are often slow due to poor engineering. If the app is fast and looks good, users like it.

Example - because many developers will fret more about the technology of their site than the actual business. <yes, it's common>

Or -16 hrs a week (made up by borrowing from sleep or other necessary time), which just isn’t sustainable.

This is what Tullio Kezich wrote in his book "Federico" to describe Federico Fellini's attitude towards life.

"He lived deep inside things with indomitable curiosity and perpetual openness, surrendering himself to what Dostoevsky calls "the river of life", in the serene awareness that it always takes you somewhere".

It always takes you somewhere.

I agree with what you are saying for sure. I have spent years working for myself in a variety of roles and while I was certainly happier than when I worked under a boss, the constant stress around lack of reliable income was stressful. Suddenly this last year or so all of the skills I had cultivated with my side hustles culminated in a way that I am both my own boss and making enough money my situation feels less dire. It was the combination of the two that really made a difference in my mental health

I reckon they're not 50 or older, though.