Re:I don't want to work very hard
by ahoyhere on Thursday December 11, 2008 @03:51PM
(#394785)
Have you considered that you might enjoy your own business more, thus making the "hate working" part no longer so true?
I'm on a shorter time scale than you. I consulted from 14 to 20, when I had a bit of a trainwreck of bad luck and choices all at once, then I held 3 jobs: one for 3 mos, one for a year, and one for 15 mos. I quit each when I got to the point you're describing. I've been consulting again since Sept 07, thinking that charging the premium rates would help limit my exposure to bad customers and boring work. It hasn't, really (I'm charging "hundreds" per hour as you say).
But it has given me the flexibility to ship my first real product. And I'm actually having a blast. And I'm not working balls-to-the-wall like the expected YC work ethic. We built v1 in 3 mos, a couple days a week, and we've already got a small stable of happy paying customers... with almost zero promotion.
Even the boring and unsavory stuff (bug fixes, answering tickets!) is more fun when it's something you're passionate about.
Maybe you're not anti-WORK, but anti-job?
That said, if you've learned a bunch doing what you were doing, why not try to sell software or do low-commitment micro-consulting or write about it for a subscription site?
I'm on a shorter time scale than you. I consulted from 14 to 20, when I had a bit of a trainwreck of bad luck and choices all at once, then I held 3 jobs: one for 3 mos, one for a year, and one for 15 mos. I quit each when I got to the point you're describing. I've been consulting again since Sept 07, thinking that charging the premium rates would help limit my exposure to bad customers and boring work. It hasn't, really (I'm charging "hundreds" per hour as you say).
But it has given me the flexibility to ship my first real product. And I'm actually having a blast. And I'm not working balls-to-the-wall like the expected YC work ethic. We built v1 in 3 mos, a couple days a week, and we've already got a small stable of happy paying customers... with almost zero promotion.
Even the boring and unsavory stuff (bug fixes, answering tickets!) is more fun when it's something you're passionate about.
Maybe you're not anti-WORK, but anti-job?
That said, if you've learned a bunch doing what you were doing, why not try to sell software or do low-commitment micro-consulting or write about it for a subscription site?