HN Explorer

Poll: Do you work on your startup full time or part time?

23 points by ctingom ↗ HN
Full time: Nothing else, or more than 8 hours per day.

Part time: Something you do on the side after your other primary job, or less than 8 hours a day.

23 comments

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spydez
No love for the "I don't have a startup (yet)" crowd?
ctingom
I added that option.
nostrademons
How about the "I had one, it failed/succeeded, and I'm waiting for my next big idea"?
[deleted]
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dryicerx
Jumped in full time after graduating. All three in the team are 1st timers... fingers crossed.
JayNeely
Good luck with it, dryicerx. Everyone has a first time; do try to help yourself by getting advice from those who have done it before, though. If you're in a place where there's a startup community, connect with it!

Smart, experienced people not only will help you refine your ideas and give you answers that will help you get to market quicker, they'll have connections that will help get you the resources / partners / talent your startup needs later.

patio11
Part time for 2.5 years now, making about what I do at the day job (scary thought), and I suppose when I eventually separate from the day job I'll be "part time" by your definition as well. (2~4 hours a day is peak productivity for me. I do substantially more at the day job to keep up appearances. Absent that factor, why the heck should I schedule my life around the work hours of a 19th century illiterate textile mill worker, whose life was in turn dictated by the requirements of 19th century textile machinery?)
blackguardx
Are you implying that you only work 1-2 hours per day at your day job and 1-2 hours at your startup?
patio11
10~12 hours of physical presence M-F at the day job, 90% of productive work done in 4. (Not a joke, I can substantiate it with commits, tickets, etc.)

0 ~ .25 hours M-F on the side business, depending on how many emails I received. I try to schedule 4 hour blocks on Saturday/Sunday to get stuff accomplished -- sometimes spiking to 6~8, although those days I find the 90% rule comes into play, too, so I generally try to avoid overdoing it.

blackguardx
It is a shame that you have to stay for 12 hours to keep up appearances. Where is this job? Is that part of the corporate culture or the part of the world where you work?
patio11
Central Japan. A bit of both.
catone
Right now, part time after my primary job. The ultimate goal, though, is part time _as_ my primary job. ;)
astine
Part time. My current primary job is too convenient to quit without good reason. However, my aims are modest. This is an experiment and I'd like how far I can go.
anatoli
Part time at the moment (and only for a short time, 2 months), going to jump into it full-time in a couple of months, once all of my current projects end.
tptacek
If I'm totally honest, or if I slice up the work the way most HN people would, I say "part time", because (like most of the people in the company) I'm billable more often than not.

On the other hand, after a couple years of growing that practice, we have some pretty excellent people on fulltime dev.

jeffa107
Part time. But as the weeks go by it's more obvious that it needs to be full time. I took the day off yesterday and got more done than I have the previous eight or ten nights after work. It's not that I don't make progress on evenings and weekends, but there's no replacement for eight, ten, twelve hours where you really get into the hard stuff. I rarely work straight through for that long, so it's not just a result of having more time. It's more about being able to focus solely on one project (and one that I love). On July 11 I'm going full time and will get to do that every day.
bigbang
Its good to have a hard date in future as the ultimatum. Seems like you planned it out. Good luck!
pjoter
part time, sometimes 2-3 hours a day, sometimes 2-3 hours a month. I'll be switching to freelancing in a month which should mean more time for the startup.
lucumo
Part time: 2 days a week in the startup and 4 days in the week graduating.

I'm not sure it's optimal. I find that for months at a time I simply stop working on my graduating thesis, mostly to do work in the startup, but also (when I put more pressure on myself) to do nothing at all. The latter is quite tiring...

ftse
Started part time, went full time, back to part time, soon full time!
gstar
I'm full time as-of next Wednesday, so I clicked 'Full Time' - is that cheating?

It's arguable anyway - the only reason I've been doing consulting for the last 2 years was to raise enough money to get the business going and have some reasonable runway to focus full-time.

I'd be interested to know if that's a common practice? I guess the option is really only available to me because I'm a bit older and experienced - hard for grads to do consulting.