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Ask HN: Programmer career problems

10 points by pylot ↗ HN
Just thought I might get some good advice here. I'm a little troubled about my current career path. I have always known I wanted to run my own business (tech) so I jumped into programming figuring I would learn the ins and outs. Fast forward 10 years, I've been in a role of lead developer with experience managing teams of ~5 and I understand product pretty well. However, I feel like I am not that much closer to my original goal. What is it that I'm missing and would help?

I know a lot of people will kill to be able to do what I do, but I am seriously troubled. Any advice is appreciated.

5 comments

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smileysteve
> I wanted to run my own business (tech)

A key question to ask is why you want to run your own business? For the freedom? For the money? For the challenge? Which of these are you not getting at your position and how can you get it?

> What is it that I'm missing and would help?

Do you have a tech idea that you are passionate about? Can you survey 30 businesses that want it? Do you have enough savings to not have a client for several months?

Have you attended any startup weekends or incubator lectures?

pylot
I want to run my own business for several reasons * The challenge of building a business from ground up. * Working for something that is my own. * The idea that I can be financially free if I'm successful (but this is secondary)

I don't think I'm getting any of those from my jobs so far.

With regards to ideas that I've had that I'm passionate about definitely. Your second question is more of a problem in that I'm not quite sure how to gauge and maybe this is something that I should work on. I do have savings for a couple of months.

I've worked at several startups and been to hackathons, lectures, pitches etc.

jp
Do you love VAT, taxes and payment problems ? Three people buying your software and then the $10 000 consulting payment keeping you afloat is delayed another month ? 1 star reviews, angry emails from paying customers and dangerous programming errors ? Being alone is brutal. You probably need partners who believe in the same idea as you.
pylot
Some of the issues you mentioned seem to arise when you do single consulting gig at a time (which I've run into before). It sounds like you have had a particularly bad experience, but I agree these are things I'm willing to put up as part of getting the company up and running. Sorry if I was unclear, but I'm primarily interested in developing a product or SaaS or even PaaS, rather than a consulting company so hopefully I wouldn't run into the issues to the extent that you did
xinwen
So, you want to start a business and you're reflecting on the last 10 years and wondering why it hasn't happened yet? Not to be cavalier but I'm guessing the simple answer is because you "haven't started a business yet." And if you spend the next 10 years "not starting a business" its not gonna happen then either.

There's a reason why few people choose the entrepreneurs route, and why even fewer succeed. It takes guts, determination, a tolerance for high-stress, and a general savviness that most people just don't have.

I'm not saying you don't have it in you. But it's definitely not gonna happen "to" you. You have to take the initiative in a much more proactive way than you've already demonstrated if you want to start taking steps toward your goal.