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Comment by adamnemecek | Hacker News Reader

It's impossible. You'll make little progress, very slowly. You'll be very tired and frustrated. If you have an idea, quit your job and do it full-time. How many hours a day do you really have after work? 3? And these are the worst hours of the day, say between 7pm-10pm.

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I learned this the hard way in college. I got accepted to a summer startup program for an idea I had (it wasn't quite an incubator but more like a think tank course, where you got a stipend to work on your startup idea). I thought I could work on my startup, meet all the requirements to stay in the program, and keep my full-time job as a developer at another company.

I was able to do all 3, and thought it showed I was a real hard workin' go-getter to have a full time job and a full time startup I was working on. Until the startup program coordinators found out I was working a job along with my startup and almost kicked me out of the program.

It was then (actually, years later) that I realized I wasn't doing 2 jobs full time; I was doing 2 jobs part time, and that what makes the people who can run a successful startup while working on a career exceptional is just that, they're exceptional at both.

I think a lot about how much further I could have gotten with that startup if I had just quit my job and actually worked full-time on it, especially given that the program paid a stiped, instead of trying to sneak some code in whenever my boss wasn't asking for something else.

So I wouldn't say impossible, but really tough for anything big enough to be its own business.

This isn't a yes or no situation, there's a grey area in between. Just because you had a bad experience doesn't mean that this is "impossible" for everyone. You comment is loaded with so many opinions and assumptions, you do realize that people live like, separate, different, and unique lives right? and that they might have different experiences than you?

On a small scale, everything is unique. On a large scale, everything is repetitive. Yes, if you have a full time job with a commute, you'll make little progress. 10 hrs a week is very little. And again, these are terrible hours. It's 3 hrs after work + weekends. It means literally not doing anything besides this. How long can you sustain this? Your main job will be occupying most of your attention anyway.

On HN, and such, people call everything a side project due to fear of criticism. If you say "it's a side project", and people criticize it, you can say "it's just a side project".

Statements like "everything is unique" are very obfuscatory. How am I supposed to make any decisions? Yes, certain parameters might be different but a universal truth accounts for this.

Instead of posting platitudes, post a rebuttal. Post a counter-example.

If 7-10 PM are terrible hours for you, consider using 5-8 AM as the hours for your side project.

I tried. I can't get up at 5am and be productive.

To me this is rather simple, if you believe both of these things to be true:

1. The business world is competitive.

2. Some people are working on their ideas full-time.

Then how is it not a huge disadvantage to not be working full-time on your idea? I'm very curious how people who advocate for side projects think about this differently? With ones they hope will become successful businesses at least, other side projects, such as open source projects, make perfect sense.

I agree. I think the assumption is that you'll quit your job once it starts taking off.

I also think that this meme is alive because people are working on their startups and are hoping for them to take off. In some sense, they repeat what they hope is true.

Well, I can say that it is exhausting to try and do both. I burnt myself out last year trying to do just that. I'm not sure how to do the break-away thing and commit to my ideas, but for me personally, its starting to feel like a shit or get off the pot issue.

I guess this goes against the grain and threatens the hope of many hn readers but you are essentially right. For sure, some people manage to have a startup and a job, like some people get rich by playing the lottery.

But this setup is like crunch time in game studios which is agreed on not being very productive. Programmers make enough money that they can put some aside to have time for a startup. Unlike in other professions, there is always another job waiting if the startup was not successful. So why risk the startup by dividing one's focus?

Why risk never starting anything at all because of the perceived need to do it big bang or nothing?

False dichotomy. Start side projects. But there will be a point where you spend 2 days after work dealing with build issues or something. Researching some solution to a problem you don't know how to solve. Trying to read a book but like spending too long being stuck on things.

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