
Summer Vacation - Xichekolas
http://xichekolas.blogspot.com/2007/05/summer-vacation.html
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leisuresuit
I think the corporate world is designed to eliminate any desire of employees
to work on their own ideas. Work takes up a lot more of your time and energy
than you imagine. Even if you only work 40 hours a week.

In reality you get up, spend 30 minutes getting ready, another hour eating and
commuting, more like 9-10 hours a work, another 30min or an hour getting home.
After this whole ordeal you don't have any desire to even THINK about anything
except relaxing.

On the weekends you're trying hard to find something to do that gives your
life some kind of meaning besides the job you have.. something that doesn't
include sitting in front of a computer.

The only way you can really work on something of your own is to quit your job
and live off your savings. And still it's up for debate how much one person,
without any investment can achieve working by themselves. You might be able to
make a simple website.. But you won't be able to pay to promote it.

~~~
staunch
I believe this even consciously occurs to many employers. It's part of the
reason why very few companies would be okay with you working 4 x 10hr hour
weeks vs 5 x 8hr. Even 4 x 12hr wouldn't make them feel secure.

I suppose it's jealousy and greed. And this exists in almost every culture
(from what I know) -- I hope things eventually change. Even Google is guilty
of this form of "Evil".

~~~
nostrademons
Actually, Google does give employees time to work on their own ideas. It's
just that they own anything that comes out of that time. Arguable this is just
as evil, so your point stands.

I think the solution may be to think of your job as buying you time. Set a
baseline salary that'll let you live a simple life with adequate health &
safety. For a single guy, that's about $20K/year (= grad student wages); for a
married guy with a couple kids, about $40K. If that seems low, remember that
50% of America lives on that.

Then take the difference between your actual salary and your cost of living,
and think of it as time. For example, if you graduate with a $60K/year job,
set aside 2/3 of your salary as savings, and every hour you work is buying you
2 hours of freedom. When you have enough time saved up to accomplish what you
want, quit and "spend" it.

For example, I'm currently saving about 2 hours of time for every hour I work.
I'm looking to quit after slightly more than 2 years at my job (that'll be
another 6 months or so), at which point I'll have 4-5 years saved up.

I met an innkeeper in Alaska who followed this strategy. He and his wife
decided when they got out of college that they'd live like grad students. They
worked in the computer field. After 15 years, they each quit their jobs,
bought a sailboat, and sailed around the world with their son, stopping at
every port they came into. They finally settled in Seward, Alaska (pop. 3000),
bought an old building, and fixed it up as an inn.

~~~
staunch
I think you're right and that is a great strategy. I know programmer who works
6 months in a major world city (it varies) then spends 6 months in Missouri at
his cabin on a lake. He's also slowly bought quite a bit of realestate as his
nest egg.

Where's your _Buying Your Freedom As a Modern Day Wage Slave_ essay? ;-)

~~~
nostrademons
I'll wait until I actually have my freedom. ;-) Advice falls rather flat when
the advisor is still working his tail off with both a day job and a startup.

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nostrademons
Am I the only one who _liked_ my summer jobs? I've had one all but two
summers, since my junior year of high school. They were (grr, I wish news.YC
had Markdown...):

1999: Did a website for a local town newspaper

2000: Worked for an all-teenage venture funded dot-com (yeah, it was _that_
easy to come by funding during the bubble).

2001: InstallShield scripting for said dot-com's parent company. (2000/2001
bookended a "gap year" between high school and college, so I was working there
all year, with various projects.)

2002: Worked for a contract programming shop.

2003: Summer off - spent it learning Lisp and Dylan, attempting the ICFP
programming contest (didn't finish), starting an Eclipse plugin for Dylan
(didn't finish), and designing the database schema for FictionAlley.org
(eventually did finish, but it wasn't till 2005).

2004: Worked for a financial software startup that eventually became my full-
time employer.

2005: Summer off. Spent it finishing up FictionAlley.org. Well, that and going
on a cruise.

If I had to rank the years from best to worst, it would probably be 2000,
2001, 1999, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2005. Two of the three worst were the years that
I had no job, while all of the best involved a job of some sorts.

I suspect it's because when I had an internship, I spent the summer learning
new technologies, which is exactly the same thing I would've been doing
without an internship. However, with the internship, I a.) got paid b.)
usually completed a project or 3, and c.) had people around me. When I was
working on my own stuff, none of those were a given.

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Xichekolas
Sorry to shamelessly link to my own blog, but I wrote this to motivate myself
a bit, and thought maybe someone else would find it motivational. I'm about to
quit my job for a few months of living off savings, and it's a bit scary for
me.

~~~
staunch
Really great writeup, thanks for sharing. I, for one, certainly don't mind
people submitting their own stuff.

This is a great topic for people who are still working for someone else. One
issue I've had is that I'm basically incapable of treating anything like a
"day job". I want work really hard and pour passion into anything I do. When I
have a day job I tend to give my best energy to it, draining me from my own
projects.

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far33d
I've worked some kind of job at all times since I was 16. Painting houses,
cashier at a grocery store, retail stores, lab consultant, summer research,
internships, and now job job job. No long breaks. Just work.

I spent my teens and college years thinking the kids who traveled all summer
were idiots. That they weren't contributing to society. Now I'm 27 and wishing
I had taken a break.. Done something because I wanted to, not because it was
"what you did". I thought that being a "year behind" would be disastrous for
my career. Well guess what.. 1 year is nothing when you have to work for 50
more.

If you are young and able to just LIVE... do it. If living is working on your
own startup, do it. If it's building a working replica of a PDP machine out of
legos, do it. Just get out there. There's plenty of time for work.

~~~
Tichy
With 27 you are still young - why don't you take that break now?

~~~
far33d
Planning on it. Just thought I'd toss some advice out for the whippersnappers
out there :)

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edgeztv
I agree with the stuff about summer jobs, as I had a few totally useless ones
in college (2000-2004).

However I had no idea what else I could be doing. I didn't realize that you
could make a decent web application and attract users, for instance. The
problem was that I didn't have any friends or mentors to guide me in the right
direction.

To the people who are working on their startups full time now - how much money
are you spending in living expenses per month?

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yubrew
you have a good point, it's much better to be working from passion than
working for money. but when you're young, it's more about gaining experience.
so the real question is "what should i do to gain the most relevant experience
to prepare me for the future?"

summer jobs are a place where you get paid to learn. not only do you pick up
technical skills, but you learn an assortment of soft skills (e.g. managing
people, communicating, success metrics, company culture, etc). if working on
your own projects will yield more relevant experience than at any summer job,
then go out on your own.

in the end, summer vacation is long enough to learn a ridiculous amount, but
short enough so that if you don't like it, you can grind through it.

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timg
"""So, if you are a student, don't get that summer job just to fill the
summer."""

A huge regret of mine.

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lucraft
Very 'graham-esque' ... Enjoyed it and logged in for the first time in ages to
vote it up.

~~~
Xichekolas
Thanks... it's probably so 'graham-esque' because I have been rereading his
essays lately for mental fortification.

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eli
$2000 covers your expenses for two months?! Man, I wish it were that easy for
me

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danw
Lovely idea but I'm not so keen on surviving by running up debt.

