
Jobs and interviews suck way too much, quit and work independently? - zippy786
Working for a Fortune 500, and thinking about quitting because things move way too slowly and it is very boring.<p>Tried to switch job and realize there are not many interesting corporate&#x2F;startup jobs out there. Most of them are js jobs really (even in hackernews). And the interview process is so awful. I&#x27;ve interviewed at many places, given many onsites and it&#x27;s the same. I don&#x27;t even get why 4-5 people ask the same question and you have to answer the same thing. Also, when I joined my current job, I found out the interviewer who asked me to implement a certain data structure didn&#x27;t know how to do it himself, I knew because we are now good friends and work together.<p>There are rare ones who are really targeting problem solving. But they are very rare. And I&#x27;m afraid even if I find them and join them I will get bored pretty soon.<p>Considering jobs are boring, interview process sucks do you think just quitting and starting with apps, open source is a good idea ? I can live for 1-2 years with my savings ? How many of you have followed this path and regretted ?
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constantinLG
Same here. Here's what I did. Long story short: I've been a developer at
smaller companies, bigger companies, a team lead, and none of these made me
happy. With some money saved, i quit for working on a personal project.

8 Months later, I now run 2 online projects: www.rechargeit.com and
www.DNhub.com

As you can see, one is publishing, one is domain investing. I love what I do,
there are so many to learn and do, I burn money every day with a team of part-
time freelancers, and I am trying to find my business way before money gets
burned.

Lessons learned? A lot :) Easy path? Not at all Deserve trying? Yes, no doubts

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montbonnot
Welcome to my life. Where you're at right now is where I was not a while ago.
So it's too early for me to tell you it's awesome just quit and go on your
own... Though, I've worked as a SWE for 10 years going from junior all the the
way up to staff level. At the end I was working for one of the best companies
out there doing %80 bug fixing versus %20 feature work. %100 Micro-managed and
absolutely zero motivation/innovation/future/control/independence.

I quit and started making Apps. Again, it's too early to say that it was the
best decision of my life. But here is my only advice for people like you:

You're a SWE, the world needs SWE/developers/coder depends how you call it.
There are not enough SWE in this world at the moment. So, you're set... This
is something you've acquired already, why do you want to spend the next 10
years doing the same thing and not learning anything else? Now, look at
Berkley university for example. They received $250 million in fundings from
the silicon valley in order to help students starting businesses. That's where
we're going. More Startups, new ventures, more entrepreneurs etc. This is the
next SWE job that is coming faster than you think. Go out there and go learn
how to be an entrepreneur and do it NOW. If you stay stuck in the corporate
world you'll be downgraded to a worker working in a factory in a few years
from now. Maybe software will be the Nike and you'll be that 14 years old kid
coding in Asia for $1/day (sounded horrible sorry but that's my vision). These
kids will write code for us. You'll be more than obsolete. If not, machines
will do it for us. So, learning new skills and more specifically entrepreneur
skills is crucial. I'd encourage every SWE to jump into the other side before
it's too late. We're smarter than anyone else. Companies like Apple, Google,
FB, Microsoft were built by people like you and I. Not by some BS product
managers hiding in the middle of an organization who has no idea where the
money is going...

That's what I told myself before I quit. Of course, like you, I have savings
and can survive while learning all these awesome things thanks to 10 years of
slavery in the corporate world. Good luck and sorry for my crude language.

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zippy786
You've definitely added an angle that I've not thought about. So true. Quit
motivation keeps growing! Thanks

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404error
Do you work on any side projects you might want to turn into paid products?
Can you be the tech guy and the sales guy?

I have a similar problem, I get bored pretty quick.

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selmat
From my experience, there are a corporate issues. Corporate need to solve them
in an effort to survive and earn money for next business. This issues are not
"real problem solving" in terms of save world or make world better place. So
there are a lot of corporate jobs where your are solving corporate day-to-day
issues. After some time it starts to be boring.

I also faced to interview processes where have been asked for insane technical
details and implementation but after hiring I found out that I will struggle
with past. I need to revise data within CMDB messed up during previous
migration. Or other interesting task : perform tedious implementation/tests
over entire infrastructure because there is process and it needs to be done
only and only this way.

For me it seems like, there are pros and cons for every position...you can
have job security but it is exchanged for boring staff. Real problems solving
position is facing to higher risk, stress and pressure.

I feel...that I am still searching "my place", trying to do lot of side
projects, raised own business...just find what will fulfill me. But day-time
is very limited so it is long-term run. I am changing full-time job every
2-2,5 year, often with changing location and it is quite depressed (for me and
also for my childrens). I don't feel "home" anywhere. I bought house but i
don't know where I will be 2 years from now. Everything due to jobs.

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karterk
What would your ideal interview process be like? I often hear about horrible
interview processes on HN, but it would be interesting to hear how it can be
improved.

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zippy786
1-2 hour interview, if you can't know the person in that time then you suck at
interviewing. During that you can ask some conceptual problem solving
questions, resume questions. Please trust the resume, if you find someone
lying you can fire them. Another is just give them 1 day to solve what you
want them to do in real life. Some of the companies already do this.

