In this short post I wanted to share with you an obstacle I face and my thinking around it.
I started to work full-time in 2011 as a Java developer. My first project was a giant software for tax department. Very complex, very boring. Actually I wanted to quit and do illustration instead.
Since 2011 instead of quitting I switched roles from Scrum Master, Frontend developer, Dev Ops to UX design. It was actually nice to see the industry from different perspectives. However now I face with a big problem: Where to go next? What is the next step in my professional life?
I became comfortable with my role and knowledge => I am not growing anymore. Of course I share what I learned with my colleagues (or anyone who is interested).
In my mind the next step is to do my own business. In the last 5 years I took courses, read books, talked with business owners and I tried to ship that first version. I still failing make it happen.
I saw other people got so desperate, that they want to do work for free, just to start somehow and later have trouble to get paid. I aim to avoid that...
I am searching the answer for these questions:
What to do if you don't see any opportunity in your surrounding which is small enough to get started, but can grow to sustain you?
What to do if you have only few connections and they are very different from you or they are not interested in the things you make?
P.S. After so much business/startup research, whenever I have a new idea, I feel like my mind can think only in slogans and landing pages. It might not be healthy anymore, I guess I will have to take a break.
Top comments (5)
"A little less conversation and little more action" come to mind. I started this thing as a hobby project. 2 years after I did the initial git import, I got funded. Now I'm the CEO for a small (funded) startup with a handful of employees building the next generation low-code automation tool. Find your itch, scratch it, open source it to check how the community is reacting to it, and start a company based upon it comes to mind ... ^_^
Nice! thanks for sharing your project. So in your case, your itch was to not repeat yourself and not write code? Did you use it also in work?
Yeah... I overthink it and cannot settle for one thing.
DRY was my itch yes, as in "Don't Repeat Yourself". Originally I created it to simply use at my day job. Now of course it's a commercial product with a business model resembling WordPress ... :)
Two things.
One, your project is really cool.
Two, damn you for earworming me with Elvis on a Monday. That's a vibe.
Hahaha :D
Thx Marissa ^_^
It's not (only) "my project" anymore though. For instance my frontend girl has completely re-written the UI and UX, improving on my (less than optimal) Angular code by at least one order of magnitude - But thank you :)