I quit my job as an Engineering Manager to be an Entrepreuneur (again)!

#career #productivity

It's been a month since I quit my job as an Engineering Manager to be an entrepreneur again.

I was working remotely.
I had flexible hours.
My pay allowed me to save more than half of my income.

But I nevertheless decided to do it.

I was promoted to Manager in less than two years, from a Software Developer position and I was really excited about it, however I realized I fell into the Paradox of Success:

the success I built by working deeply as a Frontend/React developer on a codebase that served more than 100 million users was because I was able to be very productive with my time.

In my two years I contributed to more than 500 commits to production code, by far more than anyone else.

However, as a Manager, I was literally forced to attend many meetings where my contribution was less than 5 minutes out of the whole hour. Every day of the week, multiple times a week. We have a little one at home, and we all suffered the consequences of being so distracted and having to spend extra time to make up for all the shallow work. My mental and physical health was hitting rock bottom.

Now, fast-forwading to where I am, I am hurting from losing my income and taking over a behemoth of a project, but I am proud of what I did and working better than ever.

Physically, I'm feeling great and mentally slowly getting there (I have off days, but they are the no longer the majority of my days).

I've learned more than I would have if I didn't quit; I am currently reading an Advanced Mysql book (my weak point in CS so far) and working heavily on the Figma designs:

(Note: I am not a designer! So for me, simple designs like this are already a big milestone).

Now, if anyone asked me whether it makes sense or not to quit... I trully don't know, all I know is that it is important not to become more stressed.

We do have about 8 to 10 months saved in the bank.

It's not my first time as an entrepreneur on a big project, and funny enough it's the second time I quit my job at this company. But if anyone has experience being in a similar situation I'm happy to hear your thoughts and experience!

Currently reading:

"Essentialism" by Greg McKeown.
"Deep Work" by Cal Newport (reading of for the second time -- a must read for entrepreneurs!).
"High Performance MySQL".