Lysis
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2008
- Messages
- 31,677
Well, I'm 40 and last year was the year I decided to finally do it. I had been doing it a little. I did 6 months onsite development/consulting and then 6 months freelancing. Not sure what finally made me snap, because the last real job I had I left on a good note and really liked the gig. What I hated was all the politics. Even when I was 16 I told myself that I wanted to work for myself.
I struggled hard and I thought I wasn't going to make it, but it was well worth the year of being scared to death of failing. Now, I work about 4 hours a day (not counting the customer support I do) and I'm getting to a point where I need to scale with possibly hiring someone to join my team (my team being a team of 1 lol).
I'm by no means a genius, but I did have determination and banked on a skill set that I developed for years in the standard 9-5. Oddly enough, I think my job hopping helped a lot. I think that old school mentality of working for 1 guy for years is a bad way for an employee to think. The more I job hopped, the more knowledge I gained. I've seen developers in a dead end job that they didn't want to give up because it was "safe" but they had worked there so long that their skills weren't marketable anymore. They were working with technology that's 15 years old.
I struggled hard and I thought I wasn't going to make it, but it was well worth the year of being scared to death of failing. Now, I work about 4 hours a day (not counting the customer support I do) and I'm getting to a point where I need to scale with possibly hiring someone to join my team (my team being a team of 1 lol).
I'm by no means a genius, but I did have determination and banked on a skill set that I developed for years in the standard 9-5. Oddly enough, I think my job hopping helped a lot. I think that old school mentality of working for 1 guy for years is a bad way for an employee to think. The more I job hopped, the more knowledge I gained. I've seen developers in a dead end job that they didn't want to give up because it was "safe" but they had worked there so long that their skills weren't marketable anymore. They were working with technology that's 15 years old.