Anyone have experience (especially recently) being back on the job market after quitting to work on your own app?
Posted by honoraryNEET@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 10 comments
Curious how its seen on the job market if you were a previously senior-level+ engineer, quit to take a risk and work on your own app (mobile/website/game/whatever), then came back to the job market at some point. Especially if you actually publish something, regardless of whether the app didn't make any money.
I hesitate to also include "found your own company" because although its standard to create your own LLC and publish an app under that, I'm really not thinking in terms of "trying to start your own tech company and eventually become Google", but really just more of a solo dev thing.
The context is: Something I'd like to do on a career break for the experience/knowledge and as a life goal is to singlehandedly develop and publish either an augmented reality app or a video game from zero to completion. I'm not that concerned with whether it makes money, of course that would be ideal though.
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vivri@reddit
Hey, 👋
I did this three times.
When you're a junior, it's added XP and hiring managers liked it.
A few years in it evens out - sure you gain xp, but you're also not as much of a "team player."
Now there are questions about employability.
Also -
Publishing a game to completion takes ages; much longer than first-timers anticipate. Do you have that runway / support at home?
honoraryNEET@reddit (OP)
That makes sense, I wonder if its also because you had done it before already. I feel like this is probably the sort of thing that's easy to get away with as a once-in-a-lifetime thing, twice and onwards will probably make them question if you'll just quit anytime to go back to your own app.
I'm considering a career break of most likely 1 1/2 - 2 years, <4 at most. I'd say money is basically a non-issue for me in that time period, I don't have quite enough to just retire stress-free but its not a concern anytime soon.
vivri@reddit
Quite possibly the effect was cumulative.
The thing with an X-year career break is that the market may well move on from the current skillset you've got. That's a long stretch of time for "other activities". Be prepared to start from more junior positions and pay.
unconceivables@reddit
I hired a guy that had quit to make and publish his own game by himself. It wasn't a huge success, but it was technically impressive and he finished it and went through the entire process, so I definitely counted in his favor when I decided to hire him.
crazylikeajellyfish@reddit
Why do you want to go build your own app? Is it an open source project?
If you're trying to start a business selling software, you're going to discover that the majority of the work isn't building software. Are you sure you want to do that? If your software doesn't sell and the story is one of failure, are you prepared to talk about how the process of developing a product and bringing it to the market has made you a more valuable employee?
Lots of software jobs are extremely specialized "cogs", where they don't really need or want you to be involved in the process of what problem to solve and why. Skills you learn about running a business might not be directly useful there, although they'd play well in Solution Architecture roles
itb206@reddit
I founded my own company raised money spent a few years on it and then got acquihired into an org where I'm now an IC. It was a boon because there was a lot of overlap on the work.
SubstantialSeesaw374@reddit
The only time I’ve done this I was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which it wasn’t an issue. And yes I think it was because it was all public and verifiable. I’m not sure how things would have gone if there had been nothing to show for it.
Minimum-Reward3264@reddit
Type of project gonna matter a lot. So, spending years on a dead tech is a footgun.
akeniscool@reddit
I just joined a full-time role in February after being solo for \~2.5 years. It was the second time I went through that loop.
Like anything on your resume, it has strengths in certain categories and weaknesses in others.
Building your own app with zero users to start is an entirely different set of challenges than a startup hitting a scale threshold or a FAANG serving millions. Those challenges are almost always more business and marketing than technical.
That experience will be valuable to a role that emphasizes customer-building decisions. It won't be valuable to one that emphasizes the technology and hard development problems. The right hiring manager should still see the potential.
There's also the job market in general which you have to work against regardless. The past year has been much harder than when I went from solo to full-time in 2019.
Do it, though. 100%. You will learn a lot about things you never expected. It will make you a better engineer still.