I quit my job and became independent!
and this is what I learnt
Two month ago I was sitting in a train on a Sunday morning looking at a draft email I had written several days before. It was the third or the fourth time I was opening it and doubting whether I should press the send button or not. What was keeping me from pressing that button?
fear
I’ve been always cautious about my decisions. Always wanted to make sure everything is in place before moving to the next step and mostly it has worked fine. The biggest one was leaving my country for the first time in my early 20's to live and study in Europe thousand kilometers away from home. It was a scary decision and I almost decided not to go specifically because of financial reasons. However, my father didn’t let me settle and supported me as best as he could.
Now nearly at the end of my 20's, I can’t think of any other big decision I’ve made that I regret. However, there has been a lot of decisions I regret I didn’t make. Simply because I was too afraid. And I say it out loud.
This time, I wanted to quit my job. With one big difference to my previous job. I didn’t have another job waiting for me and I wasn’t planning to find a full-time job. I was just sick of working endlessly for a company, project after project and deadline after deadline. Get a stupid performance review every year and based on that get a small percentage raise on my salary which was worth nothing. Also, I couldn’t get to work on projects I would decide. Everything had to go through the chain of management until it was approved and then we had to execute. Limited number of holidays and free time to work on my own personal projects was another side of the story.
I had decided to become a freelance developer with no prior experience in contacting businesses, finding clients, doing lots of paperwork, handling tax reports specially in a country where I barely speak the language. What made it even scarier was that I only had enough money to sustain for one month of rent without a job let alone the other costs. The night before that, I crunched the numbers with my girlfriend and came to the conclusion that I should wait at least two or three more months and save as much as possible to make that decision.
Yet, I compulsively pressed the send button and resigned from my job. I spend the rest of the day not thinking about it and hanging out with my friends. The next day I informed my team about it and it spread through the company. For the next three weeks the first question I would hear from anyone was:
So what are you going to do next? Have you found any clients?
and my answer was: I don’t know!
That freaked me out! I really needed to find something to do at the end of my notice period to keep up with my expenses. I was constantly contacting different recruiters and companies to find clients to start with. Several of them told me the market is very good and they will find something for me but I didn’t hear about them anymore. Lots of paperworks needed to be done to arrange the legal stuff. I failed an interview. It was getting scary. However, within three weeks I manage to sign with my first client on an interesting project! I was relieved.
I’m still in my first month and I don’t know what’s ahead of me but I think the experience of the past weeks took me a step further on a personal level. It boosted my confidence and helped me trust my guts to do what I’m afraid of. It gave me a bigger playground on what I would like to do and what I don’t. I now manage my own business and can work on different projects with different companies. My network grows bigger. I learn more about the business side of the industry. I simply can think bigger than only my IDE screen.
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