genuinely asking because i feel a bit weird about this.
i'm employed, fully checked out, interviewing slowly. but in parallel i have a saas thing i've been building for 4 months that's starting to get a little traction (like 3 paying customers, nothing wild). and i'm realizing the side project is changing how i feel about the job search.
before it, i felt desperate to land the next thing. now i'm weirdly more selective? like if the side project gets to 10 paying customers i might just... keep going longer. and that makes me less willing to take a job i'm lukewarm on.
haven't told anyone at work obviously. but curious if others have used side projects as a kind of psychological leverage in a search. or if that just slows you down and gives you an excuse not to commit.
5 replies
corp_refugee
this is exactly what happened to me, in reverse. i left faang, the side project became the main thing, it didn't work, i came back to a job search much worse off financially and psychologically than if i'd just kept the project as a project.
so: use the psychological leverage, it's real and valid. just don't let it calcify into avoidance. 3 paying customers is not 10, 10 is not ramen profitable, ramen profitable is not "quit your job" money.
director_dee
from a hiring manager side: candidates who are building something tend to interview better. they have concrete recent work to talk about, they're not desperate, and the desperation thing specifically makes a difference. so even if the project never monetizes, it's doing real work for you in the search.
quietquit_quincy
hadn't thought about it this way. i've been hesitant to bring it up in interviews because it feels like a distraction from my main experience. but maybe that's backwards.
director_dee
bring it up. "i've been building X on the side" is legitimately interesting. what you shouldn't do is make it the whole story or imply you'd drop the job to work on it full-time. frame it as evidence of curiosity and initiative.
sam_recovering
the "psychological leverage" framing is exactly right. i have a small thing going too and it genuinely changed what i'm willing to accept in terms of job quality. not sure if that's wisdom or rationalization but it feels better than pure scarcity mindset.