Ask HN: Do you have the courage to abandon your high paying job?
I’ve been in this exact same situation. My best advise would be to start your business aside while maintaining your current job. Do not quit until you have some sort of version #1 of your product or whatever that is. You need data before making your desicion. I planned everything in my head but my steps were way too vague. I will build this kind of products or I’m even gonna try that business that has nothing to do with tech since I have these extra skills. That’s BS. In reality the only smooth transision from a guaranteed paycheck to your own net profite is huge. I lost too much time “trying out things” rather that executing tasks that were already planned ahead of time for a specific business. A business I knew from a fact that would generate an income right away based on feedback or prior experiences. In other words,  time was the only missing variable in achieving those steps. In which case it would make total sense to quit your fulltime job to complete your tasks. Again, I didn’t have the data prior to leaving my job so I was running off of guesses and hope.<p>Back to reality after running out of savings and after freaking out, I took a huge slap in the face interviewing for 30 companies... trying to get the same job I hated before, having to go through all the painful and stressful interviews while seing my bank account getting closer to $0. At the end of the day I took a huge pay cut, I’m no longer working for  a top tech company and I feel like I took 5 steps backwards in my 9-5 career. There are hundreds of young candidates out there who have the same skills, same background etc. And they all want your job. I don’t have any savings and I’m back at a crapy job at an average tech company. That sucks, but at least I still know I will  ot retire from a 9-5 job in 20 years from now. I will try over and over until I’m able to generate a sufficent income from my own business. I had to go through this experience in order for me to learn something. Today I know exactly what to do next. Just need to recover from that free fall.