I know OP means well, but there's one piece of advice that's exactly the opposite of my experience.
First he says:
There is very little you will learn in your current job...that will make you better at starting your own startup.
Then:
Good ideas only come through trial and error.
Both are terrible advice.
There is a whole universe of things you can learn in your current job: technique, experience, exposure to different ideas (in practice, not in theory), how to manage projects, how to deal with people, what to look out for in real world situations, and the two most important things: what NOT to do and what people need.
I can think of no better way to get good actionable ideas for a startup than from one's job.
And for many aspiring entrepreneurs, having a job and learning a few of these things is the single biggest missing piece in their bag of personal assets.
If you have a great idea and the wherewithal to start a business, then by all means go for it when you're ready. In the meantime, there's nothing wrong with having a job; it's probably the best thing you could be doing until you're ready.
Perhaps I was overly strong, but my point was that whatever you're learning at your job, you'll learn it faster if you're starting your own company. I worked a few jobs right out of college and I learned some stuff that I think is applicable to our startup, but I was still virtually clueless when we actually went to start it.
When it comes to the quickest way to put yourself in a position to successfully start your startup, there's no comparison between learning at your job and just starting it.
This is super important because the longer you wait, the more risky it becomes to start your startup in the first place.
The differences are much more involved: learning as part of a startup, especially if you have debt, is learning under duress. Learning while on a job, when the issue of the next paycheck doesnt loom over you, is a more steady process
Well significant debt complicates everything, but assuming you don't have any debt, necessity is the mother of invention. If your livelihood depends on you learning something, you will probably learn it much faster and better.
I think a job is great for learning, if you take an active role.
For me, I was working in IT, but I was able to build non-IT systems related marketing, sales, product development, HR, and business.
What I would do is listen for someone to say, "I wish I knew X" or "I wish we could do Y differently" and then I'd either write up a marketing/product report or else redesign their old system and have it to them a couple days later.
I learned a ton this way, but I was very active in achieving it.
I have to say I agree with "good ideas only come through trial and error". Perhaps "only" is too strong of a word, but if you ask any successful entrepreneur about how many ideas they've been through before figuring out the one that led to their success, I'm sure the average will be quite high.
That depends totally on the job. If it's a well paid megacorp job - very safe, but far from something that might spring ideas in your head, you're locked in a little corner doing your thing. Only in small companies the business side of things is transparent enough for the technical people.
If it's a well paid megacorp job - very safe, but far from something that might spring ideas in your head, you're locked in a little corner doing your thing. Only in small companies the business side of things is transparent enough for the technical people.
This is exactly the opposite of my experience. The bigger the company, the bigger the problems, in both number and size. It may seem counter-intuitive, but I have worked in many "megacorps" and you'd probably be stunned by the extent of their needs and their difficulty getting them fulfilled. I have hundreds of ideas accumulated over years of enterprise programming that I'll probably never have time to get to.
Sometimes I think it would be a great idea to put a tiger team of hungry programmers together with the right enterprise users. But since that rarely happens from within, attacking their problems from the outside is still probably the best approach.
I worked for a 400 person company. The business side of things was very transparent. Maybe if there were 20,000 employees that'd make it less so. But at 400 employees, I could listen in my office for conversations that I found interesting, join them and then create a solution in a day or two.
It's also easier to justify a fix. If you can save 5 minutes a day for 100 employees that's one man-year of work saved. If you can do that for the most annoying process of the day that's worth at a least $35,000, plus any moral issues.
Keep your eyes and ears open and don't focus just on IT systems to improve, focus also on other systems that you can get in there and improve through your engineering mindset.
Maybe I'll just clarify what I mean by a megacorp. I'm talking from experience at working for a company with well over 100k employees. My most motivating and entertaining jobs were in companies with less than 50 employees. These however were the most tiring, so bootstrapping and "side thing" was out of the question.
First he says:
There is very little you will learn in your current job...that will make you better at starting your own startup.
Then:
Good ideas only come through trial and error.
Both are terrible advice.
There is a whole universe of things you can learn in your current job: technique, experience, exposure to different ideas (in practice, not in theory), how to manage projects, how to deal with people, what to look out for in real world situations, and the two most important things: what NOT to do and what people need.
I can think of no better way to get good actionable ideas for a startup than from one's job.
And for many aspiring entrepreneurs, having a job and learning a few of these things is the single biggest missing piece in their bag of personal assets.
If you have a great idea and the wherewithal to start a business, then by all means go for it when you're ready. In the meantime, there's nothing wrong with having a job; it's probably the best thing you could be doing until you're ready.