In an old job I spliced a lot of fibre for our research, got the hang of it and got pretty proficient.
My research shifted, and I start making sensors using fibre and similarly sized capillary tube. It all got cleaved, spliced to assemble, cleaved some more, spliced again, then polished to spec. Getting the he process down was a pain, but the results were super satisfying.
Currently doing the finishing touches on a ww2 era surface grinder, closing out a new little design, and ramping my fitness up again. Next up is some duct work, some reverse engineering, and finishing my part of a paper.
I haven't had this much time off in over a decade and it's amazing. I've been hoping to get inspire for some outdoors or running related mechanical design/prototyping projects, but nothing yet.
I quit my job. Its forced me out of the cycle of 'just a bit more' and made change the only option. Is it the smartest move, likely not, but so far I stand by it.
I’m in the process of doing the same. From a dollars and cents perspective not the smartest move, but from a finding value in life seems like quite the right direction.
Any advice on staying informed and challenged? Some of the recent changes and new products in tech are actually quite interesting. When you are on the hype-cycle hamster wheel you’re forced to stay informed about both the hype and the interesting stuff. I feel like it’s quite easy to tune it all out otherwise though.
I've somewhat found the opposite. The cycle I've been in is has had a tight grip on my time and attention that's its been hard to keep up with anything not mission critical. Now I'm backing off, I've got time to get more up to speed.
For keeping challenged long term, I've got a few products I finally have the time to do prototypes for and some chances to work in new areas.
I quit a while ago, now I have issues finding an employer that doesn't have idiotic hiring practices or even anyone who will take a look at my portfolio of projects. I haven't had a single interview in which the interviewer would ask me anything about my projects, let alone seemed to know about them, or even read my website. Hiring is utterly stupid these days.
So maybe one recommendation is to make sure you interview well, if you can, or prepare for some unemployed time.
For me quitting was also the only healthy thing I could do, and I am still glad I did leave that lost place.
A very good synopsis. I recently had the chance to put myself as the intermediate member between those expectations and our technical team. It raised the expectations on me, but helped reduce the unrealistic side of those from impacting my team.
It worked brilliantly for a while, but since things were getting done fast, well, and cheap, the expectations increased. I gave notice two weeks ago without a job lined up.
I guess my only question is how do you keep yourself from going broke while starting these projects. I've a chance to do some great work now, but it would lower my pay beneath what I can live on.
Oh, that’s a very good and difficult question. I’ve broken down many times myself and still go through tough periods. Maybe over time you just grow a bit thicker-skinned. But I can really imagine how hard it feels when you’re just starting out.
To be fair, though, it’s not necessarily easier in a venture-backed startup — maybe even harder. On top of the project risks and challenges, you also have to deal with investor pressures.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this topic, I’d be happy to share more — but maybe if your question is a bit more detailed or specific.
My position is that I've been in a failing start-up for years. Public company, but has burned through all their investment and has reached its ending days spiral. Small amount of equity has declined to be worth next to nothing, passion for the work has declined, both myself and more broadly.
On a week of vacation leave, I went and helped an extended family member in their home business. It combines the best aspects of my past three jobs. High tech, optics, design and manufacture, it's hard, and it's fascinating. There's a clear path to profit, with demand. Might be weeks, might be months, but in the meantime I can't make enough to cover my costs.
I can't risk my family's security. Having loved out of my car while studying, despite over a decade passing, the memory is fresh.
A pay cut would be fine, worth it, but the risk feels so high.
None of my ventures ever came with guarantees. I started out working in an IT company, growing quickly in both salary and career, but I didn’t stay long — I soon decided to start something of my own. I was young, without a family or obligations, not yet used to the comfort of a steady job. It was easy to take risks, and I wanted responsibility.
I founded my first company making calls to clients from my car. Instead of an office, I sat in a small room with rags on the windows instead of curtains, cheap computers, and desks that looked more like school tables. I was the manager and the HTML coder, the recruiter and the cleaner — finding projects, fixing mistakes, talking to clients, and handling all the operations. Looking back now, I smile — but it was completely irrational.
Later, when the company was doing well with outsourcing and even serving a large public client, we made another “irrational” decision. We handed a big, profitable project over to their in-house team and switched to building our own product. People thought we were crazy. But we were burned out. We wanted to create something of our own, even if it meant working harder. There was a certain romance in that, and a belief in ourselves. I still remember how we celebrated our first $50 product sale more than a $50k invoice from an outsourcing client. Strange, right?
The product grew — not quickly, but it did. And when growth stopped, we tried again. Another product, and another. If it was interesting, we continued. If not, we shut it down or simply moved on. Each new start was slower and harder!
But the important nuance is that we always had some buffer. We started our first company while still employed, only leaving once we had our first client (for 1–2 months we worked two jobs). We switched to our product only after it could at least cover the minimum salaries (working in parallel for 6–12 months). We launched new products only when the main one could support us, when we could reinvest profits, and when our personal lives were at least somewhat stable. We worked hard, but we always tried to keep a margin of safety. Living in a car was never on the table — worst case, we could always go back to a job or take another outsourcing project. There is a right time for everything.
I’m not giving advice — just sharing my own path. Even now, when something doesn’t work out, I look for the next idea to keep myself busy and moving. I always try to hedge risks with something new, rather than stagnating in one place.
Aligns with my experience as well. Way back when I got my MSEE, there was a guy in the group that did literally no work towards the final project. Tried asking the prof for help, but crickets. Turn-in time comes around for the report and we leave the guy's name off of it. I get heavily peer and prof pressured to put his name back on after some sob story comes out. Got some pretty valuable takeaways from that class and none of it was related to the course material.
I do this a bunch at home, my setup has also migrated to work. Simple solution made with vinegar, salt and sodium laurel sulphate, then a couple of cheap nickel electrodes. Run current through both to make the nickel acetate, then you're good to go.
My research shifted, and I start making sensors using fibre and similarly sized capillary tube. It all got cleaved, spliced to assemble, cleaved some more, spliced again, then polished to spec. Getting the he process down was a pain, but the results were super satisfying.