Quit my job—now a Product Maker full-time!

A while ago, I realized that working as a Software Engineer on the product that doesn’t belong to me, unfortunately, doesn’t drive and motivate me at all.

I may love the product, understand how it positively impacts people’s lives, and solve their problems, do my proper job so far, but not the best one as I can do.

The main reason why, because I don’t feel that the company product is “my baby.” I feel like a nanny who takes care of it only for a short while and in a few years, has to say “goodbye” to the child she raised. And raised not as a mother, who will not only take care of her baby but also love it sincerely and lifelong.

On the other hand, I know myself well enough to accept that I am not legally allowed and sufficiently driven to launch any product while still holding down a day job.

As a result, I left my job at the company to start my own entrepreneurial and exciting journey as a Product Maker 🛠

What made me take this step?

Last months every day I was coming to work, I asked myself:

“What am I doing here? Is it the place where I want to be? Do I want to work as a Software Engineer at any company? What do I want to do in life indeed?”

After months of thinking, concerns, and conflicting with myself:

• I made it in the end, a hard decision.

• I figured out what is empowering (and terrifies) me most at the same time and what I want to give a try.

• I defined my purpose and longterm goals.

• I created a plan for the upcoming journey in 2020.

Once I did that, I had to quit my job because if I keep them both running, I will be good at neither of them.

I quit my job, what’s next?

No, I hadn’t quit a job immediately.

It took time to save money, study neglected business niches, to prepare myself mentally for this step.

Once I found a suitable co-founder, we proved a few ideas and agreed to bring them to live as an online product/platform.

Action and the ability to make decisions are significant for aspiring entrepreneurs.

So we didn’t overthink, didn’t wait for that very right “moment.” We started working on our very first product as soon as we quit our jobs.

We were not afraid to start. There are lots of businesses today which began as small or side hustle:

• Twitter. It was a tiny side project created by a company called Odeo during a hackathon.

• Instagram. The founder taught himself coding after work and launched a photo check-in feature called Burbn, which later pivoted to Instagram.

• Craiglist. Started as a simple email list to help the founder meet new people.

• Khan Academy. Salman Khan has been making short YouTube videos from economics to art after his job as a Hedge Fund Analyst.

I believe you can absolutely understand the drive to get out of a job and live life on your terms. However, some people (including myself) become entrepreneurs because they have a deep desire to solve problems and to serve humankind.

And the first common problem that has been found out and took into an implementation that:

Often people feel certain anxiety when thinking about the salary and only guessing what their colleagues might be earning.

This issue is especially problematic in cultures and countries in which talking about wage numbers is an unspoken taboo among the employees.

That’s why my co-founder and I built 📊 FelloWage and are very happy to launch it today on ProductHunt! 🎉

This product is privacy-first. So that many more users feel comfortable sharing their wage information and keeping it up-to-date. Moreover, it allows the user to see all salary entries in the current company, search for other companies in preparation for negotiations.

Our mission is to help people to be more aware of, and informed about the current salaries at any company, and make it easier to enter negotiations for their next gig!

I know, it’s brave and crazy to quit a job and start working on an idea; hence, it’s always challenging to create a product that people would love.

We are really proud of our product. We would love you to try it out and see how it might be helpful for you to take a peek at other companies around the world and discover salaries.

Thank you for reading!

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Cheers,

Ilona Codes

Photo by Úrsula Madariaga from Pexels
Originally published on ilonacodes.com