I thought this topic deserves its own category, so here we are: is there a life before…

If somebody asks so what do you want, my automated answer would be to have fun. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have fun if you don’t have money. At least up to some amount. So let’s skip that part of discussion and focus on fun part.

To me there are two ways for having fun: You have fun while you are making something and/or you have fun with what you are doing/ what you have done. If you put those two in two ends of a line, I think by time, I am moving from one end to other. While it was fun just doing something and not really caring what will come out at the end (like my university degree) now I feel pity seeing what would come out (like my university degree). I am not at the other end yet but I hope one day.

Think a sunny day at beach. You are playing with sand and making a castle. Think that you are with friends and every now and then one starts a sand war which will end up total destruction of what you have done so far (which is not much anyway). You are going back home leaving a pile of sand behind looks like anything but castle.

Now think another beach, quieter then first one. Still a nice day with sun and sea and lots of sand just for you. You work on your big project and when you leave, you leave one of those masterpieces behind .

Now, considering that you found both of them nice, here is what is wrong with being an employee: You don’t get to choose what you are making, which beach you will be, or what you will use. But this is still OK. It is just some bigger challenge. And I believe that there are ways to affect what/where/how… Problem is you don’t get that quite nice beach. You will be on one of that public ones. People will come, watch, comment even join in some sense. But they will not be the ones from the first beach, I am sorry. At least most of the time. Not all of us are that lucky. Being an employee you can stay close to neither ends of that line. And on top of it situation is a little bit more complicated for you: You are with some people which you didn’t choose, and you are making something again you didn’t really choose. So, that’s what I call challenge my friend.

Finding your self in such mid point, you need to work your way out in both side. Finding the good in what you are doing is one challenge (which I can humbly advise try to do it good to find good in it). finding a gang is another (I will not comment on this).

I remember using the term “art” for software development, not very often but you know the times I get over excited about what I am doing. When I think about it tonight, art is on a very special point on that line. You choose to stay in that beach alone, enjoying what you are doing, while you are doing without thinking what will come out at the end and yet you come up with something good. I am far away from that point.

Short after I started writing on this topic I had my aha moment. If you don’t mind I will exaggerate a little bit and call it moment of enlightenment, sort of.

I always thought starting your own is about getting rid of management. You take one barrier between you and the things you want to do. Since you know the best anyway, why you should waste time trying to convince someone else?

While I was playing with the questions what would make me happy? or what do I want? I noticed that answering them is not as easy as it seems. Either I don’t have a clear, well defined answer or answers are changing with my mood.

Playing with them, I changed the subject and got two more sets of questions. One is a lot easier to answer: What does management want/what would make them happy?. And one is a lot harder: What does your colleague want/what would make him(her) happy?. Your manager/boss is easy to predict (most of the time). (S)He wants to see that project finished while spending less and making more money. Well, maybe I over simplified it for the sake of brevity. But never mind, we will compare it with your colleague and believe me we can live with this error margin.

I should admit that I am cheating here. Although both questions seem very similar, what we understand from the first one is quite different. When it comes to your manager, you don’t actually think what makes him/her happy as a person but as a manager. And this is easy because it is mostly defined in your contract. The expectations are more or less made clear from the beginning. When it comes to you or your colleague though, it is different story. Working is mainly about earning money. But clearly what you expect from your company is not limited with it. This brings us to the beginning, almost. Almost since now we are talking about your colleague, not you. See, there is no way to know actually, even when it is about ourselves, we think or assume. Same is for your colleague. There is a big chance that what you think that (s)he wants will be quite different than what (s)he thinks that (s)he wants. And both will change now and then anyway.

Long story short, management might be a barrier with you and what you want to do, but it is an easy one. Heard about knowledge is power? It is. All you have to do is to show what you want to do is actually what they want or it will help to get what they want. Bad news is, you are not alone and this simple trick doesn’t really work with your colleagues.

When you grow up in Turkey (*) you have to face several prejudgments. Starting from your choice of university to industry you work. You know, cases like just after you mention where you study you feel like you need to give an excuse. In Turkey you have to pass a national exam to enter the university and go to a department according to your score (from a long list of your choices of course). When I was studying it was quite common to hear someone saying “but it was my first choice” (meaning, it was not that I couldn’t go somewhere else but I wanted to study this). Same sort of need to explain yourself was visible for, let’s say, staying in university, choosing a state institute to work in, choosing to stay in the country… Now I kinda feel the same for choosing to work in a company instead of making the jump and moving the other side of the fence. You see/hear all those startups with a shining story: from garage to billions. Internet is full of stories with people starting their own companies and starting their own companies to give advice to start your own company… It feels like I am the only one (even this is questionable) left behind. But yet, we are many and yet for some it was our first choice.

I have been playing with this idea (to choose to be an employee) for a while. What does it mean? Why one would choose such thing (this is an easy one)? How one would be happy with it (this is the hard one)? I will try to write down my thoughts here. Who knows I might come with some answers.

* I am sure you can put other country names here as well.