Quitting my job, starting a weekly Substack
Last week, I quit my job as a Tech Lead at Bild after serving my 2 weeks' notice. Now I'm starting a new chapter of my life as a full-time freelancer, writer, and indie hacker.
It wasn't an easy decision to make, and I still feel a mix of nerves and excitement. Nervous excitement. I finally get to pursue all the cool stuff I have always dreamed of, full-time.
Cool stuff... like this weekly Substack. I've always wanted to write regularly to share my learnings and experiences, but a full-time job made it difficult. Starting today, I'm committing to writing a weekly Substack, every Friday.
What to expect?
I don't want to conform to a very rigid structure here and keep it flexible and exciting each week. With that being said, here's what you can roughly expect each week:
Recommendations and Reviews
Every week, I'll share a roundup of things that I enjoyed reading, listening to, or watching along with my thoughts and summaries. I consume content like a maniac (my favorite passive learning activity) so I'll try to curate only the best that deserves your attention.
Technical Deep Dives
I like doing deep dives into technical topics.
Latest technology trends
Open Source projects
Research papers
White papers
Side Projects
I have a bunch of side project ideas that I want to test. Some are just fun ideas that I want to build, while others have the potential to turn into companies.
For instance, I'm working on craftpr, an open-source CLI tool that aims to simplify (gamify??) the process of reviewing code changes, creating commits, and generating pull requests.
I'll share updates on these projects including:
What I'm working on
Challenges I face and how I solve them
Any learnings that I gather on the implementation or product design
This Week's Recommendations
M&Ms: How to Find Ideas to Build by
.BTW, big shout out to Louie from Small Bets for guiding me find my way towards starting this Substack through his workshop on starting a newsletter.
In this post, he presents a 3-step framework for finding and evaluating ideas. I'm a big fan of the small bets philosophy (thanks,
). This post provided much-needed clarity for my upcoming journey as a solopreneur after quitting my job.The worst mistake of computer science
Tony Hoare called NULL his billion-dollar mistake. This is a pretty old (2015) blog post that I stumbled upon this week. It has a fascinating write-up that goes into programming language design and discusses the issues with NULL in various languages.
Thanks for reading the first weekly update! Don't forget to reach out to me with questions or feedback. I’ll really appreciate it.
See you next Friday,
Tanay.