Hi Reader!

I did it. I quit my job.

Friday, October 22, was my last day at Truss. I was there for almost three years. I learned a lot. I got to work with amazing human beings on impactful projects like Caseflow and MilMove.

I made significant improvements to code quality, performance, and developer experience. I even gave a talk at a Ruby conference in Paris. But the best part was the fun I had facilitating our company-wide meeting known as "Prac" (short for Practicioners).

Why?

So why did I leave such a great company? Well, for several years now, even before I joined Truss, I've been dreaming of being my own boss. I wanted the freedom to choose how I spend my time and what I work on. What I get excited about is teaching, making coding more enjoyable, and helping people like you succeed.

Over the past few years, I've been trying to build my education business on the side, but it's been very slow. It was very tough to sustain a regular momentum without sacrificing time with my spouse and young kids, sleep, and physical exercise.

Once in a while, I would have energy to write articles and tutorials, some of which were featured in the popular Ruby Weekly newsletter. I also got emails from you, letting me know how helpful they were. That motivated me to keep going for a while, but I couldn't keep it up.

How?

The conventional wisdom is to wait until your business generates enough revenue before you quit your job, or try to negotiate a 4-day work week, or find another job that offers a 32-hour work week by default.

More and more companies and countries are experimenting with shorter work weeks with positive results. People are just as productive, but happier and more creative because they get to spend that extra day on other things that matter to them.

In my case, I had another option. With my spouse's support, we're lucky to be able to live off of our savings for the next year while I try to grow my business full-time.

I'm super excited to be able to focus on helping you reach your goals!

My goal is to make $20,000 by the end of 2022 through e-books, courses, workshops, and time-saving scripts. Stay tuned for more details about these products.

I've also signed a two-year contract to maintain a couple of Rails apps. I have another slot open for app maintenance, so if you know anyone who needs help keeping a Rails app up to date, let me know!

I'll be working in the open and sharing my successes and failures. Follow my entrepreneurial journey on Twitter! I'd appreciate it if you retweeted the thread where I announced this.

I also wanted to thank you for subscribing. One of my goals for 2021 that I wrote about in my 2020 Year in Review was to reach 1000 subscribers. As of today, 2445 of you have joined! The growth has been steady throughout the year, and I'm hopeful for the future.

If you're new here, welcome! Here's a link to my previous newsletters this year.

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Finally, I wanted to share a few things I've enjoyed recently.

🎥 The Year Earth Changed - a documentary about the amazing things that happened when we gave our planet a rest from human activity during lockdown.

👨‍🍳 We like to try new recipes at home to change things up and discover new tastes. Here are three of our recent favorites: Mathilde's Tomato Tart, Simple, Essential Bolognese, and Lentil and Orzo Stew With Roasted Eggplant.

💻Exercism just launched their new website. It looks great! I tried some of their Ruby exercises and had a great experience.

🎙Rich Harris, creator of Svelte, and JavaScript Journalist at The New York Times, introduced the idea of transitional apps in his great talk at Jamstack Conf.

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Enjoy the rest of your week!

Moncef