Taking a 9 - 5 job to learn.

[TacoCat]

For the past half a year I've been working on this porject:

https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/building-the-foundation-for-a-start-up.1113/

I was earning money, good money, enough for me to live a good life here, but something felt off. I wasn't learning from that project anymore, it was just the mundane everyday stuff that gives no added value to my personal growth. So I started to hate that project. I also think I've reached the ceiling for that project and it couldn't grow anymore.

I decided that I need to change something in my life and I want to learn some valuable skills.

So I decided to pick up a 9 - 5 job.

My goal was to get something that is related to Internet Marketing and that I get into something that I haven't done before. I picked out a few job offers and sent my applications.

I sent out emails, two of them invited me to job interviews and basically offered me the job.

I ended up taking the one that pays almost half of what the others offered, but the thing is that the company that hiered me is one of the best media companies in the country, so I'm looking forward to learn a lot by working with others money, not experimenting with my own.

This is a great approach when you want to learn, but don't have the funds to work with your personal projects.

 

[contract]

Working at a 9-5, even if it's start up, won't teach you anything.

It's the truth. It's just like going to college.

If you want to be a high performance person, why in the world would you surround yourself with mediocrity....

Let's face it. 9-5 = Being spoon fed. Same deal with forums where newbies beg for mentors, buy ebooks, etc. It always results in the same thing at the end.

 

[Potatoe]

If the person you're working for is doing what you want to be doing, and they're doing it well, it sounds like a perfect opportunity to learn the ropes while picking up some running around money along the way.

I agree with @contract and disagree at the same time, it just depends. I agree about the forums, ebooks, etc (Places where you'll get the overview, but not necessairly the nuances) but I disagree about not being able to be taught anything at a job, because actually doin' the damn thing is a great way to learn, especially if you're working with people that know what they're doing. Same thing with mentors, mentors can be game-changing if you have the right ones.

It's all about nuances. You can be doing something every day for a year and thinking you're on top of it all, then join a company and see the small things they do differently that make a huge difference. Sometimes, that's a lot easier than trial and error. The difference between 100 visitors a day and 10,000 visitors a day is just getting all those nuances right.

HUGE difference between getting experience with people that are already successful in your field vs getting a job flipping fries.

 

[CCarter]

getting a job flipping fries.

We drop fries we don't flip them. #BurgerKingEmployeeOfTheMonthHere

 

[Ryuzaki]

Ultimately for a lot of people with varying levels of responsibility for others, the bottom line is all about cash flow. The cash has to keep flowing or expenses aren't covered. If it's not truly a cop out but a way to keep momentum, then a day job can be a life-saver and a business accelerator. If your income exceeds your expenses, you can invest that into your personal projects to help you get free of that job sooner, if that's what you want.

I know people who've been in the IM game for nearly 10 years now who've never built their own websites. They have all the inside knowledge you'd expect of anyone else slaying it, but they never took the plunge for whatever reason (fear). Just don't be that person who accepts a ceiling on their wages and an inability to ever scale income.

A day job as a stepping stone can be a very strategic maneuver.

 

[turbin3]

I'll have to completely disagree with Contract, with a caveat though. Having a job relevant to what you do or want to do, with on the job training and experience doing the actual work, is getting paid to learn AND do. That can absolutely be high value for you in life, depending on your goals. I will mention a couple of caveats, however. The company environment may preclude any opportunity for meaningful training or first-hand experience, in which case it's a wash. That's always something to watch out for.

Also, it's a good idea to develop an idea of how much time you might want to invest in that learning experience. If your ultimate goal is entrepreneurship, don't waste too much time doing the actual work (time as in YEARS). For example, being good at doing the work and being good at business are too ENTIRELY different things. That's a point I think people miss a lot of times. If your ultimate goal is business, you ultimately need to learn about how to build, manage, and grow a business. Having a good degree of knowledge behind the product/services and how they are fulfilled can be useful in terms of being able to make wise business decisions, as well as hiring the right people that also know how to make wise decisions for their respective roles.

Again, if entrepreneurship was the ultimate goal, I would approach the subject of "getting paid to learn" from the standpoint of specifically learning the ins-and-outs of that industry/product/service. See how a good business in that industry manages itself and its business practices. Take the good, ditch the bad, and build your model for your future entrepreneurial endeavors. I probably wouldn't spend too significant an amount of time doing that, however. For example, 5-10 years might be far too long, for many niches/industries. In others, maybe 1-2 years might give you a solid understanding of what's what in that industry. Along the way, just don't forget to put an equal amount of effort into learning business.

 

[Island]

Getting inside a well oiled machine is an awesome way to learn.

While I wouldn't stick to a 9-5 forever, being part of an excellent team can teach a shitton... especially in terms of team dynamics, processes and systems, etc. This all comes in handy later when scaling up because you already are aware of what it involves. What works for one person won't work for a team, and you need to know how to run a team.

 

[finnegan]

I just got a 9-5 myself recently where I'll be doing Adwords and SEO, two things I was good at but never great at. I was dead broke so I happily took the job.

To get paid to become an expert at Adwords and SEO so I can have those tools at my disposal and employ them for my own projects on the side is a good deal.

Now I just have to make sure I keep to a schedule so my downtime is used to build my own empire.

 

[miketpowell]

I took a W2 job working for a large company in 2012. It was a great experience and I learned a ton of stuff about the industry from another perspective I wasn't familiar with before. Large companies do stupid things, we all see it, but I learned first hand more about how/why that happens.

My experience seemed to be fairly unique in that the people I worked with were great and my position gave me a ton of flexibility to learn about all sorts of things. I knew more about many things than anyone I worked with, but they all knew more about other things than me and I learned about that stuff from them.

Really though these things are what you make of it. I can learn and get a positive experience with just about anything because that's how I approach it. Plenty of people seem to have such a negative attitude about how you can never learn anything from a 9-5 job or college ect and really that's a pretty limited world view, there is always something to learn.