- Check side-project directories for inspiration! For example you can check: https://profithunt.co/
- Find an old idea/startup and try to make it better in some way! Sometimes we try hard to find novel ideas, but making an old idea better, is more rewarding actually.
I totally understand you and I know changing the situation can sometimes be way harder than what people would assume...
I heard a heartwarming story recently from Brandon Sanderson. He was saying in his writing class that a full-time writer has an advantage, but don't worry if you can't afford being a full-time writer! If you only write for 4 hours a week, after a year you would have a novel. You have even less time? It would take 2 years but you gonna have your novel eventually. The important thing is consistency...
As an outsider it's not my place to give you any advice. And I know it's not gonna be easy. But I want to encourage you to pursuit what you like to do! It maybe take more time but eventually it's achievable...
I think the most thoughtful/fair approach is to use more than one factor: role, years of experience, costs of living (having kids? big or small city? etc.) and loyalty (how many years in our company?) are the most important factors that come to my mind...
I came here to say exact same thing. I think a 30-40% pay-cut is OK as far as you choose a really more fulfilling job.
But about regrets: There are days that I doubt my choice too. Probably because I never experienced working at big corporations. Maybe I'm OK with them? Maybe I should go experience that for myself? But usually these doubts don't last long. And hopefully your more experience helps you never encounter these doubts! ;)
Every solution has its pros and cons. Based on what people actually need, they choose the most proper tools:
-If you're really not into code, Wix or SquareSpace are good choices. But they have very limited capabilities beyond static pages.
- For dynamic pages or a full control on your website's functionality, Wordpress is an excellent choice. But it's hard to implement without any coding skill! You can have a lot of functionalities but you can't customize them if you are not a developer.
- Airtable or Notion gives you a lot of customization without any coding skills. So can make a nice dynamic page based on them with the help of an external no-code tool. Their problems? Very functional but without a decent UI!
It was my experience and I could be wrong. But as a no-techie, I think my experience could be relevant!
Although I have my serious doubts about educational startups, seeing them more successful will make me happy for sure. They make a real difference in the world...
I'm not sure which Unicorns are outside US or which one hire remotely... But there are a lot of them. InVision is the only one that comes to mind right now.
Let's make a shortlist step by step. There's a good chance that we find the next big company in the Unicorn List. There are around 500 startups in such a list:
Which startups in this list have the potential to grow rapidly in the next few years? Not all of them for sure! But there are a lot of them: SpaceX, Stripe, 23andMe, Discord, Grammarly, Duolingo, Calm, Intercom, Brex, Airtable, Figma, Canva and Udemy to name just a few.
The final factor? How many of them are in a market big enough to make big companies like Microsoft? This factor gonna make our list way too shorter! But it's hard to be sure. If I want to guess? I easily remove names like Udemy, Canva, Calm, Grammarly and Duolingo from our list...
Most of the time it's not smart to work on an "actually novel idea". Because it's very risky and convincing users about your novel approach could take a lot of time. It's very common that novel ideas are ahead of their time and a more polished version of them will come and take the market a few years later...
I think -as others said in comments- taking an old idea and making it better is more rewarding most of the times. And it's not even easier to transform an existing idea and take it to a whole new level... A good product is a lot more than its raw idea. The whole package (idea, target, marketing, product, design, etc.) should work to have a successful product. And it's not easy to design such system...
Money, size (I prefer small startups), culture, interview process... all of them matter but eventually the most important factor for me is the challenge. I prefer really challenging jobs and to be honest it's not always the smartest path...
It can work great, you can make a huge impact on growth of a promising startup, but it can also fail...
I remove the UTM too and I don't think it's unethical.
Digital marketers try their best to segment people properly, to measure everything accurately, etc but in the end there's NO WAY to do these things perfectly!
There's a lot of measurement inaccuracies after all and it's a normal part of their job... They find other ways to achieve their goals.
As a lazy person, I know that I never gonna read as much articles/books that some other folks read in their time. I also want to be among the best at my field. The only way around this situation, is to choose my reading list wisely. I have a limited time and there's unlimited options to read. I think this approach has been worked for me.
How I choose my books? I read extensively about their reviews. And I don't force myself to finish a bad book!
How do I choose my articles? I have a trello board for it! In my trello board I list every promising article I seen around the web. I list these articles based on their subjects. When I have time to read something I look at all the options I have in a certain category and I choose what seems to be the best and/or most relevant article among them.
++ No matter the age, telling Math history could be useful.
Some stories are just fun and could change the mood in a classroom! Did you knew Évariste Galois, one of the most influential mathematicians of all time, died very young in a duel? What about Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy?
But more importantly some of these stories could help to understands math problems better. Why people tried to solve this particular problem? And how did they manage to solve it?
++ Another useful thing would be this: making problems less abstract! Telling students about why this formula is important? Which physics problem it can solve? How could be related to real life? etc.
++ Fun math problems could be useful too. Raymond Smullyan books are an example. But I'm sure there are lots of other books...
3. A 1 hour meeting every other week! If you want to have weekly 1-on-1s, you can have a 30-45 minute meeting.
A few tips:
- Focus of 1-on-1s should be on supporting your direct reports. How they feel at work, how they can achieve more, what should they do for their career developments, etc.
- Active listening is very important! It's a meeting about our direct reports goals, so most of the time we should listen to what they have to say.
- I found this guide by Lighthouse helpful, but there are lots of other good guides:
- Check side-project directories for inspiration! For example you can check: https://profithunt.co/
- Find an old idea/startup and try to make it better in some way! Sometimes we try hard to find novel ideas, but making an old idea better, is more rewarding actually.