Confessions of a recovering Full-Time Employee

People are so addicted to full-time work… I think this is both because we all undervalue the upside of solopreneurship (hint hint - I make more from my ‘side hustles’ than my full-time salary), but also because we overvalue the upside/stability of full-time roles. As I’ve been thinking about this, Ibrahim came to mind: Ever since we worked together at Amplitude, we’ve talked about his interest in solopreneurship. But he could never quite shake the full-time addiction… until recently. I asked him to share his story - I hope you find it as interesting and insightful as I do.

- Elena

Hi, my name is Ibrahim, and I’m an FTE addict. That’s right: I’m hooked on working as a Full-Time Employee.

This started from a good place: I experience an ever-present joy when I’m honing my craft. But I’ve begun to realize that my love for working led to making certain assumptions about what that work had to look like.

Across my career, I’ve evolved from the most cog-in-the-machine full-time roles you can imagine to a leader who used his day-job efficiency to nurture side hustles to my latest incarnation as a solopreneur who has a loosely connected flywheel offset by interesting fractional gigs. And through a lot of companies and roles, I could never shake my desire to keep a full-time gig.

Honestly, if not for the confluence of several unique and bizarre events, I’d probably still be stuck in that frame of mind, craving the hit of a W-2 paycheck and a shot at the next step on the corporate ladder.

So today I’m going to lay it all out: I’m going to share my experience with the allure and addiction of full-time, and how I finally (and hopefully permanently) broke free…

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Part 1: Optimizing for Margin

Most of us develop our personal theory of work while in school, right? When I was in college, I paid my way through a combination of merit-based scholarships and part-time jobs. For various reasons (a different essay for a different time), I was raised not to borrow money from or owe money to anyone. Which meant I was always comparing my current savings to my upcoming expenses and hoping I didn’t dip below the watermark. More than hoping, I started working - all sorts of gigs and all manner of physical and intellectual labor.

Ironically, even though I was studying computer science, I struggled for some time to make any money off that skillset. When I finally landed my first job building a real-world desktop application for real-life stakes (imaging software for the university’s radiology department), I was so relieved that I didn’t take the time to reflect on what lessons I’d been internalizing. I was ecstatic to be making an order of magnitude more money than I ever had before, but in that ecstasy was planted a seed for how I would make career decisions - I defaulted to choosing roles that optimized for income over expenses. The devil, as product builders say, is in the defaults.

When I graduated, I was lucky enough to have multiple job offers to choose from; with my mindset purely being income over expenses, I chose the option that maximized my take-home income. Note: that wasn’t simply the highest salary, I did a bunch of cost-of-living math to see where I would net out ahead by the largest margin.

This became my operating mode for some time - gauging my worth on the open market and comparing that to the raises I was getting internally. If I sensed a delta, I would negotiate, counter in hand. I definitely got more than my fair share of comp bumps, and I also left roles when I felt I had hit an earning plateau. You can guess where that line of thinking leads you: management consulting.

A lot of people feel a certain way about consultants, and there is plenty to poke fun at, believe me - I spent 5 years as a traveling consultant, doing all manner of professional services work and collecting a ton of laugh-so-you-don’t-cry stories (another different essay for a different time).

But while there may be noise around consulting in the general public, the role itself provided a lot of personal clarity for me; there was never any doubt on the incentive structure (billable hours), the career ladder (partner track), or the pecking order (client relationship). For someone optimizing take-home income, it provided a straightforward blueprint to do exactly that - the system had very clear rules, like the children’s game Chutes and Ladders. You could even speed-run the game if you were willing to put in the time. Like any good video game, you got more confident as you jumped levels, focusing on the achievement badges, not realizing how much time was going into, and what the opportunity cost really was.

There were a lot of benefits to this phase of my career, but I do remember, towards the end, regularly waking up feeling like a bit of a mercenary; it’s a unique malaise that only those who have worshiped the billable hour will understand. I remember feeling like I would give away some of that income over expenses margin for more fulfilling work - something I could show to my kids as value I had created in the world (my kids were and still are unimpressed by slide decks). That dissonance between external professional success and inward personal satisfaction led me to rethink my defaults; I decided income over expenses was for my 20s, and my 30s required work that mattered.

Part 2: Work That Matters

I ended up rebooting my career from building slides to building products. I spent 2.5 years at Amazon on the early Kindle team as a technical PM, which translates to about 25 years in most other roles. I honestly thought (and deeply felt) I was doing the work of my life: building the next evolution of reading, which has always been a personal pastime and passion of mine. Whenever I would hear anything negative about the company from the outside world, I would roll my eyes and think to myself “not hardcore enough.” Doing work that mattered evolved my wiring into “short term income doesn’t matter” coupled with “work as many hours in the day as possible” - I was the perfect Amazonian.

I remember hiring a PM for our team (we were to be peers), and the person immediately didn’t click. In fact, they ended up leaving the company a few weeks later. On their way out, they explained their departure: “why would I work this hard if it wasn’t my own thing?”

“Definitely not hardcore enough,” I told myself, as I focused on screening backfill candidates.

Looking back, I see that exchange in a different way. Despite all the many benefits I got from my time at Amazon, I’ve come to believe that… I think I did more for the company that it did for me. I gave all my time, all my energy, every ounce of ambition, and my entire identity - and after 2.5 years, I moved on and the juggernaut didn’t miss a beat. While I was there I thought every moment mattered, but as a former colleague recently told me “we were all brainwashed the same way.”

10 years later, I can finally see what that other person saw in 2 weeks: “why would I work this hard if it wasn’t my own thing?” If you’re the kind of worker who gives everything, what should you pour all of yourself into? What might happen if that drive gets harnessed (hijacked?) by a company whose goals are just growth vs your growth. Can one job even be enough?

My addiction to full-time roles had survived, intact, from one set of priorities to the next, but the cracks were starting to show.

Part 3: Exploring the (Online) Wilderness

I’m grateful for the amazing career opportunities I’ve had, and in a way they were necessary for the eventual awakening, but I needed a hard reset for my professional reality. Unfortunately, that realization didn’t immediately come with specific clarity of how the new reality should look. So I’ve spent the last 10+ years attempting to reset my reality.

I climbed the PM ladder. I climbed the manager ladder. I climbed the executive ladder. And that kept me pretty busy, but busy is not fulfilled. As I collected titles, I noticed that all the external validation wasn’t helping with my personal fulfillment. I realized I needed to explore, and I found myself dabbling here and there.

I started writing online because I felt the need to share insights beyond my company. I started coaching and mentoring externally, beyond my reporting org. I was asked to do a Maven class, and I said yes without really having thought through the course. I got pulled into keynote-ing a conference, and I jumped in without hesitation, even though officially, technically, honestly, I’m deathly afraid of public speaking (yep, definitely a different essay for a different time).

But during all of this, I still kept the full-time grind going. So people would ask if I was distracted from my day job. Some people told me I was unfocused in my career. And … they were kind of right. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this stuff anymore. Actually, some of these comments made me want to lean out even more: over the years I’ve learned not to accept criticism from people I would never ask for advice. Instead, I went on a listening tour comprised of my favorite former co-workers and bosses, and one of them said something I still think about almost every day:

“I don’t ever see you being satisfied with one job or one company or one project. You are destined for a portfolio career. You should find a place that celebrates that. Or build it for yourself.”

Like an investor managing a portfolio of diversified assets, I immediately saw the appeal of this kind of approach: accumulating the right balance of short-term cash flow against long-term bets, applied across a variety of interests and markets. This isn’t how all independent or “solopreneuer” careers work, but that approach certainly appealed to me.

But as I started exploring different projects, I had never thought of the itch I was scratching in those terms - the term I used in my head was “side hustle.” It was always on the side of the day job, and it was a hustle because you were doing what you could in limited time. And since I was still doing both, there were some tense moments: at one point, my CEO criticized the fact that 20% of my LinkedIn posts were about my other interests. He expected 100% focus on the company.

But as I started knowledge-sharing and audience-building, I also noticed that my explorations outside of my day job were actually benefiting my employers. The conference I keynote-d was sponsored by a competitor and me headlining completely stole their thunder.

So I realized that my employers would actually be happier with this kind of arrangement. And right around then, I realized that I would not be. Because I no longer felt one company could be enough for all of me.

Part 4: A realization and a relapse

That feeling is like an idea whose time had finally arrived - it couldn’t be stopped. In 2020, that feeling hit a crescendo, and I was about to hit the eject button.

But then… with the global pandemic at its peak, there seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t refuse: With the flexibility of remote work and no commute, I could keep the day job! Even as I ramped up my “side hustle” projects, I kept that irresistible FTE role.

Was this the best of both worlds?? I was able to do more work, of every flavor, while quarantined - I was shipping product features by day and writing newsletter features at night. But despite more output, I didn’t have the outcome I craved.

So, what was missing? After all the versions of my career, I finally realized what I’ve been looking for, which is what I see as the ideal outcome of a portfolio career: complete control of your craft.

Unlike in a full-time job, when you’re independent, you decide how to spend your time and energy - there are no defaults. Sometimes you write. Sometimes you network. Sometimes you do business development. Sometimes you nurture client relationships. Sometimes you do fractional work. You may even go back to full-time work with a company, for a pre-defined period - it’s the freedom to decide what % of your portfolio is traditional corporate employment vs other things that’s the crux of the appeal for me. In an everything-comes-full-circle moment, I’ve now realized that the billable hour still rules, but I want to decide my rate and my services.

So I eventually became a solopreneur and everything worked out, right? Not exactly.

Like any MVP launch, there were some good learnings, but ultimately iteration was required. I took a career break in late 2024 through early 2025, with the intent of finally, fully switching into solopreneur mode. I worked harder than ever on some passion projects, both professional and personal (yeah, definitely, a different essay for a different time).

I tried *a lot* of ideas during that time, and I needed to, in order to figure out what should and shouldn’t be part of my long-term portfolio. I love writing and will never give that up - that was not a surprise learning. I don’t love the standard ways to monetize knowledge online and will end up building something that doesn’t scale - that was not obvious going into it.

The sabbatical was critical for me to find my formula, but I didn’t (and couldn’t) stick with it. There are certain career tropes (traps?) we’re all susceptible to, and mine are imposter syndrome and career perfectionism. How could I be coaching product leaders when I hadn’t been THE head of product for a company? How could I be writing about what AI-native means when I hadn’t led an organization through this particular transformation?

So what did I do? I predictably and paranoidly relapsed into FTE.

I took a role as THE head of product. I ran point on an AI transformation. I even took on all the product functions a company could conjure, from product management to product design to product data to product operations.

But even though I was in constant learning mode (new functions, AI-native), I kept feeling that the full-time role was competing with the other ideas on my mind.

Part 5: Free your mind

We all tell ourselves stories that stick, and sometimes get us stuck. I had my “optimize for margins” talk track for a while. The “work as many hours as possible” served me for a period. And the “get to the top role” was the most recent one.

I had been telling myself that an ideal career had phases - an operator portion where you worked full-time, and an educator portion where you disseminated knowledge. Therefore, I had to accumulate more operating experience before I could commit to solopreneurship, the next phase of my career where I would be exclusively writing, speaking, teaching, etc.

It slowly dawned on me that there would always be a next title to pursue, but I didn’t need to end my operating career to diversify my portfolio. In fact, my ideal setup would blend operating and educating - I’m happiest when I’m tinkering and sharing, building and reflecting, solving and abstracting.

So I’m back to solopreneuring. Or maybe I never left. Either way, I’m grateful for the gift of intentionality and the privilege of optionality. That combination can free your mind and get you through any career crossroads.

If you love being part of one company and working there full-time, you do you. If you want to cobble together a variety of roles and services into a portfolio career, don’t take as long as me to get there. And if you go down one path and realize it wasn’t for you or your circumstances require you to switch tracks, realize that the back and forth is more possible than ever - there are no one-way doors (sorry, Amazonian brainwashing).

Part 6: Tips for fellow addicts and explorers

If you’re embarking on your own solopreneur journey where you’ll be building a portfolio career, my best advice is to be honest about the outcome you’re optimizing for. The full-time job is the default path for many professionals, and because it’s a well-traveled road, there’s inherently less friction, more reinforcement, and better systems.

If you’re going to compile your own career, you’ll need to have a DIY mindset, a supportive network, and a willingness to go against the grain.

You can’t copy/paste another solopreneur’s approach - the whole point of a portfolio career is to paint your own portrait. I find myself often reflecting on and communicating out only what I’m uniquely qualified to. I don’t just coach product people - I focus on heads of products at scale-ups. I don’t just write about building products - I focus on multi-product B2B businesses. I don’t just run a meetup - I focus on creating a community for product GMs.

Your circle has to be full of people who say “you can!” and “why not?” rather than “I wouldn’t.” In a full-time role, there are tons of people who are OK with the status quo for the company. As a solopreneur, you are the driving force of your company - will you settle for the status quo?

A former colleague recently introduced me to the say/do ratio - how much of what you say you’ll do do you actually do? Aim to get that to 100%. Why not? Remember, the whole point is complete control of your craft.

The pull of FTE is strong, especially if that’s the only career construct you’ve known. To prevent relapsing, I find myself returning often to the quote from my mentor:

“I don’t ever see you being satisfied with one job or one company or one project. You are destined for a portfolio career. You should find a place that celebrates that. Or build it for yourself.”

I took that advice to heart, and I’m in the early innings of a solopreneurship, juggling a growing newsletter, advisory work, exec coaching, product ideas, and more in the works. One of the reasons I’m writing this post for Elena’s newsletter is that she’s been such a proponent and supporter of such journeys. It helps to see other people already doing some version of what you’re thinking of trying. You can add me to that list now, because…

My name is Ibrahim, and I’m proud to be (finally) breaking my FTE addiction.

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Thanks for sharing, Ibrahim! If you’d like to connect with him, you can reach out to him on LinkedIn, check out his private community for product GMs, or get his latest insights in his cool Substack newsletter, Run the Business.