Side hustling, hacking and painting
I was planning to write about side hustling at some point, but one recent fact made this decision faster.
Couple days ago our team member Davit, showed up on an ordinary daily meeting and shared his very recent side hustle. It turned out, Davit has built an entire mobile app of our admin platform from scratch. With the help of claude code it literally took him couple days. Not weeks, not months, but DAYS.
Was I surprised he shipped a piece software this fast? Ofc not, we do that all day (all night ♫ :))
Was I pleasantly surprised he's been side hustling after office hours? YES, that was the true proud moment.
Side hustling is an important part of our culture and it's super exciting that every member of our team is a true side hustler (or as Nika and I love to call it, a true Hacker).
But still, why do hackers love to hustle and ship products even after office hours? Well, you know this spark of a childish curiosity that makes you tinker and explore new things in your early days, right? It's very similar, to what we experience while "hacking". Let me describe this whole process.
Initially there is this fear of unknown and doubting in yourself like "Can I make this work?". Then you suddenly stop over-thinking and as nike says you just start doing it. At this moment you get the first dopamine moment, you've just made a bold decision.
After this initial struggle, you start figuring things out at all costs, this is where the second dopamine wave comes. It's the process of tinkering and feeding your curiosity with new discoveries. Basically this is the same satisfaction you get while learning.
And finally, there is the proudest and the most fulfilling moment, when you actually have built something and shipped a real working product. It's the culmination of the whole creative process. Even though there is no audience and it's just you hacking at midnight, you get the biggest applause ever. Your inner self is flooded with an enormous dopamine hit.
And still, you might be thinking, what about "painting" in the title? How are hackers and painters related to each other?
Well that's a whole another story, which is already perfectly written by Paul Graham in his essay, I encourage everyone to read: https://paulgraham.com/hp.html