by joshstrange | 2025-05-24 12:21:53+00:00
All decisions/actions have a “ceiling” and a “floor”, the best possible outcome and the worst. Let’s consider them for this situation.

Ceiling

- Company buys your software

- You sell it to other companies

- This becomes your full time job

Floor

- Fired

- Trust lost, future advancement blocked (not saying it’s right, just that it could happen)

Also important are how likely the outcomes are. Looking at the above and my own experience working at companies, having side projects, and selling them, I think you are much closer to the floor than the ceiling (in probability).

Here are some hard truths:

- Even if something is a win-win, many companies will not see it that way. They often react negatively to things they don’t understand or are uncommon.

- Depending on where you work it might be impossible to develop a side project without the company owning the IP (sometimes you can get a special waiver but not if it has overlap with what your company does)

- How capable are you of writing this software and are you really sure you have the problem/solution well understood? I don’t want to be rude but it sounds like you saw one presentation and think you can build and sell a solution that’s not spec’d out. I’m also not sure if your skill set, have you created software like this on your own before?

- Just because people are enthusiastic about the prospect of this tool doesn’t mean they are willing to pay for it (or will even still be interested 1 day, 1 week, 1 month from now)

- Developing software for a company (as an employee) and developing on your own are 2 different sets of skills. There is overlap, but it’s not the same

- Sales/Marketing and running a business are a completely different set of skills. It’s rare to have a developer who can also do this well. Not impossible, just rare.

- If you aren’t passionate about this then even if you are successful, you will not be happy. Employee? Work on whatever, no problem. Contractor? Work on whatever. Sole proprietor? Make sure it’s something you enjoy/care about. Maybe you do care about YAML file GUIs.

At a minimum I would wait 2-4 weeks and gauge interest in the tool again. See if people are still super interested or if it’s “Huh? Oh yeah, ehh, it was just something that would be cool but we wouldn’t pay for it”. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, think everyone is as excited as you, then find out later they don’t care. Also use this time to see if the project still interests YOU.

If, after all of this, you still want to pursue this then make sure to check your employment contract and even if there is nothing about side-projects/IP get _written_ approval from your manager.

Lastly, ignore the people here suggesting you do anything “sneaky”, like the “I have a friend who is developing software that does this”. This is no way to live and those chickens will come home to roost. Either the company will catch you and/or you will be committing some kind of crime if you do obscure it.

In all honesty there is a _very_ low chance that this is worth pursuing. I know personally how easy it can be to get caught up in an idea like this but the chances of it working out are low. Maybe in a better world they would be higher but I’ve seen enough to assume that the company will respond _poorly_ even to a well reasoned and mutually advantageous offer. It sucks, but that’s just the reality of most places. Even if your company is not like this, it still might be better for you to just pitch working on it internally and leverage a bonus/raise/title.