This feels like a question of motivation. What is driving a person to have a side project, and potentially want to grow it? First, I need to take a step back and talk about my perspective on work units in a holistic sense.
The larger the company, the more I feel I can specialize. The smaller the company, the more I'm expected to work outside of my defined box. As a company expands, at some point it breaks up into multiple units. Those newly formed units are typically too small, and people in them are expected to work outside of their defined boxes again. This is a pain point of growth. Eventually those units expand until the pain stops. They sometimes continue their expansion until they must again split. Obvious correlations to cell division and growth abound. A side project is the single cell organism, and it will eventually evolve and grow; or it will achieve equilibrium; or it will die.
I feel like I'm an equilibrium-oriented kind of person. I don't want to grow and evolve beyond the resources of my immediate work unit. If my work unit fails to meet my needs though, I move on towards a unit that will better help me achieve my equilibrium. People who enjoy working on specialization might better enjoy overemployment[0] with multiple pre-existing work units rather than turning a hobby into a venture. Alternatively some companies offer work at internal innovation groups, and those efforts sometimes offer rewards beyond the base compensation.
I also feel like some people are more like viruses in the Agent Smith sense that they never achieve equilibrium and have an insatiable desire to expand. Unlike the movie, I don't think viruses are inherently bad, it's just another form of life. It's tough to discern boundless ambition from a significant deficiency in workplace satisfaction though, and that can lead people to try to expand a hobby into a side hustle.
I think first a person has to identify whether they are motivated by boundless growth or are simply no longer achieving equilibrium at their current workplace. Moving to a new company or division, or even moving to a new career altogether, may be preferable to trying to evolve a hobby into a hustle.
The larger the company, the more I feel I can specialize. The smaller the company, the more I'm expected to work outside of my defined box. As a company expands, at some point it breaks up into multiple units. Those newly formed units are typically too small, and people in them are expected to work outside of their defined boxes again. This is a pain point of growth. Eventually those units expand until the pain stops. They sometimes continue their expansion until they must again split. Obvious correlations to cell division and growth abound. A side project is the single cell organism, and it will eventually evolve and grow; or it will achieve equilibrium; or it will die.
I feel like I'm an equilibrium-oriented kind of person. I don't want to grow and evolve beyond the resources of my immediate work unit. If my work unit fails to meet my needs though, I move on towards a unit that will better help me achieve my equilibrium. People who enjoy working on specialization might better enjoy overemployment[0] with multiple pre-existing work units rather than turning a hobby into a venture. Alternatively some companies offer work at internal innovation groups, and those efforts sometimes offer rewards beyond the base compensation.
I also feel like some people are more like viruses in the Agent Smith sense that they never achieve equilibrium and have an insatiable desire to expand. Unlike the movie, I don't think viruses are inherently bad, it's just another form of life. It's tough to discern boundless ambition from a significant deficiency in workplace satisfaction though, and that can lead people to try to expand a hobby into a side hustle.
I think first a person has to identify whether they are motivated by boundless growth or are simply no longer achieving equilibrium at their current workplace. Moving to a new company or division, or even moving to a new career altogether, may be preferable to trying to evolve a hobby into a hustle.
0: https://www.overemployment.org/