Goodbye Google
It's finally time to share one of my biggest life updates: Yesterday was my last day working as a Software Engineer at Google.
Today starts my journey of attempting to fulfil my dream of working for myself full-time. This has been something I've wanted since I was a kid. While I’m not sure if it'll work out the way I'm hoping, if I never try, I'll never know.
From here on out, in broad strokes, I'm planning on creating content and building software to supplement my income. I'm sure it'll take a long time to iron out and really understand what I want to pursue exactly but generally speaking I'm going to try things, see what works (and what I enjoy), and double down where it makes sense — essentially the classic throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks (and what I like to do).
Ever since college, working at Google has always been a dream of mine, and thankfully, it’s now one that I’ve been lucky enough to experience. When I decided I’d be leaving Google, I thought long and hard about what I wanted my next goal to be which I discussed in last week’s article, Becoming Self Employed:
Self employment boils down to something very simple to me: the freedom to pursue whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want.
The only thing I’d add to this is that I plan to share as much as I can and document my entire journey from quitting my Software Engineering job at Google to (hopefully) being able to support myself full-time doing the things I love: content creation and building software. One of my favorite parts of creating content is that it can help others while simultaneously serving as a personal journal and way for me to capture my life.
I’d love to one day be able to look back and read all my posts and view all my videos and general content and relive the entire process documented from start to finish. If I'm able to do this and succeed, I hope it'll show others that I’m not special and they can do it too.
Now that I'll be supporting myself, I plan on starting to monetize my platforms more heavily. If you’re interested in supporting me and my content, the two best ways to currently do so are:
A paid subscription here at The Software Engineer Weekly — this will give you access to more exclusive articles I write in the future, priority replies to me across other platforms, access to all 60+ articles in the archive, and my eternal gratitude for supporting me on my self-employment journey.
Subscribing to me on X — this will give you access to my subscriber-only posts and subscriber-only articles on X, which are more raw, less polished, less buttoned up, and will include things that I would typically hold closer to my chest. If you’re interested in staying as up to date as possible with my self-employment journey and hearing my innermost thoughts, feelings, plans, wins/losses, etc. X is the best option for you. Once again, if you decide to support me, I greatly appreciate it!
For now, I’m going to collect my thoughts and start deciding what my priorities will be as I start my self-employment journey. Most notably, I’ll be evaluating what revenue streams I currently have and which ones I should focus on scaling first. In a future article soon I plan on giving a more thorough breakdown on:
What my more concrete plan is going forward to support myself
The handful of reasons I decided to jump ship and leave Google
It’s crazy to think that the day is finally here, I’m officially working for myself. While I’m not sure how this will shake out, what I do know is that this is the part where the movie gets interesting — I hope you’ll stick around for the ride.
Where you can find me online:
Drop a like ❤️ and comment below if you made it to the end of the article.
So excited to see your story told in public Kevin! I'm curious, when you talk about freedom, have you thought about how much you'd need to earn to achieve that?
Kevin, I remember you telling me about your longtime dream of doing this, so it's really cool to see it coming to life. I'm sending any luck I have your way! Big congrats man and looking forward to seeing you embrace your dreams