People around me keep wanting to start their own thing. Their own product, their own service. No boss, no team, just them. I totally get it.

But the product they make alone will look like it was made by someone who's never made a product before.

I worked for someone else for 20 years. Projects for Microsoft, Groupon, HP. Real teams, real deadlines. And I learned things there I could never have learned alone.

How to push something across a finish line. How to fight for an idea. How to work with a designer who thinks you're wrong. How to work with a designer I could never afford myself, because he's too expensive.

And next to the job, I kept building side projects. About ten of them. All failed. But every single one taught me something. Today it makes me laugh that I thought I could succeed with them. I couldn't. I only know why today, and the only way to learn it was to go through it.

When I started Edicek, and every side project before it, all of that came back. Every meeting I sat in. Every project I didn't choose. Every coworker I didn't choose. I use it now without thinking.

So if you're 22 and want to skip the job part, I'm not going to stop you. But five, ten, fifteen years working for someone else is not lost time. It's training someone else paid for.

Working for someone is not embarrassing. It's how you earn the right to work for yourself.