Job and Business Progress
I left my job about a month ago.
One reason I left my job was that I had a business I started about two years ago with two other people. We each have parts of the business we do and are responsible for. It's not the kind of business most people think of as a production line, but I find it helps to think of it that way sometimes. It's a long production chain, running 9-12 months on average end to end. However it has low fixed costs and overhead. It's very tolerant of widely varying production rates while maintaining profitability.
Initially, the other people's parts were the bottleneck on our production. Partly because I was only spending part time at my job and had plenty of time for the business. Partly because the other people were less experienced than me and were learning. However, mid last year I went from part time to full time at my job, which significantly reduced the amount of time I was willing to spend on the business. And simultaneously the other people in the business were getting better at their parts and increasing their production rates. My part of production is at the beginning of the process and I had developed a significant in-process surplus early last year, which means there was significant delay between my production rate dropping and this being felt as a constraint on production.
By the beginning of this year my part was very obviously constraining the business. The other people started trying to do some of my part to help out. But they weren't really that interested in my part, weren't as good at it as I am, and my part continued to be a significant bottleneck. I had lots of other reasons to leave my job and had been thinking about it for a while, but the business added enough urgency to actually do it.
Over the last month since leaving my job I have been catching up and working on relieving the constraint my prior lack of participation caused. I think I'm about 70% caught up to the point where my part will cease being the bottleneck. It's hard to say though, as we don't know what our overall production rate could be now if I wasn't a bottleneck.
Once the immediate constraint I've been causing is addressed, I plan to write more about the business and look for optimizations.
One reason I left my job was that I had a business I started about two years ago with two other people. We each have parts of the business we do and are responsible for. It's not the kind of business most people think of as a production line, but I find it helps to think of it that way sometimes. It's a long production chain, running 9-12 months on average end to end. However it has low fixed costs and overhead. It's very tolerant of widely varying production rates while maintaining profitability.
Initially, the other people's parts were the bottleneck on our production. Partly because I was only spending part time at my job and had plenty of time for the business. Partly because the other people were less experienced than me and were learning. However, mid last year I went from part time to full time at my job, which significantly reduced the amount of time I was willing to spend on the business. And simultaneously the other people in the business were getting better at their parts and increasing their production rates. My part of production is at the beginning of the process and I had developed a significant in-process surplus early last year, which means there was significant delay between my production rate dropping and this being felt as a constraint on production.
By the beginning of this year my part was very obviously constraining the business. The other people started trying to do some of my part to help out. But they weren't really that interested in my part, weren't as good at it as I am, and my part continued to be a significant bottleneck. I had lots of other reasons to leave my job and had been thinking about it for a while, but the business added enough urgency to actually do it.
Over the last month since leaving my job I have been catching up and working on relieving the constraint my prior lack of participation caused. I think I'm about 70% caught up to the point where my part will cease being the bottleneck. It's hard to say though, as we don't know what our overall production rate could be now if I wasn't a bottleneck.
Once the immediate constraint I've been causing is addressed, I plan to write more about the business and look for optimizations.