• Amy Zhang has faced five core struggles since quiet quitting her corporate job to start a business.
• Zhang says navigating the current economy and finding the right clients were among the roadblocks.
• Zhang says entrepreneurship involves making mistakes, but it has redefined her idea of success.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amy Zhang, a 31-year-old founder based in New York City. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I spent eight months "quiet quitting" my corporate job, which started in June 2022. I then launched a company focused on growing small businesses. I've developed an appreciation for all the ways people can become successful.

But my learning hasn't come without issues. These are the five biggest struggles I've experienced since actually quitting and starting my own business, and what to keep in mind if you're considering it.

1. You have to be able to work alone for days on end

The transition from working with a team to being completely independent has been isolating. The socialization that used to be guaranteed is now a task that falls completely on me, and sometimes I don't leave my house for days.

Being an entrepreneur requires hustle and struggle, which makes it tough for me to put my computer down and stop working.

I make sure to maintain my routine at my gym, where I have a group of people I talk to. I also try to say "yes" to invitations from friends even if it's easier to say no and keep working.

2. You must be prepared for stress, mistakes, and ambiguity

When I started my venture, I realized I was the only one to blame for poor decision-making. The pressure to not make any mistakes plagued me in the beginning, so I've been learning to forgive myself.

One of the biggest mistakes I made was figuring out what tools and technology systems to spend money on and when to make the purchase. I purchased based on referrals and quickly learned that buying tech solutions too soon and solely based on recommendations can be a waste of money.

I also made the mistake of subscribing to annual contracts for discounts. Looking back, I realize the flexibility to cancel month-to-month contracts would've been more financially responsible.

Despite these mistakes, I know that having patience with myself is important for not burning out and giving up.

3. The economy is different now than five years ago

I've noticed that those who started their business five years ago relied heavily on networks and word of mouth to jump-start their companies.

In my experience, right now, I feel like prospective clients need more convincing, touchpoints, and trust to go into business with someone. I've been able to show my commitment through time spent, being active and responsive, and through action — putting my money where my mouth is.

4. Clients might want more time

I thought working as a consultant would benefit companies — it's cheaper for them to hire me with part-time pay, the ability to cancel at any time, and no health insurance. However, many businesses hesitated to work with me because they wanted full ownership of my time.

Don't get me wrong — the clients I work with now are awesome and completely get it. They like having the flexibility and quality of work at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire.

There's just something about having full control over an employee that I think some businesses still latch onto.

5. Others will try to rank you by title

There's a social bubble — especially in the corporate world — that defines success by titles, promotions, and company prestige.

Even in social circles at events and parties, when I was introduced to someone, the default second question after asking my name was, "So what do you do for a living?" That question used to feel like a way to rank myself among my peers.

Since quitting and starting my own business, I've realized there isn't just one way to be successful, happy, or make money.

If you've "quiet quit" your corporate job and would like to share your story, please email Tess Martinelli at [email protected].

• A Stanford researcher says his algorithm pinpoints employees who are doing the bare minimum.
• Roughly 9.5% of coders are "ghost engineers" according to his research, which has not been peer-reviewed.
• The research underscores tech's newfound mania with rooting out low performers.

Quiet quitting. Lazy-girl jobs. Bare-minimium Mondays.

Over the past two years, employees have expressed repeatedly that they are fed up with being asked to do too much.

Tough luck. The latest catchphrase to describe working less is "ghost engineer" — and it comes not from burnt-out employees but from a Stanford researcher whose team has developed an algorithm to help tech companies identify freeloading coders.

Stanford researcher and former Olympic-level weightlifter Yegor Denisov-Blanch ran the algorithm, which grades the quality and quantity of employees' code repositories on GitHub, on the work of more than 50,000 employees across hundreds of companies.

Roughly 9.5%, he found, "do virtually nothing."

Measuring output is difficult

Denisov-Blanch calls these workers "ghost engineers," defined as software engineers who are only 10% as productive or less than their median colleague.

His research began as an attempt to find a better way to grade the performance of software engineers, he said in an interview with Business Insider.

"Software engineering is a black box," Denisov-Blanch said. "Nobody knows how to measure software engineers' performance. Existing measures are unreliable because they rate equal work differently."

"It's not fair when someone's doing a very complicated change that's only one line of code. And the person doing the very simple change that's 1,000 lines gets rewarded," he continued.

His algorithm attempts to resolve that tension, giving high ratings to engineers who write many lines of code only so long as that code is maintainable, solves complex problems, and is easy to implement.

Denisov-Blanch's research has not been peer-reviewed.

There are other caveats. Industry-wide, the 9.5% figure could be an overstatement because Denisov-Blanch's research team ran the algorithm only on companies that volunteered to participate in the study, introducing selection bias.

Conversely, while Denisov-Blanch's team didn't classify employees whose output is only 11% or 12% of the median engineer's as "ghost engineers," there's a strong argument that those employees aren't contributing much either, which could mean the 9.5% figure is an understatement.

The hunt for underperformers

Rooting out underperformers has lately become something of a mania among some in Silicon Valley.

In September, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham published an essay lauding a management style he called "founder mode," which he distinguished from the conventional wisdom of, in his words, "hire good people and give them room to do their jobs."

"In practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground," Graham wrote.

Heading the charge has been Elon Musk, who has spoken proudly about firing 80% of Twitter's employees after buying the company in 2022. Twitter, now X, didn't appear to experience significant outages or service interruptions following the staff reduction.

"Were there many mistakes along the way? Of course. But all's well that ends well," he told CNN. "This is not a caring-uncaring situation. It's like, if the whole ship sinks, nobody's got a job."

More remote workers were superstar coders

Musk now aims to apply that same ruthless efficiency to the federal government. As co-chair of a new Department of Government Efficiency, he pledged in a Wall Street Journal op-ed to slash federal staffing, including by ending remote work to spur resignations.

"If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home," Musk wrote.

Denisov-Blanche's research showed mixed results for remote work. On one hand, he found that the prevalence of "ghost engineers" among remote workers was more than double that among in-person workers.

But he also found that many more of the most effective engineers — employees whose performance was at least five times better than their median colleague — were working remotely than were in-person.