10 ms·

It's sad and revealing to see the other comments here. Many of them say, don't seek fulfillment in your job, just keep on cruising. What a change from the excit

• goldfeld 7y ago
  A welcome change from the exciting atmosphere of exploiting young brains and sucking the marrow out of others' 20's?
• sweetheart 7y ago
  I think many of the folks here agree with your latter point, that the point OP is at in his or her life is one for experimentation and discovery. I think they’re saying this is easier when you can pull in fat, fat stacks with little effort. Fulfillment probably won’t come from working at Google, so use the security it affords to find out where it _can_ come from.
• danShumway 7y ago
  People aren't advocating that OP should stop learning (although there is nothing wrong with Software Engineering being a safe, predictable career for some people). They're advocating that OP should focus on learning things outside of work. A lot of exciting opportunities open up when you don't need to care about money. You can do experimental, innovative stuff just because it's worth doing, and not just because a VC investor wants another cash-out. Although, given Google's policies towards employee IP, that alone might be a reason to look for another company to work at -- keeping in mind that you almost certainly will be accepting a drop in pay if you leave.
  • buboard 7y ago
    being poor is bad, but being cushy is demotivating. “Experimental, innovative stuff” requires a certain level of hunger, or disregard for money. In both cases this person should seek elsewhere.
  • pjc50 7y ago
    You will have a hard time finding a tech employer that doesn't have a restrictive IP clause.
    • jamestimmins 7y ago
      Maybe at large companies, but at small companies in California, this has not been my experience. Plenty of employers realize that programmers tend to program on the side, and as long as you don't use company hardware or facilities, they claim no ownership of your IP.
    • danShumway 7y ago
      This hasn't been my experience. My current employer doesn't have a clause like this, and although they wouldn't have needed to, they also in-writing cleared my side-projects when I joined, even commercial ones.
• flattone 7y ago
  Autopilot is for middle age? That's a pretty terrible thing to say. My 20s were a total waste. Now, mature and sorta burned out on nonsense distractions, I'm on fire.
  • czbond 7y ago
    Yeah, I agree here. I can't imagine going on autopilot even decades and decades from now as I hit 80. The point is to drive to learn AND create always gives you opportunity.
• s0crates28 7y ago
  I agree with most of your statements. However, I don’t believe you should ever auto pilot. Life is about constantly, and consistently challenging yourself. Auto pilot, at any age, are for duds. Why auto pilot during middle age? I’d argue that you have acquired so much wisdom, leading into your middle age. Why stop the momentum. Use all your wisdom ALWAYS! :)
  • awinder 7y ago
    I have read that certain earth beings sometimes replicate themselves, and navigating the needy replicants needs & wants requires rejiggering how much life is spent where.
• munmaek 7y ago
  No, most comments say to find fulfillment through personal projects/hobbies. Work is work; it doesn't necessarily have to be the most satisfying or fulfilling experience ever. That's always going to be the case if you're working for someone else. Earning a boatload of money (and saving it) to retire early isn't anything to scoff at. This also assumes one can find a more fulfilling job elsewhere (with ideal compensation). Which is just that, an assumption. If, and only if, such a job were lined up, then it might be time to move on.
  • furyofantares 7y ago
    We spend a LOT of time at work. It's ridiculous not to seek fulfillment at work as well as elsewhere. Edit: I think maybe I didn't communicate well. I just mean that being fulfilled at work can be _very_ significant because work is such a huge part of our lives whether we like it or not. And so not _seeking_ fulfillment in work can be a huge blind spot. I didn't mean to imply it should be prioritized above all else, or that it's shameful not to have the luxury to achieve this to a high degree, as the OP presumably does.
    • wayoutthere 7y ago
      Very few people have that luxury. The career path for your average software dev in Silicon Valley does not have a lot of interesting work involved -- it's a bunch of middleware stuff like parsing data, CRUD operations and updating documentation. It's the 21st century version of being an auto mechanic -- super interesting at first, but there's a definite ceiling on the knowledge. There is only so much interesting work to go around, and you're usually not going to be doing it. You can seek fulfillment at work, but you also have to be prepared not to find it. Seeking fulfillment elsewhere is the secret to not burning out.
    • munmaek 7y ago
      In an Ideal World, sure. The Reality that most people live in is that we need money to pay the rent, like right about now. This limits the opportunities available to us because we simply cannot wait to find a fulfilling and justly compensated job. I simply will not work for low(er) income just to satisfy my need for fulfillment (at work). You know what's better than that? Financial security. Retiring Early. Owning my own house instead of renting. I would rather get paid a lot of money and not really work on very interesting things, if that meant I could retire a lot earlier and then do whatever I wanted for the rest of my life. When work ends for the day, I work on my personal & open source projects, or engage in other intellectually stimulating activities like learning a language, etc. I think the only exception at this point would be me taking slightly lower pay if it meant living and working comfortably abroad, because I want to live abroad for an extended amount of time, personally, so that tradeoff would be fine for me. In all likeliness that's going to be exactly what I do after I own my own house (at 26yo), and work under my own consulting business.
• wayoutthere 7y ago
  Software engineering just isn't that hard. Tedious yes, but not remotely difficult. We've been fed the narrative of economic success that many folks have forgotten what personal success looks like. You can be successful in your career and still feel like a failure. Therapy is the answer here. You have to un-brainwash yourself from the notion that your job is your life and figure out what really matters to you. Then focus on that, and use your job to fill the boring hours in between. I agree that you need to push yourself and discover who you are -- but the answers to those questions aren't going to be found at work. This sort of mid-life crisis is pretty common for career-focused people in their late 20s - early 30s and the solution is to find interests and friendships outside of work.
  • booleandilemma 7y ago
    Software engineering just isn't that hard. Tedious yes, but not remotely difficult. Come back and say this after you’ve had to fix concurrency bugs or had to maintain some overseas contractor’s terrible codebase with no documentation.
    • wayoutthere 7y ago
      I have; I was a software engineer for over a decade before I moved up through architecture and laterally into product. Those problems are tedious. Not difficult.
      • not_kurt_godel 7y ago
        While I agree that there are parts of software engineering that are merely 'tedious' rather than 'hard', there are definitely parts that are legitimately 'hard' too. Just because you've had a particular set of experiences that you've classified as tedious doesn't mean your perspective represents the totality of the industry.
        • jcims 7y ago
          The problem here is that 'hard' is dimensionless and relative. There are people in Australia right now storming the gates of hell with a shovel and a hose because that's the job they signed up for. If that type of work is on the spectrum, I can't really think of anything in software/systems engineering that's 'hard'.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• sillysaurusx 7y ago
  What a change from the exciting atmosphere of the 2000s. I miss this every day.
• fargle 7y ago
  > Autopilot is for middle age ??? I thought that middle age was where you still had the energy and the brainpower, but also had a bunch of hard-earned experience to bring it all to the highest level. Oh, wait. I forgot. You slacked off when you were in your 20's and 30's so you don't. Never mind.
• tayo42 7y ago
  > Your 20s are the time to learn, push yourself and discover who you are. I agree with this, but it's not going to happen with any job. You'll never discover yourself sitting in an office. If you look at jobs as a means to an end to let you live you're real life I think your better off. At this point in my life, an "exciting" software job is for suckers
  • Starkus 7y ago
    I do develop some insights working in an office though. For the most part, no, I can't even totally be myself in this corporate office and my life feels too routined. I'm looking for something more
  • fargle 7y ago
    Well, exciting can mean different things. I have a job where I never know what I'll be doing at 2PM when I walk in at 8AM. AND, I am not a sucker.