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How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time

• draw_down 6y ago
  People like this will never cop to the fact that you can just work a job to make a living. You can just do that. There is no shame in it. That’s not to say I disagree about things like sunk cost fallacy and misplaced loyalty. And I even have similar experiences to the people shown. But it is ok to not have your job hold such importance in your life. You don’t have to be the kind of person whose regrets in life are around the timing of job changes.
• codingdave 6y ago
  On the other hand, once you've been doing this for a couple decades, have a family at home, hobbies, and are thinking more about your retirement than advancing a career... a nice, stable job with a good paycheck that you can forget about at the end of the day is also a pretty decent life. What you have to avoid is the middle ground - if you are advancing your career that is great. If you have a comfortable, satisfying life, that also is great. But if you do not yet have that satisfying life AND you are failing to advance... that is the middle ground to get out of, fast.
  • gravitas 6y ago
    Thank you, I resonate with this. I feel it's a perspective reached after spending those decades in the hustle; you reach a point where it's just a job (that doesn't have to be negative). The grass is always greener as the saying goes - I'm going to do the same work at company X vs company Y (my specialty), so long as I'm being treated fairly with compensation, tasks, rewards, management, etc. and I believe enough in the core mission of the company, I'm satisfied. Leaving at 5pm to go work on a loved hobby is now more important than some ephemeral career goal. :) I think a key is financial stability though, it takes that hustle to build an investment reserve in the early years.
  • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    This is a good way to put it. I work at a well known big tech, and in many ways the money has given me a lot of freedom. I travel with my young family now because I can both afford it and I have enough co workers to easily cover my shift, which was NOT true at my startup. It’s especially useful having young children, because there is no time for “side hustles” right now. After 5:00 my time and attention goes to my family and my work encourages that.
    • elpatoisthebest 6y ago
      I love this sentiment. Probably the best thing about my entire life is that my Dad was free and able to be at every single game, play, recital, or other event in my entire childhood (and for much of my young adulthood, to be honest.) I can't think of a more fulfilling way to spend a life than with the people you love. Work can be fulfilling, but it pales by comparison. For me, work is 2nd place at best. Loved ones and meaningful moments are my priority.
  • gamma3 6y ago
    This makes sense. However, what kind of company culture does this set? If the company is OK with people being not passionate, what kind of signal does that give to the colleagues who want to be eager, passionate, driven?
    • xboxnolifes 6y ago
      The signal is that they are more likely to be able to argue for a raise with less competition?
• spodek 6y ago
  While the article has you thinking of stopping listening to the voices keeping you comfortably complacently lacking meaning and purpose, consider that the pattern and lessons apply beyond one's personal life to acting on the biggest problems of society too -- mainly choosing to act in stewardship for the environment. People expect it will be a burden, a chore, ineffective, and separate them from family an income, as the article implied it its context. Likewise, the opposite happens.
• derwiki 6y ago
  Re: company loyalty, see Gervais Principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
  • lucasyvas 6y ago
    Wow I loved reading this!
• sbuccini 6y ago
  I just want to provide a counterpoint to the above article. My first job out of college was at one of the "sexy" unicorns. I had fun working there, loved my coworkers, etc. I ended up leaving after 18 months to go start my own thing for many of the same reasons listed in this article. I'm in my twenties! Now is the time to take risks and optimize for learning! In retrospect, I wish I hadn't. Maybe that's because they just filed for IPO. But I underestimated how rare these jobs are. Let's be honest--the types of experiences the author references are only available at hyper-growth startups the Valley has deemed to be "sexy". Just look at the examples: Uber, Stripe, Coinbase. The author makes it sound like you can walk into one of these roles whenever you want. It's a lie. First, these companies only come around once in a blue moon. Second, you've got to time it just right. Third, you have to convince them to hire you. I'm sure most people on here have a story about how they didn't get a job for no discernible reason whatsoever. There are many good reasons to leave a job. Don't let hustle porn be one of them.
  • asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    Agreed. There are many axes along which one's career can be wasted. Throwing prime earning years at a low expected yield activity like founding startups can be one of them, depending on your priorities and luck. If one views making money as the primary purpose of a career, that will inform decisions differently than the criteria this article identifies.
  • bumby 6y ago
    Did your unicorn job meet the Accomplishment, Impact, Growth, Challenge, and Community aspects of the article? While I have some reservations about the article (chiefly that these all have to be evaluated every three months) I think the framework to assess your current position is very different than just changing to start your “own thing”, chase the newest shiny object etc.
    • sushicalculus 6y ago
      Those aspects are also too inward/selfish. What About the company? Did you join for the mission, is the mission something you still support, is the mission something the leadership actually conveys or is it lip service, do you feel you’re in a position to be impactful for that mission. Sometimes you might get a crappy job at a company with a cool mission (such as SpaceX) but it doesn’t mean you have to leave. Transfer internally!
• durnygbur 6y ago
  Bollocks. European management and screening people will judge negatively both CV gaps and "job hopping" (or whatever they'll judge as disloyalty). Will use both to lowball you or reject you when comparing with other candidates. Have a cozy full time job at major tech/engineering company? Stay where you are. It's dark and windy out there and believe me you don't want to deal with recruitment processes.
  • bartread 6y ago
    I'm not really sure that's what she's saying. There's a whole section at the end on "Change doesn't mean to quit". To address your specific points, and as someone who's done a lot of hiring for different companies over the years: - Yes, lots of job hopping can be viewed negatively (please see below). - I've been amazed by the number of people I know who've changed jobs mid-pandemic. Clearly there is still a job market out there. With that being said my default position agrees with yours: unless you have a very compelling reason to change jobs, if your current job is secure, stick with it. Back to job hopping... If you've been working for 10+ years and never held down a job for more than a year or two the alarm bells start ringing. If you've pulled that off for 15 - 20 years all of the alarm bells go into maximum overdrive. However, I certainly don't mind a bit of job hopping early in your career: it can take a while for people to find a position that really suits them. Similarly, peoples' circumstances change: they get married, they move, they have children, they're made redundant, they have health problems, they need to care for a relative, they suffer bereavement, or they just get bored and need a change and it takes a while to figure out - not to mention all of the other changes that can happen within a company that make them to look for work elsewhere. The result is that people might go through another period where they change jobs more often: they might start contracting, or if they move and have to change jobs the first job they land might not be that great. Often I've seen on CVs where people have been with a company for a long time, then might change two or three times after that because really good jobs that suit you well aren't actually as common as we'd all probably like. Again, that's generally OK. What I do want to see is some solid evidence that under the right circumstances you can hold a job down and stick at it for a few years. The amount of evidence I'll want to see of that increases proportionally to the length of your career. This is an inexact rule of thumb. Changing jobs a lot may not immediately put me off a candidate but it will, at the very least, mean I dig into the issue very thoroughly during the selection process, and if I don't like what I find then obviously you won't get the job (but that's true of any aspect of selection). With that said it is possible to stay in a job too long. I was with one company for 10 years, and that was too long. Far too long. But not because it was 10 years: the company had stopped growing at the time and I'd run out of opportunities to really develop and advance in my career. I'd say I wasted at least the last 3 years there. In terms of career advancement that 3 years has probably cost me more like 5 - 7, because I was burned out and pissed off, so I spent a couple of years contracting before moving back into full time employment.
• mellosouls 6y ago
  It's worth remembering this article seems to come from a rather clichéd and narrow frame of reference - overly driven by money and perceived status - one which seems to drive a lot of very similar advisory posts. That's cool if it's what you want to dedicate your life to, but if you are in a happy position with a great work life balance that encourages and enables you to both improve yourself and - particularly - your non-worklife then that's a thing worth holding on to, whatever the article-heavy career gurus seem to be selling you. Edit: as this comment has been significantly upvoted to visibility, I think I should acknowledge jasode's (and others) fair point that the author doesn't specifically focus on money. While I believe it is an implied strategic goal (which is fine) my concern is with the general over-focus on writing like this with careerism and the corresponding values which are definitely not shared by all. Thanks for the useful counterpoints to my reading.
  • jasode 6y ago
    >It's worth remembering this article seems to come from a rather clichéd and narrow frame of reference - overly driven by money But the blog author wrote the opposite of your characterization. Excerpt from article of not letting money distort your goals: >Staying in a job for loyalty or money's sake is like staying in a bad marriage for the sake of kids. [...] Optimizing learning over money early in your career. [EDIT to the many downvoters: Did I totally misunderstand the author's blog article? Where is the "overly driven by money" message? His framework chart doesn't have money anywhere on it. See: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F55cda1a8-942b-4e38-b861-9c890da06931_1274x506.png https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q...]
    • mellosouls 6y ago
      My actual quote ended "...and status", and "frame of reference" was important. The article is a reflection on I recently saw this tweet asking people about their career's most expensive mistake which appears to at least indicate a long term financial (and no doubt time/energy/status/skills/etc) view. It's not to say there aren't useful (if rather overly played) points in there and similar articles; but the whole thrust is about "career growth" and "brand" and dismissing either directly or by implication engineers who prioritise life as being vastly more important than work.
• rsynnott 6y ago
  I always find these ‘optimise your net worth’ posts quite strange, especially in the context of working for FAANGs/ Unicorns where generally pay for software engineers is very, very high anyway. “I have more money that I need now, but if I’d done different thing ten years ago I’d have even more money than I need” is a weird thing to worry about. I say this as someone who now works for a ‘unicorn’ and previously worked in a number of places that the author might consider dead end. I have some regrets about one previous job in particular, but mostly around stress it caused me at the time, not impact on my net worth. And, certainly, job hopping every couple of years seems like no life.
  • Aeolun 6y ago
    It would be nice if I didn’t have to worry about a mortgage any more. It’ll be a loooong time before I have more money than I need.
    • gravitas 6y ago
      If I may offer advice - the math is against you, a $150k home loan over 30 years (+tax, insurance) is usually well over $300k at the end of the road. If you can (a) ensure your loan has a "all extra payments to principal, not interest" loan and (b) overpay every single month as much as you can, even shaving 10 years off that time frame will net you a lot back in your pocket to invest and make money on it. Even an extra $100/mo if that's all you can manage - pay down that principal as fast as you can to reduce the interest owed on that principal.
      • freewilly1040 6y ago
        This is bad advice. The $300k doesn’t look so bad when compared to the compounded gains those extra payments would get if they were invested instead.
        • LoSboccacc 6y ago
          if they're invested. investing takes time, and if your job/career is on a natural rising curve, sinking time in the job to advance faster will gain greater returns, especially if you and the job market can stay in the "switch every two years for 15% pay increase" zone, very hard to beat that unless one is consistently very lucky all the time with investment, at which point it's better to fire yourself and start investing other people money as a job anyway.
• roel_v 6y ago
  "The moral is that you can tame wild ducks, but you can't wildify tamed ducks (that's why there isn't even such a word as wildify)." Well, I don't know about ducks, but it's certainly possible to re-introduce animals that have been raised by humans into the wild, e.g. with hand-raised foxes. Moral of the story: don't make wild claims about things you don't know anything about if you want people to take your main point seriously.
  • buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    Meh, I think the point still stands even if there are exceptions. And it certainly doesn’t invalidate the rest of the article. Perhaps the author should have written, “it’s much more difficult to wildify a tamed duck”. But it wouldn’t have made the article any better had they done so.
  • tootie 6y ago
    There actually is a word. It's "feral". Some animals have been engineered to the point of helplessness but not all of them. Feral pigs are actually very hardy and aggressive.
  • mattkrause 6y ago
    Also, doesn’t ‘feral’ mean exactly that? 1 (of animals and plants) existing in a wild or uncultivated state, esp. after being domestic or cultivated. I don’t know of a verb form, but perhaps that reflects the fact that it doesn’t require human agency to occur; animals just go/become feral (and, as you say, humans can also take active steps to help reintroduce them to the wild).
• cbanek 6y ago
  I feel like FOMO is one other way to waste your career. The article talks about how they missed out on Uber's hyper-growth phase, but really, that's 20/20 vision after the fact. What if Uber went down instead? You never know the growth trajectory of any company really, even ones you work for. Getting a job and then doing it (and moving, if that is required) takes a lot of time. Every time you move, you might as well kiss away 3 months of time from your life, between moving, packing, new friends and routines, ramp up at work, etc. Moving careers just because of a feeling isn't something you can do twice a year just because. This also totally misses out on doing things you want to further your career that aren't in your job time, which I think is a lot more flexible and amenable to quick change to pursue growth and passion. Things like hobbies, side projects, etc.
• Fumtumi 6y ago
  I have seen and still seeing enough people prefering to use there work time to spend a lot (and i don't mean having a quick read once or twice or thrice a day) of time at work doing everything than working. Feel free to do something totally unrelated while you are waiting for a build to finish but if you never ever reach a certain level, you will be stuck and you will live in your own missery. And by missery i mean: Things you have done shitty and quick will fall on your feet daily; No one is asking you for guidance or real help. You might never be in the position of doing something additional than 'just working one ticket of after the other' and what i mean by this: forming your environment, forming the product and making that thing to yours. Something you formed, you guided, you made. You will be frustrated about your job, you will complain, your colleges, well aware what your problems are, will just not tell you what you need to here because you are probably not showing them that you do care. You will earn the same amount of money, your job will not change switching companies much and thats it. While the others are getting rid of the standard pitfalls, making their lives easier, learning new things, getting faster, better, more valuable. Earning more money for the same time spend at work, getting cooler projects, being aksed to join teams because of reputation, having more slack than you with a much better salary due to trust and past achievements. And if you realize this too late, you lost the most valuable time: early in your career. The time where you advanced the most and the fastest, were you learn easier, where everything new is interesting and cool. If you read this and you spend a lot of time on imageboard or whatever and you hate your job or you are depressed because of it, its not the fault of others. I have never ever had the issue of doing my things to early and then not knowing what to do else. There is always an old bug to fix, something to automate, something new to try out, to read to watch etc. And there is a secret: I actually like my job because of all the possibilities.
  • reducesuffering 6y ago
    What advice do you have for people to kick this bad habit? I struggle with keeping focus on work because it’s generally not that interesting. Switching teams within the company is a non-option because there’s a high risk other teams are toxic and WLB would be terrible. Switching other companies is a problem due to the leetcode-ification of interviews I know I couldn’t pass currently.
• taken_username 6y ago
  The author is talking about joining apple and uber like they are jobs in a restaurant that is easy to get for everyone! And compared money in career with kids in marriage like everyone has a privilege of accepting a lower income without compromising basic needs of life or their dependents. He has some points, but maybe he didn’t learn enough about what career means to many!
  • littleninja 6y ago
    > He has some points, but maybe he didn’t... Host site is Valley Girl Newsletter, author Apoorva Govind with feminine avatar. Why the assumption this is a male engineer and author?
    • raincom 6y ago
      Not everyone can infer genders from non-European names.
      • stu2b50 6y ago
        People should get use to using they as a gender neutral pronoun. If it's good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for random internet forum posts.
      • luminati 6y ago
        *not every European For heaven’s sake, European names are not universal
    • justincredible 6y ago
      The avatar looks like Carrot Top surfing the web.
• 734129837261 6y ago
  It was a lesson I learned early on: "loyalty" doesn't make you any money. It doesn't grow your career, either. Your work life is a big part of your daily life and it should be fun, challenging to some degree, and rewarding. For me, "rewarding" means financial compensation, learning new things, and being appreciated by my peers and those above me. Currently, I work as a senior software engineer for Apple. I make a low 6-figure salary while working 100% remote (also before COVID-19). The assigned work is groundbreaking, secretive, uses new tech, and it's going to be used by millions of people around the world. Then I got the offer a few weeks ago to work for a local bank, setting up their new platform. Even newer technologies and more responsibilities as a competency lead. The salary will increase by 60%. Imagine making 120k a year and jumping to 192k a year, just by signing a piece of paper. I've worked for Apple for about 2 years now, and I'm having a great time. But there's no way they'll increase my salary like that. What I have learned over the years is that if I make this switch and don't burn bridges behind me, I should stay in close contact with my current colleagues, and work to learn all I can at the new job. Two or three years from now, I might apply at Apple again. For a higher-level job. Right now I'm a senior software engineer, but in 3 years with 3 years of enterprise leadership experience, I'd apply for a leadership role. I will use my connections and insider-knowledge to have a more personal connection to them. That can be a quicker, but certainly more lucrative, way of promoting inside a company. And I've done that before at a different company. I was a medior developer at CompanyA, moved to CompanyB where I became a senior developer for 2 years, then moved back to CompanyA as a senior developer. Usually I would have gotten the usual +5% salary increase if I had stayed at CompanyA. But by making a little detour I increased my salary by 30% to 40% with each jump. Loyalty is worth nothing, except to your employer. That just means you're an asset that is going to become worth increasingly more as time goes by, because your potential market value skyrockets while you remain working for the annual +5%. And every once in a while you'll get the +7% because you're so special. And that one year business is bad, so you'll only get +2%.
  • brookside 6y ago
    120k at Apple? I know you say remote - are you US based?
    • 6y ago
• nashashmi 6y ago
  > I learned more in the first six months ... around the 3-year mark, my learning curve had flattened entirely ... I stayed that extra year due to loyalty to my colleagues ... >companies do what's best for their business, and you should not feel bad for doing the same. These two quotes struck me hard. After I left school, I was appreciated at work, I felt great about myself, and I was learned a lot in the first 3 months. I stayed 3 months more to give back, 6 more months because they could not find someone to replace me, and then a year longer because I got promoted (more learning now?). I stayed another 4 years in the industry with much higher pay than all of my classmates ... but now I was not learning anything, just working, just filling someone else's ineptitude. The work was not worth it! My education was. And not realizing that cost me dearly. Never think the work you are doing is worth more than your own education. And never think the pay you are getting makes it a better job than a chance to learn a whole lot more.
• jskdvsksnb 6y ago
  One anecdote: I had a very cushy position at a post-IPO startup that was taking off. My initial RSUs had appreciated by 5x by the time I left. Every time they vested I took the money off the table. My colleagues loved me, I got great performance reviews, but I didn't feel like I was learning or growing. I was severely burnt out after working on a couple projects that exploded due to organizational problems. I went through 3 managers in a year because of reorgs and departures. Ultimately I left that job because I tortured myself - what was I doing, what value did I add? How would I get a job after this when my skills were out of date? Meanwhile the company's stock has tripled since I left. Even if I had sold every time my stock vested I would be a millionaire by now. I grew up poor, and the security of having that money in the bank would be life-changing. Instead I'm at a new startup where I'm not any happier, but I also don't get a million dollars.
  • bumby 6y ago
    >new startup where I'm not any happier The post reads like you left for one reason (fear if complacency) but your unhappiness is rooted in something completely different (financials). Both may still be wrong way to get happy, but it’s hard to expect a job to provide that if you aren’t consistent about what you should be shooting to improve
    • jskdvsksnb 6y ago
      People can be unhappy about more than one thing. My point is that the "value experience over comp and comfort" perspective was drilled into me when I was starting out, and it definitely contributed to what I now think was a mistake.
      • bumby 6y ago
        I didn’t mean to imply you can only have one goal. But I do think sometimes people are not always aware of what would make them happy and instead default to what values hate been “drilled into” them rather than defining them for themselves
• pcstl 6y ago
  I really dislike how posts of this kind simply assume that everyone lives in Silicon Valley (and hence there are abundant jobs with ridiculously inflated pay) and has no ambition beyond working on hard technical problems and making loads of cash by working for other people. This is completely invalid advice for people with any kind of entrepreneurial ambition, for instance, and even more so for those who might care more about building a family or spending time with loved ones than frittering their time away "increasing their net worth" by working on things they don't own. What is most infuriating is the implication that if you don't live life by this person's constraints, you're "wasting it".
  • e_tm_ 6y ago
    It reads as unintentional satire. Person with a software-hammer tries to hit the nail of basic psychology, motivation, and happiness. Misses. Shame on me for reading it though.
• maverickJ 6y ago
  Some of the key points for early career progress are: 1. Seek the counsel of trusted mentors. 2. Pick accelerated learning over money at the beginning of your career. 3. If given the opportunity to take remuneration in form of equity, take it. 4. Go work in an industry for a fixed amount of time to pick up some skills. 5. Learn early on what industries your personality type is not suited for. 6. Know what you want and go for it. 7. Don’t get too hung up on the job title when you first start out; Especially if the opportunity to learn is enormous. There is an interesting article on this https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics-to-accelerate https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics...
  • anonymoushn 6y ago
    Please don't do this. Editing your comment to no longer acknowledge that it is just a summary of your blog post or that the blog post was written by you does not help.
• cemregr 6y ago
  > Have I done anything noteworthy these last three months? Either the author’s bar for noteworthy is really low or I’m really out of touch with what an individual can achieve every three months.
  • the_only_law 6y ago
    On a similar note, but in regards to non-work projects: I see things all the time like "look at this thing I built in a [week, weekend, day]". Man I sometimes spend months just thinking about my stuff.
  • Double_a_92 6y ago
    Sounds like the author is just LARPing being a successful genius software engineer in Silicon Valley...
  • Barrin92 6y ago
    not to mention that my definition of noteworthiness is acting in the service of others and spending some time with my family and loved ones and lifetime friends, which by the way requires some dreaded 'complacency' instead of treating my life like some Silicon Valley TV show business plan. By god reading that entire thing has managed to rile me up, I can't believe people actually live like this
• lazyant 6y ago
  I agree with the overall message to optimize for learning early on and check with yourself every few months and take some risks while you are young. OTOH, it must be nice to get a job into a FAANG right out of school (if you got to Stanford or Carnegie Mellon like the author) and then get to choose a job at the new sexy unicorn, and the type of job/team once inside. As in, this work history and the people who can afford it is a tiny, tiny minority in the world, or even in the US and it's kind of depressing to read for the rest of us.
• bdavis__ 6y ago
  Is software really so shallow? Does it wash away so quickly as fads change? How do you get really, really deep knowledge? A person that works at the same company for 25 years should show a progression of titles and work assignments, ending up with a very valuable perspective into the companies products, customers, and business issues. Job hopping every 2 years? Do you even know how to make coffee before you leave?
  • ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
    > Is software really so shallow? Does it wash away so quickly as fads change? In SV and in the NH bubble, yes. Ex Amazon here. In Amazon there's plenty of technology that HN would likely characterize as "extremely ancient" that keeps the production infrastructure running. (I'm not talking about AWS)
  • Double_a_92 6y ago
    Yeah I'm also kinda confused... What do those "hopping" people do at work? Must be consulting roles for new projects? Or just working on small "easy" projects? Otherwise it usually takes 1-2 years just to get comfortable for the current project.
    • derwiki 6y ago
      If it’s at the same company, often less. I switched from one line of business to another, completely new team, and it took a few months to get comfortable with the current project.
  • ptr 6y ago
    Anecdote: in 6 months I can and have surpassed team members that have been with the team for 6 years. These are bespoke complex systems, but some people don’t advance much (“work to live”?) and I’m a quick learner, partly due to job hopping.
• mkl95 6y ago
  Switch jobs every 6 months to 2 years, and some people will label you a job hopper. Last more than that, and some people will think you are too comfortable for your own good. I think you are better off accepting you can't make everyone happy and that, no matter what you do, someone won't like you for some random reason. Just trust your gut as long as you are making a decent living.
• stoicpsyborg 6y ago
  Once you are able to differentiate between a job, a career and a vocation you are set for life. You will either agree with the article or laugh your head of depending on the stage you think you are in. That article does resonate with me to a certain extent since I am one of those persons who has stayed too long , but if you love what you are going, have found your calling and are growing professionally and financially I guess its not a bad thing. But yes, please do evaluate your contribution and once in a while jump out of your comfort zone.
• Hokusai 6y ago
  > I missed out on witnessing Uber's hyper-growth phase. That is so alien to my personal values that I have a hard time following the post. > [...] fueled what current and former Uber employees describe as a Hobbesian environment at the company, in which workers are sometimes pitted against one another and where a blind eye is turned to infractions from top performers. > One Uber manager groped female co-workers’ breasts at a company retreat in Las Vegas. A director shouted a homophobic slur at a subordinate during a heated confrontation in a meeting. Another manager threatened to beat an underperforming employee’s head in with a baseball bat. That the article describes this situation as a "missed out opportunity" just means that the writer personal goals are antagonistic to mine. And, to ask people to pursue such a situation seems quite bad advice from a mental health perspective.
• ineedasername 6y ago
  Well, that depends. This article assumes you want to always chase that next thing, next incremental step up, next status boost There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but there's also nothing wrong with sticking with a job you like. Outside of SV that's both common and desirable in a candidate. I don't want to see a candidate who jumps around every 2-3 years. I want someone who will stick around a little longer to really learn the organization and be able to initiate and execute on projects that require a deeper understanding of how we work. The people I see that hop around a lot seem to come in with what they think are big ideas, but often are simply the newest fad and don't fit our needs. With respect to "just being a cog in the machine", if you're hopping around a lot then you really don't have time to work through the life cycle of really big projects. You come in at some stage, put in your time, and move on without making much of a mark before you leave. In that situation, you were just a plug-in component. Obviously this dynamic is different if you're looking to work for startups. But even there, if your goal is to get equity and cash it in, you often have to be willing to stick it out a little longer. How many engineers left Google or Facebook too soon and left a lot of money on the table as a result? What it all fundamentally comes down to though is understanding yourself. You need to dissect you motives, you impulses, to really understand what will make you happy. Once you do that, it would be foolish to chase change if the sacrifice is your happiness. I've seen people like that too, who are never content, always unhappy, and always think another change will be the solution. But it's not, because the problem isn't the job, it's the person.
• metalliqaz 6y ago
  I can't rock the boat because I have a family, a mortgage payment, and I can't afford to risk losing health insurance.
• aitrean 6y ago
  Ugh. The mind of a narcissist on full display here. Want to have a comfortable position with decent growth opportunities over time, and fair compensation? You must be some bottom-feeding moron who doesn't understand that [Unicorn Co]'s valuation just rose 4x YoY. Think you can be happy at a company like Apple making six figures while unemployment is at record levels, and people are being bankrupted by hospital bills and shuttered businesses? clap emojis THINK ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL BRAND. This girl learned everything Apple had to teach her in 6 months. You can't possibly expect to just switch departments, or ask for more responsibilities to continue learning anything at a company like that! It's incredible how insulated developers in the Bay Area can be. I would love to see how quickly all of this advice falls apart for an engineer in Portland, or Minneapolis, or just about any country besides the United States, where six-figure software jobs aren't so easy to come by.
  • jason0597 6y ago
    Pretty much this. The author really seems to live in a bubble. Additionally, if you're anything but a software developer, e.g. you're a process (chemical) engineer, this advice doesn't work in the slightest. New chemical companies don't open up in a bedroom every year, so you can't hop around that quickly. This applies to every engineering profession except for software development (/...engineering) What about feelings of regret later down the line? I already regret not doing more in my life in my teenage years (I spent it all studying alone). I cannot imagine what feelings of regret I would have if I spent all of my 20s working non-stop.
    • ryandrake 6y ago
      I am pretty sure I am not going to be on my death bed, surrounded by loving family, yet thinking about that job working on the Uber-for-cats middleware stack that was technically challenging, so impactful and aligned so well with my future career goals.
      • PascLeRasc 6y ago
        I was reading the article going "Yeah! This is exactly what I need to hear!" until I got to the sentence "This is what we always say at UberEats" and had to close the tab.
• o0-0o 6y ago
  The section of the article titled, "Complacency is Cancer" is, in my opinion, very offensive to those with cancer and their loved ones. I personally get very offended with this hyperbole.
  • srean 6y ago
    The other thing that gets me is that "he had the courage to fight cancer and that's why he survived". As if those that did not had mental weakness to blame.
• borski 6y ago
  I wrote an eerily similar post to this in 2011, right as I was about to start Tinfoil: http://www.theborski.com/2011/01/27/furniture-or-lack-thereof/ http://www.theborski.com/2011/01/27/furniture-or-lack-thereo...
• renewiltord 6y ago
  I think the most predictable thing about the Internet is that articles like this have two kinds of comments: - from people who feel that inside drive that leads them to be unhappy when they're not moving forward and upward (maximizers) who use it as validation - from people who have a target life and see this as threatening (satisficers) or offensive Every single comment always comes off like it has some sort of insecurity that it's trying to protect. Here are some other types of articles that cause this: - work really hard to be the best that you can be v work hard enough at your career so that you can focus on other things - startups vs big companies Almost all the 'advice' in the comments here is just a bunch of thinly veiled attempts on the commenters part to feel better. Just read them from a neutral eye. They attribute so many non-existent traits to the opposite position: "overly driven by money", "stagnant", implications of not being "well-rounded" or in the opposite: "mediocre". This is mommy forum level stuff.
  • vishaalk 6y ago
    You nailed my emotional response completely as a satisficer. Any advice on reading with a neutral eye? As a satisficer I dread the convos with my maximizer friends who seem to imply I am worth less since I don’t want to grind all the time. Perhaps that’s a problem with the friends, but I’m not sure how to differentiate.
    • renewiltord 6y ago
      Honestly, no advice available, sorry. I fail at it often enough that I'm unlikely to be of much help.
  • croissants 6y ago
    Good point. Also, if you want to watch a movie that explores these two perspectives and has nothing at all to do with tech, My Dinner With Andre is pretty good.
  • ricc 6y ago
    People often forget that most of these come from personal blogs who are, at the fundamental level, just voicing their opinions based on how they experienced life. It is understandable and quite common sense that it will not apply to everyone. I mean, even with licensed professionals, e.g. doctors, we try to get a second opinion but I don't think we'll be quite as fast to judge that first opinion.
• photo_155553 6y ago
  I'm extremely glad that I never pursued a career as a software developer. I hate the word "career", and I've never wanted one. When I was about 14 years old, I decided that I needed to avoid a career at all costs. Eventually I understood that entrepreneurship and ownership in a company was the only way I would ever achieve financial freedom. I wanted to (and I still want to) do whatever I want, go wherever I want, whenever I want. > You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom. [1] (Naval's recent interview with Tim Ferriss was really interesting [2].) I also gave myself a deadline of 10 years. I decided that I would join startups and try to work on my own projects and app ideas. If I ended up with nothing after all this, I would join the workforce and put away my ambitions. I would still try to achieve financial independence the normal way, and perhaps try to retire at 55 instead of 65. Against all odds, I've been able to achieve my goal. I was one of the first employees at a startup that has become a unicorn. The IPO will give me a life-changing amount of money (> $3 million.) While waiting for the IPO, I also founded multiple failed startups and side-projects. I eventually managed to build a modestly successful bootstrapped company. I just reached the point where the income from my startup ($120k) is higher than my initial salary at this unicorn company in San Francisco ($115k). Growth is good and I will probably sell the company for $2 million within the next few years. That's my story. If I could go back in time and tell my teenage self something, I would say: shut up, you are completely wrong. I grew up in a country with limited career opportunities for software developers (aka anywhere outside of Silicon Valley.) I had absolutely zero idea that a software developer could earn total compensation of $300k, $500k, $750k, or even $1M per year. If I had known that a career at a FAANG company could pay so much money, I would have told myself to stop wasting time on side projects and work as hard as I can to get my foot in the door at one of these companies, and work my way up to these extremely high salaries. Then I would retire after 8-10 years of extremely high earnings, and I would be much further ahead than I am now. I am an extremely talented programmer. I have been doing it since I was 5 years old. I've never had a job at a FAANG company, but I think I could probably get one. The stress from startups has wreaked havoc on my mental health. The freedom of freelancing and then owning my own source of passive income has ruined me for regular employment. I will never go back to being an employee. If I could do it all over again, I would pour all of my energy into preparing for the Google Technical Interview, then work my way up to a L7 or L8 software engineering position. Part of me wants to do it now, just to see if I could do it. I'm very happy with how everything turned out, but I walked along the edge of a knife, and I was a dumb teenager who didn't know anything. Now I'm a dumb adult who still doesn't know very much. Also I guess everyone already knows that FAANG compensation can extremely high. I only learned about this a couple of years ago, and I struggled to believe it for a long time. I just didn't know that $750k in compensation was even possible. The people who earn this much money just work pretty normal hours, and they don't deal with a ton of stress. I'm sure there is a top 0.01% programmer who is reading this while earning $80k in the mid-west, or €70k in Germany. If you want to make a lot of money and retire quickly, you should consider applying for a job at a FAANG company in the US. Instead of working on your next SaaS idea, it would be better to spend 6 months practicing data structures and algorithms and getting ready for your interview. [1] https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103670400417792 https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103670400417792 [2] https://tim.blog/naval-ravikant-on-the-tim-ferriss-show-transcript/ https://tim.blog/naval-ravikant-on-the-tim-ferriss-show-tran...
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• Lammy 6y ago
  > Companies only want your loyalty if you are engaged and have fun doing your job — true loyalty means leaving when your heart isn't in it anymore. I agree, but I would rephrase this as "Companies only want you to invest in them — not the other way around"
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• commandlinefan 6y ago
  No. Optimize for money (unless you don’t actually care how much you ever make). Money follows money. If you’re not learning at work, learn on your own time, and learn things that are worth money.
• barnacled 6y ago
  Personally I have found a rather different factor has been at play in my career - I have been in the industry for 15 years and made several side-steps, including working as employee #1 at a startup (which I cashed out from a buy-back), working at a GPU company on the driver and much else. I've also contributed to the linux kernel, chromium, the go programming language and a number of others. I have never lacked the ability to make a change in my career even when it was scary, including taking the early stage startup job at a >30% reduction in pay + they only had 2-3 months money in the bank max. However I've found that my career progression has been stalled by each and every move. I'm back at the bottom of the ladder and those years of experience? Worth absolutely nothing. It's felt like every move to another position for whatever reason (typically to have a more interesting, fulfilling career in my case) has absolutely reset my career every time. I'm 39 years old and last week a 25 year old was promoted in my company above my position after he'd been there for 3 years. It's pretty galling to think that I could be in the same position as not far off a graduate engineer in my early 20's. My experience has consistently been that only your experience at $CURRENTJOB counts for anything when it comes to progression. By all means, seek out the best job for you, but don't be surprised if there's a cost in progression of any kind. I don't regret taking risks and aiming for happiness but I do regret that I was naive about how to do it in a smart way. I think part of the issue is that many technical roles (note: I have never worked for FAANG so maybe different there) do not have a well-defined or sensible technical promotion route, so only managerial experience matters in terms of progression.
• corytheboyd 6y ago
  > Complacency is Cancer You lost me immediately. If you can make $200k without becoming a worshipped CTO after year three, yet you’re comfortable and happy with your life, you aren’t doing anything wrong. Author, you really need to develop some empathy for people with different lifestyles than yours. Instead you call it cancer, which is both offensive and just not true.
• throwaway7_16 6y ago
  I feel like I might be in this predicament in that I am very comfortable at my company. I think part of my issue is that I am not certain what are definitive ways to add more value to my company. In the last year, I had contributed in ways that had tangible benefits to my teammates; however, I'm not certain of how to repeat these sort of feats. The feedback from my manager is that I'm doing well, I get along with my team, and everyone seems to pull in the same direction without ego. What should I do? Do I coast and hope for finding the work that needs to be done? Or do I look somewhere else? There's a lot of areas where I can learn new things at my current company, but I don't know where to start or what direction to head towards.
• axetheone 6y ago
  The easiest way to waste a career is to remain oblivious of office politics and to think honest and hard work are the way to go.
• kamaal 6y ago
  This article is typical of early career success people. These people are generally in their career prime right out of college in their 20s. They are healthy, and they have no other responsibilities. They can easily shut out every thing else and come out with all their guns blazing. The gravy train can look perpetually arriving from this vantage point. In reality this will barely last. The wisdom is in understanding this is a phase. Also I'd say How to waste your career, one false sense of discomfortable year at a time During the last 2008 recession, In Bangalore, I know a fair amount of people who hopped jobs often, got laid off, and were unable to find jobs for like 2 - 3 years, even the jobs they got later weren't all that nice. Reason, simple. When you are cash strapped you want to hire serious people, not some one whose replacement have want to hire just 3 months from now. It gives a vibe of a non serious person, who will barely stay for weeks without contributing much. I personally did this for my first job and promised my self I won't do it again, having said this I was changing career streams(Call Center to Programming). Even then my Dad, used to tell me I won't go far in life, if I was not serious about what I was doing. Quitting often is a giant red flag of a non serious person, unwilling to undergo even minor struggles to build valuable things. Eventually it will show and cripple you when you have to put up minor quarrels in a marriage, or a back pain in the gym, or a hard monthly installment for your home loan. Life is 90% of the time putting with non attractive things. >>Since I left Apple, its stock has almost tripled while Uber's stock has been... I probably would be better off financially had I stayed. >>If you are an average 30 yr old engineer, let's say you want to retire reasonably by the time you are 60. Its hard to take any one who writes this seriously. If you are a 30 year old engineer your are 8 - 10 years away from being aged out of prime opportunities. You are also close to getting old to the point of fatigue, you will get married, you will have responsibilities, your parents will get old. You yourself are likely to get obese, catch a sedentary disease or two. If you haven't already, you risk catching one with this kind of all-night leetcoding lifestyle soon. The true wisdom is in understanding no matter who you are things come to an end, eventually. The idea is to plan for that day. Stay lean, make a alternate source of low effort recurring income, work on your relationships, and work on your health. Sure learn by reading books and doing projects, but know where the real priorities are. If you are a 40 year old, your resume has a life of 10 years at the very best. If you are a 50 year old your resume as a net value of ~0 years. You are closer to the end, so might as well plan and work for it. This is not exactly a linear climb in any way. >>If you are ambitious and want to build a good reputation for yourself in the valley, if you don't want your talent to go to waste - treat complacency like cancer. >>Anytime I score 40% or under, alarm bells go off. It's a sign that my job isn't meeting my metrics and that I need to stop and evaluate. >>I was curious to visualize what the wasted time breakdown looks like in my 8-ish year long career so far The remainder of this post looks like classic busy-ness trap and thirst for resume dressing. No matter how busy you are or likely to get, or what ever senior senior something blah superman you are, it won't pay your bills, it won't set you up for a retirement, it won't keep your healthy. Lastly I would like to say. These days complacency is to hop jobs often as its easy to hop jobs often. The hard thing is to stay, embrace the suck and build the hard things that actually matter in life. Not optimizing pie charts that shows your trello/asana/gtd usage. Or recruiter emails that come due to LinkedIn updates. Quitting hard situations is complacency today. The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name ~ Confucius.
• ornornor 6y ago
  I disagree with this post so much! I felt anxious just reading it. Of course there is always an opportunity cost, and of course that tiny startup that offers half the salary you’re worth might become the next unicorn costing you millions in equity because you didn’t join when you had the chance. But that is FOMO and you can’t live your life this way! I realized this the older I grew: stability is good for your mental health and money isn’t everything. I won’t take a job that pays below market rate, period. And if I have a choice between a “boring” job at a mature and stable company vs a frantic startup where you have to be 200% just to feel like you’re standing still, I’ll always take the stable job. “Personal brand” be damned. With the boring job I can also afford do be 9–5, leave work at work, and realize how meaningless these business problems are outside of work! Really, there will be another 8h tomorrow to tackle these TPS reports, nothing is going to happen if it’s not done today but you’ll be healthier for not worrying about it too much. By working the 9-5 job, you get more time to do things that actually matter (in my opinion), like stepping away from the keyboard, living your life, spending time with your family. But with the early Uber, you don’t get that: your peers are working long hours and so you have to do the same just to keep up. And for what? Meanwhile, your life passes you by and it’s 5 years of your limited life you’ll never get back. But you’ve made Uber shareholders richer. When you calculate your per hour rate after all the unpaid overtime, it’s not even worth it from that perspective. I’ve never worked in the valley but what then author describes sounds like a recipe for burning out multiple times in your youth. That also has a tremendous cost which dwarfs staying at a boring job for a few years longer.
• frollo 6y ago
  It might work, but this is definitely not the life I want to live. There are lots of things I value more than career (family, friends, my dog, my hobbies...) and I'm not going to sacrifice them to land a shiny hip job. In fact, 9-to-5 suits me well.
• Mikho 6y ago
  I'd never hire such a person to work for me. Nobody needs a job hopper who only rely on an employer to invest in her to just then hop to another job. Professional growth is achieved by being useful and proactive at a job one has. Not by constantly switching jobs. Every time an employee switch job there are a long way to get to a level of quality career growth in a new company. Nobody is going to promote a newcomer. Looks like the author is just a passive noninnovative who quit job right by the time when it's time to show resourcefulness and value. The best way to kill own career. Really, if this person can't be useful and innovative at a job she has, and can't improve own skills unless somebody else do it for her, she won't be a good worker anywhere.
• absolute100 6y ago
  Apoorva Govind shares a practical framework to look at when considering changing teams, projects, or companies. I use something similar to look at how far I am from my comfort zone and whether this is the type of challenge that makes me excited to experiment - failing is acceptable as it's hard to know how success looks like at certain scale. I like to define my Failure Indicators, so I'll know how to be less stupid.