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“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” I know saying this is easier than doing it, but; seek upward movement until you no longe

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” I know saying this is easier than doing it, but; seek upward movement until you no longer feel like you're the smartest person in the room. I would also add, although it's purely personal opinion, that seeking a solution to loneliness through work is a surefire way to feel more lonely. You say you're big on self-improvement, but are you only focused on improving your work-related skills? All areas of life need attention, and it sounds like you've only been focusing on the work part of work/life balance (work/life balance is so much more than just what hours you work).

100011_100001 4y ago
I've thought about this. I actually do not think I'm the smartest person in the room, hell two of the people in my direct team are definitely smarter than me. I think I have really good systems that allow me to consistently solve problems and write code. On the loneliness front, I meant in the scope of working. I have four kids, I am everything BUT lonely with them. However, I do agree that aside from work and one of my hobbies I have neglected my health, specifically I need to eat healthier, exercise more and lose some weight. I've debated working one hour less than I'm supposed to just so that I can exercise daily, but I find myself worrying that without me things will fall apart. Logically, I know that's not true. If I died today, the company or my team would not collapse. Nevertheless I feel that if I'm supposed to be working from 8-5 (which 1 hour lunch), I need to actually be working.
- ziddoap 4y ago
  >two of the people in my direct team are definitely smarter than me How often are you actively learning from and engaging with them on exciting new tech (or the systems you've designed and how they can be further improved, etc.), compared to water-cooler talk?
  - 100011_100001 4y ago
    Probably 2-3 times a week actually. My team is specifically the spear point of new tech and integrating it for the company to use. From a point of self-evaluation I think it would help if I tried to listen more than talk.
    - ziddoap 4y ago
      From what I've seen here: you have a family life you enjoy, at least a few competent coworkers that you are actively engaging with and learning from, you're successful and sought-after at your place of work in a field you seem to enjoy, you have a hobby that you're consistent with, you have consistent and not overly-demanding work hours, you've tried challenging yourself by changing sectors, etc. You're hitting all of the points many people are still striving for. Perhaps it may be worthwhile seeking a professional's opinion, as the problem may be deeper-rooted than can be explored via forum.
      - 100011_100001 4y ago
        Thanks for your perspective, and taking the time to express it. I truly appreciate it.
        Ehh_01 4y ago
        Yo man. It's not a secret that you feel loneliness at the top. But if that's bothering you and on top of that you are saying most if not all areas of your life are good then I have some news for you. So in general humans as a species is destined to suffering. Makin the long philosophy short, humans need to suffer to be able to enjoy happiness. From what you are sayin you live a decent life but in the back of your head there's something missing or lacking. And that's the suffering calling you to remind you that "you cant be high all the time". To help you with that personally as I've done it myself , would recommend you to go to an animal shelter as a volunteer and help one day a week. Try a homeless shelter and do the same. Try some empathy with total strangers you won't ever meet, quick example: I was waiting in the line for a cashier and had some items and saw the guy behind me had like tw or 3, probably stuff for his breakfast for work. So I said, go ahead Infront of me you'll go quicker and the guy was like if he hit the lottery that day, said thank you so many times like if I gave him a gold ounce coin or such. Makes you wonder what he's been throu. Try some martial arts but maybe not to get serious hurt but to remind yourself that you are a simple mortal being. I recently try humility with strangers, kinda like one year ago or more I was angry at myself and everyone else, now I do a step back and do stuff more calmly,say more times a day, thank you, sorry, please. Etc. Hope I don't wrote too much and you get the point I'm trying to say. Be gratefull for what you have and try experience some suffering from various sources to remind yourself that you are just a collection of a few atoms and a few lucky situations in the vast galaxy. Did you see the butterfly effect movie? Cheers take care.
- somenewaccount1 4y ago
  Sounds like you just need to redefine what "working" for the company is. If your exhausting yourself at a desk for 8 hours x5 until complete burn out...well...then you go from writing 80% to 0%. How does that help the company? It really doesn't, and your overall average drops real fast (even though your not there). Others maybe already get this (or live like it anyway) and spend less time typing code. Taking care of yourself so you can continue to contribute 4-5x of others is far more beneficial for the company in the long run. Think about the "10x" companies - FANNG if you will - they have bicycles for people to go between campusus's, entire gyms, foosball, etc, etc. They seem like insane perks to the outside world, but it's what give balance to the 10x'ers whom work there - and they do it on company time. Good luck!
- rootingforyou20 4y ago
  OP, don't know you but rooting for you Re eating/getting healthier, 1) food: this guy Rip is truly a lifechanger (esp if since you're in the zone when it would be smart to look after your heart: https://mealplanner.plantstrong.com/ https://mealplanner.plantstrong.com/ 2) Lose weight (this approach might be appealing to your engineer'y instinct): https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ 3) Exercise: - Warm up (DO THESE): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QWyyHfARNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QWyyHfARNI - Try to get through a round of this w/ good form + then try to do 2, 3, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSIqbuZC0Y&t=369s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSIqbuZC0Y&t=369s I don't have any career advice for you, leaving is one option but consider that it would great for you to "skill-up" the people around you so when you leave it isn't like they lost their Golden-Boii, but rather bow out like a Bob Iger at Disney & leave them with a glorious future blah blah
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  A tip from me... Try intermittent fasting and spend the 1 hour allotted for lunch on a brisk walk or a short (30-40 minutes) exercise if you have a nearby gym. I think you will feel better. I certainly do, on a similar regime.
  - 100011_100001 4y ago
    Good ideas. Put them in my list.
- prirun 4y ago
  Being the big fish at your current job gives you some advantages. I would talk with your manager and explain that you need to work fewer hours so you can take better care of your physical health. Especially if you combine this with coaching your peers, they may not resent the fact that you are getting some perks they don't get. And if they do, well, that's not your problem. I have worked at many jobs where I received flexibility that others didn't have, and as long as you're not a dick about it, others will accept it because of your obvious value. The alternative is, you quit and then they get all the work. Work isn't everything. If you start working on your health, it will improve your mood and outlook. My guess is, you have an introverted personality and occasional feelings of isolation are just part of it. Try to accept it rather than fix it, because you might find that if you did have peers, that would have its challenges too.
  - pnutjam 4y ago
    aside from your 1 hour lunch, you're entitled to at least a couple 15 minute breaks. Make sure you're stepping away every now and then to take care of yourself. Working from home is not the same as working in the office and we all need to adjust.
- smsm42 4y ago
  You may want to really go to a gym (meaning broadly, any type of physical activity, if it's not a gym but running or biking or anything else for you, it's fine) more. It's amazing how getting regular exercise (and I don't mean just walking around the block, something that really makes you sweat and pushes you to your limits) has positive influence on your mental health - yes, including the work stuff. It's hard to believe until you really experience it, but I can tell you from my experience, if you feel frustrated after a bad work day, there's nothing like putting your big brain on neutral for a while and do some physical exercise, and then you'd be surprised how much better you feel. Do take that hour - it will pay for itself, you'd get much more back in better productivity and better mental (and physical, obviously) health.
- wreath 4y ago
  > I've debated working one hour less than I'm supposed to just so that I can exercise daily, but I find myself worrying that without me things will fall apart. So be it. This may be harmful to your team/company in the short term but it will make it clear that there is a gap in output and productivity within the team that must be addressed. Go lift heavy weights (im talking about iron).
  - lowercased 4y ago
    Came here to say something similar, as I feel the OP's "fall apart" comment too. However, my bigger anxiety is not that it'll "fall apart", but that things will "fall apart" and then it'll be my role to fix it. If I died, I don't care. If I left the project entirely, I don't care. I've moved on many times over my career. I can live with that. But... if you leave early for a bit, then things "fall apart" and you have to then fix things.... that is the bigger concern. It's the 'fix it' part that bothers me.
    - mk81 4y ago
    - krageon 4y ago
      Timebox your contributions and ensure you work less hours according to everyone. Even it it falls apart, you work for those hours to fix it. Then you leave. Who cares if it breaks more than you have time to fix? Nobody will die (probably) and everyone at that company gets paid to pull their weight. Time for them to do so.
    - wreath 4y ago
      This has been my experience. It became an expectation _of my peers_ that I am the one who should step in to fix stuff when it breaks as if Im the sole owner.
- rexpop 4y ago
  > I have four kids, I am everything BUT lonely with them. This is inadequate. Adults need "love" and companionship from adults in our lives. The love of children is inadequate; we must also have strong ties with buddies, pals, compatriots, and colleagues for mental health. Children can never fully deplete adult loneliness.
  - flakyfilibuster 4y ago
    In addition to this - having people "around" you - does not negate the fact, that you still can be lonely
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  > I actually do not think I'm the smartest person in the room, hell two of the people in my direct team are definitely smarter than me. I think I have really good systems that allow me to consistently solve problems and write code. I had the exact same experience in my first job, where I was one of the least experienced developers and I wasn't even remotely the smartest one there. However, I was working smarter than everyone else. For example, I was the only one that had adopted a "proper" IDE (IntelliJ IDEA). I was the only one using the source control the way it was supposed to be used. I was the only one using scripts to automate the gruntwork. Etc... I could be told about a bug and the function name it was in and be done fixing it in under a minute. Literally just the "global semantic search" feature of the the IDE saved me hours of time compared to everyone else. Incremental builds saved me another hour. Automated tests running in the background eliminated an hour of manual testing. Hilariously, the reason I leaned on the tools so heavily was that I felt like I wasn't good enough to navigate the codebase without the assistance of an IDE. The end result was that I could run circles around everyone else. Like you, I compared the checkins per week and I was #1 by far. Literally more fixes per unit time than everyone else combined. This should be a lesson for everyone here who thinks that they are smart, or experienced, or "senior": - Your typing speed is not your velocity. It doesn't matter how good you are with VI or Emacs if you take hours to complete a task that a purpose-built IDE lets a junior developer finish in a minute. - Tooling outside of the editor matters. Incremental builds matter. Automated tests matter. Telemetry from production matters. - Focusing on features while there are open bugs is a guaranteed catastrophe. You will have to fix the bugs sooner or later anyway. You can fix them right now, or you'll have to compensate for them while adding features... and then fix them later, after having wasted your own time. Etc...
  - hughlilly 4y ago
    Out of interest, what language was the project written in, and what kinds of testing tools did you use?
    - jwilber 4y ago
      Given the mention of IntelliJ I’d assume Java or scala (probably the former).
- aiisjustanif 4y ago
  > Nevertheless I feel that if I'm supposed to be working from 8-5 (which 1 hour lunch), I need to actually be working. Maybe it’s my young mentality but, you gotta change this opinion first. If you did enough work in a week to be 40 hours worth then go take time for yourself. Results are more important than hours, give back some hours to yourself and focus on your health and exercise. Go join a fitness class, bike group, running club, something and make friends.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  > I find myself worrying that without me things will fall apart. > Logically, I know that's not true. If I died today, the company or my team would not collapse. Even before I got to the next sentence I recognized this from my own experience. You’re experiencing acute burnout. It’s hard to disconnect from that, but I can tell you (again from experience) that you need to find a way to do that. My advice is to set yourself a goal, to become a .1x developer for a clearly defined amount of time. A month is a great minimum. Go travel or even just find a fishing hole or something that feels relaxing and detached from work and just… don’t be at work. Either you come back recharged and reassured that your team is as capable as your rational-voice mind is telling you, or you come back to flames and realize you deserve a better role that supports you. Regardless, you come back with some time away to rest and think about what you want for your life, including whatever is next in your career.
- EFreethought 4y ago
  What are these "really good systems that allow me to consistently solve problems and write code"? I assume you are referring to some sort of productivity methodology like GTD.
- roguas 4y ago
  Listen, if you are so good at your job you stand in front of 2 choices. Downgrade time spent and enjoy personal life more or upgrade your title/team/company. If you are working salaried job and not earning 3x as your peer, yet you worry things will fall apart? Something is not right. Most likely you need to ease a bit on work, see nothing will fall apart or if it does ask for huge raise.
mepiethree 4y ago
Meh. 16 people from work came to my wedding (including my best man). You can be social at work without it ruining your life
- ziddoap 4y ago
  This doesn't run counter to what I said, really. I believe that if you are already feeling lonely, despite working somewhere for X number of years, the solution is very likely not going to be found at that same place of work. If you have friends at work and they come to your wedding, congratulations, my thoughts on the situation are not suitable for your situation and you are more than welcome to (and should) ignore it.
hoten 4y ago
I like to say I aim to be the second dumbest person in any room.
- amelius 4y ago
  And Feynman was in the wrong room his entire life.
  - dfcowell 4y ago
    To his credit, it wasn’t for lack of trying. He was in a lot of pretty good rooms.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    The mathematicial physicist Ray Streater on his website did tell a story where Feynman was definitely in the wrong room.
  - cranium 4y ago
    Well, he met von Neumann a few times.
- kilroy123 4y ago
  Couldn't agree more. You never want to be the dumbest one in the room. Stressful and dangerous position to find oneself in.
throwaway012299 4y ago
> “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” Easier said than done. I found smarter people only in few teams in FAANGs, but never in other companies. Unfortunately there are many other aspects that we need to balance out in life other than being in the right room.
- ziddoap 4y ago
  >Easier said than done. My next line literally says "I know saying this is easier than doing it," >Unfortunately there are many other aspects that we need to balance out in life other than being in the right room. And then I finish with "work/life balance is so much more than just what hours you work" So... yes. I agree?
amelius 4y ago
> seek upward movement until you no longer feel like you're the smartest person in the room. What do you mean by "upward"? If it's the classical meaning: you're not guaranteed to find smarter people higher in the organization.
- ziddoap 4y ago
  Of course it's not a guarantee, I didn't intend my message to make it seem like it was. I think upward movement has a higher chance than downward movement, though. And considering staying where OP is at is causing issues, I said upward. I could have said "seek movement until you no longer feel like you're the smartest person in the room", I guess.
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kromem 4y ago
Then you finally meet the smartest person you've ever met and, statistically given the quality of the room and their excellence above and beyond it, ever will meet. And you realize that person spends their life handing out wisdom which consistently just falls on deaf ears. It's an empty journey with an unsatisfying end even if you make it to the top. The money's great, but if you are smart enough to be constantly walking into bigger and better rooms, you should also be smart enough to realize there's diminishing returns on personal wealth but diminishing supply on personal time. Sometimes the best strategy in winning a game is not to play.
- dmichulke 4y ago
  Fully agree. As an aside, you can be smartest in programming and even managing teams but you might still not be most sociable, strongest, most musical, richest, most charismatic, funniest, most attractive, <insert adjective here> person. If the only measure you go by is IQ, you're childishly defining the game all other kids are supposed to play and then wonder why no one plays with you. That would definitely not be smart.
xpe 4y ago
> “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” > I know saying this is easier than doing it, but; seek upward movement until you no longer feel like you're the smartest person in the room. Since there are many dimensions of intelligence, the above is very underspecified. Once you disabuse yourself of the fallacy that there is a single dimension of intelligence, it opens up a whole new world of possible mindsets. This allows you to rethink your goals and even your metrics for fulfillment. Perhaps it is more rewarding to think of how you complement others, for example, in terms of capabilities, personality types, and life experience.
- User23 4y ago
  Spoken like a true midwit. Having had the extreme privilege of actually working with some really exceptionally smart people I can assure you that intelligence is a general trait without any significant extradimensionality. The best possible outcome for any organization that has such a person is not the crab bucket ideology you propose, but rather celebrating that exceptional person and benefiting from that person.
  - thrwouybgt 4y ago
    Spoken like someone with low eq. Intelligence has many forms, athletically gifted, musical, emotional, the list goes on. Your classical & narrow definition of intelligence is outdated. To be a true polymath - as is hinted throughout this entire discussion, there's a need to nurture more than ones intellectual prowess.
    - webmaven 4y ago
      > Intelligence has many forms, athletically gifted, musical, emotional, the list goes on. I'm slowly coming around to the idea that intelligence doesn't have dimensions or types per se, but something skin to modes that are skill-like, and while there are aptitudes (largely biophysical) that may either preclude or predispose one to enjoy certain activities, what really determines ability in particular modes is how much you invest into practicing that mode (often unconsciously), simply because that's what you find comfortable or pleasant. You get high EQ if you enjoy figuring people out so you spend more time doing that, but other factors like introversion may affect how often you afford yourself the opportunity to even try. You'll have a low EQ if you find it hard to meet people's gaze directly. In general, high EQ is correlated with empathy (so you enjoy anticipating other's needs). However, psychopaths lack empathy, but if they are highly intelligent (ie. high g) they are often extremely observant master manipulators of others' emotions. Someone who is tone deaf is unlikely to be particularly interested in music (possible exception: percussion). Manual dexterity (but not necessarily hand-eye coordination) figures in pretty strongly for mastering an instrument. Perfect pitch is definitely a nice-to-have, but some people don't have a voice with a particularly broad range. So who is more "musical" , the popular and theatrical singer-songwriter (that doesn't actually write any of their own songs), or the Pop songwriter that can't sing and gets stage fright? Perhaps the renowned violin or classical guitar player? Ability in higher (or "pure") mathematics is somewhat associated with musicality (though not the reverse), but neither is particularly correlated with arithmetic (which is what most people mean when they say they aren't good at math). I suspect that what's actually going on is that high g individuals who enjoy constructing deconstructing and recombining particular kinds of abstractions that often can be aesthetically represented as mathematics or as music. Nudge that aptitude in one direction and you get a mathematician. Nudge it a different way and you get a musician. Athletic giftedness is most dependent on things like physical build[0], genes that code for building extra muscle, other genes that code for more efficient oxygen transport, higher pain tolerance, and so on. Fast reflexes can help, and a lack of any number of contraindicators like poor eyesight or vestibular problems. The closest we have to an innate "athletic intelligence" is proprioception, and I think the jury is out as to whether that's an attribute of the central nervous system or not. Basically, if you can get into a state of flow such that what you're doing is just challenging enough to keep you engaged and there isn't anything that derails you, you're going to get better at that thing. If you enjoy doing the thing you're going to enjoy getting better at it. Your aptitudes (including fairly abstract ones like right or left brain dominance, or Big Five personality factors), can push you in particular directions at the outset and keep giving you nudges in that direction, as can your environment, but most people start out with a broader array of these than they end up leaning into. We all know people who stopped drawing because of unkind feedback or comparisons with others in their age group, for example. We've also seen a huge explosion of computer-mediated visual art made by people who never really learned how to draw well with pencil and paper and that use a mouse but not a stylus, that in an earlier age would not have been labelled "artisticly inclined". In short, these so called different intelligences or ways of thinking are more like skills that are encouraged or not by the environment you're situated in (including your body); you get better at them the more you use them at the edge of your ability especially if you think you can get better at them. [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502477/amp/Can-guess-sport-shape-Olympians-body.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502477/amp/Can-gue...

100011_100001 4y ago

I've thought about this. I actually do not think I'm the smartest person in the room, hell two of the people in my direct team are definitely smarter than me. I think I have really good systems that allow me to consistently solve problems and write code. On the loneliness front, I meant in the scope of working. I have four kids, I am everything BUT lonely with them. However, I do agree that aside from work and one of my hobbies I have neglected my health, specifically I need to eat healthier, exercise more and lose some weight. I've debated working one hour less than I'm supposed to just so that I can exercise daily, but I find myself worrying that without me things will fall apart. Logically, I know that's not true. If I died today, the company or my team would not collapse. Nevertheless I feel that if I'm supposed to be working from 8-5 (which 1 hour lunch), I need to actually be working.

ziddoap 4y ago
>two of the people in my direct team are definitely smarter than me How often are you actively learning from and engaging with them on exciting new tech (or the systems you've designed and how they can be further improved, etc.), compared to water-cooler talk?
- 100011_100001 4y ago
  Probably 2-3 times a week actually. My team is specifically the spear point of new tech and integrating it for the company to use. From a point of self-evaluation I think it would help if I tried to listen more than talk.
  - ziddoap 4y ago
    From what I've seen here: you have a family life you enjoy, at least a few competent coworkers that you are actively engaging with and learning from, you're successful and sought-after at your place of work in a field you seem to enjoy, you have a hobby that you're consistent with, you have consistent and not overly-demanding work hours, you've tried challenging yourself by changing sectors, etc. You're hitting all of the points many people are still striving for. Perhaps it may be worthwhile seeking a professional's opinion, as the problem may be deeper-rooted than can be explored via forum.
    - 100011_100001 4y ago
      Thanks for your perspective, and taking the time to express it. I truly appreciate it.
      - Ehh_01 4y ago
        Yo man. It's not a secret that you feel loneliness at the top. But if that's bothering you and on top of that you are saying most if not all areas of your life are good then I have some news for you. So in general humans as a species is destined to suffering. Makin the long philosophy short, humans need to suffer to be able to enjoy happiness. From what you are sayin you live a decent life but in the back of your head there's something missing or lacking. And that's the suffering calling you to remind you that "you cant be high all the time". To help you with that personally as I've done it myself , would recommend you to go to an animal shelter as a volunteer and help one day a week. Try a homeless shelter and do the same. Try some empathy with total strangers you won't ever meet, quick example: I was waiting in the line for a cashier and had some items and saw the guy behind me had like tw or 3, probably stuff for his breakfast for work. So I said, go ahead Infront of me you'll go quicker and the guy was like if he hit the lottery that day, said thank you so many times like if I gave him a gold ounce coin or such. Makes you wonder what he's been throu. Try some martial arts but maybe not to get serious hurt but to remind yourself that you are a simple mortal being. I recently try humility with strangers, kinda like one year ago or more I was angry at myself and everyone else, now I do a step back and do stuff more calmly,say more times a day, thank you, sorry, please. Etc. Hope I don't wrote too much and you get the point I'm trying to say. Be gratefull for what you have and try experience some suffering from various sources to remind yourself that you are just a collection of a few atoms and a few lucky situations in the vast galaxy. Did you see the butterfly effect movie? Cheers take care.
somenewaccount1 4y ago
Sounds like you just need to redefine what "working" for the company is. If your exhausting yourself at a desk for 8 hours x5 until complete burn out...well...then you go from writing 80% to 0%. How does that help the company? It really doesn't, and your overall average drops real fast (even though your not there). Others maybe already get this (or live like it anyway) and spend less time typing code. Taking care of yourself so you can continue to contribute 4-5x of others is far more beneficial for the company in the long run. Think about the "10x" companies - FANNG if you will - they have bicycles for people to go between campusus's, entire gyms, foosball, etc, etc. They seem like insane perks to the outside world, but it's what give balance to the 10x'ers whom work there - and they do it on company time. Good luck!
rootingforyou20 4y ago
OP, don't know you but rooting for you Re eating/getting healthier, 1) food: this guy Rip is truly a lifechanger (esp if since you're in the zone when it would be smart to look after your heart: https://mealplanner.plantstrong.com/ https://mealplanner.plantstrong.com/ 2) Lose weight (this approach might be appealing to your engineer'y instinct): https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ 3) Exercise: - Warm up (DO THESE): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QWyyHfARNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QWyyHfARNI - Try to get through a round of this w/ good form + then try to do 2, 3, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSIqbuZC0Y&t=369s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSIqbuZC0Y&t=369s I don't have any career advice for you, leaving is one option but consider that it would great for you to "skill-up" the people around you so when you leave it isn't like they lost their Golden-Boii, but rather bow out like a Bob Iger at Disney & leave them with a glorious future blah blah
inglor_cz 4y ago
A tip from me... Try intermittent fasting and spend the 1 hour allotted for lunch on a brisk walk or a short (30-40 minutes) exercise if you have a nearby gym. I think you will feel better. I certainly do, on a similar regime.
- 100011_100001 4y ago
  Good ideas. Put them in my list.
prirun 4y ago
Being the big fish at your current job gives you some advantages. I would talk with your manager and explain that you need to work fewer hours so you can take better care of your physical health. Especially if you combine this with coaching your peers, they may not resent the fact that you are getting some perks they don't get. And if they do, well, that's not your problem. I have worked at many jobs where I received flexibility that others didn't have, and as long as you're not a dick about it, others will accept it because of your obvious value. The alternative is, you quit and then they get all the work. Work isn't everything. If you start working on your health, it will improve your mood and outlook. My guess is, you have an introverted personality and occasional feelings of isolation are just part of it. Try to accept it rather than fix it, because you might find that if you did have peers, that would have its challenges too.
- pnutjam 4y ago
  aside from your 1 hour lunch, you're entitled to at least a couple 15 minute breaks. Make sure you're stepping away every now and then to take care of yourself. Working from home is not the same as working in the office and we all need to adjust.
smsm42 4y ago
You may want to really go to a gym (meaning broadly, any type of physical activity, if it's not a gym but running or biking or anything else for you, it's fine) more. It's amazing how getting regular exercise (and I don't mean just walking around the block, something that really makes you sweat and pushes you to your limits) has positive influence on your mental health - yes, including the work stuff. It's hard to believe until you really experience it, but I can tell you from my experience, if you feel frustrated after a bad work day, there's nothing like putting your big brain on neutral for a while and do some physical exercise, and then you'd be surprised how much better you feel. Do take that hour - it will pay for itself, you'd get much more back in better productivity and better mental (and physical, obviously) health.
wreath 4y ago
> I've debated working one hour less than I'm supposed to just so that I can exercise daily, but I find myself worrying that without me things will fall apart. So be it. This may be harmful to your team/company in the short term but it will make it clear that there is a gap in output and productivity within the team that must be addressed. Go lift heavy weights (im talking about iron).
- lowercased 4y ago
  Came here to say something similar, as I feel the OP's "fall apart" comment too. However, my bigger anxiety is not that it'll "fall apart", but that things will "fall apart" and then it'll be my role to fix it. If I died, I don't care. If I left the project entirely, I don't care. I've moved on many times over my career. I can live with that. But... if you leave early for a bit, then things "fall apart" and you have to then fix things.... that is the bigger concern. It's the 'fix it' part that bothers me.
  - mk81 4y ago
  - krageon 4y ago
    Timebox your contributions and ensure you work less hours according to everyone. Even it it falls apart, you work for those hours to fix it. Then you leave. Who cares if it breaks more than you have time to fix? Nobody will die (probably) and everyone at that company gets paid to pull their weight. Time for them to do so.
  - wreath 4y ago
    This has been my experience. It became an expectation _of my peers_ that I am the one who should step in to fix stuff when it breaks as if Im the sole owner.
rexpop 4y ago
> I have four kids, I am everything BUT lonely with them. This is inadequate. Adults need "love" and companionship from adults in our lives. The love of children is inadequate; we must also have strong ties with buddies, pals, compatriots, and colleagues for mental health. Children can never fully deplete adult loneliness.
- flakyfilibuster 4y ago
  In addition to this - having people "around" you - does not negate the fact, that you still can be lonely
jiggawatts 4y ago
> I actually do not think I'm the smartest person in the room, hell two of the people in my direct team are definitely smarter than me. I think I have really good systems that allow me to consistently solve problems and write code. I had the exact same experience in my first job, where I was one of the least experienced developers and I wasn't even remotely the smartest one there. However, I was working smarter than everyone else. For example, I was the only one that had adopted a "proper" IDE (IntelliJ IDEA). I was the only one using the source control the way it was supposed to be used. I was the only one using scripts to automate the gruntwork. Etc... I could be told about a bug and the function name it was in and be done fixing it in under a minute. Literally just the "global semantic search" feature of the the IDE saved me hours of time compared to everyone else. Incremental builds saved me another hour. Automated tests running in the background eliminated an hour of manual testing. Hilariously, the reason I leaned on the tools so heavily was that I felt like I wasn't good enough to navigate the codebase without the assistance of an IDE. The end result was that I could run circles around everyone else. Like you, I compared the checkins per week and I was #1 by far. Literally more fixes per unit time than everyone else combined. This should be a lesson for everyone here who thinks that they are smart, or experienced, or "senior": - Your typing speed is not your velocity. It doesn't matter how good you are with VI or Emacs if you take hours to complete a task that a purpose-built IDE lets a junior developer finish in a minute. - Tooling outside of the editor matters. Incremental builds matter. Automated tests matter. Telemetry from production matters. - Focusing on features while there are open bugs is a guaranteed catastrophe. You will have to fix the bugs sooner or later anyway. You can fix them right now, or you'll have to compensate for them while adding features... and then fix them later, after having wasted your own time. Etc...
- hughlilly 4y ago
  Out of interest, what language was the project written in, and what kinds of testing tools did you use?
  - jwilber 4y ago
    Given the mention of IntelliJ I’d assume Java or scala (probably the former).
aiisjustanif 4y ago
> Nevertheless I feel that if I'm supposed to be working from 8-5 (which 1 hour lunch), I need to actually be working. Maybe it’s my young mentality but, you gotta change this opinion first. If you did enough work in a week to be 40 hours worth then go take time for yourself. Results are more important than hours, give back some hours to yourself and focus on your health and exercise. Go join a fitness class, bike group, running club, something and make friends.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
> I find myself worrying that without me things will fall apart. > Logically, I know that's not true. If I died today, the company or my team would not collapse. Even before I got to the next sentence I recognized this from my own experience. You’re experiencing acute burnout. It’s hard to disconnect from that, but I can tell you (again from experience) that you need to find a way to do that. My advice is to set yourself a goal, to become a .1x developer for a clearly defined amount of time. A month is a great minimum. Go travel or even just find a fishing hole or something that feels relaxing and detached from work and just… don’t be at work. Either you come back recharged and reassured that your team is as capable as your rational-voice mind is telling you, or you come back to flames and realize you deserve a better role that supports you. Regardless, you come back with some time away to rest and think about what you want for your life, including whatever is next in your career.
EFreethought 4y ago
What are these "really good systems that allow me to consistently solve problems and write code"? I assume you are referring to some sort of productivity methodology like GTD.
roguas 4y ago
Listen, if you are so good at your job you stand in front of 2 choices. Downgrade time spent and enjoy personal life more or upgrade your title/team/company. If you are working salaried job and not earning 3x as your peer, yet you worry things will fall apart? Something is not right. Most likely you need to ease a bit on work, see nothing will fall apart or if it does ask for huge raise.

mepiethree 4y ago

Meh. 16 people from work came to my wedding (including my best man). You can be social at work without it ruining your life

ziddoap 4y ago
This doesn't run counter to what I said, really. I believe that if you are already feeling lonely, despite working somewhere for X number of years, the solution is very likely not going to be found at that same place of work. If you have friends at work and they come to your wedding, congratulations, my thoughts on the situation are not suitable for your situation and you are more than welcome to (and should) ignore it.

hoten 4y ago

I like to say I aim to be the second dumbest person in any room.

amelius 4y ago
And Feynman was in the wrong room his entire life.
- dfcowell 4y ago
  To his credit, it wasn’t for lack of trying. He was in a lot of pretty good rooms.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  The mathematicial physicist Ray Streater on his website did tell a story where Feynman was definitely in the wrong room.
- cranium 4y ago
  Well, he met von Neumann a few times.
kilroy123 4y ago
Couldn't agree more. You never want to be the dumbest one in the room. Stressful and dangerous position to find oneself in.

throwaway012299 4y ago

> “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” Easier said than done. I found smarter people only in few teams in FAANGs, but never in other companies. Unfortunately there are many other aspects that we need to balance out in life other than being in the right room.

ziddoap 4y ago
>Easier said than done. My next line literally says "I know saying this is easier than doing it," >Unfortunately there are many other aspects that we need to balance out in life other than being in the right room. And then I finish with "work/life balance is so much more than just what hours you work" So... yes. I agree?

amelius 4y ago

> seek upward movement until you no longer feel like you're the smartest person in the room. What do you mean by "upward"? If it's the classical meaning: you're not guaranteed to find smarter people higher in the organization.

ziddoap 4y ago
Of course it's not a guarantee, I didn't intend my message to make it seem like it was. I think upward movement has a higher chance than downward movement, though. And considering staying where OP is at is causing issues, I said upward. I could have said "seek movement until you no longer feel like you're the smartest person in the room", I guess.

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kromem 4y ago

Then you finally meet the smartest person you've ever met and, statistically given the quality of the room and their excellence above and beyond it, ever will meet. And you realize that person spends their life handing out wisdom which consistently just falls on deaf ears. It's an empty journey with an unsatisfying end even if you make it to the top. The money's great, but if you are smart enough to be constantly walking into bigger and better rooms, you should also be smart enough to realize there's diminishing returns on personal wealth but diminishing supply on personal time. Sometimes the best strategy in winning a game is not to play.

dmichulke 4y ago
Fully agree. As an aside, you can be smartest in programming and even managing teams but you might still not be most sociable, strongest, most musical, richest, most charismatic, funniest, most attractive, <insert adjective here> person. If the only measure you go by is IQ, you're childishly defining the game all other kids are supposed to play and then wonder why no one plays with you. That would definitely not be smart.

xpe 4y ago

> “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” > I know saying this is easier than doing it, but; seek upward movement until you no longer feel like you're the smartest person in the room. Since there are many dimensions of intelligence, the above is very underspecified. Once you disabuse yourself of the fallacy that there is a single dimension of intelligence, it opens up a whole new world of possible mindsets. This allows you to rethink your goals and even your metrics for fulfillment. Perhaps it is more rewarding to think of how you complement others, for example, in terms of capabilities, personality types, and life experience.

User23 4y ago
Spoken like a true midwit. Having had the extreme privilege of actually working with some really exceptionally smart people I can assure you that intelligence is a general trait without any significant extradimensionality. The best possible outcome for any organization that has such a person is not the crab bucket ideology you propose, but rather celebrating that exceptional person and benefiting from that person.
- thrwouybgt 4y ago
  Spoken like someone with low eq. Intelligence has many forms, athletically gifted, musical, emotional, the list goes on. Your classical & narrow definition of intelligence is outdated. To be a true polymath - as is hinted throughout this entire discussion, there's a need to nurture more than ones intellectual prowess.
  - webmaven 4y ago
    > Intelligence has many forms, athletically gifted, musical, emotional, the list goes on. I'm slowly coming around to the idea that intelligence doesn't have dimensions or types per se, but something skin to modes that are skill-like, and while there are aptitudes (largely biophysical) that may either preclude or predispose one to enjoy certain activities, what really determines ability in particular modes is how much you invest into practicing that mode (often unconsciously), simply because that's what you find comfortable or pleasant. You get high EQ if you enjoy figuring people out so you spend more time doing that, but other factors like introversion may affect how often you afford yourself the opportunity to even try. You'll have a low EQ if you find it hard to meet people's gaze directly. In general, high EQ is correlated with empathy (so you enjoy anticipating other's needs). However, psychopaths lack empathy, but if they are highly intelligent (ie. high g) they are often extremely observant master manipulators of others' emotions. Someone who is tone deaf is unlikely to be particularly interested in music (possible exception: percussion). Manual dexterity (but not necessarily hand-eye coordination) figures in pretty strongly for mastering an instrument. Perfect pitch is definitely a nice-to-have, but some people don't have a voice with a particularly broad range. So who is more "musical" , the popular and theatrical singer-songwriter (that doesn't actually write any of their own songs), or the Pop songwriter that can't sing and gets stage fright? Perhaps the renowned violin or classical guitar player? Ability in higher (or "pure") mathematics is somewhat associated with musicality (though not the reverse), but neither is particularly correlated with arithmetic (which is what most people mean when they say they aren't good at math). I suspect that what's actually going on is that high g individuals who enjoy constructing deconstructing and recombining particular kinds of abstractions that often can be aesthetically represented as mathematics or as music. Nudge that aptitude in one direction and you get a mathematician. Nudge it a different way and you get a musician. Athletic giftedness is most dependent on things like physical build[0], genes that code for building extra muscle, other genes that code for more efficient oxygen transport, higher pain tolerance, and so on. Fast reflexes can help, and a lack of any number of contraindicators like poor eyesight or vestibular problems. The closest we have to an innate "athletic intelligence" is proprioception, and I think the jury is out as to whether that's an attribute of the central nervous system or not. Basically, if you can get into a state of flow such that what you're doing is just challenging enough to keep you engaged and there isn't anything that derails you, you're going to get better at that thing. If you enjoy doing the thing you're going to enjoy getting better at it. Your aptitudes (including fairly abstract ones like right or left brain dominance, or Big Five personality factors), can push you in particular directions at the outset and keep giving you nudges in that direction, as can your environment, but most people start out with a broader array of these than they end up leaning into. We all know people who stopped drawing because of unkind feedback or comparisons with others in their age group, for example. We've also seen a huge explosion of computer-mediated visual art made by people who never really learned how to draw well with pencil and paper and that use a mouse but not a stylus, that in an earlier age would not have been labelled "artisticly inclined". In short, these so called different intelligences or ways of thinking are more like skills that are encouraged or not by the environment you're situated in (including your body); you get better at them the more you use them at the edge of your ability especially if you think you can get better at them. [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502477/amp/Can-guess-sport-shape-Olympians-body.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502477/amp/Can-gue...