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The boredom is a surprise killer. I left Meta for similar reasons and left behind much more income. Don't regret it all.

Melting_Harps 4y ago
> The boredom is a surprise killer. I left Meta for similar reasons and left behind much more income. Don't regret it all. Can you elaborate? Personally speaking, after COVID I think I just learned what mattered most in life was how I spent my time rather than what I could do in order exchange my labour for material things that justified being bored, upset, unenthusiastic etc... I was rather active during COVID (I volunteered where I could just to get out of the house) and then traveled quite extensively from late 2020 onward, and to be honest I'm glad I did because I had grown tired of most things but 'the money' was making me do it. That has all gone away, now I feel I want to be challenged in my next role to keep me engaged but I don't want to be dependent on my employer for purpose in some existential validation cycle like I have at other times in my career, either. I'm taking my time studying a BSc in AI/ML and it's given me a chance to study at my own pace while looking and interacting with the projects that appeal to me most to see if it can meet the aforementioned criteria.
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  It's simple, I came to the end of a journey (the final public artifact: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3477132.3483572 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3477132.3483572 ). The thing was built, the organization was flushed out, and I helped grow a bunch of staff engineers to do what was needed. I succeeded as a leader and put myself out of a job. At the end, they didn't know what to do with me, and I didn't want to deal with much of the day to day nonsense. I moved back to the midwest because being closer to friends and family became very important. Now, I mess around with https://www.adama-platform.com https://www.adama-platform.com which is fun when I can mess with it, and I can run the company how I see fit. For example, I believe in being 100% honest with no B.S.
  - Melting_Harps 4y ago
    Very cool. > I succeeded as a leader and put myself out of a job. I can relate. As a former co-founder of a fintech startup I measured my success not on ARR or ROI (it was bootstrapped 75% of it's existence before we reached profitability) but how soon I would be deemed unnecessary as the network and ecosystem had matured sufficiently in order for my userbase to not rely on me as I was mainly hand-holding in that regard: I automated what I could when I could and what task was left became ever smaller as we transitioned to B2C to mainly B2B and what little customer facing tasks remained I could just do with standardized weekly consultations or speaking engagements at conferences which felt more like sales more than anything. It's off putting at first to think this is success after grinding just keep your head above water all those years, but it's rather gratifying isn't? To sit back and just say 'well, I guess that's it for me.' I've been struggling with the 'what's next' thing more than I thought I would, but that may be because of I've monetized all my hobbies and I subconsciously fear doing it again.
    - mathgladiator 4y ago
      My advice for the struggle is to reset via Ketamine. I'm currently going through it, and almost immediately after starting treatment I was able to play with Legos again. Honestly, I feel a little bit like a kid again. I also recommend doing something crazy and not by the book. For example, my new company is https://www.adama-platform.com/ https://www.adama-platform.com/ which is going to be exceptionally hard to turn into a real business since my focus is so diluted. However, instead of focusing on profitability, I'm focusing on joy of building. I'm doing everything "wrong". If you read the blog, then you can read between the lines as I struggle between "doing the tactically smart thing" versus "doing the joyful building".
      - Melting_Harps 4y ago
        > My advice for the struggle is to reset via Ketamine. I used to do MDMA and psilocybin after hitting certain benchmarks/projects, and while it was useful to get the 'bigger picture' to come into focus, I'm not sure I want to do that again as all it did was justify why I acted with such imperatives to take those kind of risks/damage and never correct my behaviour. Ketamine is interesting, I went to a lot of DnB nights and that was often the drug of choice depending on the kind of night and I didn't like what it looked like when people on the dance floor gave into the 'k hole' so I steered away from it entirely. It's gaining usage in the US as a way to help with depression and such, which I don't think i have as I'm usually the most optimistic person in most rooms. Also, Ive never done anything 'by the book' either, I was always defying conventional wisdom as I simply didn't think my efforts contributed to much by doing the same thing that everyone else was. My startup in particular used Bitcoin to bypass financial censorship, and at the time no one cared about building a payment processor or offering financial services for Ag related businesses that were suffering from illogical censorship laws because alts and then ICOs (and then NFTs) were where the money was made from VCs. No, what I struggle with is with the enormity of the problems I see and not wanting to get involved even though I achieved my goals' I can't help but expend a large significant part of time and mental bandwidth hyper-focused on these issues, and seeing very little financial backing outside of minuscule angel investment. I did the MIT Clim-CoLab and their were a lot of promising technologies that didn't require much funding but most would never be able to go beyond a proof of concept phase.
Brogrammer69 4y ago
I have an interview with Meta (frontend) next week, what should I expect day-to-day working with them? 1. Will they overwork me like a slave? 2. Is there work-life balance? (i.e work productive 4 hours) Or am I expected to work 12-16 hour days every day (or at least 'appear online' for 16 hours)? 3. Meetings, how many meetings am I expected to attend per day? 4. Colleagues are mostly a-holes or normal people? 5. How do my colleagues feel about working there day-to-day? 6. Will I be micromanaged? Thanks a ton in advance
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  The bad news is that it the answers all depend on the team you join. The good news is that, assuming you are not pre-allocated, then have a choice between teams. I recommend choosing a team that has had a manager in the manager role for at least 2 years.

Melting_Harps 4y ago

> The boredom is a surprise killer. I left Meta for similar reasons and left behind much more income. Don't regret it all. Can you elaborate? Personally speaking, after COVID I think I just learned what mattered most in life was how I spent my time rather than what I could do in order exchange my labour for material things that justified being bored, upset, unenthusiastic etc... I was rather active during COVID (I volunteered where I could just to get out of the house) and then traveled quite extensively from late 2020 onward, and to be honest I'm glad I did because I had grown tired of most things but 'the money' was making me do it. That has all gone away, now I feel I want to be challenged in my next role to keep me engaged but I don't want to be dependent on my employer for purpose in some existential validation cycle like I have at other times in my career, either. I'm taking my time studying a BSc in AI/ML and it's given me a chance to study at my own pace while looking and interacting with the projects that appeal to me most to see if it can meet the aforementioned criteria.

mathgladiator 4y ago
It's simple, I came to the end of a journey (the final public artifact: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3477132.3483572 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3477132.3483572 ). The thing was built, the organization was flushed out, and I helped grow a bunch of staff engineers to do what was needed. I succeeded as a leader and put myself out of a job. At the end, they didn't know what to do with me, and I didn't want to deal with much of the day to day nonsense. I moved back to the midwest because being closer to friends and family became very important. Now, I mess around with https://www.adama-platform.com https://www.adama-platform.com which is fun when I can mess with it, and I can run the company how I see fit. For example, I believe in being 100% honest with no B.S.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  Very cool. > I succeeded as a leader and put myself out of a job. I can relate. As a former co-founder of a fintech startup I measured my success not on ARR or ROI (it was bootstrapped 75% of it's existence before we reached profitability) but how soon I would be deemed unnecessary as the network and ecosystem had matured sufficiently in order for my userbase to not rely on me as I was mainly hand-holding in that regard: I automated what I could when I could and what task was left became ever smaller as we transitioned to B2C to mainly B2B and what little customer facing tasks remained I could just do with standardized weekly consultations or speaking engagements at conferences which felt more like sales more than anything. It's off putting at first to think this is success after grinding just keep your head above water all those years, but it's rather gratifying isn't? To sit back and just say 'well, I guess that's it for me.' I've been struggling with the 'what's next' thing more than I thought I would, but that may be because of I've monetized all my hobbies and I subconsciously fear doing it again.
  - mathgladiator 4y ago
    My advice for the struggle is to reset via Ketamine. I'm currently going through it, and almost immediately after starting treatment I was able to play with Legos again. Honestly, I feel a little bit like a kid again. I also recommend doing something crazy and not by the book. For example, my new company is https://www.adama-platform.com/ https://www.adama-platform.com/ which is going to be exceptionally hard to turn into a real business since my focus is so diluted. However, instead of focusing on profitability, I'm focusing on joy of building. I'm doing everything "wrong". If you read the blog, then you can read between the lines as I struggle between "doing the tactically smart thing" versus "doing the joyful building".
    - Melting_Harps 4y ago
      > My advice for the struggle is to reset via Ketamine. I used to do MDMA and psilocybin after hitting certain benchmarks/projects, and while it was useful to get the 'bigger picture' to come into focus, I'm not sure I want to do that again as all it did was justify why I acted with such imperatives to take those kind of risks/damage and never correct my behaviour. Ketamine is interesting, I went to a lot of DnB nights and that was often the drug of choice depending on the kind of night and I didn't like what it looked like when people on the dance floor gave into the 'k hole' so I steered away from it entirely. It's gaining usage in the US as a way to help with depression and such, which I don't think i have as I'm usually the most optimistic person in most rooms. Also, Ive never done anything 'by the book' either, I was always defying conventional wisdom as I simply didn't think my efforts contributed to much by doing the same thing that everyone else was. My startup in particular used Bitcoin to bypass financial censorship, and at the time no one cared about building a payment processor or offering financial services for Ag related businesses that were suffering from illogical censorship laws because alts and then ICOs (and then NFTs) were where the money was made from VCs. No, what I struggle with is with the enormity of the problems I see and not wanting to get involved even though I achieved my goals' I can't help but expend a large significant part of time and mental bandwidth hyper-focused on these issues, and seeing very little financial backing outside of minuscule angel investment. I did the MIT Clim-CoLab and their were a lot of promising technologies that didn't require much funding but most would never be able to go beyond a proof of concept phase.

Brogrammer69 4y ago

I have an interview with Meta (frontend) next week, what should I expect day-to-day working with them? 1. Will they overwork me like a slave? 2. Is there work-life balance? (i.e work productive 4 hours) Or am I expected to work 12-16 hour days every day (or at least 'appear online' for 16 hours)? 3. Meetings, how many meetings am I expected to attend per day? 4. Colleagues are mostly a-holes or normal people? 5. How do my colleagues feel about working there day-to-day? 6. Will I be micromanaged? Thanks a ton in advance

mathgladiator 4y ago
The bad news is that it the answers all depend on the team you join. The good news is that, assuming you are not pre-allocated, then have a choice between teams. I recommend choosing a team that has had a manager in the manager role for at least 2 years.