I think Kanye West put it best "if every move you make you're trying to meet people's expectations, then every day is a test day. And what day was the most stressful in school? Test day"
One thing I recently started doing is not caring about what I "should" be doing when I program. I used to love coding up random sites in basic html javascript with a few jQuery calls. But I was told I "should" be using react js, node js, hosting on specific cloud providers instead of a vps. I'm not saying all the new tools are bad, but I think the problem with the modern web, is it's less about building what you want and much much more about building what is considered "best practice". I think if you want adventures in the web, just start building janky weird stuff. AI is a help in that if you know what to ask for. Just have fun.
The trick is to be in a growing company where new management seats are materializing by the day. Then your manager will be delighted for the help as his number of directs grows beyond what one person can reasonably keep track of.
Product Owner, Product Manager can be loads of fun and very creative at the right company - though both can be high stress in the wrong team/company.
Project Management can be fun if you are organised, Programme Manager if you want it to be a more senior role
Business Analyst can be great - and can get pretty senior.
In some companies the step out of programming and into architecture can be a very different pace, but all companies will vary. In my current company it seems full on but at the last it seemed a great role.
Strategy is really important and loads of people and companies do it poorly - great opportunities to do it well! Can be a lot of board papers and socialisation of ideas, but the pace will be very different, and while there can be some stress, will not be consistent.
Obviously ymmv - find a good company that you like and things will be a lot easier. Important jobs don't have to be high stress.
Your ego and your conscious mind are the source of most of your problems. Meditate to delve deeper and find out who you truly are. (Or more accurately, who you are not.) If you can tap into and sync up with this inner self, your problems will melt away and you will find happiness without needing much.
This isn’t to say that you must get rid of your conscious mind or ego. Simply understand why they’re useful.
Your conscious mind is a focusing tool, like a coach, and your subconscious mind is like the players in charge of the doing. The conscious mind shouldn’t be the one trying to solve everything. The ego cares too much about things that don’t matter like pride, greed, and ruling the universe. It is just trying to protect you from harm and death.
Let go of these feelings and thoughts, and stop trying to be the supreme ruler of the universe. You cannot control nearly as much as you think you can, including yourself. You can only influence.
Be still, let life happen and flow with it like water. Translation: Be perceptive of what’s happening around you and within, then act appropriately by gently guiding everything toward the desired outcome without using force and striving. Patience is key here. Striving makes you use up your energy too quickly and potentially burn out.
When you achieve this state of mind, it feels like you can solve any problem using your mind and ingenuity, and nothing really bothers you anymore. You’ll only spend time on what truly matters to you and your life will become one that’s truly worth living.
I'm somewhat of a slow learner, and one of the main reasons I would rarely ask for help was because people are not as helpful as they think they are. Most of the time it's a lazy attempt to answer questions at the surface level only, and attempting to follow up with further question ends in frustration quickly. People think they're helpful but in fact have small amounts of patience generally speaking. This was obvious when I was student of really good teachers who made sure to answer literally any question without judgement.
Unless you're asking someone who has great confidence in their knowledge, asking a question can lead to an unpleasant situation. I've always scratched my head at this, since to me it's no problem to admit ignorance, but I've come to learn this isn't the case for most people, especially in front of others (i.e. a meeting).
IMHO, getting others to ask more questions starts by allowing others to ask you anything without thinking it has multiple layers of meaning and/or intention.
I now view life as a sort of cosmic experience or simulation. What matters (to me) are the insight you get, the exchange you have with other people, the new perspective you acquire thru life experiences. The external is sort of a theatre (sets, characters, story) but it's the meaning behind the experiences that matters in the end.
So why are we living this experience of overworking?
Perhaps fear of not being good enough, fear of not being accepted as a new hire if we're not giving our 110% constantly, maybe ancient Judeo-Christians beliefs in the value of "hard working to earn one's place in heaven" or something.
Ultimately it's you job to protect your mental, physical and emotional energy/health.
A big part of me wants to just quit and get a job where I can turn my brain off for 9 hours and then spend my free time dedicating my brain power to personal projects and actually build things. I've stopped all personal projects because after 9 hours at work, the last thing I want to do is sit in that chair for another second.
I, for one, wholeheartedly endorse this plan. I think it's a mistake to expect to derive significant joy / self-actualization / gratification / whatever from your "job". A "job" is just a means to pay the bills - put food on the table, buy gas, pay rent, pay electric bill, etc., to enable you to do the things that you actually enjoy doing. I mean, sure, if you happen to enjoy your job, then that's a nice bonus. My problem is with the idea that your job should the primary focus of your life.
Likewise, if by happenstance the "thing" you do outside of work happens to be very similar to what you do at the job (eg, "programming", just in a different domain) then so be it. That's fine. It's fine to say "I love coding for AI research I'm doing at home, but hate coding the same boring CRUD app at $BIGBANK for 9 hours a day." The big thing to watch for here is IP conflicts, especially if you intend to commercialize what you do at home (or think there's even a chance you might).
If anything, count yourself lucky for coming to this (apparently) fairly soon in your career. It took me a long time to figure that out.
Of course the article is less about good coffee or bad coffee but about how coffee is intertwined with our lives and our culture (at least, American culture). For example, the author mentioned Perkins and I knew exactly what he was talking about. The stories about his stepdad Ted were touching as well.
Two memorable coffee experiences come to my mind.
One was a dinner I had with the late John Vlissides (probably known to some HN denizens as one of the Gang of Four design patterns folks) at a basement Indian restaurant in San Francisco. The meal was excellent, and for some reason we had coffee afterward instead of the usual masala chai. The coffee was far from bad, in fact it was quite good, so we asked about it. The waiter came back with the answer. It was not Peet's, not Graffeo, not some gourmet roaster I had never of. It was Hills Brothers. Hills Brothers was (I guess still is) an old school coffee roaster founded in San Francisco in 1900.
Soon after, I went to the grocery store and bought a can of Hills Brothers coffee and brewed a pot. It was disappointing. Not nearly as good as the coffee we had that night in the restaurant. It could be that Hills Brothers delivered different coffee to bulk buyers such as restaurants as opposed to the retail market. Or the difference could have been my dining companions.
Another coffee memory is hauling my late parents' 50+ year old Pyrex glass percolator out of the closet and brewing a pot. I remember when I was a kid, watching the clear water start to boil, and droplets of coffee falling from the grounds basket into the water, turning it first reddish brown, then darker brown, and then finally black. There is something mesmerizing about watching coffee percolate this way. After it was done I had a cup. It tasted kind of burnt, but at the same time kind of thin and weak. Not terrible, but not really very good. I don't think I made it incorrectly; I think this is how coffee always was for my parents. Hm, that was a while ago. It's about time to haul out the percolator again.
> Nobody reviews it for days because everyone is busy working on their own stuff.
Just ask people nicely. If they do your review promptly and objectively, ask again.
> You end up in an endless back and forth with one or more reviewers (e.g. push-review-fix-push-review-fix-push-review...).
The fault is clearly theirs in this case. They're being obsessive and not showing respect for your time. In any case, if it's one person doing this, you can ask them to pre-review your solution with them before you start implementing it.
Recognized that procrastination was often a form of emotional soothing - got stressed thinking about starting a task, and promising that I'd start it 'tomorrow' removed that immediate threat. Which worked until the stress of not completing a task was greater than the stress of starting it.
Introspection on why I was stressed starting a task and changes for each type:
-Sometimes ambiguous and I didn't know where to start: break it down, and treat 'getting oriented' as a discrete task
-Sometimes I was giving myself pressure that it had to be 'perfect': approaching it via iterations
-Sometimes I was just too tired to start: understanding my energy cycles and scheduling to do the hard parts right after coffee. And scheduling it.
Other commenters suggesting great other techniques, but for me the core was understanding and leaning in to the sources of anxiety to know what techniques to try. I'm still not perfect, but getting better.
> I think there are three main kinds of career destination, at least in the tech industry:
> Independent
> Senior individual contributor (IC)
> Management
I guess I'll stick my neck out and just admit that I don't want to give any more fucks about any of the above and just wake up, sip my tea, read the news and take a bloody nap whenever I want to. Also volunteering/open source but mostly, not doing things I don't want to do any more. Yep, I don't want to be "incredibly excited" about the "next growth chapter of my life" - I just want to live my life in a non-agile way without sprinting towards the end of it. That is about it.
> How far can a boring person with diversified interest go?
Diversified interests sounds like the opposite of boring to me.
> If one doesn't aim for excellence, is it a bad thing?
It probably indicates that your actual interests lie in something other than what you are currently doing. One suggestion I found useful was to make two columns on a sheet of paper and keep it at your desk. The first column is "I loved this!" and the other is "I hated this". When you find yourself enjoying a task (or vice-versa), write it down. The theory is that our interests are surprisingly specific. The guy saying this (Erwin McManus if I recall correctly) said that he is really excited by helping people find their passions. Not pursue them, find them. It helped me identify some of the areas I enjoy, so I've pursued jobs in those areas.
> I am jack of all trades but master of none.
Reframe this: I know a little bit about everything, so no matter what your problem is, I can solve it. I might not solve it the most efficiently, but if you need a problem solved, I'll solve it.
Some environments need raw production. Some need carefully crafted algorithms. Some need prototypes held together with duct tape. Some need solidly connected piping. Breadth favors some environments over others. Breadth is helpful for freelance contracting, for instance, since clients have a problem and want the assurance that you have already solved a similar problem before, so the more difference environments you have worked with, the more likely you will look like someone who can solve their problem.
I wouldn't worry too hard, though. (Nor would I recommend jumping in to freelancing too early.) If you're early in your career, focus on figuring out what it is that you enjoy, and leverage your skills to slowly move in that direction. And figure out what your boundaries are (hrs/week, pay, on-call, etc.), so that you know what things to avoid. There's plenty of software jobs besides FAANG out there.
