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.
I wrote a whole reply echoing another reply about how this article isn’t about maximizing money or status (though most of these articles are about that), that this article is just about staying competitive. But then I really thought about what you wrote and I think you’re saying that is besides the point, if you have good work life balance and really value that then it’s essentially maybe ok to give up some competitive edge.
Here I will caution you, that is a trap which I think the article is trying to get at. I am one of those people who stayed too long at a job where I was losing my competitive edge because I felt like I had a great work-life balance! And work was fun! But one day I realized I’m actually being asked to eat a lot of crap so to speak that I hadn’t really noticed before and once I started to look for the exit it was obvious it was going to be harder than it should be because I had stagnated.
Moral of my story (and this article), is stay competitive, you don’t have to crush it, but don’t lean back too far either.
that this article is just about staying competitive.
Moral of my story (and this article), is stay competitive, you don’t have to crush it, but don’t lean back too far either.
There are a large number of people, including smart and successful and accomplished people, who work to live, not live to work.
For the people who live to work (myself included), it's a good reminder to stay competitive and avoid complacency. But you have to understand yourself and what you're looking for. And that's what I think the real moral of the story is: understand what you want, what makes you happy, and what gives you meaning and purpose. Then make sure you're working towards that. Too many people forget to do the first thing and skip straight to the second because they inherit the answer from their environment without questioning it.
For lots of people the answer to that question is not career related.
But the value of "staying competitive" is to better earn money and status. It's less greedy than maximizing money/status, but it's on the same line of pursuit.
The parent's point is that there are more aspects in life than work that you can improve on (eating healthier would be one of them). And as long as your work can sustain your life, you are free to choose to work on something else.
Of course, you can choose to focus even more on working, too, if you please.
I don't know about that, in my experience careers are built on political skills as much as actual ability to do your job. Then there is the obvious problem that winning the rat race makes it pretty clear that you are a rat. I prefer to leave all that to the budding sociopaths.
>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 was exactly my reaction. I was a lead for three years and recently decided to go back to a purely technical role. I just didn't like the work, and the prospect of spending the rest of my career in middle management was not appealing.
I currently received an offer from a FAANG(M) company. This was a real offer from someone I had worked with in the past which would have required a very thin interview process. I declined because I very much enjoy the work I'm doing today.
It may turn out to be a bad idea down the road if all I consider is money and that nice company name on my resume. I decided I don't care. I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond and work on truly interesting tech than be another cog in the wheel. I'm well past the "live to work" phase of my life, I just want to be happy, and I can't complain at all about my salary and benefits.
Fortunately, many companies have individual contributor engineering ladder all the way up. My personal ideal endgame is a position like a principal / staff engineer. While I can't compare to people like John Carmack or Rob Pike or Greg Kroah-Hartman, but they show what can be achieved.
(Founding a company is another possible route, much more risky, though.)
> 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
Someone needs to write "waste your personal life, one comfortable year at a time".
Yes, this is much more important. I love my job, but I'm not defined by it. I long ago realized and decided that I had no interest in chasing the next step up if it meant never having a stable personal life.
For me, keeping yourself relevant is not about money per se, but about freedom. Freedom to control your life instead of being controlled by an employer. By trading some current comfort (good work-life balance and low stress) for current discomfort (finding a new job and challenging yourself to grow) you make your "personal business" stronger (that is what value you and your career bring to prospective employers). That means if I do lose my job or my current employment situation goes south, I have less stress because I know my personal brand is strong and can go many places without fear.
Bottom line, moving to a new job regularly is about investing in yourself and allowing you to control the direction of your life and not allowing others to control it.
A lot of young people around here dismiss money and status as superficial goals and hurt themselves in the long run. Once you leave the roughly egalitarian youth and college phase where everyone is roughly at a similar level (at least in your bubble), roads start diverging and money and status become more important than people especially idealistic nerds would imagine. The world is a cold hard place that doesn't give two shits what happens to you, whether you can make a living, provide your family or not.
I don't mean to say that you have to enter the rat race and keep up with the Joneses and burn out. I just mean that money and status are these dirty words that are taboo to admit caring about in some circles, but it is money and status that earn you freedom and the ability to not give a fuck what people who you don't respect think about you. It is the only thing that will make annoying people you don't care about still act as if they respected you so you can concentrate on all the people and things you do care about.
> a happy position with a great work life balance that encourages and enables you to both improve yourself and - particularly - your non-worklife
Any advice for scoring this on my personal OKRs? I’m vacillating between 0.6 and 0.7 for this quarter, and I’m circling back with the other members of my household this afternoon.
Depends on your motivations. It might also depend on your location.
Silicon Valley culture sort of expects you to move around every few years - you will get a more well-rounded perspective both technically and personally.
In other places, particularly with different employment opportunities, the picture might be different.
The one that got me here was "misplaced loyalty" because looking back, most of the companies I've worked for are either radically different or ...gone.
>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...]
The person writing this post lives for his job. His goal is to have a job that brings him some combination of achieving job related results, learning job related skills and earning money from that job. And if the current job situation is not optimized for that (no learning opportunities,
no achievement opportunities limiting future employment opportunities etc.) it should be seen as a cancer.
While it’s a completely valid point of view to not live for your job, but to do your job to (financially) facilitate your life: earn money in a stable (but from the authors point of view boring and pointless) job so you can take nice vacations with your wife and kids. Or keep a “9 to 5 job” because you like to explore foreign cinema and Russian literature from “5 to 11”, while the author is still busting his ass so he’ll end high on the corporate ladder in the future.
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.
Do you mean that perspectives change into the 40s and 50s?
I find that I'm considering this much more now that I'm in my 40s, because I know that as a generalist developer, I will be slowing down in skills compared to the younger devs, so I need to make sure my career is developing in areas that value my experience and soft skills.
I think it's even easier to get complacent with not challenging those soft skills and "tech wisdom" by staying too long in one role.
One thing to always keep in mind is that your job can disappear very quickly.
If, or when, that happens those who've spent years in the comfort of that nice work-life balance and often, frankly, mediocrity (you don't improve yourself by staying in the comfort of such a job) are in for a shock.
Absolutely (with the qualification there are certainly comfortable jobs you can continuously advance your skills in), but the counter is that life disappears very quickly too, and if you have spent your whole energy and time prioritising your career you are in danger of finding a far greater shock when you are looking back on what is actually meaningful in your life.
exactly. I work with a guy who has a family, and probably stopped growing career wise years ago. But he makes good money, he enjoys the company, and he seems happy. He has enough depth of skill that if he were to get laid off, he could easily find another job in that area.
For a while I looked down at him, like “dude why are you stagnating?” But over time I could see why he’s doing what he’s doing, and it works for him. Maybe I’m wrong and if he got laid off he would have difficulty finding another job. But that’s his choice, relative to living with daily stress of stretching and pushing to the next level.
I think the people who are making poor choices are those who are driven by fear - they want to grow, they aren’t, and they are afraid to make a move. Or they fear being disloyal, or whatever.
I myself stayed in my second job far too long, and have regretted it since.
Since being at my current company, I’ve done something like this, though less formally. I went thru a period of 6 months where I was having less impact and I felt like I hit a “ceiling”, so I kept pushing for a different role. Then covid hit, some people left, priorities change, and now I have a perfect role and am growing again. If covid hadn’t happened I think I would’ve needed to start looking. I love my current company so was willing to wait it out a bit longer.
Really I think the only part of the post that's particularly status/money driven is:
> If you are an average 30 yr old engineer, let's say you want to retire reasonably by the time you are 60. You have at best 120 quarters left to make something of yourself. A year wasted at a poor job or role is equivalent to you throwing away 3.3% of your career. The older you get, the steeper your loss is.
Which sort of implies that what matters is where you end up at the end of your career, not enjoying yourself a long the way. I guess this isn't so much "status/money" as it is "destination vs. journey", but I feel like those can be related.
That said, I found most of the rest of the post to be much more broadly applicable. The Accomplishment/Impact/Growth/Challenge/Community framework I thought was especially good/useful to keep in mind.
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.
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.
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!
Many of these types of posts of reflections of the insecurity of the authors.
You don’t want to be like one of the IBM lifers back in the day who sat around waiting to get culled like a steer. But staying at a job where you enjoy what you do usually isn’t a bad move.
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.
Even so you have to choose between status/money and skill. The way SV thinks about engineering is under the influence of billions of dollars being poured into 90s tech for incremental improvements. Linux. Java. Javascript. The research community has long known how to do better but change doesn't benefit monopolies.
> Now is the time to take risks and optimize for learning!
Why is now the time to take risks? Long term debilitating losses have more years to compound for you. For example if you crash in a motorcycle and are paralyzed you'll have to spend more years in a wheel chair than someone who is older.
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.
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.
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.
> Ugh. The mind of a narcissist on full display here.
Is this ad-hominem really necessary? The author didn't make character attacks on anyone, I don't see why you feel the need to do so.
> You must be some bottom-feeding moron who doesn't understand that [Unicorn Co]'s valuation just rose 4x YoY.
Contrast this to what the author actually said:
"Optimizing learning over money early in your career.
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. However, what I learned at Uber is way more valuable to me, given my career aspirations."
I'm genuinely surprised that the HN community thinks a toxic comment like this is upvote-worthy
It's brash for sure, but if its garnering upvotes its likely because it struck enough of a cord to overcome HNs dislike for personal attacks. I think people are tired of blog posts telling them what to prioritize in life.
> I'm genuinely surprised that the HN community thinks a toxic comment like this is upvote-worthy
Is this a̶d̶-̶h̶o̶m̶i̶n̶e̶m̶ [EDIT: attack] really necessary? I'm sharing a thought about the ridiculous nature of bay area hustle culture.
> Contrast this to what the author actually said: "Optimizing learning over money early in your career.
Contrast that to what she goes on to say in the article itself. She laments on how she missed out on Uber stock rising by not ditching Apple sooner. She then pulls a figure out of thin-air about how much net worth you're going to lose by "wasting" your career on any given year by not following her arbitrary framework for self-worth.
"Optimizing learning over money early in your career" would bear far more weight if she actually used an example like going into academia, or joining a tiny startup with low pay. Going from one 150k+ position to another 150k+ position with (gasp) lower performing stocks (!!) is hardly a sacrifice. Moreover, she speaks as if she already knew Uber stock was going to go down when she joined. Uber happened to tank Apple happened to rise. But she acts like she factored that into her decision before she left Apple.
I'm genuinely surprised some people still can't recognize how absolutely out-of-touch it sounds to lament over a "wasted" year of career at Apple, while most of the world is just trying to get by. Likewise, claiming you stopped finding opportunities to learn anything at Apple after only 6 months sounds like self-inflating bullshit.
So, I hope I have eased your surprise. It's toxic to tell people that they're wasting their career by valuing stability and work-life balance over weird learning frameworks, and net-worth. It's not toxic to call out such privileged fools for doing so.
It's certainly a different mindset. I don't really do software development any longer. But if I were at Apple, barring a bad situation that I was unable to resolve for some reason--which I've been in before and have been able to switch managers--I'd think very long and hard before switching companies, perhaps especially to Uber.
Maybe if you really want to do a startup? Perhaps one could learn a bit more at Apple first. And to the point later in the post about the loss of net worth. I'm pretty sure sticking around Apple for a bit as a young person is not going to cripple your chances of retirement.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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".
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.
I felt like the article was more about optimizing your net self than optimizing your net worth. Subjects like complacency, (over) loyalty, learning are focused around making sure one is taking the opportunity to actualize, grow.
The question of why & for what is a good one, & we see various forms of these doubts throughout comments here. I think everyone ultimately had to do some personal development, define their own arch of progress that they are shooting for, build their own personal mythology that pushes them forward, or not (exist & be merry). The named dimensions, accomplishment, growth, impact, challenge, community seem like good things to keep an eye on to assess whether we are chasing better versions of ourselves, no matter what end goal orientation you want, be it mastery or merely money.
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.
Readit News
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.
Moral of my story (and this article), is stay competitive, you don’t have to crush it, but don’t lean back too far either.
There are a large number of people, including smart and successful and accomplished people, who work to live, not live to work.
For the people who live to work (myself included), it's a good reminder to stay competitive and avoid complacency. But you have to understand yourself and what you're looking for. And that's what I think the real moral of the story is: understand what you want, what makes you happy, and what gives you meaning and purpose. Then make sure you're working towards that. Too many people forget to do the first thing and skip straight to the second because they inherit the answer from their environment without questioning it.
For lots of people the answer to that question is not career related.
The parent's point is that there are more aspects in life than work that you can improve on (eating healthier would be one of them). And as long as your work can sustain your life, you are free to choose to work on something else.
Of course, you can choose to focus even more on working, too, if you please.
That was exactly my reaction. I was a lead for three years and recently decided to go back to a purely technical role. I just didn't like the work, and the prospect of spending the rest of my career in middle management was not appealing.
I currently received an offer from a FAANG(M) company. This was a real offer from someone I had worked with in the past which would have required a very thin interview process. I declined because I very much enjoy the work I'm doing today.
It may turn out to be a bad idea down the road if all I consider is money and that nice company name on my resume. I decided I don't care. I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond and work on truly interesting tech than be another cog in the wheel. I'm well past the "live to work" phase of my life, I just want to be happy, and I can't complain at all about my salary and benefits.
(Founding a company is another possible route, much more risky, though.)
Someone needs to write "waste your personal life, one comfortable year at a time".
And skip “comfortable” in the title.
Bottom line, moving to a new job regularly is about investing in yourself and allowing you to control the direction of your life and not allowing others to control it.
I don't mean to say that you have to enter the rat race and keep up with the Joneses and burn out. I just mean that money and status are these dirty words that are taboo to admit caring about in some circles, but it is money and status that earn you freedom and the ability to not give a fuck what people who you don't respect think about you. It is the only thing that will make annoying people you don't care about still act as if they respected you so you can concentrate on all the people and things you do care about.
Any advice for scoring this on my personal OKRs? I’m vacillating between 0.6 and 0.7 for this quarter, and I’m circling back with the other members of my household this afternoon.
Silicon Valley culture sort of expects you to move around every few years - you will get a more well-rounded perspective both technically and personally.
In other places, particularly with different employment opportunities, the picture might be different.
The one that got me here was "misplaced loyalty" because looking back, most of the companies I've worked for are either radically different or ...gone.
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...]
The person writing this post lives for his job. His goal is to have a job that brings him some combination of achieving job related results, learning job related skills and earning money from that job. And if the current job situation is not optimized for that (no learning opportunities, no achievement opportunities limiting future employment opportunities etc.) it should be seen as a cancer.
While it’s a completely valid point of view to not live for your job, but to do your job to (financially) facilitate your life: earn money in a stable (but from the authors point of view boring and pointless) job so you can take nice vacations with your wife and kids. Or keep a “9 to 5 job” because you like to explore foreign cinema and Russian literature from “5 to 11”, while the author is still busting his ass so he’ll end high on the corporate ladder in the future.
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.
I find that I'm considering this much more now that I'm in my 40s, because I know that as a generalist developer, I will be slowing down in skills compared to the younger devs, so I need to make sure my career is developing in areas that value my experience and soft skills.
I think it's even easier to get complacent with not challenging those soft skills and "tech wisdom" by staying too long in one role.
If, or when, that happens those who've spent years in the comfort of that nice work-life balance and often, frankly, mediocrity (you don't improve yourself by staying in the comfort of such a job) are in for a shock.
For a while I looked down at him, like “dude why are you stagnating?” But over time I could see why he’s doing what he’s doing, and it works for him. Maybe I’m wrong and if he got laid off he would have difficulty finding another job. But that’s his choice, relative to living with daily stress of stretching and pushing to the next level.
I think the people who are making poor choices are those who are driven by fear - they want to grow, they aren’t, and they are afraid to make a move. Or they fear being disloyal, or whatever.
I myself stayed in my second job far too long, and have regretted it since.
Since being at my current company, I’ve done something like this, though less formally. I went thru a period of 6 months where I was having less impact and I felt like I hit a “ceiling”, so I kept pushing for a different role. Then covid hit, some people left, priorities change, and now I have a perfect role and am growing again. If covid hadn’t happened I think I would’ve needed to start looking. I love my current company so was willing to wait it out a bit longer.
And it is an article focusing on your career, not any life goals outside of that.
> If you are an average 30 yr old engineer, let's say you want to retire reasonably by the time you are 60. You have at best 120 quarters left to make something of yourself. A year wasted at a poor job or role is equivalent to you throwing away 3.3% of your career. The older you get, the steeper your loss is.
Which sort of implies that what matters is where you end up at the end of your career, not enjoying yourself a long the way. I guess this isn't so much "status/money" as it is "destination vs. journey", but I feel like those can be related.
That said, I found most of the rest of the post to be much more broadly applicable. The Accomplishment/Impact/Growth/Challenge/Community framework I thought was especially good/useful to keep in mind.
“Comin’ up as a coder in the cash game / Livin’ in the fast lane / I’m for real.”
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.
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.
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!
You don’t want to be like one of the IBM lifers back in the day who sat around waiting to get culled like a steer. But staying at a job where you enjoy what you do usually isn’t a bad move.
Why is now the time to take risks? Long term debilitating losses have more years to compound for you. For example if you crash in a motorcycle and are paralyzed you'll have to spend more years in a wheel chair than someone who is older.
Looking back I should have kept that, sold that, married that one, stayed away from that one, moved out earlier, tried harder, given up, etc...
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.
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.
Is this ad-hominem really necessary? The author didn't make character attacks on anyone, I don't see why you feel the need to do so.
> You must be some bottom-feeding moron who doesn't understand that [Unicorn Co]'s valuation just rose 4x YoY.
Contrast this to what the author actually said:
"Optimizing learning over money early in your career.
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. However, what I learned at Uber is way more valuable to me, given my career aspirations."
I'm genuinely surprised that the HN community thinks a toxic comment like this is upvote-worthy
Is this a̶d̶-̶h̶o̶m̶i̶n̶e̶m̶ [EDIT: attack] really necessary? I'm sharing a thought about the ridiculous nature of bay area hustle culture.
> Contrast this to what the author actually said: "Optimizing learning over money early in your career.
Contrast that to what she goes on to say in the article itself. She laments on how she missed out on Uber stock rising by not ditching Apple sooner. She then pulls a figure out of thin-air about how much net worth you're going to lose by "wasting" your career on any given year by not following her arbitrary framework for self-worth.
"Optimizing learning over money early in your career" would bear far more weight if she actually used an example like going into academia, or joining a tiny startup with low pay. Going from one 150k+ position to another 150k+ position with (gasp) lower performing stocks (!!) is hardly a sacrifice. Moreover, she speaks as if she already knew Uber stock was going to go down when she joined. Uber happened to tank Apple happened to rise. But she acts like she factored that into her decision before she left Apple.
I'm genuinely surprised some people still can't recognize how absolutely out-of-touch it sounds to lament over a "wasted" year of career at Apple, while most of the world is just trying to get by. Likewise, claiming you stopped finding opportunities to learn anything at Apple after only 6 months sounds like self-inflating bullshit.
So, I hope I have eased your surprise. It's toxic to tell people that they're wasting their career by valuing stability and work-life balance over weird learning frameworks, and net-worth. It's not toxic to call out such privileged fools for doing so.
Maybe if you really want to do a startup? Perhaps one could learn a bit more at Apple first. And to the point later in the post about the loss of net worth. I'm pretty sure sticking around Apple for a bit as a young person is not going to cripple your chances of retirement.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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
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.
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".
Person with a software-hammer tries to hit the nail of basic psychology, motivation, and happiness. Misses.
Shame on me for reading it though.
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.
Make money while you can, for it may already be 5am.
The question of why & for what is a good one, & we see various forms of these doubts throughout comments here. I think everyone ultimately had to do some personal development, define their own arch of progress that they are shooting for, build their own personal mythology that pushes them forward, or not (exist & be merry). The named dimensions, accomplishment, growth, impact, challenge, community seem like good things to keep an eye on to assess whether we are chasing better versions of ourselves, no matter what end goal orientation you want, be it mastery or merely money.