throwaway99923

Yes, happened to me. My ex had a mid life crisis and decided she didn't want to be a mother or wife anymore. She wanted to enjoy life and be free.

Great for her, terrible for everyone else in the family. After that experience, I take these kind of articles with a heavy dose of salt.

They translate loosely into "Be selfish, think only about yourself, live your own life" no matter the consequences.

It's pretty much the performance culture. Everyone is trying to work towards meeting the bar on their yearly perf review over everything else.

I naturally try to do what I think is best for the company and my team. So this kind of high pressure performance review system adds what seems like an unnecessary level of stress to me.

Expectations are also not clear cut. You're essentially "calibrated" or ranked against your peers. So there is no clear goal to achieve - you just work as hard as possible and hope you did a good job compared to others of your level.

From what I understand, having a great manager makes this all much less stressful. But my manager is pretty much hands off, so this means I really have to figure it out on my own and advocate for myself a lot.

I imagine once I have a few years of reviews under the belt, I'll know what to do and it will be less stressful. But I think the first couple years of perf reviews is very tough.

Good advice, thanks. The PSC games are what stress me the most. In the back of my mind there is always this huge uncertainty about whether I'm doing the right thing for a good rating. Expectations are murky and I find it hard to deal with.

Leadership seems to be fairly poor in my org. Finding a stronger leader who has my back would make a large difference. Everything is still frozen, but my plan is to swap when I can. If that doesn't work out, I'll probably leave.

I have a very good friend who is a medical doctor and swapped to engineering. He bought some books and self studied. He's now working his dream job at a biotech startup trying to extend life, using both of his skills simultaneously. Based on what he tells me I'd say there is a large demand for the niche crossover of M.D. + SWE in the startup space right now.

Yes I've done almost 2 years now of therapy. It's partially how I pulled myself out of my depressing hole and went after one of my dreams (join a FAANG). Despite how disillusioned I sound here, I'm actually in a better place now mentally than I was in the last 5 years.

> switched to information security. I found reverse engineering, doing CTFs, and hacking things in general brought back the sense of joy I’d lost.

This really resonates with me. I did a binary exploitation class in my M.S. where we did weekly CTFs. I really, really enjoyed this - thanks for reminding me. Do you have any tips for breaking into the industry?

Re. FAANG I feel this must have been true at some point? I knew people who worked at these places in the 2010s and they loved it. I think I must have missed the golden period. There are probably still great teams with great culture at these places but they are difficult to get into and are the minority now.

And you're right, my expectations absolutely set me up for failure.

Hmm I guess what I said can come off as condescending. But I was trying to condense all of my experience in less than 4k words, and I guess I came out sounding a bit like an asshole based on your comment.

Trust me, I don't think that highly of myself. Even when I was getting good perf reviews, I constantly was critical of myself as not doing a good enough job. I had bad burn out for several years and it made me feel like I couldn't do my job anymore. My self confidence was very bad, and I still struggle with imposter syndrome in my current role.

Many of the things I described above, I used to blame myself for as if they were entirely my fault. It was only after working with a therapist I was able to reframe these events as being out of my control. Which helped me get out of the hole I was in. So I disagree it's bad to blame external events - I actually think that's a very healthy way to look at the bad things that happen to us.

By saying I want to work with people that care like I do, I mean people who are passionate about engineering and want to do a good job. I've found that incredibly hard to find. Morale in general just seems to be poor.

I probably just need to be realistic. It seems the kind of dream team I want to be on is very rare. I had it once in my career so far, and didn't even realize what I had at the time.

> The impression I get is that you must be someone incredibly annoying to work with

I'm actually a pushover, which is a problem. I go out of my way to make everyone I work with happy, at my own expense. Despite being an introvert, I'm the person organising social events, checking in on my team members who seem down, and trying to help everyone to get along. But I guess my inner dialogue makes me sound like an asshole, which is fair enough. I think I can be overly critical of others (and myself, first of all).

> Stop looking outside, work on yourself instead.

Yes, this is a good point and what I'm trying. I find my FAANG job very stressful, and it makes it hard for me to relax outside of work. Maybe my next challenge is just learning to disconnect from work as much as possible. Easier said then done.

These days I use a private music sharing site. I browse the Top 10 every few days, grab things that look interesting, and listen. I am constantly discovering new artists and new favorite albums.

I used Spotify for years and found the discovery not very good.

Thanks for the words. Can't move due to custody arrangements, unfortunately. I dream of simply leaving it all behind, but I'm not willing to lose my kids so I endure for their sake.

Not great. I got separated and have been struggling with depression the last couple years. I'm stuck in a foreign, expensive location paying spousal support so I barely have any money left over and no family and few friends. Rents keep going up and I don't see how I'm ever going to buy a place now or retire. My single friends who are junior to me are grinding leetcode and getting into big tech companies, making twice as much as me, which makes me feel left behind. I'm either in single dad mode or spending my free time catching up on household jobs, and preparing for interviews is really tough to fit in (but I started doing it anyways). I feel completely stuck and screwed, now throw the anxiety of interviews on top of that, and I can never relax. Just steeling myself now for failing my interviews due to lack of time to prepare.