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Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

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Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#41

Post by pizza »

Keep track of your average goal-progress growth rate over time, and the timescale of the discounting factor of future rewards - longer timescales w/ really unpredictable progress is the riskiest combo, but that doesn't mean that's totally disqualifying.

Hopefully early progress leads to somewhat multiplicative growth of future progress - compound gains on early achievements.

Additionally, you're in a good situation if you can be at 80% peak effort and 20% peak effort at will - balance it about 50/50 imo. Lean on help - ask professors for mercy, order takeout when you're exhausted, etc. - to nudge your life towards that ratio, when possible.

Otherwise, if you're operating at max burn almost all the time, no matter how hard you work and how much it pays off, it won't be your dream - it'll be your yoke.

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#42

Post by rwanda »

cehrlich wrote: post #23

I gave up on a dream about a year ago. I had been working hard, not very successfully, for several years to make a passion into my career, and it not only caused me burnout and depression, but also made me hate the thing I was meant to be passionate about in first place. Now I'm on a mediocre, safe, boring path (web dev). Of course there is still some lingering regret, but overall I feel very relieved. My advice woul…

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Switching to medicine is something I've been contemplating for a couple of months and though about all pros & cons, best-, worst-, average-, expected outcomes extensively, yet I still feel at a lock. To put it shortly, my best case is better staying at my current program and my worst case is worse. The average case is too difficult to determine as the probabilities I assign to each case are speculative.

As for a PhD in medicine being easier, I don't mean that doing the actual PhD is easier but rather the entrance requirements are. The medical school in my country is good so I can just do my PhD there which would be quite easy. On the other hand, the technical school I'm in doesn't have that much research in machine learning so I'd have to apply abroad which would make things much harder. Not to mention that machine learning is a hot area and perhaps the most competitive of all PhD-subjects.

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#43

Post by marto1 »

cehrlich wrote: post #23

I gave up on a dream about a year ago. I had been working hard, not very successfully, for several years to make a passion into my career, and it not only caused me burnout and depression, but also made me hate the thing I was meant to be passionate about in first place. Now I'm on a mediocre, safe, boring path (web dev). Of course there is still some lingering regret, but overall I feel very relieved. My advice woul…

> working hard, not very successfully, for several years to make a passion into my career

But did you learn anything ? If yes, I'd think of it as a very expensive education.

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#44

Post by gorbachev »

avemuri wrote: post #18
JohnHaugeland wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dude, there’s something wrong either with your schools, or with your perception of reality. Talk to some doctors. Ask what their workload is like. It turns out that software engineers are worked way, way harder.

This is just not true for at least the first 15 years of a doctor's career. Source: Worked with multiple surgeons all over the country.

Surgeons are not typical doctors. That's not a valid comparisons.

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#45

Post by xtracto »

rwanda wrote: post #39
quantumite wrote: post #2

Honestly, you sound burned out. I wouldn't make any career- or life-altering decisions until after some rest. There is a reason you picked the program to begin with and while medicine may be a good alternative, you will likely feel the same way if you get burned out in that industry as well. Rest well friend!

This is very good advice and I feel like you've gotten at the heart of the issue. The way you frame it makes it obvious to me that what you're saying is very true, and is not something I've thought about as explicitly as you stated. Thank you!

Medicine is crazy hard... way harder than ML/CS I think. Particularly emotionally hard.

Regarding a PhD, I am a Mexican who was "just ok" in a no-name Mexican college where I studied my BSc Computer Science.

I got a scholarship for the UK to do PhD in CS on a 'red brick' university. It was amazing and life changing. So you being on eastern europe surely can easily get somewhere good as well.

Dont give up your dream! Specially when your dream is so fucking profitable. (If you told me it was arts or something similar I would have doubts).

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#46

Post by cehrlich »

marto1 wrote: post #43
cehrlich wrote: post #23

I gave up on a dream about a year ago. I had been working hard, not very successfully, for several years to make a passion into my career, and it not only caused me burnout and depression, but also made me hate the thing I was meant to be passionate about in first place. Now I'm on a mediocre, safe, boring path (web dev). Of course there is still some lingering regret, but overall I feel very relieved. My advice woul…

> working hard, not very successfully, for several years to make a passion into my career But did you learn anything ? If yes, I'd think of it as a very expensive education.

In terms of quantifiable skills that your typical recruiter will be interested in, not much. In terms of everything else, absolutely. I also had much more fun in my 20s this way than I probably would have had otherwise, at the expense of entering my 30s broke.

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#47

Post by cehrlich »

rwanda wrote: post #42
cehrlich wrote: post #23

I gave up on a dream about a year ago. I had been working hard, not very successfully, for several years to make a passion into my career, and it not only caused me burnout and depression, but also made me hate the thing I was meant to be passionate about in first place. Now I'm on a mediocre, safe, boring path (web dev). Of course there is still some lingering regret, but overall I feel very relieved. My advice woul…

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Switching to medicine is something I've been contemplating for a couple of months and though about all pros & cons, best-, worst-, average-, expected outcomes extensively, yet I still feel at a lock. To put it shortly, my best case is better staying at my current program and my worst case is worse. The average case is too difficult to determine as the probabilities I assign to e…

Is your dream a PhD in machine learning, or to work on difficult machine learning problems? Many people (most, probably) come out of their PhD less happy than they were before, maybe there is a different way you can pursue this interest? If you even have a chance of becoming a PhD candidate, I assume you already have some skills in the subject that you could apply at a corporate job, on an OSS project, etc. I understand the appeal of "pure" research, but there are other paths as well.

I don't know much about the field so I can only guess, but maybe you can find some people here or elsewhere to talk about this who have the relevant experience?

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#48

Post by rwanda »

cehrlich wrote: post #47
rwanda wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Switching to medicine is something I've been contemplating for a couple of months and though about all pros & cons, best-, worst-, average-, expected outcomes extensively, yet I still feel at a lock. To put it shortly, my best case is better staying at my current program and my worst case is worse. The average case is too difficult to determine as the probabilities I assign to e…

Is your dream a PhD in machine learning, or to work on difficult machine learning problems? Many people (most, probably) come out of their PhD less happy than they were before, maybe there is a different way you can pursue this interest? If you even have a chance of becoming a PhD candidate, I assume you already have some skills in the subject that you could apply at a corporate job, on an OSS project, etc. I underst…

My dream is to improve & develop new machine learning algorithms. Weather I'd do this as a researcher or through a private company doesn't really matter to me. It just seems to be a prerequisite to have done a PhD to most such positions I see ( Take Google Brain as an example).

Unfortunately, there aren't too many people/research in my interest area in my country, but I'll try to ask my classmates. Thanks for your comment!

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#49

Post by dang »

rwanda wrote: post #39
quantumite wrote: post #2

Honestly, you sound burned out. I wouldn't make any career- or life-altering decisions until after some rest. There is a reason you picked the program to begin with and while medicine may be a good alternative, you will likely feel the same way if you get burned out in that industry as well. Rest well friend!

This is very good advice and I feel like you've gotten at the heart of the issue. The way you frame it makes it obvious to me that what you're saying is very true, and is not something I've thought about as explicitly as you stated. Thank you!

Since that seems to be resonating for you, I think you owe it to yourself to at least test the hypothesis before deciding not to do your original plan. I'm just repeating here what quantumite already said, but I wanted to comment from personal experience. I dropped out of mathematics when, around the time my first kid was born, I suddenly started to feel like my brain was paralyzed and unable to think mathematically anymore. I remember blankly staring at textbook pages for hours, unable to do any exercises at all. I didn't talk to anyone about it at the time, just concluded that I had lost all my ability, and suffered in silence.

Only years later did it occur to me that it might have simply been burnout, and with the right kind of coaching I might have been able to continue. So that's the other bit I'd suggest, besides just taking a rest: find some people who can advise you about this and who you have a good connection with personally. Don't just go through it on your own. Something that may not be obvious to you at all might be the first thing to occur to a more experienced person with your best interests at heart, and it might turn out to be a big deal. You don't need to deprive yourself of help.

Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?

#50

Post by aristofun »

rwanda wrote: post #36
tizzy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This quote stuck out to me. You either have a natural aptitude for medicine or you think the grass is greener on the other side. Maybe Dunning-Kruger effect. In any case, devote some time to the hard stuff. It will pay off.

OP here. To be clear, I'm referring to studying in school and not career-work. In my country it would be very non-controversial to say that the program I'm currently in is significantly harder and more time-consuming than medicine. I think this is due in part to the fact that medicine is 6 years here, as opposed to 4 years in some countries. Average workload for a medical student is around 40h/week including lectures…

Then the medical school you refer to is probably not worth it (I would never choose to visit a doctor, who didn't study harder than a programmer).

Being born in eastern europe myself I know of plenty of shitty schools, both medical and engineering.

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