I tried filling out my "career octopus" once. Maybe that could help you?
Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
41–50 of 61 posts
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#42I tried to quit programming twice. Once to become a full-time musician (too hard even if you are very good, not enough money). Another time to work in mental health (the training was too intense). I figured out how to make it work for me long-term and the key was to focus on what my needs are both in a job and outside of a job. It also has helped tremendously to put significant effort into learning how to communicate…
> What do you hate most about your job? [Can you] identify a job that you would like better?
This reminds me of https://markmanson.net/question :
> What pain do you want in your life? […] What is the pain that you want to sustain?
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I certainly didn't intend to sugarcoat anything. I was actually hoping to lay bare the harsh reality that work is often disappointing. I would hazard a guess that maligree has built at least a few things they're proud of at work. I read their post as expressing an overall feeling that they're not at home in their job, which to my understanding is a tangent from whether or not you have individual accomplishments to be…
should we not put up some serious effort to make work less disappointing? i think everybody, especially the senior folks need to up their game a little and say „no“ a lot more. we are trapped in a loop of endlessly stupid hypecylces and we will never break out by stating „work is often disappointing“ and call it a day.
I'm not saying we should turn a blind eye to disappointments because "that's just the way it is." Work itself is a process of taking things that are not good or disappointing and correcting them. But maligree is getting at the idea of finding ultimate fulfillment at work. I'm convinced that even a thousand years from now we'll still be experiencing disappointment at work and if we wait for disappointment to be gone from work so we can find ultimate fulfillment in it we'll never get there.
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#44Consider the possibility that it's you. Ask: Is it the industry, the company, the department, the city I'm in, or is it something in me? We all have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to ourselves. In my case it's largely, but not entirely, me. No matter where I go or what I do, the biggest problem will still be there. Whatever the answer is in your situation will narrow things down.
But also, it may not be you. It may be that you're working on stuff that, while it pays, is still stupid stuff. Maybe you need to find another job, not that pays better, not that is less annoying, but that does something that matters.
Take my world - embedded systems. I could work on telephones for the hard of hearing, that give (mostly older) people their social lives back. I could work on medical equipment that saves lives. I could work on airplane avionics, that also saves lives.
Or, I could work on the latest fad electronic toy for five-year-olds, trying to have it ready in time for Christmas buying.
One of these is not like the others. One means little besides money.
Then there's product life-cycle. Am I creating the medical instrument, say? Or am I adding the 42nd functional mode, that can be used in 0.2% of cases? Those 0.2% of cases really matter to the people who are those cases. There aren't many of them, though. Or am I on maintenance? That matters too, so that we can keep building the device for more customers. For me, my personality is that I like being earlier in the life-cycle - from prototype to initial release, maybe the first couple of major enhancements. After that I get bored. The work is still useful, meaningful work, but it's not as meaningful to me.
So it may not be programming. It may be that you're building something that you consider to be a waste, or that you find little joy in the part of the life-cycle you're stuck in.
I can't answer that for you. All I can do is recommend that you think about it.
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#45The grass really isn't greener on the other side. Programming is among the highest paid professions and has pretty decent work-life balance. Almost anything you choose will pay far less and have less flexibility.
Just find fulfilling hobbies or something.
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#46I tried to quit programming twice. Once to become a full-time musician (too hard even if you are very good, not enough money). Another time to work in mental health (the training was too intense). I figured out how to make it work for me long-term and the key was to focus on what my needs are both in a job and outside of a job. It also has helped tremendously to put significant effort into learning how to communicate…
What was intense about mental health training if you don't mind my asking? I know nothing about it.
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#47What are you really, I mean really trying to do here?
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#48I wonder what I could do today that would allow for a breakthrough in my life?
I wonder what I can learn today that will benefit everyone?
I wonder what choices I can make today that would allow me to experience greater and greater fun and creativity?
Source: 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer. > https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23275060-15-commitments-...
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
should we not put up some serious effort to make work less disappointing? i think everybody, especially the senior folks need to up their game a little and say „no“ a lot more. we are trapped in a loop of endlessly stupid hypecylces and we will never break out by stating „work is often disappointing“ and call it a day.
I'm not saying we should turn a blind eye to disappointments because "that's just the way it is." Work itself is a process of taking things that are not good or disappointing and correcting them. But maligree is getting at the idea of finding ultimate fulfillment at work. I'm convinced that even a thousand years from now we'll still be experiencing disappointment at work and if we wait for disappointment to be gone f…
disappointment, set backs and failures are part of work and this is not a problem but a very natural thing. The thing about software is that we do way too many stupid and downright useless things and this leads to a lot of frustration. Imagine we built houses like we do software.
Re: Ask HN: Wanting to grow – what questions should you ask yourself?
#50Sometimes I feel like shit working on mundane business problems.
What always perks me up is just trying to find something that someone wants and that I can be invested in. There's things you make for the sake of the business, but there's also things you make for the sake of other people to improve their work life. If I know the person who wants a thing, then I feel invested because I can get feedback and I can see how happy they are with it. Whereas the usual things I work on are so disconnected from me that I feel no satisfaction, like no one is congratulating me on adding a new API endpoint, it's business as usual and I don't even know the names of the people using it.
I just ask managers other non-dev roles about quality of life things they want, or their far away wishes of how they want things to be.
Sometimes it makes me want to start contracting for small businesses. I feel like I'd get satisfaction from solving their problems and seeing how happy they are.