Ask HN: What were/are you doing at age 25? What would you change?

At age 25 I was trying to figure out how to really get into the game. I had a promising job offer in the mountain west and decided instead to move to Portland and wait for the awesome tech job offers to flow into my inbox.

I ended up moving to PDX and burning through my savings, finally taking a job at a company that turned out to be deeply unethical. They spied on personal phone calls, asked employees if they were on birth control, you name it. The IT guy was something of an Edward Snowden who opened up an encrypted channel with me just to vent. What he shared with me blew my mind.

A few short months later my in-laws offered to let my wife and I live in their home rent-free in a town in California that no one's ever heard of. We had weirdly good "vibes" about this offer even though we couldn't explain it. We had no jobs lined up but my wife knew lots of people there and the in-laws were traveling internationally and free rent would allow us to stretch our little savings for a while longer.

After we moved here I started working as an independent hire-a-webmaster. It's so rural here that people still use that term. It turned into a very successful business and I found out that I really love living in a rural area. I also hired a coach and had an amazing experience working with him to understand my business and learning to make the most of who I am.

My life changed a lot after that and I'm now a coach myself, but for 20-something-years advice: I'd say I think I could have done a lot better for myself had I more readily shared my problems with others and listened to them more. I wish I would have hired my own coach earlier, someone who would hold me accountable, and help me accelerate my self-knowledge.

If you're in a pit, keep doing what you're doing here, consulting outside sources and listening to what they have to say. Then try out the ideas, make observations, and develop theories. Soon you'll have a reliable model for who you are and what powers your problem-solving and achievement processes. It's important to actively test out others' ideas and reflect on the results, because most advice you get will be of the "be like me" variety; it's not necessarily suited to your personal psychology. Good luck.

What do you do for fulfillment? I'm 25 too and the only fulfillment I experience is from thinking about/eating good food which is just sad. I've forced myself into reading a lot of books and doing a lot of hobby programming but it feels empty.

Living in a beachfront apt on the East coast of Florida with my gf/wife (we were married when I was 25). Trying to learn how to surf. Working on a glorious tan. For a kid from Appalachia it was a glorious time.

I made the rent via my first post-college job as a fresh EE in a miserable military contractor firm. Did I make huge career strides? No way & I wouldn't change it.

Unhappy in a relationship, stuck in the UK after a couple of glorious years working overseas. (I got real lucky in my early 20s.)

At 27 – I'm cheating, sorry – I packed it all in and went on holiday. Backpacker style, South-East Asia then Australia. Some time later I found myself in Melbourne, and I'm still here.

As a result, my career basically re-started. I'm now 41. It's worked out incredibly well.

You have to enjoy where you are. You have to enjoy what you do. If you have those two things, the success – whatever that means to you – will come. Don't chase something you think you should be chasing just because that's what you read in tech forums. That's bullshit. And don't stay somewhere you're unhappy because, in the history of the world, that never just magically got better. That's not how it works.

Find your place. Find your people. Don't worry about the rest.

Edit: I missed the advice question. Advice to younger self: leave relationships when you know they're not good. Stringing it out helps neither party.