This is the theme of Breaking Bad. :)
Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
31–40 of 292 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#32Acknowledging your feelings is a good first step. The next step is to realize and accept that you can only impact things that are within your sphere of influence. Focus 100% on those things, especially the things that make you happy. Note that you rarely know the full story behind someone else’s success. It may have been luck, it may have been privilege, it may have been that they are simply able to perform at a leve…
sometimes ego suspension fixes the problem.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#33Host a couch surfer from https://couchsurfing.org, especially one a less-than-rich country.
I hosted a person from poor country in my San Francisco apartment. They had traveled here on a paid trip for a tech conference. They asked where they could buy food for less than one dollar per meal. It turned out they only had $6 to pay for their entire stay in San Francisco, including public transit fair for a return to the airport (which costs almost $10). I don't stress about finding money to pay for food or public transit, and occasionally being the one who has more helps me balance out feelings envy when I see people who have more than I do.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#34> Does this happen to anyone else? This happens to pretty much everyone. > What do you do about it? Your options are: Motivation: " If I learn to do the things s/he does, I can be more successful too. " Rationalization: " Well, if I had had the same opportunities s/he did, I'd have been just as successful. I did the best I could with what I had. And at least I'm still doing better than X, Y, and Z. " Indifference: "…
Mine is more "X clearly loves doing Y - as much as I wish I did too, deep down I know I really don't. What do I actually like to do? I'll have more of that, thank you."
This is where I've landed as well. Earlier in my 20s I thought it was required for me to work on side projects that I have zero real interest in just so that I can keep up with my peers who were clearly better than me, when in reality I despise the idea of working on anything software-related outside of work. This limits me to being an above-average/good engineer rather than an exemplary one, but I'm comfortable with that. It just takes some time for you to figure out what you want out of your career.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#35Take a deep breath, and a moment to realize that you still make n times more money than the average person and are better off than, hmm, 90% of the average people.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#36There are too many things you do not know about how a person got there to make an adequate comparison to yourself and your situation. Be joyful for them.
You made different choices. You valued different things at different times. If you optimized everything to get the job you maybe would have the job - but you didn’t, because it’s a job and there is more to life than that.
What you see in their title / newspapers / on social media is not their life. The acclaim / praise is not their life. It does not guarantee happiness / success. It does not make you worse or lesser.
May the envy / anger be fleeting. It’s human, it’s allowed, but in the end, useless and harmful.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#371. Thanks to the internet/social media, you will _always_ see people who more successful than you are, sometimes a lot more successful. You need to get used to it and learn to deal with it [1].
2. It may be helpful to think that this is probably also true for the person you're looking ahead to: she's also looking at somebody "ahead" of her. So, even if you get there, not much will change, you'll just keep looking at people ahead (also see "hedonic treadmill" [2]).
3. A lot of the time you're just seeing PR, and they're in fact not ahead of you. For example a recent trend is "winning startup competitions". I had friends who went to these, kept winning them, they got futured in newspapers... but then the product had no traction and they shut down quickly. Don't confuse PR with the real thing. Social media can be misleading.
4. In my experience, a lot of it is down to luck. For example, for our group, if a friend gets a juicy job at a FAANG, it will feel like they're ahead. (And they will be.) But having been at a FAANG and done interviews, believe me, a lot of it is down to luck --- esp. when it comes to getting a juicy job. Same is true for startups, I would say most of it is down to luck.
5. Often, other than luck, there's really something the person has done to get there; a lot of the times the major component is _hustle_. Ask yourself, would you want to do that to get there? For example, some startup founders who achieve initial success (Series A and later) end up working for their own company for 10+ years. Would you want to work for the same company (even your own) for that long? Eg. I had a startup, it failed, and since then I'm "just" an employee, and I switch jobs every 2-3 years, and I'm loving it, because I keep learning new things, meet new people, go to new countries, etc; right now I wouldn't want to trade this to be a Series X co-founder having to explain to my board why we're not growing like I said we would in the pitch deck (most companies don't end up growing like they were "supposed to").
[1] unless you become the next M.Z. (unlikely), this will always be true.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#38What's wrong with internally putting an asterisk on their success and moving forward with your life, maintaining diluted self confidence?
I think in that case, people might be placing a limit on who they could become.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#39Jordan B. Peterson writes in “12 Rules for Life - an antidote to chaos” that you should “compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today”
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
#40Whenever you feel envious, remember that your world need NOT be a zero-sum game.
If you find yourself envious, instead focus on enlarging ur world to escape the zero-sum mentality. Try thinking beyond the limitations you perceive yourself in currently.