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Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#21

Post by datenhorst »

burnoutgal wrote: post #10
vijucat wrote: post #6

Possibly unpopular advice on HN, but stop joining startups. Idiosyncratic-Culture Risk is off the charts for startups. Join more stable firms with a more "boring" but predictable culture where things get delivered every Sprint, everyone gets paid well, there is no Mountain Dew being guzzled at 8 pm in the office to meet some deadline, weekends are truly off, and your mental health actually recovers. Your dream jobs a…

My current job has > 1000 employees, it seemed from the outside like it would be sufficiently stable. It's not actually the culture you describe, it's pretty mature, good work-life balance. They don't have a great planning process but it seems insane that it is just impossible for me to onboard successfully as a result.

How many employees were there a year ago? If the answer isn't ~1000, it doesn't meet the definition of stable

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#22

Post by burnoutgal »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #5

What I got from all this is that you are telling yourself that you want to do work that continuously causes you a great deal of distress. Why is that?

Partially because it's very well compensated, and my partner has a disability so I'm the sole income for our household. Taking a pay cut to do something else would be a big life change.

More importantly, I can't imagine doing anything else. The first 5 years I was in the industry I loved it and was very successful. I got to travel and learn and felt like I was on top of the world.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#23

Post by mentalwealth55 »

- Deferring to others for strategic startup/career/tech advice

- More immediately, however, from the way you wrote it sounded to me like you're really, really down on yourself & have this constant churning sense of fear (above/beyond the typical "background radiation" of our insanely distressing life right now)

- I hope I didn't misread, but it sounds like generally you've got your $$$ locked down for foreseeable and are getting paid to work with high-caliber people

- Just going based on what you wrote, all the stuff going at this new gig (omg manager left, less-than-flawless onboarding, new person with lots of ideas learns they might need to come up with different business-valuable ideas, it's unclear how to get stuff merged, etc etc) are not that unusual. Your career trajectory as you describe sounds like somebody who actually gaf about engineering

However, that underlying fear or whatever the gnawing feeling you describe that threads through everything, might be worthy of further examination. Like figure out why is that monkey on your back?

If you're not already, hang out with kind people who don't work in tech

Also this group is like the khan academy of mental health-- check out the mirror exercise: https://wiki.healthygamer.gg/en/Insecurity

Don't know you but rooting for you

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#24

Post by jgwil2 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #17
burnoutgal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done ok financially, but in retrospect if I had held on to my stock instead of selling when it vested I could be set for life. A lot of my old coworkers only ever worked in one job for 5 years, got rich and retired on their stock at 30. When I was searching for my new job I knew I didn't wan small start-up chaos - my current role and the other big startup both have > 1000 engineers. "Startup" is kind of a loose…

> A lot of my old coworkers only ever worked in one job for 5 years, got rich and retired on their stock at 30. Is this normal? It doesn't seem so normal to me.

It's not normal. I think maybe OP's perspective has been affected by seeing a lot of people experience exceptional success, and feeling comparatively like a failure, but that doesn't reflect the reality for the vast majority of people in the industry or otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#26

Post by cardosof »

vijucat wrote: post #6

Possibly unpopular advice on HN, but stop joining startups. Idiosyncratic-Culture Risk is off the charts for startups. Join more stable firms with a more "boring" but predictable culture where things get delivered every Sprint, everyone gets paid well, there is no Mountain Dew being guzzled at 8 pm in the office to meet some deadline, weekends are truly off, and your mental health actually recovers. Your dream jobs a…

I'm going to get downvoted to minus infinity but let me say this: consider also less techy firms. Or, companies that do have technology but aren't tech. I have some friends having a blast working with agriculture, there's lots of technology involved, but it's as far away from the stereotypical startup culture as you can get.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#27

Post by burnoutgal »

mentalwealth55 wrote: post #23

- Deferring to others for strategic startup/career/tech advice - More immediately, however, from the way you wrote it sounded to me like you're really, really down on yourself & have this constant churning sense of fear (above/beyond the typical "background radiation" of our insanely distressing life right now) - I hope I didn't misread, but it sounds like generally you've got your $$$ locked down for foreseeable and…

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I definitely think part of it is above-average background stress - queer woman, sole breadwinner for my household, grew up poor, we've had a lot of emergency expenses and unexpected health problems the last few years. Our finances aren't terrible, but the past year has eaten away a lot of the cushion I had built up from my last successful role.

Objectively the rest of my life outside work has been extremely stressful, and I'm scared of losing my job.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#28

Post by dymk »

brodouevencode wrote: post #25

You have some self-imposed stench of failure. You’re failing because you expect to fail. Change your perspective. You can do this.

OP is failing because OP put themselves in a job that's draining their life-force, not because of some vague "perspective" issue.

Unless by "change perspective" you mean "change jobs", because that's what OP needs to do.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#29

Post by hollander »

Stop going for that PR. I don't even know what a PR is, but my guts tell me that you should stop pursuing that. Start making yourself useful. Do small stuff, support other people. The guidance you miss - start giving other people guidance. Ask for advice. Don't think you know it all.

The new very successful startup, the many high-performing people. Is that the truth or is that appearance? Fake it until you make it. That may apply to people, but also to companies.

Find a hobby, something outside your workfield that gives meaning to your life. If I hear you, you are successful, but you choose the wrong companies. If they pay you and don't complain, then you are a success in my book, much more successful than I ever was.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#30

Post by lazyant »

burnoutgal wrote: post #11
pezzana wrote: post #2

> ... It's been a couple months and I have achieved nothing. Not a single PR merged. ... There's a lot to be said for getting into a rhythm of picking an issue, solving it, and merging it. Doing it a few times can be a real confidence booster. What's the reason behind having no PRs merged? Did you create them, only to have them rejected? Have you not completed the work for any? Is there nobody to review them? Also, j…

I've teed up maybe 6 PRs, but it is hard to find who's actually responsible to review things and get sign-off one way or the other. The iteration speed is also very slow and deploys are pretty high risk, so it's hard to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.

High-risk deploys and slow iterations is not on you but on engineering management.

Not knowing who's responsible for reviewing your code is also not on you but on your manager, bad onboarding, bad documentation and general communication. Still you can check in the repo who's been working recently on adjacent work and reach out to them on slack/whatever and ask them.

I suggest to try and get small wins (like merging those PRs) as soon as possible and then pause and reconsider if this startup is for you. BTW, I don't see the "constant failure" you mention in the title anywhere, more like not being lucky with startups, which is normal since often they are shitshows.

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