What should I do with my life?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726119

by mcbeth • 15 years ago

28 31 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Given the previous post on the same subject I was inspired to tell my story and ask HN community's introspection.

While I had very humble beginnings, in a poor but well educated family I managed to achieve pretty much everything I've set my mind to, including going trough school and university and being self sufficient (money-wise) since I was about 15.

After finishing university I worked on 3 continents with some very large manufacturing, engineering and construction companies, always overachieving (and being also a cheap worker since I come from a 2nd world country). I've got promoted quickly and very recently I have reached a senior management level in large company. Just to be clear my expertise is in IT infrastructure and telecom and I'm 29.

However, job satisfaction is low now because this company is a politicized beyond my liking and also I enjoy engineering a lot more than meetings and people-management.

How many of you have been in the same situation and what did you do? Did you stick with the cushy salary or did you spend your last penny on some startup idea? Did you wind back on your career and invest in your personal life (get married, have kids, all of which I haven't done yet) or did you decide to push further the corporate ladder? Or did you all try to "balance it out" and manage the routine?

NanoWar• 15 years ago

Donate everything. Restart your life.

mcbeth6• 15 years ago

Considering that. But how do I make sure I won't get to the same point again?

mahrain• 15 years ago

By, when you get to the point where you have to choose with either your heart or your head (wallet, benchmarks etc.) picking the former.

Oh, and watch Steve Jobs at Stanford on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

csomar2• 15 years ago

Okay. You can cross the street and have an accident and be handicapped for the rest of your life. You can't make sure of anything. You can estimate the probability of happenings. That's what makes you feel sure.

Do you have a family? If not, go pursue your dreams. I'm dropping Medical studies to do... well...freelancing on the side and coding stuff. No clear idea, but I like to start something (a small project/SaaS) and get busy with it.

I only can say one thing, I learned hopefully after not so long time (I'm 20): Stop doing Shit! Go and do something you like. Period.

ricardobeat3• 15 years ago

Sounds charming, but I'd say money is better invested on a business that will make a difference. NGOs have a lot of overhead.

Plus you're investing your time too, so it's double the effort.

wccrawford2• 15 years ago

Figure out what you like. Go do that.

mcbeth6• 15 years ago

I suspect that happens a lot more often in movies than in the real world. In the real world you have to figure out if you will be able to make a living off your passion, raise a family in the near future, save some money and tend after your parents in their last years (depending on your culture YMMV).

Of course, every once in a while you hear about somebody who did exactly that and it worked out for them. It that an exception or the norm?

wccrawford2• 15 years ago

I don't think many people try.

ricardobeat3• 15 years ago

Having a family to support certainly makes things more difficult, but if you're unnattached I believe you can just go after what you want. You'll survive.

csomar2• 15 years ago

Well. You go do what you want. But you should ensure that you don't come back with your hands empty.

For example, you take one year off to study and experiment with JavaScript. You waste one year and burn all your expenses and makes no money but you made something amazing (let's say a popular JavaScript library).

Since you come back after that one year and your hand are not empty, you should probably find a good job at a nice company or startup.

ulisesroche• 15 years ago

It's something you tell developers so they can go to sleep at night, but a lot of us don't actually have the economic freedom to do that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Blackradio• 15 years ago

Seriously? Go, find a hobby. And then invest in that - time and money. That's what I do. I am nowhere near your position, but I find great comfort in donating money to witty lil' startups on kickstarter, buy random electronic crap for my modular synthesizer and even think of a start-up.

Nicolas___2• 15 years ago

Set your main goal in life to "Share that knowledge".

29 is stupidly young to be a mentor, but it's a great moment to start working on helping others in your field of expertise.

I think HN is not a place for that kind of posts. It's a place for people like you to post about their incentives to help the world (and succeed in the process), thanks to what they achieved in their field of expertise. Otherwise, just open a blog.

mcbeth6• 15 years ago

Thank you, best advice so far. I find I am slightly lacking in soft skills/mentoring skills. I mostly come across as edgy on first meetings which scares some people off- it is related to my cultural background where smiling is only done for a reason, not as a courtesy. However people which have known me for more than a few days find that I am quite friendly/useful.

Where do you think I should start? How do you think I should improve my mentoring skills?

g0T• 15 years ago

I am 2 yrs out of college, now working as a telecoms engineer. I am also a hobbyist programmer with a lot of interest in IT. It looks to me that in many ways, you have achieved what I'd like to achieve in my career. I have always thought I could do with some advise from professionals in these fields regarding progression, growth and skills development. Kindly let me know should you be agreeable to this: kcingot@gmail.com

Nicolas___2• 15 years ago

There are many ways to share knowledge.

The most obvious would be "write a blog". But to be honnest, you may as well use your knowledge in the process of building a tool to share it :)

Here comes the engineer approach : List your knowledge, structure it, and think about how people would like to get access to what you have to offer. You might come pretty close to what Khan has done with http://www.khanacademy.org/

Feel free to contact me (nsebban at google's mail thingie) if you want to talk about this topic in more details...

penguat• 15 years ago

Personally, I'd like you to raise kids. I think there should be more people who apply their intelligence in the world.*

However, I think you should find something that interests you, something you enjoy doing overall, and do that.

This could be:

- Entrepreneurial - see a gap which needs filling, and start to fill it.

- A pure hobby - something you could never make a living out of.

- Changing the way you make your living, working at a startup, or teaching others what you have learned.

- Studying something interesting.

*I come from a moderately poor area in the UK, there are plenty of people I know who don't apply themselves. You are a welcome contrast to this!

ignifero3• 15 years ago

Do you have money to stay a year off work? If yes, quit your job and work on something yourself (you sound like you could figure out what it is). Reclaiming those 8 most creative hours of your life can make a huge difference. Even if you don't have an absolute business plan right now, having an open horizon will give you a new perspective.

I took a year off at 28 after 7 years in a small company to do a Master's programme. I ended up becoming an indie developer and its only gotten better since. We live in great times, take advantage of it. If, OTOH, your plan is to start a family etc., it would be better to stick to the corporate safety.

But most of all, you should not take other people's advice too literally; life doesn't come with a manual, and nothing can guarantee happiness.

mcbeth6• 15 years ago

I'm pondering that but the current situation in Europe (I'm European but don't work in the EU) worries me that I might not be able to find a job one year down the line.

Are there any engineers out there that did a complete career shift and went into the medical field or law? For some reason that tempts me but soot it might be too late to make that change.

ignifero3• 15 years ago

You need lots of patience for such a shift, esp. with medicine; think twice about it. You sure you can't find another discipline? On the other hand, it's never too late (me i started a PhD in neuroscience at 29). I would definately not worry about finding a job in IT in a year.

ricardobeat3• 15 years ago

I'm even younger to give out advice, but why not try talking to your superiors and finding a compromise? If they don't see the value in keeping a senior engineer instead of a bored manager, then go find something else :)

BasDirks• 15 years ago

You only live once, don't be bored, ever.

GregoryK2• 15 years ago

well, for a start read the Big Kahuna epilogue, simple with a touch of humor http://www.makemagic.gr/node/312

mcbeth6• 15 years ago

While I appreciate the comment (I'm a fan of that essay too), I think you should read it in full, as written by Mary Schmich: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-su...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen

GregoryK2• 15 years ago

Thanks, now mentioned.

pknight• 15 years ago

answer this question? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tClHDEoje6Y&feature=playe... [ted talk]

fttechfounder• 15 years ago

mcbeth,

We have a similar background, and in similar situation I left my job to go for it. I'll share my story here:

After graduating from university, I joined HSBC's international management program where I worked for 3 and a half years. I was living the dream: getting paid a six figure package, living in a nice house and working decent hours (i.e. I had most evenings and weekends free and about 6 weeks of holiday a year). In a large organization like HSBC, getting work done takes time and a lot of consensus building. Sometimes the pace got frustrating but this was compensated by getting to travel the world. As part of the international management program, I moved to a different country about every 2 years to work in a different part of the bank. Traveling when you're young is exciting. I didn't have a girlfriend and in the short time I was with the bank, I lived first in London for 2 months, before moving to Shanghai for a year and a half and finally to Mexico City for two years.

3 months ago, at 25 years old, I left my job to start learning to code from scratch and start a start up. I left for some of the reasons you gave: politics was getting worse and I found myself taking more time trying to convince different parties and teams of my work than the time I took to do the work itself. But I didn't leave because the bank was so much more political than it was when I had started, I left because I wasn't prepared to put up with the politics and the red tape anymore.

The difference was that I realized I didn't want to work for anyone anymore. 2 years ago, while living in Shanghai, I stumbled into the local start up community and befriended some start up founders who completely changed my perspective on life. Until that point, most of my friends had been working in banks, consultancies and law firms. It was normal to sometimes spend 6 months building consensus and convincing teams to work on a project that might only take 1 month of effort. We accepted that it was normal for the perception of hard work to be more important than hard work or even effective work itself. We put up with corporate life because it was normal and because we didn't know any other.

The start up life I saw wasn't glamorous but it so much more exciting. While I lived in a 2 bedroom penthouse apartment in a fancy part of Shanghai, my friend shared an apartment with his co-founder and 4 other hackers he hired to work out of his living room. But unlike me, he wasn't worrying about deadlines and making a good impression. Instead, he was working on things that mattered like figuring out how to get through the month with enough cash to pay his employees. His life was the life of an entrepreneur, a roller coaster ride of emotions with very high highs and very low lows, and I wanted his life.

And so with a promising career ahead of me, I quit. I figured that in the worst case, I would fail multiple times, burn through my savings and get a job at 28. Of course, I had already decided that I wanted more than anything to start a start up.

My advice, as some have already suggested, is to find out what you value. If you value being at the top end of the corporate ladder, keep pushing, it's a long road ahead. If you value having disposable income and the opportunity to travel, keep your job. If you value your personal life, keep your job but take your pedal off the gas a little and prioritize your personal life.

If you're serious about a start up, ask yourself if you can afford to quit and then ask yourself if there's any other alternative. Start ups are difficult and demoralizing, even if you're wildly optimistic and the kind of person who normally achieves what you set your mind to.

If you're still serious, put together a budget, and see how long you can last just on your savings. If you don't have any liabilities like a mortgage or a family and you've saved some of your cushy salary over the years, you'll probably find that you can survive for a while.

For me, it came down to asking and answering these questions:

Q: What will I regret when I'm 80 years old? What am I going to regret more: taking a shot at a dream and failing, or never having taken a shot at all? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ)

A: Taking a shot and failing.

Q: What's the realistic best case scenario end game? I.e. If I look at someone who's 15 years ahead of my in the same career path and has done a good job of getting promoted, recognized and rewarded, am I happy doing what he's doing in 15 years?

A: No.

Q: What's the worse thing that can happen?

A: I'll get a job at 28. I'll probably make less money, but I'll at least have 3 years of international work experience at a major bank.

Q: What if you never get such a sweet job? Six figures is a lot of money for a 25 year old!

A: I don't have kids, I don't have a mortgage, I don't have debts and I do have a enough savings to tide me over for a few years. It means that I won't live with the same degree of financial freedom (e.g. watching my spending, going on fewer holidays, eating out less, etc.) but it's a price I'm prepared to pay.

For most people, the last few questions about financial security are the most difficult. At 29 without a family, you're young enough that you can start over if things don't work out. If you have enough savings and you're serious, go for it.

Good luck.

donnaware• 15 years ago

listen, OK, here is my story, 10 cent version, way back in 1985 or so, sorry if it is a little hazy, I was developing GUI for network management systems for a Big Blue type company. I interviewed with this rinky dink company in, what was then, HQ'ed in Bellevue WA (now they are in Redmond), to work on their top secret "windows" project. Wow, what a POS that thing was at the time. They offered me $10K/yr less than what I was making at the time and this fantastic stock option plan. But hey; all they had going for them at the time was DOS and this crappy windows where the windows could not overlap, wow. They did not stand a chance against Apple who was way ahead of them with the Mac. So I turned them down. That was the smart move on my part? OK, so the moral of the story is this, take chance when you are young, go for it, do what excites you. So what if you fail. Try it, do it, go for it. Do NOT stick with the cushy salary.

qiaolongji• 15 years ago

well,this is my story. I am born in a rural place in China, and my family is poor, I have a elder sister and she leaved school after she finished high school, while I got a graduate degree. Last year I enter a big IC company, and do embedded system programming. However after less 1 year, I find I can't learn a lot from this job, what's worse I am not interest the job, so I quit last month and now I'm finding a new job.

What should I do with my life?

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