throwaway55254

I've been in a similar position, a couple times in my career. I think its a natural trap to fall into when you are the kind of person that is good at bootstrapping projects to the point where they need a team to grow further, but not interested in management.

A newsletter article (not mine) that helped crystallize my thinking around this, and helped me to explain it to non-technical folks in my current organization is this one: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/engineering-leade.... Unfortunately its pay-walled, but Gergely (author) put some of the content in a tweet thread that is worth reading (https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1473353064358756352). If you look at the venn diagram posted in that thread, it sounds like you fall squarely in the "beware!!" zone.

If you are like me, you fall into that zone, at least in part, because you are clinging to the some technical duties that you could give up, but since they are the foundation of why you enjoy your job, refuse to do so. Understanding this and your own strengths and weaknesses clearly, can really help frame possible solutions for you. I would spend some time reflecting (and it sounds like you already have) about what you want out of this job and your career in general.

Perhaps you can propose to your management that you want to move into more of a "staff engineer" role. This may or may not work, and in the end, depending on the management at your company, you may have to move on to find what you want, but being clear about what that you want, is the first step in that direction.

is the condition/symptom negatively affecting your ability to go about your day-to-day life

I wonder though, is this even too broad? Perhaps people need to overcome some of this adversity. Not everything is painless in life nor should it be.

Better living through chemistry. Not at all what I was thinking when I wrote this post, but I love this take on it. I think if that is truly the drive behind the medicalisation of every day life we would be better off dropping the facade just allow people to live their best life through chemical augmentation, if they so desire.

My mind takes the wide application of this to a scary dystopian conclusion, but perhaps it doesn't have to be this way. Or conversely perhaps we are already there.

I wonder about this as well. I see lists of anxiety symptoms shared and I meet every one of them, but I don't consider myself to have anxiety. Isn't it normal to be anxious in stressful situations or to be depressed when things are going poorly. Then I do some reading about it and I wonder maybe its not normal, maybe I'm not supposed to feel this way.

I'm sure there are people with mental health conditions that do need treatment, I won't argue that at all. I do think pinning down what is "normal" and should be just waited out and what is abnormal and should be medically treated, although easy at the extreme edges, is very difficult in the middle of the spectrum.

I agree with the article that we are trying to narrow the normal distribution of human traits by medicalising things that are a common occurrence for at least a subset of the population. I'm not sure where this stems from though. Is it the desire for extreme corporate efficiency and competition for resources. Is it a misguided medical system trying to make patients out of more people? Like anything sufficiently complicated its probably a huge confluence of factors.

This terrifies me. I've been trying to get up the nerve to talk to my doctor about my mental health for years now. I've been depressed on and off for a large portion of my life. I've always been really wary of pills though and reading things like this makes me worry even more. I wonder if the efficacy is actually there or if the withdrawal is worth it.