Ask HN: Advice for finding purpose and early career burn out

2 points by khadgar25 4 years ago | 3 comments

I have had a bit of a non-standard career trajectory. I started out with an undergrad in engineering (aerospace), with a masters in applied physics, then a PhD in theoretical physics. Then not wanting to bounce between post-docs, I decided to try out industry and someone was kind enough to give me a chance at a full-stack role which was interesting but got a little boring after a year so I tried quantitative research at a bank for a couple years which ended up being mostly writing code and not much modeling. I craved more research so I looked elsewhere and found a role doing High Performance Computing for an Oil and Gas company's research center for a few years which was fun and I learned a lot but there wasn't much career growth in that role and due to some other family/financial constraints, I ended up leaving that to come back to NY to work at a bank as a quant developer.

At this point in my life, I really do enjoy being a developer (primarily C++ but I enjoy more theoretical/drier aspects as well and I often dabble in Haskell and functional programming and incorporate that in my work and personal projects). I have about 7 years of work experience after 6 years of grad school.

Lately, I have been battling with anxiety and depression and some of that has to do with me being not completely satisfied with my job. Although I enjoy programming, I was never the hacker teenager and didn't grow up with friends or family of coders. I have primarily seen myself as a problem solver throughout my life and I enjoy that. The main thing that I am lacking at this point and have missed throughout my life is a purpose. I would like to have a job where I can solve problems while making an impact of some kind, whether it be through writing code or something else. But I don't know how to go about finding what that might be. I am also feeling a little burnt out but I feel that it's a bit silly to be burnt out so early in my career.

Any advice is appreciated.

dossy 4 years ago |

As someone who grew up "a hacker teenager" and has been working in tech, writing code, etc., for ... yikes, 34 years ... let me say: some people are very fortunate that they have the self-awareness to recognize what their life's purpose is.

I'm not one of those people.

Tried therapy. Working with coaches. Experimented with drugs, both prescribed by psychopharmacologists, and ... the other kind.

Don't let this discourage you: most people don't seem to have this problem, finding their purpose.

If you truly and actually want a job solving problems and making an impact of some kind, as you say you do, then start with yourself: how could you solve this problem? What experiments might you design and execute? What questions would you seek answers to? What are your success criteria? Are there experts you could seek out for assistance?

Ultimately, you might find that you're only fooling yourself, saying you want a purpose because you've formed that opinion through life experience or some other influence, either internal or external.

It's also perfectly okay to just "be" and not have a purpose: this is probably the hardest thing for me, personally, to recognize as true and fully accept, too. But, it is.

In the end, my personal advice would be to spend some time, whether it's minutes, hours, or days, and write down a list of every single thing you like to do, no matter how trivial or whether you think it's "wrong" for you to like doing it or not. Don't focus on all the things you don't like doing, don't create a "cons" list of those things. Only focus on the "pros" and write them ALL down.

Then, once you've got a fairly extensive list, start creating groups or clusters (permutations, with reuse) of the things on the list, and look for patterns that emerge that suggest possible professions or at least things you could develop and get good at.

Then, start doing those things. The things you truly, genuinely like doing. Then, eventually, you can figure out how to monetize those activities. Almost everything in life is monetizable if you're willing to.

The challenge is finding the things you truly like doing and going out and doing them.

dylanhassinger 4 years ago |

you are very employable, you can get a job in any industry

focus on getting your finances and savings right, that will give you even more optionality.

be generous with your income to stay humble

if you need purpose, find a job in the green energy industry, that is society's #1 problem

fch42 4 years ago |

Your trajectory is far from "non-standard". Many of us in the IT space have come from a physics or maths background, not the least because some of the IT-related skills you almost inevitably pick up in these fields of science is numerics / applied maths. Which helps hugely with the more data-driven areas of IT employment.

I've started my IT career as a student sysadmin (at an institute of applied physics) in the 90s ... and in these near 30 years, not yet managed to set aside the time for a multi-month career break or sabbatical - in spite of being a few years into my eighth employment since. And no, I've not remained sysadmin all these years; done development in multiple areas and using different programming languages and environments, done project and people mgmt and sysadmin - with more than one back-and-forth. I would not say I have "found" my zone of comfort that I'd like to stay in ... and am often asking myself if I'd be more content had I stayed in physics, or academia, or both. And whether I'd really like to continue with the grind.

If that sounds resigned to you, then that's on purpose. Let me say though that realizing "I don't like all IT jobs through the bank", "this job appears to be pointless", and that introspecting yourself stops at the barrier question "am I / have I actually done the right thing?" is absolutely normal. If the IT World, as employer, can be characterized with a single word then I'd choose "fast-paced"; trends develop overnight and things become possible today that appeared intractable yesterday. Technology becomes deprecated barely after it shipped, methodologies you learned and liked go out of fashion. Or else you discover and introduce one you like and it quickly evicts what tied you down before. Fully agree that this onslaught can overwhelm and trigger anxiety. The feeling of being unable to follow. Or the cynicism of noting that it's only a reoccurance of an ancient tech that you had thought dead in the ditch ... ten years ago.

It can be very refreshing to join a startup or younger company in this context - once you rationalize that it will feel as if you're the left-behind, the grumpy greybeard, oldschool, and that you'll have a lot of these cynical "been there seen that don't ask" moments. Live through them and observe. Then turn the "duh" feelings into action - and nudge the colleagues. Ask them why they try what seems a dead end to you. Give them examples to broaden their horizons for side effects, or to exploit opportunities to catch value from low-hanging fruit they didn't see. This way, you may capture the spirit. Younger colleagues generally actually like this approach. Because it doesn't "put them in their place" (as in: I know so much better and you noob should listen to me greybeard), but instead broadens their horizon. That they prefer Rust and you C++ doesn't mean you can't read their code and point out their implementation does an O(N^3) where a well-known library provides O(log(N)). Is this purpose ? To use your experience making others more productive ? To treat the company a little bit like a parent would their children, with goodwill, help it grow, help it develop, in ways that go beyond what a project deliverable done "to-spec" would ?

As far as "purpose" in the wider world goes, what matters to you most ? Money ? Environmental issues ? Human Interaction ? Peace ? Safety+Security ? International Politics ? Equality or international development ? Whatever it actually is, right here right now, few areas of employment are entirely devoid of IT involvement. And if you wish to remain "close" to IT but not quite right on a developer job, there's Data Science, IT Training, People or Project Management to try out. Or even "manual labour" - chip making tech, hardware engineering.

What I'm saying is, phases of burnout, reaching the point where you don't like "the job" anymore will always happen. The best boss can't make up for a company that bet on the wrong product and is circling the drain. The fastest-growing company won't offset personality clashes, say, the fact your boss is a fake-till-you-make blender and you're not (or vice versa). The coolest benefits and huge pension contribution may (not) balance out the iron-fisted run-by-the-book bureaucracy.

Don't despair - dare to move. Internally, externally. Sometimes, a step-back can be a leap forward.

Start joking about your grey hairs !