Thank HN: Five months ago, I was feeling like a loser, now I am opposite
I thought I hated programming and was ready to quit or even divorce my wife. I was not able to have a normal conversation with anyone. I was burned out but I thought I was having midlife crisis.
My wife wanted to buy a big house and I kept blaming her for the stress.
My job was easy and I had a lot of control over my time, work location, etc. I didn't think it could be the job that was causing me feel depressed.
What I didn't realize while my work gave me freedom on work schedule, it didn't give me any real freedom to make important decisions. We were checkmark driven company. I was forced to do a lot of compliance and security related tasks which added zero benefit to our service.
After my post, I decided that I either move into management at my last company or get a new job. I worked longer hours and spent all my free time doing LeetCode.
LeetCode was hard and pointless. But I was motivated and was able to solve most easy and medium question in 30 mins. However, that was not good enough for FAANGs.
I applied to some smaller companies and got a few offers. I picked one really great Series D startup. I believe in their mission and I have freedom to make real decisions here. I got a decent bump in my salary but not really FAANG TC.
However, more importantly, work is 1000 times more exciting. I feel alive again. Wife and I are not fighting anymore. I work longer hours but have more energy at the end of day.
I just want to thank everyone that responded to my post and tell everyone that if you find your work or life unfulfilling, change your job now!
225 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 356 ms ] threadThat said, as a cybersecurity practitioner, this:
>a lot of compliance and security related tasks which added zero benefit to our service
scares the bejeezus out of me. Security is never of zero benefit.
There are plenty of security-related tasks that have zero, or even negative, benefit.
- Obtaining EV certificates for your websites.
- Enforcing password rotation every 90 days.
- Adding a webapp firewall in front of your static file hosting (e.g. S3).
1. Angst to clean up the latest non-vuln. vuln. (e.g., the use of the vuln. library doesn't meet the requirements listed in the vuln. for it to be vuln., or the vuln. is researcher spam and … isn't really a vuln., but good luck trying to get someone to understand that, or where a vuln. gets publicized but your upstream OS is derping around and hasn't actually released the patched version yet)¹
2. ill-advised attempts to add TLS or similar: adding TLS is not trivial (you do have to have the cert available, so that the ends can validate), but I've seen a lot of TLS additions, e.g., on top of a secure network, or where TLS is bolted on but the library is set to "don't verify". (Worse, this is the default in many libraries: as someone implementing TLS, industry would be greatly helped by having defaults that were secure. PG, MySQL, I'm looking at you.) In one case an auditor asked the mobile apps to do cert pinning — which they did, without ever involving the BE engs. (They weren't told they needed to!) The next cert rotation broke both mobile apps, and broke both differently: the Android app pinned only the private key (and had a NPE if it wasn't RSA) and the iOS app pinned the cert, so that one was truly broken. I've also seen a VPN setup where the clients were configured to accept any leaf cert issued by a public web PKI CA … and check nothing else. (I.e., anyone could go to that CA, get a leaf, and it would MitM the VPN.)
3. adding yet-another-security-linter that has problems with every little thing. E.g., we had one that really disliked that we did string concatenation in our SQL queries. But we were concatenating parameterized queries, as the search parameters (including the number of parameters), came from the user. So a program would need to add, e.g., "AND column > ?" to the query, and append the value to the parameter list. Ended up switching some of that to SQLAlchemy, through which it couldn't see, even though it was functionally the same. SQLAlchemy did work with a better internal AST, though, so it caught some errors our query builder caught only after bugging. I also have a linter from my current security team that files a bug for each package in a container that has vulns. against it. But it does not ever update its bugs, … so you don't know if anything is actually fixed. (I'm not patching package by package; I'm usually invalidating a cache & forcing it to do the equivalent of "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade", so I'm going to close a bunch of tickets all at once … but I have no way of knowing which ones.)
4. Audits, where the auditor asks things like "do you use RC4, TLS, or AES?" which … good grief
5. concerns about PII handling for information that's part of a public (government) record.
¹my default disposition is to patch, regardless of theoretical exploitability, if it is trivial to do so. But if it's not trivial — e.g., if the upgrade is a SemVer incompatible upgrade that requires me to rebase the entire monolith on to a new web framework and I lack the resources to do that right now, and the vuln.'s conditions to be exploited say we're not vuln., I am going to take the pragmatic approach of "we're ignoring this, as it doesn't apply to our codebase."
Where I work, it’s widely acknowledged that doing security for security’s sake, done right, can cover your compliance, but security for compliance’s sake just checks checkboxes and doesn’t really get you security.
Or some day, they will decide that one part of our service should move from one network to another for security or compliance reasons. But they have no idea how to do it, who to talk to, etc.
But since it is security issue, we will need drop everything and figure out how to move part of our infrastructure to another network. Things like these were pretty common.
Are you so sure that work is really important? Most of that big tech stuff is some variation of a low quality attention sink, or similarly some kind of ad-tech that mines the personal information that gets used in said attention sink. [There is real stuff being worked on, but it's not the core focus]
I've worked a couple jobs that have had tangible real-world impact, and that has counted for a ton: keeping search and rescue helicopters in the air, and improving material science. Besides that, I think back to what I've contributed to, and it doesn't amount to much.
At this stage, I'm fairly selfish about work stuff: I need to learn and to get paid. If my work can have meaningful impact that's awesome, but very elusive.
Like, I understand your position, but the way everyone goes about "de-Googling" or avoiding other big tech products makes it very clear it is useful and important.
Everyone always writes their blog posts about how to switch to alternate services for everything company X does, instead of writing letters to the editor about how notebooks and typewriters, paper letters and day planners, physical photos and public radio, printed maps and encyclopedias are all you need.
Online maps, internet search, email, word processing, spreadsheets, mobile and desktop operating systems, compilers and IDEs, music and video streaming, cloud file and photo storage... people use them. You can have your problems with the way the business is run and the fraction of the internet that is ad supported, but it doesn't change that it feels good to work on a thing that millions of people will use and get value out of and maybe even like.
That’s what I gather from the replies so far.
This is almost every job. You might as well get paid fairly for it.
I ain't sitting in front of my computer because I love it, I do it because I need money.
If ~12k in savings is close to being a millionaire then I'm rolling in it. But I guess I don't need to live a lavious life style.
I just wouldn't accept 250k at a FANG company where I'm a number and hating my job and not having any say or impact. Working for a smaller company and having a life after work with no stress is better.
Some people go on cruises every year or get a timeshare, others throw a dart at a world map.
Plus FAANG is like grad school for startups. Startups love their CTOs and tech leads to be ex-FAANG. Looks great on the "who we are" pages and slides. You're way more likely to be able to land a top-level position at an early, promising startup with that in your work history. I suspect lots of them round-file any applications that don't have either FAANG or something really remarkable and relevant (say, published research in the same area the startup's working on) as their first filtering pass. They need someone with a history they can sell to investors and early clients.
“spent all my free time doing LeetCode. [..] LeetCode was hard and pointless”
For someone recovering from burnout, it doesn’t seem a good idea to recommend that they return to an activity that felt pointless.
BTW I thought about divorce but never said that word to my wife. Those thoughts luckily were very brief.
But with that said, it is always a good time to work on yourself and relationships.
on the other hand, being individually happy is not enough. if your partnership does not add anything to your happiness then you are more like roommates.
you are fortunate until now, but i would not rely on being able to keep that going without your partners help. you say you are happy as a couple when you are happy individually, but there is more to a relationship than just your individual happiness.
i would investigate how your relationship is really doing. is your wife as happy as you are? how would you deal with difficult times as a couple? what might happen if your work changed and you no longer feel happy there?
how are you supporting each other?
It's not happening here, but: I really really don't understand people who get offended by "unsolicited" advice. Chances are it's coming from a place of honest care and concern. Just ignore it if it doesn't pertain to you. When you get a strong reaction from someone in response to unsolicited advice, I find more often than not it's actually striking a chord and probably more needed than the person realizes. I'd want that feedback whether I solicited it or not, personally.
To me it comes off as condescension, not actually help. If they wanted to help or cared, they would seek to understand first. Unsolicited and more importantly uninformed advice shows a disregard for the recipient.
It reminds me of legal advice threads where people give terrible advice because they are too busy speaking to even read the original post.
Re-read Lumost post, and then em-bee's unsolicited diagnosis and advice. They are absolutely making assumptions and suggesting a narrative about an uncollaborative and deficient marriage.
At the end of the day, people are free to post what they want, but having some community standards is what prevents things from devolving into rabble and insults.
For my part, I want to use that freedom to tell people that it is unproductive and generally considered rude to make unsolicited, uncharitable, and uninformed assumptions about the marriages of others. Moreso, because I think are giving out factually bad advice.
Perhaps you should respond to the factually bad parts, because that's actually debatable. Leading with "that's rude" is a personal sentiment and all it takes to rebut that is a "no, it's really not".
Similarly if you’re finding yourself prefacing comments with “No offense, but…” just don’t say them. Offense avoided.
The comment to which you're replying makes some good points and isn't finger-pointy, and is more suggestive of potential gaps to fill. Any long-term relationship requires hard work, and so advice is often a helpful reminder of this, whether the advice is good or not it can trigger a re-evaluation of perspective; a view from the outside of what may have become taken for granted from the inside.
I've semi-jokingly referred to my relationship as 'like roommates'. We've discussed at length that 'this time in our lives' is the busiest we've ever been with early teen kids playing various sports, playing musical instruments, having braces, dealing with hormones and their personalities developing into 'who they're going to be as adults', fuck it's a lot.
I just had a couple of days off sick, and it was like a fucking holiday.
Unsolicited advice: If your long term relationship hasn't yet reached 'pre- and early-teen kids', then make sure you're ready for it. Get your house in order, because it's going to feel like your life and dreams are on pause for five to ten years whilst you develop the best little adults you possibly can. And you will need each other to lean on for the duration.
The first swear word is a beautiful moment to be revisited regularly :)
As in, when children are born, the first 6 months are a nightmare, the next ~3 years are extremely tough, then as they get more independent and grown that's when it gets good? That 'pre- and early-teen' is supposed to be the best part, when you can more-or-less deal with them like with adults and they are fairly independent?
i think what makes kids tough to deal with is not accepting their behavior as it is. when you want them to be a certain way, but you don't know how to get them to be that way. even when i see problematic kids portrayed on tv many times i feel that the kids don't have a problem, but it's the parents who can't deal with it. they don't take the kids seriously and don't respect them or consider their needs. with that attitude, kids will be difficult at any age.
;)
I think there's a "know thyself" problem for those who have difficulty with their kids. They'll behave like you, and if you're not happy with yourself then you won't be happy with them.
Both of mine are so often overtly like me I often ask my wife: when are YOU having kids?
To which she replies: three is more than enough.
(Explainer: we have two kids, I'm the third).
yup that's a classic.
I think there's a "know thyself" problem for those who have difficulty with their kids. They'll behave like you, and if you're not happy with yourself then you won't be happy with them.
very much so. but it works the other way too. seeing myself reflected in my kids motivates me to change my behavior.
and parents changing their behavior is the only thing that works. applying two different standards and thinking that certain behavior is only ok for adults but not for kids (swearing for example) doesn't work.
for anyone who missed it, a longer discussion on the topic is here btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31703675
My wife and I both work, our weekly routine is as follows:
* Monday: daughter piano lesson 4:30-5pm, son soccer practise 7-8:30pm
* Tuesday: daughter dance 6pm-8:30pm
* Wednesday: son soccer practise, until his coach went to play a comp he was getting tennis coaching 5-5:30
* Thursday: rest day, although sons tennis team get together for a hit most evenings, dads also play
* Friday: son tennis comp 6-8pm, daughter dance practise 6-8:30pm, I take my niece roller skating 7:30-9:30pm
* Saturday: Dance comp season there are dance competitions every third week or so, when there's no competition they do 'teams' dance practise, I play tennis comp 1-4:30pm
* Sunday: son soccer game
I try to fit in four or five stretches, weights, exercise sessions per week as well to slow the decline of age.
So, yeah, I fit in playing tennis and roller skating weekly, so I get to scratch those itches, and I have time to tinker with personal projects, and watch movies and shows, but they always feel like 'slices' of time. My job isn't hugely demanding, by my wife's is, plus she does the cooking (because she's the picky one, says I).
But there's also managing screen time, bed times (they're both night owls), chores, homework, school drop offs and pickups, their friends, our friends (!), taxes, banking, finances, physio appointments, car servicing, fixing the goddam toilet and a leaky tap, and I'll fix the WiFi in a minute, and funerals, and birthday parties (they're much less of a big deal then when the kids are under 10, glad that stage has passed).
We've got a great network of family support without which we'd probably have to cut some activities or require more flexible working arrangements. We're using the whole fucking village (but we're also contributing).
I wouldn't have it any other way, and I wouldn't have thought I could cope with all of that if I wasn't in the middle of coping with it.
BUT you need to support you partner and you partner needs to support you.
And I'm totally aware that in the (near?) future we're going to need to support our kids with theirs, and wouldn't you know it: I think I'm kinda looking forward to that.
Someone else can’t make you happy.
They can help you being more happy by supporting you.
But if you're really unhappy about your life or work, that's usually not enough
I mean.. it's not like most people haven't tried that. Things are just more complicated than that in real life, and not all problems can be fixed. Consider perhaps you guys are lucky to not have any such issues and are therefore both able to find happiness on your own
big life decisions should never be made alone. OP came here to help make his decision, which is better than deciding all by himself but consulting with his wife would have been better still.
In reality she will leave you for a guy who isn’t so miserable all the time.
I think it is kinda rude to make these assumptions.
I'm just saying there are plenty of problems love, support, and teamwork can't fix. Doubly so when you don't know what is wrong in the first place. A healthy marriage can help in rough times and be a source of strength and resiliency, but is hardly a panacea for all of life's problems.
hard disagree. there isn't a single problem that can't be fixed in a good relationship.
OP would not have needed to come here and ask for help if he had been able to talk with his wife about his problems.
partners should be supportive of each other and they should work together to solve problems. but a solution can include bringing in outside help.
the point is that any approach to solve a problem starts with looking at that problem with your partner and together deciding the next steps
Apologies for the misunderstanding, then. Agree that keeping one's partner "in the loop", especially early on [edit: early on in seeking help for something, that is, not early on in the relationship], is generally advisable.
wow - Because his wife is an expert in software career development, burnout, and real-estate? For all we know his wife suggested he get feedback here!
>hard disagree. there isn't a single problem that can't be fixed in a good relationship.
I am fine to agree to disagree. PSA, if you have cancer, see an oncologist. No amount of love from your partner will fix it.
it doesn't take an expert in career development.
a partner is also the person that you should be able to share your innermost feelings with.
burnout especially is something partners should talk about. if your partner doesn't understand why you have problems at work then that will cause problems in the relationship.
sure once you have identified a problem you may need to seek out an expert. but you should still talk with your partner before taking any steps.
if i come home telling my wife that i decided to move to new york because they have the best treatment for my cancer then that's not going to fly. that kind of decision only both can take together.
same goes for changing jobs. it might change the commute, oe require a move. or reduce their income. OP was unhappy at work, taking on a better, but less well paid job was at least a possibility.
the reason i am stuck on this is because from my experience and from what marriage counselors have told me, the majority of relationship problems come from lack of communication.
OP considering divorce doesn't sound like there was any sensible communication between them at the time.
My experience differs. In my experience, multiple marriage and personal counselors have been very clear that there are personal problems and relationship problems. Personal problems can cause relationship problems, and often times a spouse can only lend support as individuals work through their personal problem.
It can be unhealthy and destructive to expect your spouse or relationship to solve a personal problem.
People can have other types of problems besides relationship problems.
Totally agreed with this.
In my experience (~7 years married) I didn't acknowledge I had anxiety for a really long time -- because I didn't know it. Up until the moment I actually acknowledged it I couldn't "level up" in my relationship.
On top of that, people change with time and experience (for better or worse). I feel like I am a completely different person than who I was when I first got married. Fortunately, I changed in ways that happened to be good for my relationship -- but I truly believe that some people have to level up by leaving a relationship -- even if it's not necessarily a "bad" relationship.
I.E. a relationship may begin with or without religion and if that changes for one of them it could be a breaking change for the other -- even if the people still treat each other with mutually love and respect and are hypothetically perfectly healthy with one another.
Do you think that contradicts what you quoted? Yes, you can fix those problems. But sometimes it takes more than love, support, and teamwork. Sometimes you need to make other changes.
those other changes are the result of love support and teamwork. love, support and teamwork are the necessary conditions to find out what changes are necessary, and to be able to carry them out.
there are plenty of problems love, support, and teamwork can't fix
to imply that love, support, and teamwork are not always what is needed to fix a problem. and that the solution is elsewhere.
but at least when it comes to problems that affect the family and the relationship, without love, support, and teamwork nothing can be fixed. only if you have love, support, and teamwork then you can find a solution. they are a necessary condition.
i think in the further discussion we reached a common understanding that this doesn't mean that love, support, and teamwork are sufficient. they don't make the problem just go away. sometimes the solution requires further action, or outside help. nor does it mean that the love and support of one partner can solve the problems of the other on their own, but rather it is the process of collaboration and consultation of the partners with each other combined with love and support by both that enables the finding and implementation of a solution.
one thing that may have lead to the confusion is that to me, the teamwork part already implies that there is more work being done to solve a problem. love and support alone can help address a problem without hurting the relationship further, but teamwork then makes it go away. to me it implies all the work being done to solve the problem.
You’re right. Ideally your partner should support you. You also shouldn’t be thinking of divorcing your wife because of your job - that sounds ridiculous and like your wife is actually a net drain to your life. (Been there…) That said - it shouldn’t be that way. If the wife is being terrible then they need to shape up and not be terrible. Partners should add value to your life and not drain it. Together you should be greater than the sum of your parts. Even when you’re both struggling - you should find comfort in that you’re both not alone in your struggle.
As well - this idea that you should be atomically happy and there should be no outside influences on your well being is just an asinine juvenile belief. Do we expect babies to not cry out for their mother? Why is it that when you’re desiring something you somehow need to become the Buddha? The fuck is wrong with people. Sometimes you just need a hug and some support from someone in your life who loves you and is willing to be there for you. You don’t need to be some mythical stoic creature who cares about nothing in this world like you’re a nihilist.
I legit wonder if maybe some of you are just super neurodivergent and need to tag yourselves as such before making such wild ass statements about how to interact with other people. Fucking HN.
This is exactly why I think social media is cancerous, it normalizes that conversations devolve into a contentious battle of words for dopamine feedback loops. It's pretty pathetic that you think that is how people interact in the real World, perhaps you should interact with people in real life more often to address you 'compulsion' rather than assert your need to do so in every interaction.
I've come to this realization given how prevalent tech is with people with ADHD and Autism pretty early on and since HN is mainly tech people it's quite common to see this type of response. I used to think it was most trying to live up to some edgelord persona they've built up online but after going from idealism based startup World and stepping into the megacorp level tech worker I think it really is clear that it's the former given how they interact with people and can't read social cues at all and feel the need to interject with outlandish conclusions with seemingly no tact or discretion.
The prevalence of this issue is spoken openly by people who are afflicted but have developed coping mechanisms, but I fear that is the exception not the norm as most just insulate themselves further rather than ever address them.
As for OP, I've been in demanding relationships with partners that seem to have a need to want to make it clear to their friends/family that they're on course to marry up more than have a fulfilling relationship, and it was incredibly draining albeit an amazing learning experiences so I'm glad they never went beyond the girlfriend level for that reason. I've seen some pretty stark reactions to people in long term relationships (mainly boomer age) who 'made those work' during COVID which re-enforced the fact that most people were in what were marriages of convenience(s) as it was clear to see when they were forced to live with one another under lockdown and things got dark real fast--hence why so many divorces and things like substance abuse took place during that time.
With that said I'm glad you've been able to regain agency in your professional life, perhaps she was just giving you a goal to get your mind back to former ways?
"I wish I had worked more."
"I wish I had a less meaningful relationship with my wife."
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her
I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat, And a six four Impala
So I can get with Leoshi
She don't know me
but yo she's really fine...
You know I see her all the time everywhere I go
but even in my dreams I can scheme my way to make her mine...
One in Tombstone, AZ (probably the only place people read these) says "We killed him by mistake. Too bad."
There may really be a grave with the poem: "Here lies the body of Richard Weigh, who died defending his right of way. He was right, dead right, as he sped along. And he's just as dead as if he was wrong"
"Here below are the ashes of a man who had the habit of putting everything off until tomorrow. But in his last days he improved, and did actually die on January 31, 1972."
“I wish I never got married”
“I wish my wife would’ve left sooner”
But I highly doubt there are many people who can prevent their internal mental state from affecting their relationships.
I was not able to see her point of view when I felt like a loser. Once I decided that I will get a new job, we were better able to communicate and figure out our next steps.
In the movies, maybe: "As long as we're together, nothing else matters".
In reality, relationship success often depends on certain fundamental things being in order. Like financial security and comfortable living arrangements.
It's not just a direct relationship though. Consider your relationship with your spouse's family, friends, community, spiritual stuff. These are usually easiest to strengthen during good periods.
not just thanks but get her a gift too. something that requires you to put in an effort that she sees and understands.
Not too long ago, my wife and I got the suggestion to schedule a weekly "open-faced hour". It has worked wonders for understanding each other, which has positive effects on every aspect of our relationship.
Long live the culture of individual freedom the west values most.
(remote (Sweden))
... or am I unclear on “remote” or “Sweden”?
As an example, I’d have to look, but I think it’s only quite recently that I’ve been able to hire in Sweden, 2 years after being remote. I know I couldn’t last year, but we contracted with some company to make some of the smaller markets feasible for us.
the onus is usually on the employer. if the employer doesn't have an any legal entity in the target country they can't be forced to to employ that individual.
that said, some countries really don't like individuals to run their own businesses. is sweden one of those?
Also SaaS like Deel make it easy for employers to hire anyone around the world. The problem is educating the employers. I would perhaps add a blurb about getting paid via Deel in cover letter.
I had a stringent mentality before that I wanted to be an X. Not anymore.
Work needs to have certain things going on, and money beyond an amount is not that of a gamechanger.
I want to do exciting work. Life is too short to work just for money.
(That is not to say you shouldn't assume your pre-IPO equity to be worth anything though.)
I presume OP doesn’t live in SV because no way to buy just about any home here on a startup salary. Homes where I am went from $2m to $3m in last couple years. These pillars of dust full of termites somehow managed to get even more insanely expensive. I literally didn’t think it was possible to see a shitbox going for $3m outside of Palo Alto but I was wrong.
A new goal for myself is to always be interview ready. I ll resume LeetCode pretty soon.
If it were a "I got a job, it's cool." condition, leetcode grinding would've been good advice but he says work is 1000x more exciting so I'm assuming he loves it.
I feel this.
Secondly I genuinely hope you apologize to your wife and appreciate her sticking by you through what sound like mental issues. Sadly, a lot of people aren't so patient.
The house is a bit more expensive than I would like but we can afford it. And we could have afford it before too, but I probably subconsciously thought that I don't deserve it.
Unfortunately, if you are not building your own house (or having it built, ofc), you can only get a house the size that's almost always bigger than what you'd like initially. Or has fewer rooms than you'd like. You simply don't get to specify the room sizes or such, and for unbeknownst-to-me reasons, people simply build huge houses with huge rooms instead of smaller houses with more smaller rooms.
> startup
If this is your criterion for working at a startup, then you are too conservative to work at one. Every job carries risk, and looking to eradicate it is pointless.
If things tank in a year or two, OP will just be the target of a recruiter feeding frenzy, and they'll come out more qualified than they went in.
Quitting immediately would look bad in comparison, and staying but exuding pessimism and paranoia would not be adaptive.
You're riding really high now. You were really low before. Emotional roller coasters mean you should talk with someone, regardless of how you're feeling right now.
I've jumped ship and had it be a really positive experience. Wouldn't be averse to it again, and I think that's mostly what this post is about: recognized that their career was important to them, dug deep and found a better job, now they're sharing excitement their about it.
It's also important to not get too much personal identification from a job (see Mike Rowe's thoughts on happy people working crappy jobs), and to not overwork, but whatever - they're making progress!
Your second sounds like good advice to me too, if a little presumptuous. How well do you know OP?
Is it that hard to believe that changing what one spends over a third of their waking hours per week on can have a significant impact on one's emotional well being?
There's this strange "work-life balance" ethos, where the two have some sort of invisible barrier that holds them at diametric odds with one another. I'm still working out a theory, but I think it's a descendant of the Greatest Generation/Baby Boomer work values starting in the 1940s after practically every able-bodied young man became militarized.
Needless to say (or maybe needfully), it's tripe, as you've indicated. Work creates meaning in its own right, yes, but not if someone despises it, and a sense of duty alone will _not_ empower someone to sleep well at night.
The longer hours mean you spend less time with her so you're happier, the pay rise means she can spend it so she's happier and the decision making you get at the job gives you a sense of manhood which you are obviously lacking at home.
Give it time and your wife will again become unhappy with the status quo and demand more and once again you will be unhappy and blame your job.
What makes you think it's not good enough? LC is important and today it might be even be essential to land a role, but I think people tend to think of it like an exam when that's not really what we're testing for.
The goal is to see how you think, not see if you can simply come up with the right answer. If you need a hint it's usually not going to hurt you at all so long as you listen to the hint, are able to understand it, then incorporate it into a solution. I'd go so far as to say that being able to do that can help you more than reciting an answer without a hint.
There are some patterns like tries, left/right pointers, memoization, heaps, and maps that studying helps with for sure, but that doesn't mean you're supposed to be able to immediately solve something without any help.
(Note that there are asshole interviewers out there that will challenge you and won't follow what I've described, but that's rare and personally I've only seen them at startups, not big tech)
I get where you are coming from when you say "the goal is to see how you think" - I really do and I have definitely believed in that once upon a time. Truth is, it's extremely gut/instinct driven than we realise. So yeah, while you can easily shoot down a candidate who seem to regurgitate what they had already solved, there's just absolutely no way to differentiate it from a candidate having a bad moment (let alone a bad day).
I had a take home exercise recently where I was supposed to identify a performance issue and fix it. I read the code in a hurry after finishing my day job. I knew where the likely issue is coming from but just couldn't locate it. I wrote back as such. The next day the solution came to me. I fixed it and sent it back. I still got hired but that sort of thing can never happen in a leet-code type interview no matter how much we'd like to believe. I have ADHD but even otherwise our brains are finicky.
30 minutes is probably about what it takes me to solve an LC medium on average and I’ve passed every single FAANG full onsite loop I’ve taken which is a total of 6 over my career. I almost always need a hint or two if it’s not a trivial problem.
If I practiced I could get that number down but I don’t think it would make it more likely to get a better offer.
Yes they are this blatant about it nowadays.
My heart nerves got jacked up a couple years ago, and I had to get a pacemaker. It's presumably collecting a ton of cool data that it BLE's to the manufacturer and my cardiologist, but I don't have access to it.
I used the swagger interface a few months ago to download my resting heart rate over a three-year period, and it was interesting.
But this post is Blind worthy not HN.
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot
Congrats and thanks for sharing, you rock :)
It's really nice to get updates from folks who posted an Ask HN. Especially with a positive outcome.
It's really not uncommon for humans to find energizing work energizing, and for that to affect their overall quality of life. Plenty of people are comfortable checking boxes and going home early, sure, but that can be a slow death to a lot of folks (even some who might not realize it).
This is simplifying a complex situation, which OP should definitely seek professional guidance for before he finds himself in the same situation 5 months from now...
Of course, there's always risk that the job changes and becomes worse. In a Series D company, we know that could happen at any time.
OP probably knows this too :)
Depends on what one understand by “rewarding”. If it's compensation, title, status, achievements, etc., these are extrinsic factors. Regardless, I don't see any evidence for a rewarding career in the OP.
For OP, it sounds like an intrinsically rewarding job would be one that involves autonomy, decision-making, a sense of impact - which it sounds like they now have.
> OP should definitely seek professional guidance
You speak with the certainty of a professional (more, in fact, since a professional would know how little they know about the situation). Are you one? Do you have any reason to believe OP _hasn't_ sought professional guidance?
If you have something to share about _why_ talking with a professional would be worthwhile, or how to find the right one, or what kind of professional to look for, or something else that OP would plausibly think to themselves, "wow thanks, this is really useful" – that would be kind to share. Personal/secondhand anecdotes often work (as distasteful as some find it), as do peer-reviewed evidence etc.
Pointing the obvious is seen as rude, negative or plain toxic, as some do here. Even just dropping hints is received with hostility. Honestly I've experienced no upside and only downside from trying to help people in such situations.
Note, I am doing exactly what you were talking about, but with you.
I too, give blunt unwarranted advice, and don't give a single fuck if people hate me for it because their emotions cloud their judgement. I like to believe others that will read the advice from a 3rd party perspective, and if even a single person gets helped, it's ultimately worth it.
signed, an asshole who frequently calls people idiots (generally not to their face, though)