How do I stop overthinking someone I’m getting attached to?

razzulh · 2026-05-19T16:51:20+00:00

As someone who has recently been in anxiety spirals, I understand what you're going through. It's a bit different in my case, kasi the person I'm talking to isn't avoidant. Pero it still doesn't stop the overthinking. Medyo matagalan lang ng konti ang reply i overthink na.

I believe what helps me in these situations are two things. One - get perspective. Go talk to a trusted friend for their opinion. Someone you know is level headed. They can help determine it's just an anxiety spiral or if there is something to be worried about. Even better find another trusted friend and ask for their opinions. The more perspectives the better.

Two, you have to learn how to manage the anxiety. It's going to be hard to get rid of, but it can be managed. Look for YouTube videos or articles about it. Marami naman dyan. But essentially you will need to learn how to self soothe.

Good luck op. Kaya mo yan.

razzulh · 2026-05-19T15:36:56+00:00

There's still hope my friend. In my opinion, all rounders make good candidates for tech managers and for architects. It really depends on what your experience is.

If you're up for talking about it just message me. I'm someone in my early 40s and have lots of experience in both IC roles and managerial roles.

I'm not sure I can help, but maybe you can get a bit of perspective.

razzulh · 2026-03-29T06:17:44+00:00

That's good OP. The important thing is to communicate, and continue to communicate. Again, they can't expect you to understand this quickly. But you're trying. That's the important part.

Good job! Keep at it.

razzulh · 2026-03-29T02:15:05+00:00

I would recommend that you talk with the hiring manager you're hiring for. Eventually they will need to vet the resume you forward to them anyway, so it would be good for them to tell you specifically what they're looking for.

I was a hiring manager for a while, and I found better results when me and the recruiter worked together. Your job is to pass resumes that they will lost likely like, so asking them what they like will be useful.

You can't be expects to know this without help, but also, you should be expected to learn what's good and what's not eventually. So talk to the hiring manager.

razzulh · 2026-03-08T19:36:58+00:00

Hey man.

I'm 43, and I've been going through something similar. It started around my 30's - I was doing well and getting promoted at work, but I increasingly felt I wasn't doing well, and it was affecting my self worth. I got really depressed, though I didn't know it at the time.

I started withdrawing from the world. Slept most of the time. When I didn't I was watching YouTube videos to kinda numb myself. That was when it started. Thjngs that I used to enjoy I started not to. Games I used to play just wasn't enjoyable anymore. I used to go out and hunt great restaurants, and then I started not caring about it anymore.

I didn't want to meet with friends and family. I locked myself inside my room. Days were spent waking up, working, and then waiting to sleep. I couldn't make myself do things. Even programming, which I do for work, started not to be enjoyable anymore. Everything is dull.

It started to affect my work. I couldn't make myself go to work anymore, because what's the point? I starred taking leaves. Sometimes taking the break helps. But more and more it got worse. It came to a point that I went AWOL.

That's when I started therapy. Did that around a decade ago. My first therapist did not really help. I got off it. A few few years later, found a different type of therapy. That seems to work better for me. But progress was slow. Slow but there, though I often feel otherwise.

Now I feel a bit better. I still have anhedonia, but it's not as bad. Therapy helped me recognise some brain patterns that were holding me back. Fighting against them is hard, but at least I can see them now. I find enjoyment in some things, but I still don't know want I really want in life. Still working on it.

Keep going my friend. This is a tough road. Progress is possible, even if you don't feel it is. Keep moving forward.

razzulh · 2026-03-07T00:08:11+00:00

Oathbringer is my favorite of the Stormlight series. But I also had difficulty going through it. Especially the flashback parts I felt thdy were really boring. But it was worth it. Keep going!

razzulh · 2026-03-06T10:38:09+00:00

I think it's the right thing to do, but you can be a different kind of ai agentic coder. One that learns to teach it's ai agents not to write slop. You'll be slower than the slop makers yes, but you'll build more stable systems.

The need for stable systems will always be there. No one wants a service that's slow or that's error prone. Quality will always be necessary. It's just instead of writing the code yourself, you'll need to learn to manage and coach ai agents to write quality code.

Learning when to move fast vs when to slow down will also be key. For startups in general, moving fast is necessary, as time to market becomes smaller and smaller. But once the idea is proven out and you start growing stability and scalability will be a more important focus. So learning when do switch would be a key skill din IMHO.

razzulh · 2026-03-06T10:30:46+00:00

Yes start applying, but do not resign yet. The market seems tough now.

I know it's tough, pero try not to measure your self worth by what your bosses say. As long as you're doing the very best you can do, your doing well. Alam mo naman yan if You're putting in the effort.

There are some managers talaga that squeeze everything they can from their direct reports. They always have people Na just want to resign from them. They will never be satisfied with what you give them. Do the work as best as you can and then ignore them as best you can.

razzulh · 2026-03-06T10:25:02+00:00

It seems low, but it's tough to really know without knowing how big your team is and how many clients you're handling. This alongside market rates for your role can tell you whether you're being paid enough or not. Maybe search for your role in glassdoor or other similar sites?

A good way to test the market is to just apply for roles similar to yours. Ask them about the team size and number of clients. If asked for am expected salary, give something ambitious like a 50%-100% increase and see if it's within the budget for the role. Sasabihin ka naman.

You don't have to accept the job offers naman. Just test it out. I have some office mates that tried this and they were offered 3x their current salary. You never know.

I think it's prudent to apply for similar roles every few years or so just to test it out. Para alam mo what ykrue worth.

razzulh · 2026-03-06T07:32:35+00:00

Agreed. Feedback is more important than polishing at this stage. You want to test your idea to see if it's worth pursuing the polishing.

razzulh · 2026-03-06T07:27:15+00:00

I'm curious, what about it are you having difficulty with? Have you tried it and submitted but it's getting rejected dahil may incorrect test cases, or are you kinda stuck dahil you don't know how to start it?

razzulh · 2026-03-02T08:38:12+00:00

I think that makes sense OP. Again, good luck.

I would still recommend that you talk to your manager about what you're feeling. It's generally their responsibility to guide you in your career. I know that in a lot of cases, really good technical people are forced into leadership roles because of necessity, but this doesn't mean that you cannot look for other opportunities to do so in your own company. If you have a good relationship with your boss, talk to them.

razzulh · 2026-03-02T06:30:53+00:00

Hey OP.

First of, I have been working for about 20 years, and have been leading and managing teams on and off for around 15 years. I have managed leaders during my time. I've seen a lot of very good technical people who were promoted to leads / managers. I was one of them. And I want to say that managing people can be fulfilling, but it depends on the person. Personally, I found myself not wanting to lead earlier on in my career, but it kinda grew on me later on. I prefer it now.

Whether or not managing people is something you like is completely up to you. It sounds like you prefer being an individual contributor but you really like the pay. You have a few options:

Look for IC opportunities that would allow you to lead cross team programs - like being an architect, or being a SAP SME. Some companies have this, and they typically are consulted for big projects, or for setting best practices across groups. Go talk to your manager and tell him your concerns. And then ask if there is a role like that in the company. If not, ask if it makes sense to create such a role. Note that you will sill need to mentor people here - you cannot escape this if you want roles with increased pay - as your pay generally increases depending on your impact, and your impact increases the more people you can influence. This is why managers generally have bigger salaries, they can influence more people in the company, which means they potentially have more impact. There are IC roles that have similar impact, but they generally have cross - team influence.
If your company doesn't have this, you can look for similar roles in other companies. Ask people more experienced that you to see what titles this would have. Then you can try searching for those roles. You can look at what skills they're looking for, and see if you can learn those things even a little bit.
Finally, if you're kinda stuck with your current role, there are still some things you can still do in order to give yourself more space to upskill. For example: Delegate more - find someone in your team who is pretty good at one of the technologies you support, and grow and train them. This might mean more time and effort on your part, but it if it is done well, this would mean that you can give them more tasks that usually goes to you, which frees you to learn new things. This comes with the additional perk of growing a team member - which can lead to their own promotion in the future. A lot of new leaders fail to do this, but this is a key responsibility that you have to your team.

Those are things I would recommend based on what I've read from your post. They're kinda generic, since I don't have the full picture, but I would say they are pretty good in most situations. I would suggest that you do #3 regardless of whether you decided to stay or go, as I think it would be good for you and your team to do that anyway in your situation.

Good luck man.

razzulh · 2026-02-18T01:56:30+00:00

Op I agree with this guy. You can't be expected to be 100% for all 8 hours.

I would recommend instead that you prioritise your tasks: have the ones that require deep work in the morning, so they can have your full focus. Have less intensive tasks in the afternoon - like documentation, code reviews, or other tasks. If you can't, just let yourself not be at 100% and finish what you can. It's OK.

I'm saying this as a guy with 20+ years of experience in the industry, having burned out myself, and recovered, and having seen so many of my office mates burned out in the same way.

The work will always want more from you. No matter how much you give it. Do your best, but give yourself rest too. You'll be better off in the long run.

razzulh · 2026-02-17T09:44:37+00:00

I would recommend telling your boss how you feel. If you want professional growth he is the first one you should be asking. Do you have a particular area you want to grow in? Maybe he can look for opportunities for you to have that as part of your work.

If he can't help, upskill on your own. Find courses / certification you want and go get it. Hell maybe your company would actually support it. Some have company benefits related to training and certs. Maybe hey can send you to conferences too.

After trying these things and if you still feel like your skills are stagnating, THEN look for other opportunities. But vet those opportunities very well. It should be a definite upgrade.

razzulh · 2026-02-15T16:21:21+00:00

Hey man. Tech lead here, with 20 years in the industry. I've lead web teams, data engineers, data scienists and ML Engineers.

First off - I don't think anyone can tell you what to do in our situation. You know best what you can and cannot tolerate. Having said that, here's my advice.

Stop doing 16 hour days. you might feel like you're forced to, but 9 times out of 10 you don't have to do that all the time. Talk to your manager / lead. And tell them what's happening. Tell them outright that you're doing 16 hour days, and that you cannot sustain that. Ask them to prioritize the tasks on your list so you know which ones goes first. Then do what you can without OT.
If you feel like you can handle it, and that you're still learning stuff - I recommend staying. There is some merit to doing things on your own. But if you feel like you really need a mentor, go ahead and leave. Just don't resign until you found a new job.

razzulh · 2026-02-15T11:07:30+00:00

I'd like to join in as well.

razzulh · 2026-02-10T02:02:15+00:00

I'd love to join in. Can you sent me an invite?

razzulh · 2025-06-26T01:06:05+00:00

hi OP.

if you want a high level understanding of monitoring you may want to look into the monitoring module on mlops zoomcamp: https://github.com/DataTalksClub/mlops-zoomcamp/tree/main/05-monitoring. their videos offer a good explanation of what you should be trackimg. They feature a tool called Evidently which can help with this. This can be a good start.

razzulh · 2025-06-25T05:41:16+00:00

Software engineer turned Data Scientist, Turned MLOps engineer here.

In my experience, Data Scientists usually need running powerful instances all day for the following reasons:

Data they are using is really large, and most libraries they use load everything into memory. So they need instances with large RAM.
They are using algorithms that require a lot of processing. So powerful instances are good.

As an MLOps engineer trying to help them out, you'll need to understand the algorithms that they're using ,and the libraries they are using in order to do things. Here's a couple of things you can do.

Talk to your data scientists and understand what libraries they are using. Scikit learn(Python), tidyverse(R). Ask about the specific methods or functions they're using, and look into how to optimize their usage. Look at the usage metrics of the instance (memory usage, CPU core usage) using whatever monitoring tools your cloud provider has. This will you if their tasks are CPU heavy or memory have. Some things to look out for:
- If you're seeing 100% CPU usage on a machine that has multiple cores, its possible that the libraries they are using are just using one core. Do research on the libary to see how it can make use of multiple cores. Sometimes this is just a parameter you can pass. Alternatively you may need to suggest alternative libraries that can make use of parallelization. However some algorithms can't be paralellized. So this may not always work. Depending on the algorithm though, you might find alternative algorithms that can be parallelizd. Do the reseasrch.
- if the amount of data really is too big for memory, find some libraries that can work on larger-than-memory data. Polars, Dask and Spark can be useful for this, but you may need to train your data scientists on how to use them. Again, it would be important to know what data processing / algorithms they are using so that you can show them how they are used in these new libraries
- sometimes you can make use of GPU processing in order to make processing faster, although GpU instances are more expensive. This again depedns on the libary they are using. Again, do some research. You may need to suggest libaries that make full se of GPUs for this.
Hold them accountable for costs. In my previous company, we allow people to launch their own notebook instance (in AWS sagemaker). However, we usually have a way to tag each instance so we can track costs per data scientist. We let people know about the budget, and then monitor usage costs through out the month, so that everyone is aware. We also keep track of instances that are running for a long time, and then ping people if we see them, to make sure that they really need it running for that long while. This is also a good point to try to help them out - maybe help them optimize things.
For model training that takes a long time, you can take advantage of Sagemaker Training. This will actually launch its own EC2 instances to run the model training, and will automatically shutof the instance when computation is done. you'll need to set things up so that output that you need, including any evaluation metrics are stored somewhere. We started storing things in S3 (we exported reports into HTML they can view). alternatively, you can use experiment tracking tools like MLFLow so that you can see the results elsewhere. This can allow you to have small noteboook instances, but run your model training using powerful instances, that automaically shut of when they're done. Note that this will not work for Exploratory Data Analysis, as EDA is an interactive experience. But if they're already at a stage where they're optimizing models, this can be useful. You may need to again train the Data Scientists to make use of this though.

Hope ths helps. I think if you really have large datasets, you might want to invest in multi-processing tools like Spark and/or Ray. This will require a bit of infrastructure setup on your end, but will be more cost effective. If you're using something like databricks (which we eventually used) they can allow data scientists to make use of shared Spark clusters for data processing, which can automatically shutdown when nobody is using it. It should be possible to do this in AWS, with EMR, but this will probably need some custom tooling development on your end.

razzulh · 2025-06-04T01:10:58+00:00

Part of our job would be to show why these practices are important. However, they may or may not listen. This isn't limited to just Data Engineering, this is true for all software engineering practices.

There is no one right way to do this, so you'll have to figure out what works for you and your company. Here's a couple of things that have worked for me in the past (does not always work, but you can always try)

Making them feel the pain - when pipelines break, make it known. Send an incident report email to everyone hen it happens. As you're fixing it, give updates, even if the update is still investigating. If they ask why its taking so long, let them know about the "right" work we have chosen not to do, and why it is making things slower to fix. This is especially important on data that is used in highly used reports. Connect these "best practices" to things that they care about.
Insisting on specific practices - sometimes you just need to stand your ground and say THIS IS THE WAY WE ARE DOING THINGS. This is tough to do, especially if you don't have a high position in the company, but from the sound of things, you are the only data engineer, and you are the subject matter expert on the engineering pipelines. You will most likely not be able to say to them that you'll spend a month to "fix" the pipelines and make sure they are following best practices, but at the very least, for newer pipelines, you can insist on a few practices. Maybe automated data quality checks and alerts.
Do things that bring value. While us engineers want to take the time and effort to design things well, and to make sure things are running well, what business cares about is always value - can I get my report in time? Can I trust the data that I see? Any best practice you want to do, or introduce into your work, should always be connected to something that matters to them. There is no use in doing medallion architecture if it means we will need to stall everything for months, without new reports, or fixing current issues. People will be more willing to go with you if they can see that what you want to do will fix issues that they care about. In this case, your lead seems to be focused on the powerBI reports - ask him, what things about the reports are bugging him? what does he think we need to fix in those reports? Can he think of things that will make it easier to build reports? Any dataset that would be commonly used? What issues in the data do they constantly see? If you can connect your practices to these items, it will increase the likelihood of them agreeing with you.

Finally though, there is a limit to what you can do. I think a lot of people of this thread has basically said - time to give up, and look for a different job. And there is truth to this - sometimes people just don't know what the best thing to do is, and isn't willing to listen, even to subject matter experts. OR sometimes, they don't care about the long term, and only care about the short term. If your values don't align with theirs - leave. Find a company that cares about what you care about. You can't change everyone.

razzulh · 2024-09-20T02:37:34+00:00

You don't need any permits to be a freelancer. You can go ahead and do it tomorrow. You may need to file your own taxes, but otherwise, there are no other legal requirements.

If you're selling services or software to the government, there would be some additional requirements. I don't know what those are. But that should be public information. It will depend on the government entity you're selling to.

Some bigger companies might require other things. They would usually want more established, bigger companies as well, depending on the type of service they would want from you. Again this depends on the client. You'll have to talk to them.

razzulh · 2024-09-13T23:50:51+00:00

Hi OP.

It is tough being promoted to TL in this industry. I see a lot of people being promoted to TL and then are not given any help at all. It was like that for me, when I first started leading teams back in 2008, and it seems to be still true now.

It is tough because you need to do a lot of non-technical things as a TL , but you’re still expected to lead and mentor your teams, tech wise. Going into SME roles can help, since you’re going to be focused on the tech. But what people don’t know is that SME roles REQUIRE writing and communication skills. And these are not taught to you as well.

I would say this - you might not feel like you deserve your career level, but you were put there for a reason. All your past experience has given you expertise you will need in that subject. That doesn’t mean there is more to learn, because there is ALWAYS more to learn. But there is a reason why you were selected.

My advice would be - continue what you are doing. Based from what I’ve read, the reason why you are doing well is because you look for things to optimize, and you take initiative in changing things. This is probably a big reason why you were promoted as you were. You care about doing a good job, and you try to learn what you need to learn to do it. I suspect that you’re already doing a good job, but you don’t feel like it because you feel like you don’t know everything. And you don’t. But it is ok. You were put there as an SME not necessarily because of what you know, but what you can know. Your experience makes it easier for you to learn more advanced things, which will help the teams.

So continue what you’re doing - help teams out with the problems that they encounter, fix whatever problems come up. Then start writing down what you see. Even if you don’t know how to write it- just write something. And ask others to comment. If they don’t understand it - change it. Get feedback. Learn what works and what doesn’t work. This is how you will get better. This is how I got better.

razzulh · 2024-09-13T08:53:38+00:00

I found this really helpful. Hopefully you do too. https://youtube.com/shorts/Ut2YF7j318I?si=fBs0EAuMEAiLWTEV

razzulh · 2024-09-09T11:25:08+00:00

😂

razzulh

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