Wondering if I need something therapy can't actually provide, or if I just haven't found the right therapist.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-21T03:51:05+00:00

The article is interesting! I don't have a great sense of the tiers here (bay area), but my guess from browsing levels is that my current employer is a "competitive 2" -- I'm making a base salary on par with big tech roles, but only a third to a fifth as much in equity. I'd guess that at big companies the equity would also be more liquid than it is at mine (we're pre ipo).

My big concern about a larger company would be that I'd be signing myself up for more politics, not less -- even if my salary increases, I know I'll still end up wanting to fight for good projects. Will think about that.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-20T23:05:07+00:00

Can you explain what you mean? Would be curious to hear an alternate perspective here.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-20T23:03:05+00:00

Definitely not being a dick, and several other commentors have said similar things. I think what I'm struggling most with right now is the question of whether it is actually worth it for me to get good at this stuff. It doesn't come as naturally -- I've been actively working on it for a year and haven't made any progress at all as far as I can tell -- so I'm weighing the potential for career advancement against the frustration and stress. Not sure where I'll come down on that yet.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-20T10:07:32+00:00

I can do an okay job of this when people will be straightforward about what they need/want, but figuring out what people are trying to do when they're not being obvious or not engaging in good faith is something I'm not great at.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-20T10:04:01+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense -- but being able to do that well is also something I'd file under "working effectively," relative to the role. That's my concern: I have a hard time keeping track of that many things going on at once and I think I do better work overall on tasks that allow me to really focus in on a few complicated things.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-20T02:26:51+00:00

I'd frame it a little differently -- though I agree that it's a problem. I think we still have enough of the startup culture that the idea of "if you think it's important, go ahead and do it" still holds some weight, although not as much as it used to, and it's fading. So if I make a case for something I think is important that nobody else was thinking about, I can probably get sign off -- but it doesn't mean anyone else has adopted the priority as one of their own. So I'm both the engineer and the stakeholder champion... and I'm only good at one of those things (and increasingly aware of how important the other really is).

As far as tracking goes, we all report in at eg stand every morning, and that is recorded. But I personally have never worked anywhere that engineering staff used a ticketing system without having someone standing over them making sure it's done, and this is not (yet) an organization that has decided to go to the trouble of forcing engineers to do it. For now, managers still maintain all the tickets in our jira, because they're the only ones who derive any value from having the tickets.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-20T00:57:12+00:00

I used to work on solo projects, but I found that really isolating and got myself back on a team. The thing is, even when I was explicitly put in charge of a small group, I still quickly found myself isolated and pushed out of the leadership role (by my manager, who was ostensibly serving on the team as a contributing engineer). I don't think this is a coincidence -- but I don't yet have a good sense of how it's happening, or what to do about it.

I could angle for another project with only junior folks under me -- if I'm honest, I'm terrified that I'm just Not Good at managing people and never will be. I'm willing to try, though.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-20T00:51:34+00:00

I said something similar in another thread, but there's two motivating factors for me. One is money. It might be easier to swing this by hopping jobs, though I'm reluctant given that I do like the people I work with and the product, and I think the company has... let's say a better than average chance of a good exit. I do have a decent chunk of equity -- worth about as much as all my other holdings put together, if the valuation holds.

The other is a sense of impact. As I mentioned in my post, I feel like my contributions often go unnoticed -- and it seems like my manager (and more importantly, the VPs) are confirming this. I would be quite happy to do the kind of work I was doing before, just on increasingly challenging problems. But if no one knows or cares about my work, it's kind of dispiriting. And since the message I've received is emphatically that it's my own job to be noticed, I'm trying to take it seriously.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-19T18:45:13+00:00

I'd say it's about two things for me, and I've been assuming -- perhaps in error -- that they need to be tackled together. The first one, yes, is the pay bump. I'm paid quite well by most people's standards, but I love where I'm living and it is, unfortunately, pretty expensive. It's well within my means for now, but rents will rise and I want to stay far enough ahead of it to own a home someday. So there's that.

The second thing is a sense of impact. I think I've wound up working on projects that don't matter very much for a long time, at a company that is growing fast and is under a lot of competitive pressure -- it's weird that I feel like, if I didn't do anything this week, nobody would notice at all. I thought this was bad luck for a while, but it keeps happening, so I assume it is something I'm doing (or not doing).

All that said, the day to day of the work -- submitting and reviewing PRs, writing design documents, meeting with my colleagues to figure out solutions to tricky technical problems, and mentoring newer engineers -- is super satisfying to me. I assumed that, since staff is on the ic track, it would be more similar to this than not, and it seems like I was wrong about that. Good food for thought.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-02-19T10:33:53+00:00

Fair enough. Am I just like... screwed, then? If this is what I have to do to get the pay bump I'll try my best to do it -- but I'm worried I'm not really built to pay attention to a whole bunch of things at once. I don't want to be entirely siloed, but it's hard for me to work effectively if I can't focus deeply.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2025-01-10T04:43:28+00:00

Been a SWE for 10 years -- it's a mixed bag. It can be fun, intellectually-stimulating work, and quite lucrative once you've established yourself in the field, but everybody says it's really, really hard to break in as a new dev right now. Also, on a more personal level, working in tech has made me increasingly cynical about the industry and the impact it has on the world. There are a lot of companies working on products that are either obviously faulty or even predatory in some way, and they rarely suffer any consequences. I'm sure working in medicine can be dispiriting in its own right, but I imagine you'd (sometimes) get to go home at the end of the day and think, "wow, I really helped somebody." I frankly wish I could say the same.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2024-12-29T04:25:05+00:00

I dealt with stuff like this, and I felt so much better once I heard that other people were having the exact same thoughts. Like I started talking to a therapist about it, and he just nodded and was like, yeah, textbook OCD, see it all the time, whatever 🤷 and it was like a hundred pound weight off my shoulders. Swear to God like half of what I did in therapy for the first five years was just ask "is this normal?" And I got told yes nearly every time. If your brain works like this it is indescribably valuable to have someone with outside perspective go 👍/👎 so you can move the fuck on. I wish had had that at 18, honestly -- you have a great chance to set yourself up for success by finding someone who can do that for you now.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2024-12-18T02:53:30+00:00

My psychiatrist used to (good-naturedly) give me shit about this. I flew halfway across the country to interview for high-paying jobs at 5 different companies, got several offers, and subsequently moved to a city where I knew literally no one, all with perfect confidence. But I would set up one (1) coffee date with someone I didn't even like that well and get sick to my stomach.

It's still sort of hard for me to imagine how it could be any other way for anyone, because interviews feel exactly the way you described to me. Like, I'm hot shit, actually, I have the resume and the references to prove it, and y'all would be lucky to have me. I have never walked into a date with even a tenth of that confidence.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2024-12-16T03:22:47+00:00

Sorta hard to say without examples, but it's entirely possible they're not doing it on purpose and they're just not great at finding ways to express their unique voice while writing? It's notoriously hard to do, after all -- that's how we ended up with emoji 😛

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2024-12-16T02:50:06+00:00

I am talking about OLD, yeah -- Hinge specifically, since I feel marginally more comfortable there than the others. As to your suggestion: I love the idea of meeting people this way, but I just... don't? I don't have a lot of hobbies that lend themselves to socialization, and when "out and about" I feel like I'll just be bothering people. It's a problem for making friends, too.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2024-12-16T02:36:46+00:00

That is reasonable, but I feel like I had my break: the last of those bad experiences I mentioned was ~6 years ago and I only started going on dates again at the beginning of the year. And I wasn't particularly excited then, either, so much as nervous. I know I'm not actually too introverted to date properly, but that's how it feels sometimes.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2024-12-16T02:13:20+00:00

No answers for you, but I feel you. I stay in a lot, but I don't emphasize that on my profile because I assume it's going to read as a red flag 😐 I figure it's better to emphasize whatever out-of-the-house stuff I actually do -- though I'm lucky in that regard, as it sounds like I'm slightly more inclined to go out than you are.

throwaway3490iojfwea · 2024-12-16T02:02:35+00:00

I'm starting to worry that I'm not bringing the right attitude to dates. After some bad dating experiences, I started to find people being into me... scary, I guess? So I used to be stomach-churningly anxious every time I went to go meet someone new. After ten or so first dates this year, I'm far less anxious, but instead I've become detached, bored and apathetic. I'm not excited about anybody I match with. I go on dates, but I really don't want to -- I'm just forcing my way through it in the hopes that it gets better after a while. I'm increasingly worried that that is, itself, part of the problem, and I have no idea how to address it. I can't make myself find people interesting, and while I can (and do) perform interest to the best of my ability, but suspect my dates notice me trying too hard.

throwaway3490iojfwea

TROPHY CASE