
You're only 23, stop rushing your life - spdionis
https://medium.com/@susieshier/you-re-only-23-stop-rushing-life-d6ce19ee673c#.3cb5vndi6
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bm1362
I had just joined Amazon at 21 and felt the same anxiety. I was with another
new hire in the kitchen when our principal engineer came in. We both asked him
for some advice, as newly minted engineers, on what we could do to become most
effective. His reply, "Go find a woman, get married and build something that
matters- a family. You have 30 more years to get better at software
engineering, you'll be fine."

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mrcrassic
That's actually terrible advice, in my opinion. Raising a family is REALLY
hard work that requires a lot of time and dedication out of you. It also
restricts what you can and can't do; quitting jobs that you hate or moving
somewhere to seize an opportunity become astronomically difficult with a
family.

Families are important, but why limit your potential early?

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bm1362
I think the take away was to avoid optimizing 'potential' and stop focusing on
anything really. He meant go do something else with your free time, like meet
people and experience new things.

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CM30
Oh, I can definitely sympathise with this article and it's message. I mean, I
feel pretty much the same thing, and not just in a startup/work sense either.
I simply cannot enjoy doing anything unless it's A: completely revolutionising
some field or another, or B: better than just about everyone's work in the
field. Which has led to some pretty miserable times these last few years,
since there's always someone or some group that's absolutely amazing at
anything and can seemingly do really well at it even if they put in less
'effort'.

Maybe I'll calm down a bit now and stop being obsessive over every little
thing.

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spdionis
After having worked as a developer through my university years I partly regret
it now because there was not much reason to start working at 18 and I missed
all the university experience and lifestyle.

Lately my struggle to always do better than everyone is slightly smaller and I
enjoy my life much more.

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susie_pan
Thanks for sharing my article. Glad to see people relate. I think it's still
all part of the learning/growing up process.

