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Thank HN: Five months ago, I was feeling like a loser, now I am opposite
564 points by ac2022 on June 13, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 213 comments
I posted this a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709273

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!




Just a suggestion, but if your relationship with your wife depends on your personal circumstances and mood, then it sounds not very strong. Might be worth taking advantage of this good period to do some relationship strengthening exercises while you can so that when the next downturn happens, you can both understand each other's and your own feelings better. I'm not talking about random activities like going to the beach but finding a good self-help book or therapist and sitting down together working through it regularly. It's easy for problems to grow silently until they're too big to fix. Relationships are far more important than jobs, money or houses.


It is pretty normal for poor mental health to take a toll on relationships. Sometimes the problem really is that simple.

But with that said, it is always a good time to work on yourself and relationships.


Shameless plus one, I’ve been with my wife for 10 years - when we’re both happy as individuals were happy as a couple. Sometimes people just need to do the hard work of finding happiness on their own. Someone else can’t make you feel happy with your career.


partners should support each other, especially through trying times. but your happiness should not only depend on your partner. if it does then any problem in the relationship can quickly spiral into something unfixable.

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?


> more like roommates.

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.


Shit, I have two kids under 4 and have been telling myself it will be a lot easier by the time they are that age!


It's different, it's all hard but increasingly rewarding - if you've put in the work early to get the rewards later.

The first swear word is a beautiful moment to be revisited regularly :)


I thought that is supposed to be the easy time?

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?


if that is what you expect, then our kids were angels. really we had no trouble with them. they slept pretty well very early, maybe because they slept in our bed so feeding them at night was easy. we had a nanny for help, but i was working from home so i could spend a lot of time with them. we'll see how it will be when they are older. so far it's going well though.

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.


Fuck my kids can be annoying. They're so much like their dad.

;)

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).


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


As reply to you and anonymousDan: I love it, and I may be overstating it to some extent. I love my kids and watching them grow but, because they're like me, the effort required to explain things is increased because their perspectives require answers with a level of detail that makes them understand, because with 'the little things' understanding is a prerequisite of compliance. Scaring them with loud angry voice isn't enough if your argument isn't solid. My son is unbelievably good at pointing out my hypocrisies and logical flaws, god it's so annoying and beautifully satisfyingly fulfilling all at once.

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.


Am I the only one that thinks it's rude to give unsolicited marital advice based on absolutely no facts


Considering how grateful OP is for the advice shared by the community here previously, my impression is they're open to the continued advice. It's hardly unsolicited. I don't consider it rude when people are trying to be genuinely helpful. If you consider that rude you might be overly sensitive yourself and missing the bigger context.

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.


In not especially offended, but it does rub me the wrong way when people make negative assumptions about others, then offer their advice.

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.


> 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".


I did in a sibling thread


I agree. But since unsolicited advice is low effort, it's hard to stop that sort of thing becoming the dominant form of narrative


Well sometimes unsolicited advice is not really helpful advice but really is just a thin veneer over judgement and criticism.

Similarly if you’re finding yourself prefacing comments with “No offense, but…” just don’t say them. Offense avoided.


that's a very good point. something to consider when writing a comment. especially in a forum like this where it is difficult to interpret the intent of a message, or the attitude of the writer. i certainly hope that my comments aren't seen as being judgemental, but i can't be sure.


Consciously off-topic: Posting on an open forum invites it.

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.


> Someone else can’t make you feel happy with your career

Someone else can’t make you happy.


But they can sure as hell make you unhappy! And it's up to you to keep that in mind.


Why would they be able to make you unhappy but not be able to make you happy? How can they affect one but not both?


Doing a thing „A“ is not the same as not doing a thing „B“ that looks like the opposite of A. E.g.: not healing your broken leg is very different from breaking your leg.


By being assholes. It happens


They can make you unhappy by being not nice with you.

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


>Sometimes people just need to do the hard work of finding happiness on their own.

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


it shouldn't have to be normal. ideally your partner is supporting you especially in times like this. you should be able to share with your wife what OP shared with HN. if he had, the result might have been to not only get a new job but get a job in a different location, with a new, bigger house. it's more work to pull that off, and not something they could have done while the relationship is sour, but possible if they work together.

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.


You’re getting shit on for no good reason. It’s like people here have never been in a problematic relationship or had to work through things with their partners. I really hope I never have to be or deal with their partners.

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.


Everyone on HN and reddit has to be the most right and be unnecessarily argumentative. And that includes you and me. It’s a compulsion.


> Everyone on HN and reddit has to be the most right and be unnecessarily argumentative. And that includes you and me. It’s a compulsion.

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 disagree only half ironically. In some ways, we are living through a golden age of debate. It just isn't well distributed. The problem is that it is difficult to maintain Community standards and incentives for what would legitimately be considered debate (EG listening, addressing the other person's point and maintaining good faith and civility.) There is a parallel and greater growth of online argument which many people conflate with debate. This is fed by online point systems and engagement. It is the latter that is bleeding over into the real world and causing problems.


> 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.

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'm not interested in making up stories about OP. We don't know how supportive their partner was, how much they shared, and how collaborate they were in the process. We also don't know what alternate realities might have been.

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.


there are plenty of problems love, support, and teamwork can't fix.

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.


>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.

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.


because his wife (and the kids) are going to be affected by the decisions he makes.

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.


Why do you continually assume they don't talk with their partner??? You seem stuck on this point


sorry, i read your post to fast, and missed the part where you say that the wife may have suggested to ask here.

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.


Thank you for rereading and for sharing.

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.


> Personal problems can cause relationship problems, and often times a spouse can only lend support as individuals work through their personal problem.

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.


i agree with that. the partner can't solve personal problems, but support from the partner is often necessary and helpful in order to allow the other to solve their problem. especially when that problem affects the relationship


I wouldn't call the attitude that one ought to be able to get all the support one needs from one's partner, no matter what, healthy. That can lead to an entire category of relationship failure, I'd say.


that's a fair point and that's not what i meant.

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


> that's a fair point and that's not what i meant.

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.


> there isn't a single problem that can't be fixed in a good relationship.

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.


i oversimplified. of course it takes more than just love, support and teamwork. you also need to act.

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.


So what did you "hard disagree" about then?


i understood the statement

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.


> ideally your partner is supporting you

In reality she will leave you for a guy who isn’t so miserable all the time.


It is certainly a possibility. It is not uncommon for people to have a personal problem that they refused to address which is unacceptable for their partner, even if they love them.


I think that you're missing his point which is that when you are unhappy, it is not always easy to pinpoint the cause of that unhappiness and it is very easy to start casting around for an explanation and end up blaming the wrong part of your life for your misery. You might think that this isn't believable but the unhappiness colours everything in your life and so it isn't as obvious as it seems.


All the more reason to listen to GP. Your partner should be someone to lean on, not blame. They likely don’t see them in the right light.


I'm not sure what this really means in practice, though. Going to them for support is an entirely different thing than feeling distressed that they are insisting on a major life change you disagree with. I don't think it'd be healthier to always agree with them. They're an independent mind, it's inevitable you will butt heads every once in a while


For example, the OP seems to know (he writes it in the post) that he was fighting with his wife because he was generally stressed. It would be interesting to know if, once he had this realisation after changing jobs, he actually sat down and told his wife "you know, I'm sorry for how I was with you. I was unhappy and I poured it on you. Did you realise it back then? What can we do to make it better next time? Thank you for bearing with me."


best comment.

not just thanks but get her a gift too. something that requires you to put in an effort that she sees and understands.


Lines you won't see on a gravestone:

"I wish I had worked more."

"I wish I had a less meaningful relationship with my wife."


… I wish I was little bit taller

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


I wish I was like, six foot nine

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...


This is not Reddit.


You made my day with that Skeelo reference!


spinnin


Along with "npm install ..."


The grave isn't big enough.


It would be unusual to see an epitaph containing any personal thoughts, because most such messages are written by surviving family members, not the deceased.


Things you will read on a gravestone:

“I wish I never got married”

“I wish my wife would’ve left sooner”


Because I’ve seen “I wish I had worked less.” on a gravestone?


Yeah, there's typically little or nothing. No meaningful sentiments from the deceased. That's part of what the popular funeral poem "The Dash" plays on—everything that mattered in a life, by the time it's nothing but marks on a stone, is expressed in the distinctly inexpressive dash between the birth and death dates. It's rare to actually put anything about the life on there. "Loving father" or something is usually the most you get, if that. Sometimes poets or writers will compose a stanza for theirs, but those are exceptional.


There was a famous Swedish author called Fritiof Nilsson Piraten, whose grave lacks any name but instead had the inscription (translated):

"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."


There are some which are exceptional.

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"


Maybe that’s because the life that died is not under that stone. What’s under that stone isn’t even the husk of that life.


It's an expression. It means what people say at the end of their life.


There's a great song by Titãs, Epitáfio, which imagines a gravestone with all these thoughts, "I wish I had watched more sunsets, I wish I had cared less..."


You might have the first one, but they won't describe it as work. They might say "taken risks" "followed my dream" etc.


Thanks, we are.

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.


> "Relationships are far more important than jobs, money or houses."

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.


Relationships are like a muscle. They grow with stress, but not with prolonged stress.

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.


May be this works for American culture. In India over 95% are arranged marriages. The probability of finding a partner with common interests is pretty low. Not marrying is not an option. Because it affects siblings marriages. Women have even lesser freedom in this area. Given these conditions the best thing to do is not forget the relations ship b/w spouse will never be great and at the same time its not the spouse's fault. Minimal commitment to the happiness of the spouse is a must but never forget it will not be great.

Long live the culture of individual freedom the west values most.


I second the recommendation of the help of a therapist if possible. You can certainly "work on yourself" but having the guidance of a professional can really accelerate things. It's also helpful to talk to someone who 1) is always in your corner and is your advocate and non-judgemental 2) is an expert in emotions, coping, relationships, and so on and 3) is not someone you already have a previous, possibly "tainted" relationship with. Good luck.


> Might be worth taking advantage of this good period to do some relationship strengthening exercises while you can so that when the next downturn happens, you can both understand each other's and your own feelings better.

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.


Well said! Unless the personal life is happy (stable dependable lovable relationship like spouse/significant other), it's hard to succeed in professional life.


Just to provide a contrarian viewpoint, myself and some of my closest friends are experiencing the exact opposite.


Can't believe the negativity I see on some of the top comments right now.

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).


The negativity is totally warranted: OPs misguided believe in thinking that simply finding a new job will get rid of all his woes is worrisome. Furthermore the fact that a high percentage of commentators are encouraging his stance is counterproductive.

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...


You seem to know something I don't. What is the evidence of a misguided belief? OP was skeptical this change would make a difference, but shares that it did. I did not see any forward-looking statements implying the new job "will get rid of all his woes", only what they are experiencing now. Elsewhere on the thread, OP shared that they are using this opportunity to work more intentionally on their relationship with their wife, which doesn't sound like the kind of thing someone who thinks all their problems have been magically fixed would do.

> 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.


I've seen this pattern so many times in life it isn't even funny. An acquaintance hated her job and had to leave to be happy. Now she is on her 3rd job in 1.5 years and already thinking about leaving again. Somehow the next job will be perfect and will finally make her happy.

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.


Perhaps you're an idiot that keeps giving unwarranted advice and just wasting your time trying to help people that in the end will hate you for it?

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.


Calling someone an "idiot" isn't being blunt – it's just being an asshole.

signed, an asshole who frequently calls people idiots (generally not to their face, though)


What is he misguided about, and what is the complexity he is simplifying. I ask out of genuine intrigue. Reading the post it comes across as someone who appeared to need to make a change in his life, unsure of what to change. He took a chance on a new role and has found himself happier for it.


OP is mistaking positive feelings (short term, extrinsic) with wellbeing (long term, intrinsic). Their excitement probably allows them to neglect any underlying problems. When the excitement wears off, issues that haven't been addressed are likely to reappear. All of this is purely speculation of course, based on my reading of the post.


Wouldn't "a rewarding career" qualify as long-term, intrinsic wellbeing? Cynics may believe no such thing exists, but I don't think it's a universal view.

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 :)


> Wouldn't "a rewarding career" qualify as long-term, intrinsic wellbeing?

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.


I've generally heard "rewarding" in this context used to mean "satisfying and/or meaningful" – e.g, a teacher who loves their job and is able to see their students learn and grow happily would be said to have a rewarding job.

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.


Seek counseling. You're making life decisions based on web boards. Somehow programming and your relationship with your spouse are tied up together.

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 think you're being a little harsh maybe? I agree big mood swings like this are a concern, but jobs do a lot to affect our happiness. I'm likewise a little concerned about a partner who "wants a big house", but that's a highly condensed statement about what is no doubt a more nuanced situation.

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 first paragraph does not come across as considerate.

Your second sounds like good advice to me too, if a little presumptuous. How well do you know OP?


> Seek counseling. You're making life decisions based on web boards. Somehow programming and your relationship with your spouse are tied up together. > > 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.

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?


I think it's a specific cultural idiosyncrasy that comes from (I'm guessing) modern USA.

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.


Please stop psychologically evaluating someone over an Internet comment.


People are making a lot of strange, reaching conclusions based on little information


I don't normally comment on HN but reading all the negative vibes made me want to comment.

Glad to hear you are doing great! I had to make the decision between a high paying job and a high rewarding job and choosing the second one has been a huge improvement in my life.


Indeed the HN community seems to manage the ‚issue‘ in an overall happy tale. I doubt there are many in a long relationship which did not suffer for a time due to external and not so well understood circumstances. Pull through and better self/us understanding and a stronger relationship can be ahead.


HN doesn’t do happy very well.


"My wife wanted to buy a big house and I kept blaming her for the stress."

Feminism's greatest enemies aren't necessarily men, but their wives. Your previous post indicated you "needed a bigger house" but clearly there was more to it.

It seems like you have great emotional investment in two things that don't reciprocate your investment: your wife only seems to care about what you can give her, and a job is by definition a business relationship with a company they can sever whenever it is convenient to them.

I would guess you do not have a good sense of self-worth. It's ok, it's really hard to have a good self-worth in a world where you are exposed to thousands of daily messages of inadequacies. It's ok to get some reinforcement from jobs, but just keep in mind it is a business relationship.

I hope your wife does not also consider your marriage a business relationship. Two kids are a "real marriage" not easily unraveled.

Hope the best for you.


I didn't see your original post. But I'm delighted to hear that things have improved.

There's no doubt that stress in your career can lead to stress at home. Certainly, when I'm stressed about my work (or when my wife is stressed about hers), it can be difficult on our relationship. And then, as they say, you have two problems. Moreover, it can feel hopeless.

So many people say that you have to work for a big, famous company, with huge compensation packages. But once you're getting paid well, there are other important things: Do you care about the work you're doing? Are you treated decently at work? Do they give you responsibility, and the power to make decisions?

There are oodles of people out there making good wages at companies we've never heard of, working with people they like, on projects they believe add value to the world. Such jobs aren't glamorous, and won't make the front page of the newspaper, but it doesn't matter.

I love my work. I feel fortunate to do what I do. And when I tell people this, they are often taken aback, and say, "Wow, you're really lucky. I don't like my work; I just do it for the paycheck." So if you have this kind of excitement, energy, enjoyment, and fulfillment from your new job -- then you've won, as it were. You should feel good about this, and should consider yourself among the rare, fortunate folks in that situation.

In short, it's great to hear about someone who has found satisfaction in their work. And if that satisfaction has improved your marriage? All the better.


"Series D startup" may be a very bad place to be very soon. Keep grinding LeetCode.


My parents always said videogames were a waste of time, but at least they ingrained the value of repetitive stat grinding.


Not OP but the day startups are no longer viable I will change careers (something I did already in the past, so I know what it entails) rather than grinding leet and trying to find work at some tech mega corp. Salary at the expense of everything else was never the goal.


Same here.

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.


on that day there might not be many career options open on the market, though


That might be the best day for starting your own business!


there won't be anyone willing to finance it and there won't be any customers willing to pay money for anything...


There are studies indicating that past a certain level of income, more money doesn't bring more happiness. As a software engineer you can likely hit that threshold fairly easily even at a startup. I'd choose gratifying work at a startup I believe in rather than grind LC so I can work on some shitty adtech that nobody wants any day.

(That is not to say you shouldn't assume your pre-IPO equity to be worth anything though.)


I don’t know OPs location but if they’re in SV - series anything isn’t enough to afford the Bay Area long term unless the wife is working at FAANG.

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.


OP says he's having fun. I think that's to be prioritized over the better offers, or heck, even the potential downturn that the startup might face itself.

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.


Sure, I'm happy for him, but the company can literally vanish, so I'm just saying to be prepared to interview again :)


Yeah, with recent economic developments, I am a little worried but stock of my previous company is also down. I am hearing rumors of layoffs there. So I could still be laid off even if I had stayed with the big company.

A new goal for myself is to always be interview ready. I ll resume LeetCode pretty soon.


There are plenty of recession resistant software engineering jobs outside of SV. If you have some skills, you'll be fine. When the economy crashes and bitcoin startups go out of business, payday loan startups will be hiring.


Why?


you're probably from the "work harder not smarter" school of thought


And presumably you are from the “stonks only go up” crowd?


Bro, it's not the job, it's you not standing up to your oppressive wife.

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.


Congrats! I'm happy for you. Funny how being more engaged and working more can leave you with more energy at the end of the day. I've felt the same way in the past.


Yes, it is amazing. They say Heart Rate Variability is pretty good indicator of stress. My HRV graph for last 6 months clearly shows when I made decision to change job and when I gave 2 weeks notice.


How do you have 6 months of data? Is that something modern smart watches produce? I would love to have that data for myself, but don't really want to complicate my life with a smart watch. I don't even like keeping my e-reader's battery charged...

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.


https://dev.fitbit.com/build/reference/web-api/heartrate-var...

I used the swagger interface a few months ago to download my resting heart rate over a three-year period, and it was interesting.


> I was motivated and was able to solve most easy and medium question in 30 mins. However, that was not good enough for FAANGs.

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)


All we need is one interviewer who absolutely hates interviewing to ruin the experience for the candidate and probably throw them off balance. It happens in Big Tech much more often than people are willing to admit.

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.


My point is just that being able to solve LC mediums under 30 minutes isn’t that relevant. I’m not saying it’s a great way to vet candidates.

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.


Wait wait wait - have you seen the Amazon interview process? The first assessment step is a completely automated LC test with no human on the other side. Either you pass the all the test cases including your algo being quick enough on large datasets or you don’t.

Yes they are this blatant about it nowadays.


I’ve gone through the process twice with Amazon as recently as last month and not had this screen. I’m sure they offer it for some candidates but it’s not going to be LC medium difficulty.


No problemo. Optimism, useful advice, and motivational speaking are what we do best here over at HackerNews.


Well, that and ripping certain subjects to shreds whenever they come up.


First off - congratulations.

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.


Congrats on fixing the job issue. Now that times are better, might want to consider working on improving communications with the wife, so that the next time you go through a rough patch it won't go as far as divorce.


Thank you and yes we are working on it.

BTW I thought about divorce but never said that word to my wife. Those thoughts luckily were very brief.


Very happy to hear that :)


Good luck at your new job but it sounds like you are in a honeymoon period. It is good that you are happier but a fresh startup with longer hours does not sound good at all, especially if you have 2 kids and want to buy a house (ie you need stability)

Work is work, the stress will happen when things are not perfect. You need to figure out a way to deal with.


Wow FAANG waited 5 months to finish this PR masterpiece


"My wife wanted to buy a big house and I kept blaming her for the stress."

I have a similar situation. It's not unreasonable to not want a bigger house, even if that's what culture tells us we should want that. Maybe your wife is fine being house poor, like mine wants to be. One bad issue and you're sunk and there will be stress. I prefer a cushion for the real possibility of life altering issues arising. We shouldn't all be spending balls the wall like culture tells us and then going up in flames at the first bump (not that it's your situation, but mine).

And yes, I'm a loser and feel like it too. That's ok.


I will try to properly word the well known thing:

When you are happy, full of energy, love your job, get a lot of things to do, confident, etc - you are more attractive for any woman, especially for your wife, than when you are uncertain, unhappy, frustrated and full of problems.

Work as much as possible on yourself and your own happiness and career. Any reasonable woman is designed to feel what is going on with you.

Also consider some physical activity which you like. Gym, hiking, cycling, kayak, crossfit - whatever makes you happy and stronger and a same time does not lead to injuries


Glad to hear it worked out for the better. My current employment is no longer fulfilling and I wish to "move on", but I can only do remote and such vacancies are very hard to come by in Sweden.


The wikimedia foundation hires remote workers all over the world. They are also very stable with good job security. Some things are dysfunctional but it was a pretty awesome job in many ways - so much that I stuck with it for 7 years and only recently moved on to seek more exciting and challenging work. Wikimedia is almost always hiring and although it’s not the easiest job interview it’s worth a shot.


Try Toptal. I applied there for practice and as a backup. It seems they have plenty of projects.

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.


Doesn’t the Venn diagram look like:

(remote (Sweden))

... or am I unclear on “remote” or “Sweden”?


It costs employers money and complexity to open up remote hiring of employees in a new jurisdiction. If Sweden isn’t a very big market or Sweden is a difficult market from a legal perspective, even remote companies may not be able to hire there.

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.


You could always be an independent contractor instead of being an employee. That way it reduces the hurdle for hiring. I'm technically a contractor atm, but get treated like an employee. You of course don't get the same legal protections or some benefits but you can charge more instead :)


Even there, we’d have to understand if that arrangement is commonly viewed as legal in the country of residence. (My understanding is that it’s not legal in all countries [including my own] just because you say and I agree that you’re a contractor, if there are additional facts and circumstances tests to decide the “proper” treatment.)


we had this topic on HN before. i do not believe that many countries forbid individuals to take on a single long term client if they wish. they may have to do their own taxes and register as a sole proprietor of some sort, and in some places that may be complicated, but not allowing an individual to do that would be pretty restrictive.

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?


Just curious, what prevents you from incorporating a company (or even easier ,becoming a sole trader) in your country and then billing the company in another country for services rendered? Would it be the amount of paperwork involved or is there some other legal provision that makes this unrealistic?


I live in Sweden and I'm employed here, but I work remotely as I live very far from my employer's offices. This is remote work by our conventions and perspectives. If you're not in the office most days of the week you are considered a remote employee, and most Swedish employers (still) have a general aversion to hiring "remotees".


> it didn't give me any real freedom to make important decisions.

I feel this.


Congrats! But be very careful about the start up you're working for. Make sure they have enough cash to survive the next 4-5 years and have a steady revenue stream.


Uh, why? They already work there.

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.


> 4-5 years of runway

> 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.


The environment right now is very different than a few years ago. Risk is way higher right now. Reward is even more questionable.


I am happy to see that you could leave your “bullshit job”!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs


So much awesome here, you having the revelation, taking action to change what needed to be changed, feeling the positive outcome, then sharing it. <3


Fanng is not for everybody and everybody doesnt fit in Fanng. Im glad you found your happiness!

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot


Hey congratulations ! Keep at the Leetcode thing though. You already turned your situation but why not go for another thing in your arsenal ?


From the OP:

“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.


True, I have taken break from LeetCode but not for too long. I will probably restart it in couple of weeks. Going forward, I always want to be interview ready.


So… did your wife get the big house she wanted?


Sort of, yes. We have signed the contract and should be closing in the fall :)

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.


People who believe they need big houses baffle me. It isn't priced right, and you can improve to flip or live and decide later. But why on earth would someone need a giant fucking house to be "happy".


People usually don't stress so much on the size, but on the neighbourhood and number of rooms. A "big house" might mean a separate office for a work-at-home parent (or two) instead of the bedroom or living room, or separate rooms for your soon-to-be-teenagers. Maybe that was the case for the OP?

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.


yes, number of rooms is a big thing. especially with kids and working from home. my office room is 6m² now. sufficient for me. but places with rooms that small are rare. a friend has a 100m² apartment with 5 rooms, when every other apartment i found on the market in that city with only 4 rooms had at least 150m².


OP has kids, it does not have to be a mansion but you need a large house


Thanks for sharing, I think many people out there are going through the same thing you did.


Congrats on the new gig. It sounds like things worked out well.


You got help here? I guess you’re a “best” loser now.lol


That sounds really awesome. Congratulations :)


Leetcode is not good training for FAANG?


easy to lose sight of what makes you fulfilled while on the Leetcode grind. congrats OP


Man I'm so happy to hear this! Wish you the very best of luck!


Hell yeah man :)


Happy to hear you've made some positive changes!

That 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.


The OP could mean that the security-related tasks added zero benefit because they were unnecessary tasks that didn't result in increased security.

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).


Agree with you in principle. However, it sounds like OP was doing security theater, which is demoralizing to perform.


I agree in principle but where I worked a lot of it was just for show. We had a lot of security people who only knew how to generate pdfs. They were very hard to work with.

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.


How has a cybersecurity practitioner never encountered useless compliance-driven security tasks?

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.


I bet he was referring to the endless documentation around it.


It might not be zero, but in some cases it could be lots of additional work for some marginal benefit


I agree with both. Real security is never of zero benefit, but I've worked on a lot of "security" tickets that are of no pragmatic benefit:

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."


Is Hacker News the new Blind ? Wtf did I just read? But good on you dude - just don’t attach that much of your self worth and relationship situation on your job .

But this post is Blind worthy not HN.


What is peoples obsession with FAANG companies?


The pay is insanely high. That's what does it.

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.


A stable career with a high income. Looks good on a resume so quitting is easy once you have enough money saved


So people just want money even if they are just a number doing boring work and hate their job and have no impact.

That’s what I gather from the replies so far.


> if they are just a number doing boring work and hate their job and have no impact

This is almost every job. You might as well get paid fairly for it.


I would rather get paid less and enjoy my job than wake and not want to get out of bed. But that’s just me. Only live once so want to enjoy life.


It's easier to make that decision if you've already made a bunch of money. Pretty hard to do that if you have no money.


So I’ve worked ~18 years and never at a stupidly high salary in the US.


Right, so you've made a bunch of money, and can now be a little more picky. I never implied that you were necessarily a millionaire, but it does seem like there's a good chance of it.

I ain't sitting in front of my computer because I love it, I do it because I need money.


I haven't made a bunch of money. I never worked for a company earning FANG style income. Outside of America companies don't pay stupidly high salaries like silicon valley.

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.


Do you have any assets along with that 12k, or does that 12k just go quite a lot farther wherever you are? 12k renting in Canada would last me a few months, spending frugally and splitting rent. Once that's gone, I'd have no assets, no investments, just homelessness looming on the horizon. So it would provide a bit of runway, and I'd choose whichever of a set of offers if I received them, but it's very rarely the case that there's even one option. If you've put money into a mortgage over that time, or an investment account, or your cost of living is extremely low while your prospects are good, then sure it's just a low risk lifestyle choice I'd also favour. If you can't whether a bad storm though, you don't want to be caught outside during it. Every time I'm in that position, I take the first month or two and try to find something I really enjoy. But that never goes well, and I'd sure as shit hedge my bets and take the job at FAANG if it came about, especially if it's the only choice available.


No, just spent disposable income traveling as I spent 10 years living in Singapore. But met wife while traveling and now living in Taiwan trying to save money.


Do you have a family to support?


Yes.


Stable job. Good pay. And let's face it seems most startups these days is some crypto bullshit.


FAANG is "growth & engagement", not much better though. At least crypto is easy to ignore, while "engagement" relies on it getting in your way and being hard/impossible to ignore.


Eh, a lot of the work at a FAANG, or a GAMMA, or whatever acronym you want to use for "big stable tech companies", is on products that people use and like and the changes you make matter to people. You may be a cog in a machine, but it's an important machine.


I'm actively resisting any future incorporation of Google related anything into my life. Doubly so for Facebook and it's evil tendrils. Twitter/LinkedIn and all that other junk don't even deserve consideration.

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.


> Are you so sure that work is really important?

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.


getting paid?


And resume points, bragging rights, exposure.


Harder to brag about working in big tech given increasing contempt for these companies but yeah maybe the implication still is that you're loaded and comfy if that's something worth bragging about


People hate the companies but no one denies their tech acheivements. A manager may not brag but tech person certainly can...if they acheived things there.


My observation is that people “like” what’s familiar. If they try something new they may not like it, and consider the experience a waste when they could have had something they know they like.

Some people go on cruises every year or get a timeshare, others throw a dart at a world map.


Winner takes all, extreme wealth disparity?


Lots of money


Prestige?




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