Hacker News Reader

Comment by ginsurge | Hacker News Reader

This really resonates with me, I was the first person in my family to go to university, and my grandparents had to work multiple jobs when they migrated from Europe in order to survive. My dad did slightly better, but both my parents only had high school education and worked blue collar jobs.

It does make it really hard to change your mindset when you come from this sort of background, when you've achieved more than anyone in your family and therefore can't really talk to them about your ambitions or career objectives.

It sounds awful, but sometimes I wish I had been born into a different family, with highly educated parents I could have amazing conversations with, who would encourage me to achieve and grow even more.

I find I constantly have a mindset of "I'm not good enough" and it's paralysing. I want to interview for the top tech jobs out there, like Google or Facebook, but my brain keeps telling me I'm not good enough, it's awful.

View on HN

> with highly educated parents I could have amazing conversations with, who would encourage me to achieve and grow even more.... I find I constantly have a mindset of "I'm not good enough" and it's paralysing.

I went to Medical school and for a period of time was surrounded by people who, for the most part, came from affluent or otherwise successful families. My experience was the opposite of what you might have expected: I met many people who felt like they weren't good enough, whose parents weren't encouraging to them, and in several cases had no relationship with them whatsoever. Which I guess is only to say, if you want to be "Good enough" you just have to accept yourself for who you are and continuously try to be better. If you want to apply for the top tech jobs, you should. And if you fail, you should ask how you can improve, do so, and try again. Ultimately, you can only ever be good enough if you try. Failure isn't a disastrous outcome; its absolutely a part of the process of getting better.

> highly educated parents I could have amazing conversations with, who would encourage me to achieve and grow even more.

I realize you may not be implying this, but I just wanted to point out that highly-educated parents don't always have amazing conversations with their children, or encourage them to achieve and grow even more, or even accept or approve of the accomplishments their children have achieved.

Everyone would like better relationships :)

If you feel like you are not good enough - maybe you aren't. Maybe it will take another few years to work on something you are proud of and then you'll feel ready.

You sound relatively young - there is no rush to join google/facebook this year or the next. If you look at the bigger picture - you'll likely be working until you're in your 60s.

That's a long time. So I'd say don't sweat the goals you set for this year or the next so much, once you have the bigger picture, things will fall into place much more naturally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com