Remaining Ambitious

I've had many rejections from publishers and literary agents for a book which I've put a lot of work into (https://www.wyclifsdust.com, since you asked). It's very tough, and puts a lot of pressure on one's innate self-belief. And as an academic, you probably have on average at least one rejection for every paper you write. (If you don't you aren't being ambitious enough in your journal targets!)

I like the (apocryphal) Churchill quote: "Success has been defined as the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."

This rings true to me.

Perhaps the strangest part is realizing that managing your own ambition is a necessity for living a healthy life. Pure, unbridled ambition can theoretically have a massive reward, but it's far more likely (statistically) to cause you to neglect other meaningful life pursuits to a damaging degree.

In other words, I am the only one who can increase or decrease my own ambition, which means that I can't avoid responsibility for the fact that I am less ambitious now than I was coming out of college. I am mentally healthier, but it's also entirely possible that, had things worked out a little differently, I could have been just as (or more) ambitious and _also_ been mentally healthy. Being aware of this in some ways makes it harder to further downgrade my own ambition in service of a better life.

Some things you can fully control, and others you can't. I can't fully control the rejections, but I can control how I manage my ambition and how I view my life. I'm not sure this is particularly satisfying, but it's better than many alternatives.

> But I don’t love it as a strategy for dealing psychologically with rejection: it amounts to numbing ourselves, and I suspect that numbness can weaken the boost to ambition when we finally get a “yes.”

I've done this. I did indeed become numb and on the short to medium-term it also meant that I lost respect for the industry. I'm not sure what the long-term effects are. One of the things I now do is to apply every week to a company, I've been rejected so much that it became a habit. I'm numb, I go through the motions, let's keep on chugging. I'll never stop anymore. I can't, I need to stay sharp, as sharp as possible. I've been rejected so much that I need to create opportunities before I actually need them, because when I need them then they most likely won't be there. Keep that deal flow going.

I wish there was a better way, I'd love to open myself more emotionally, but I can't take it when you open yourself up every time and you just get: ignored, ghosted or rejected. And I mostly seem to get ignored or ghosted.

For me what seems to kill ambition is personal failure. Lack of energy. Lack of motivation. Lack of focus. Ambition often comes, but unless I am SUPER excited about something and/or get very quick positive feedback, I will inevitably become tired, lose focus, and fail.

This has improved over the years thankfully. It was much worse in my 20s. But still, for me at least, ambition is a function of my own ability and not really of any external person or thing.

The issues outlined in this essay are why, as an organization, it's important that if you want your members to be ambitious, you need to be positive, cooperative, constructive, and helpful.

I don't mean "don't provide any critical feedback" or "competition is bad", I mean, the point of you having an organization is to have a group with some goal, and if you want to accomplish that, you should cooperate. If you're going to provide critical feedback, do it with the aim of improving things, not just to tear things apart.

>Instead of simply rejecting people from the mountain path, lead them, with friendliness and encouragement, to another path they can take.

I would point out that you get a lot of societal bang for your buck even if gatekeepers only sometimes give feedback. Getting rejected from 20 jobs and getting feedback from two of them gives you a big ambition boost: someone is looking at my applications! They thought I was a good enough applicant to merit some of their time!

The next 18 feedback emails probably don't add as much value as the first couple.

Anyway, my guess is that giving good feedback, absent any societal movement to change norms around rejections, still has a fantastic ROI.

Everytime I’m rejected, I follow up a number of times. Usually that leads to an answer of why, even if it’s a generic one.

I will never understand why companies fail to give candidates constructive feedback. Especially at the final rounds. Even if it was “you were great, but we are going with someone else at this time”. One ounce of feedback is investing in people reapplying or wanting to work for your company. No feedback at all makes people look elsewhere.

Ambition and success are similar to me. It’s a few practiced disciplines every single day. Nobody can gatekeep that except you.

This article resonates as I’ve observed it happen in many contexts. In addition to failure and rejection sapping away the energy to be ambitious, alternative forms of success can reduce the motivation to pursue the original ambition. For example, it can be hard to turn away from a stable FAANG job that supports a happy family and undertake more ambitious but less certain endeavors.

On rejection, more often it's people issue, not my issue when i got rejection.

So in general, ambition is a bad word to describe people trait for good reason.

I've seen people mostly hunt for money, not for their dream, nor their "ambition", which's not the goal here.

Hunt for value, instinst value, rather than money, then you naturally become ambitious, regardless of any kind of rejection.

Be rich. That's how you remain ambitious.

If you're poor your best achievment in life is to simply hold a job and make the future better for your kids, and in a few generations those ancestors will be able to follow their dreams.

Statistically the poor are totally screwed from birth. By a huge margin. A very very few will be able to follow their dreams beyond holding a job but that's a statistical anomoly. The best most poor people can hope for is to get a job until you die. Almost every single rich person/ world mover you see was born with some natural talent or rich or upper middle class from birth with enough time/resources to develop some talent. If you're just working to survive your time and energy will be taken in exchange for money.

Any b.s. self help hustle culture is nonsense.

Be rich.

Hard facts.

> Recently, faced with the necessity of making money, I began applying to full-time jobs again. I had thought that with my skills and network, it wouldn’t be too hard to find an enjoyable job that paid well enough. But of course, the first few that I applied to rejected me right away. I could feel my ambition collapsing: half a year ago, I thought I could revolutionize some of the institutions of science, and now I am merely wondering if I’m good enough to land a regular coding job. Maybe I should go work in a restaurant or something. Am I even good enough for that?

I've had this. University built me up (high grades, cum laude, honors, published paper, side projects, TA jobs, 1 year of iOS development experience, 1 year of being a web development instructor experience). FAANG (and its friends, like Elastic, Databricks, all the known names, banks, etc.) broke me down by not ever responding to my job applications for a graduate software engineer. Fast-forward 18 months later, still no job. I also got more downvotes on HN due to having a more gloomy mood and my desperation was perhaps a bit too strong. In general, people can't deal with it. HN has a lot of edge-cases where they can (some ask HNs are an example of this), but in my case they couldn't deal with it. HN showed me that I had to force myself to be more positive, lest I'd get more downvotes (and also because I reasoned that the general public would judge me way harsher than HN). For context, this comment is already quite on the "negative" side. I know that by writing like this I have a one in five chance to be downvoted. Often enough these category of posts also get upvoted a lot, so I do get some insight into the nuances of this problem area simply by seeing my downvotes and upvotes on what I experience to be similar comments, so in both cases the upvotes/downvotes are really helpful.

In any case, I took a job that paid low out of necessity (2500 euro's for a junior position, my own coding students were making more). I quit 6 months later, because I wasn't passionate about their product. I searched and 5 months later found another company. I felt so grateful to already find a company after 5 months that I felt excited by! They thought I was too slow (after 6 months), I agreed. Sometimes it simply doesn't work out. In this particular case, my contract didn't even formally end yet and I already found my 3rd company. Holy hell! What a different world. The 6 month mark is coming up, I hope I'll make it this time. I think I will, but not because my skills improved a lot. In my case it's mostly luck/bad luck depending on the company I was at. Culture has a lot to do with it. It's not my dream company, but I'm simply trying to get by. Moreover, the work conditions are amazing, I have nothing to complain about. However, if I'd be ambitious then I'd have all kinds of ambitious "complaints" like that it isn't my dream company.

Because of this whole process, I don't really know what my purpose in life is anymore. I decided to drop it for now and simply enjoy life. It feels too hedonistic for my taste, but alright, life is teaching me I can't control it I guess. Let's flow with it then!

So, I have 16 months of ragged recent experience (not including my experience that I got as a student). Here are some things I've noticed that are notable:

What I find weird is that some FAANG companies are even approaching me now. Like, really? Having a ragged resume with 16 months worth of experience is really that much better? Really?! It still makes me a bit angry, because I feel it diminishes how tough and valuable my actual academic education was. I've definitely learned a thing or two at the 3 companies I've worked at, don't get me wrong. However, the hardest stuff I've learned was still at university (e.g. rowhammer via JavaScript + WebGL, using IDA Pro to analyze binaries, hacking in general really).

Another thing I find as weird is that my salary is at 4500 euro's gross now. It's amazing that I feel compensated well now (for Dutch standards), but given my ragged resume, I also find it weird. Somehow failing at companies and searching for a new job (after six months of staying at one place!) allows me to negotiate for a much higher salary. Wait what? Why?

Company 1: 2500 euro's

Company 2: 4100 euro's ("This is what a software engineer costs right?" Me: "Yes")

Company 3: 4500 euro's ("How much did you make at your previous company?" Me: "4100 euro's gross" Them: "Hmm, we need proof" Me: sends proof Them: "Okay, we'll make you an offer based on that, it's a bit high on the pay-scale though for your level")

I can't see the forest through the threes here, it just feels like I'm being tossed into a downstream river and whatever randomness happens, I just have to take it.

University isn't like that, at university you can actually shape your path. In real life, I can't shape my path, I feel little agency. I've tried. Right now I'm enjoying a 4 day work week at 80% of my salary, remotely in another European country. I suddenly catapulted myself in a very enviable position. And it's mostly luck and I've happened to have bad luck before. My sense of agency feels crushed, and I feel sad that I belief it. I wonder if it's learned helplessness or whether there's a huge kernel of truth there. With that said, I'm very grateful for what I have.

I don't know what to make of it anymore. I simply try to get by and have a lot of empathy and sympathy for people who've lost their way. I don't understand how some people can say "I chose to do xyz." How do they have so much agency?