Ask HN: How do you manage this feeling? I was expecting more than this." | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you manage this feeling? I was expecting more than this."

5 pointstokyowiz4 comments

I am a software engineer and have friends at Google and others in Zurich or Silicon Valley. I know I'm not at their level, but I find myself at a large consulting firm that I hate every moment of. The only offer I've received is from another consulting firm, much smaller, with about 50 people. When I started university and put in all the effort over these years, I expected to be in a high-quality place. Instead, I now find myself deciding between an unknown company and a famous one that is toxic to the core, while many of my colleagues are at the top of the world. Have you ever dealt with these emotions? How do you manage them?

View on HN

I was in a similar situation fresh out of college. I’ve been hacking code since the third grade but somehow I found myself working for a dev shop in the Midwest full of non hackers making BS software. I remember burning with the feeling of “this can’t be it”. So I basically set a rule for myself that every weeknight I would take my laptop to a coffee shop and hack on whatever got me excited. Over the span of a year I wrote a chess engine in python and learned web dev via Django. The next year I moved to the Bay Area and doubled my salary by joining a startup and worked with some of the most curious and intelligent people I had ever met.

Something that might help is to cultivate a list of developers who you respect and make sure to follow what they do. (Eg. I personally recommend following Theo or Primagen on social media) this helps alot with not feeling alone and with keeping your sights and standards high. You have to learn to not see what’s around you as the norm.

Above all, make curiosity the foundation of your coding routine and your career. I know that sounds cliche but if you can tap into the joyful energy of curiosity then you will have superpowers and will have meaning in your life even if you’re broke and alone.

> while many of my colleagues are at the top of the world

The grass is always greener on the other side. I promise you the work at these "high-quality" places is no more glamorous than that being done at other places.

Maybe the position at the other firm, although smaller, might end up being a different, maybe even better experience?

Here’s the thing: you have an opportunity to turn the unknown high quality place into a well-known high quality place. You will have a bigger impact in a small shop than at Google.

If you don’t like your slate of opportunities as a new grad, then get out there and network with your cool friends.

If you want to do great things, do them outside of work. Side projects, open source, etc. Keep your job to pay the bills, maximise salary and minimize working hours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com