Ask HN: Ever hit a professional goal but felt surprised by your reaction? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Ever hit a professional goal but felt surprised by your reaction?

25 pointscalflegal33 comments

Like a lot of us, I think about trying to work for myself, but then I wonder if I'd be happier running marketing AND software dev? Sometimes I think I'd rather be an in-person worker rather than a remote one. I'm interested in hearing some stories of people making big changes and being surprised in both negative and / or positive directions.

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Yes, I have hundreds of patent filings (in atom space, not bits), every invention has about a week shelf life where I’m pleased, then the following week I think it was obvious in hindsight and I look for the next hit.

The feelings of meaning pale in comparison to interacting with my young kids throwing carrots at the kitchen table or watching them be amazed with a frog they find.

Life is interesting!

I thought financial security would be more comforting. I didn't realize how much of it is performance... in a truly not meaningful way. Or how deep the fear of "going backwards" goes.

I bounce between these patterns:

    * I've nearly starved before, I don't need this
    * I really like not worrying about food, maybe I'll grin and dance

Special case though, hardly any goals. Just getting by. Lost my 20s trying to get here

Similarly, I weigh my financial situation through the lens of how many months I could last if I lost my job. The number isn't infinite, and so that anxiety still drives me regardless of the realities of how long a job search in our industry would actually last

For quite a long time I’ve also considered my personal “runway” as the key metric in considering my financials. The number isn’t perfect because if I lost my job I’d make cuts elsewhere (so my runway is longer than I “think” it is) but it helps reduce my anxiety.

I love YNAB for this since I can fund future months easily.

For most of my life that number has been 0. The past five years I’ve seen it slowly rise into double digits. The level of anxiety is still the same because I always go “but then what?”.

I try to keep my cost of living relatively low for this reason. I’ll buy a nice thing or go on a trip here and there, but those things do not add recurring costs in my life. I _think_ if I were to lose my job, I could get a job at Costco or something and still make ends meet.

I’ve had a co-worker tell me I “live like a poor person.” He doesn’t know exactly what I make, but can assume I make more than him, due to our titles.

I thought once I paid my house off I’d be able to relax a little, but little has changed. I can just now last that much longer on a lower income of something were to happen. I also increased my savings rate, to keep extending that time out. But it’s all fear based. No amount will ever feel like enough.

I also tend to think like this and getting divorced hasn't helped. I was recently re-thinking it as if I needed to I could sell my house and then based on that plus savings I could manage a number of years with a rental property. That seemed to calm anxiety a little. A lot of the things that you worry about never come to pass, and the things that end up causing the most grief were never expected at all.

This is true. I guess I’m in a headspace where I’d rather prepare while I’m relatively healthy and can, because if something happens later it will be too late.

Many, many people have told me I should leave my job. However, I don’t want to cut my legs out from under me during what should be my best earning years.

I was getting better at not caring so much. Two co-workers dying, leading to a big change of heart in my boss at the time, made the job lower stress. But managements changes have increased the stress and disfunction to the highest level. I suppose the stress of staying is lower than the stress of the unknown.

Try not to spend too much time thinking about working. It is important, but for me it's definitely not THE MOST IMPORTANT. I value myself, kids, parents and friends above that and try to retain my own identity.

Ugh, this is sticky af. I wonder why we tend to form such memories as a species, because it literally pulls you back to that shitty period for the rest of your life.

I don't think I've ever set a professional goal. The promotions and stuff are all controlled by other people and almost arbitrarily given out.

What kind of company do you work at?

That said: can't you in part control your destiny by doing whatever it takes to get those people on your side?

To what end

People who enjoy believing their fate is out of their control will do anything to maintain that belief and see their whole lives through that lens.

Personally, it’s more fun to think that I’m the one in control of my fate so I choose to live that way. And it turns out when I do that, I end up in control of my fate.

It’s crazy how that works.

This is like the person who says they woulda gone pro but their high school screwed them out of playing time.

Not at all. To use your analogy, this is more like the person who plays and tries a reasonable amount but doesn't kill themselves by overdoing it or paying excessive amounts for specilized equiptment because they know they aren't making it to the professional level.

For me, there's no point in setting a professional goal. I just do my work and try to do a good job. On average, I've had a new manager about every 10 months. That's not a lot of time to build up rapport and work whatever angle that person sees s the path to the next level. I've literally gone from teams or managers that say X is a strength and Y is a weakness, to the new team or manager that says Y is a strength and X is a weakness. I've been a dev for over 12 years, and been midlevel for over 10. I've done all the stuff you're supposed to do to move up, not because I set them as goals but because it seemed like the right thing to do - learn new tech, volunteer for new roles and assignments, work extra hours, get a masters (since they pay for it), etc. I've had tech leads ask why I'm taking a demotion when I'm actually taking a lateral, because they already thought I was a senior. I've had our team and other teams in the enterprise calling me the TL because I fill that role for a year when we didn't have one (I did a good job and the manager admitted I deserved the highest rating but they couldn't get me the rating for political reasons... this is one of the 3 examples where a manager has admitted I should have gotten the highest ratingnor been promoted but wasn't).

So yeah, what's the point of a professional goals when the targets change in less than a year, I'm doing what I'm supposed to or doing a good job, and past results don't help with advancement? I guess I should mention that I have a disability and my current department head is targeting me, according to what my manager told me. So maybe that's what's holding me back. But I see no point in setting professional goals - I'd rather just focus on doing a good job. That should be enough, assuming you don't want to hit the C suite.

Let's say it was an "intermediate goal". Just before my first child was born, I quit my consulting job. While looking for another job, I went into business as a solo consultant to have some cash coming in. Surprisingly, I brought in enough money in the first 6 months that I could extrapolate that into a viable business & livelihood (I've started several small ventures before and this one felt different). What was unexpected was how stressed I was from telling multiple prospective customers that I could take on their projects. When you're trying to get business, you know that you're not going to "close" every deal in the pipeline - but the idea of potentially overloading myself with several large projects and letting down the customer, was very emotionally taxing.

Of course, when I eventually got a great job and had to back out of an engagement it was a non-issue for the client. It happens all the time with contractors/consultants... I learned a valuable lesson about what it takes to run a business, and the kinds of businesses I'm suitable for.

I didn't think I'd really like management, but I also didn't think I'd totally hate it. I liked helping to organize the team and put systems in place to make things run more smoothly. People also tended to look to me for direction. It was my team that pushed me to make the move to be their manager. I was absolutely miserable and it was all self-imposed. After a year I asked if we could re-org some things so I could go back to being an individual contributor. The team was pretty disappointed I was stepping down, which I guess means I did a good job, but mentally I just couldn't deal with trying to balance my own perfectionism with other people doing the work.

> The team was pretty disappointed I was stepping down, which I guess means I did a good job

If you’re a boss and everyone likes you, then you’re probably doing too much yourself, not doing the right things, or being too easy on everyone.

It’s a one-way path to a miserable life.

Committing to the belief that a) Everyone won’t like me and b) Everyone shouldn’t like me made me much happier as a boss.

> I just couldn't deal with trying to balance my own perfectionism with other people doing the work.

Whenever I interview someone who’s a self-described perfectionist, I love asking them “Tell me about the last thing you did perfectly…” It often leads to, “So you’re a perfectionist and you’re having a hard time finding something you did perfectly…”

I’ve had a few people have a visible A-Ha moment during the discussion. Those are the ones that I like to hire.

I think we humans are not very good at guessing what would make us happy; you just need to try the real thing or as close as possible.

Perhaps we could differentiate happiness and fulfillment? Climbing a mountain might not make you happy (who is happy when their feet hurt etc) but it might bring you satisfaction and fulfillment. Many things are like that, but not every thing that others find fulfilling will be a fit for you.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is a good read on this - it essentially covers many psychology experiments on happiness. I mean, overstates what the studies actually say and gets repetitive by the end as you might expect for this kind of book, but it’s interesting nonetheless and avoids becoming a self help or life philosophy book. The hedonic treadmill is very real.

Yes. For the first decade plus I was promoted every couple years, which was what I “wanted” (more like I saw it was what other people wanted and didn’t really have an opinion of my own yet). I enjoyed the continuous challenges and check marks, and the joy of building software — until I wasn’t building software any more. It was a bit of a letdown that only got resolved when I left to join a series of small companies where I was able to sustain building software as a core part of my job while also being a leader (until that too played out, and the process repeated).

Edit: checkmates -> check marks

Many many years ago, I dreamed about moving from engineering into a management position. I was getting baited for a long time that "I had potential, if I do X and Y, maybe next year, yada yada", but it never actually happened - maybe I didn't try hard enough, or it was one of these things someone tells you to give you something to look for, but they never happen - whatever.

Anyway, few years passed, I changed jobs a few times, and one day I realized I actually just wanted to be compensated fairly, without my employer taking a large cut (my hourly rate in the beginning used to be way higher than what customers were billed for my work, so I knew it was attainable). Or, to not have to go above and beyond because my employer came up with "great" ideas that crept up into overtime territory "if I wanted to make it". Getting promoted was just a workaround for the actual goal, but it would increase my responsibilities a lot, and I never considered myself as someone made for management position (despite promising feedback). I'm glad it turned out this way.

So, the surprise was that I hit the goal, but realized it was something else all along (or I'm just coping).

I always saw myself as an introvert, and anyone would say the same about me. I’ve worked remotely for the past 6 years, yet all friends and good memories are all from office times.

I am more social than I’d like to admit, yet I dread all meetings. I guess I’m looking for the water cooler experiences and for me, those just don’t work online.

Yeah, the biggest surprise of the pandemic was how much I miss the social contact and how much I'd like to visit the office again (with people, not the empty shells of today).

I think this is because for a long time on the internet there was this intense discussion of "introvert vs extrovert" and memes about what it means to be in each camp that we have forgotten that it can vary greatly from one person to another and from one setting to another. It was also somehow "cool" to be an introvert on the internet, in some circles.

These days I feel like those conversations have dies down. And I've also realized that I', more social that I'd previously liked to admit. Maybe age also plays a factor here.

I feel this one a lot. Working from the office these days feels like working from home from the office.

Yes, very surprised.

I make software projects on the side, and one day I made a decent amount of cash, starting at 0, from a huge surge in users.

Was really cool at first, after getting the cash I was really happy for like a week then I was really miserable.

Not sure why, didn’t like the “popularity” I think, felt very shallow

The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory

I used to work in a back office job and I wanted the high life in sales. Got it, then became dissatisfied. Then I wanted to become a software engineer, got there, now I'm miserable again.

The lesson? I'm happy being unhappy.

Always dreamt about working in trading/finance and doing ML stuff and now that I'm doing both it's like "Ehhh, it's fine I guess?".

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