Posted by TheAlchemist 1 day ago
Another useful input is what are other people telling you? This shaped my career early on by either taking on the work others didn't want to do, or hearing others mention what they felt was important and focusing on this.
I’ve been working since 1996. But without going into ancient history, in 2008, I had spent the last 9 years at my second job, became an expert beginner, been divorced for two years, and had 5 mortgages between my home and two rental properties that were underwater by about a $250K.
I was also teaching fitness classes part time to make up the gap - that was suppose just be a hobby.
Then my plan was to get out from under all of that mess. I didn’t know how or have a timeline. But it started with getting a job where I could get exposed to modern development practices (done after 3 months and a lot of prep work), stopped teaching so much (just kept my favorite classes where my friends were), and walked away from five mortgages and wrecked my credit (everyone was doing “strategic defaults” back then).
One thing I didn’t “plan” for was to meet and marry my future wife and become a father to pre-teens by 2013. I’m still married, boys are grown. That by itself changed my goals.
By 2013, I was still about 25% under paid even for an enterprise “senior” [sic] dev in Atlanta and still digging myself out of my financial mess while supporting a family.
My goal by then was to develop the soft skills and hard skills to be a team lead - again no timeline.
Then in 2016, my goal was for us to move and work for a much better paying tech company after 2020 when my youngest graduated from high school. Even that changed to I would rather just not move and get into customer facing cloud consulting (not staff aug) after 2020 when I thought I would have to travel a lot (who could have predicted a worldwide pandemic??).
Well both fell into my lap in mid 2020 - customer facing cloud consulting and BigTech and I didn’t have to move when I got a job at AWS working in Professional Services. I didn’t even know the department existed. Again not planned.
2020 my plan was to work for Amazon for four years, pay off debt, save some money and work for a smaller consulting firm. I knew three months after I got there that I definitely didn’t have the stomach for BigTech long term. This was the only 5 year plan that worked out more or less as I wanted (staff consultant for a reputable mid sized company).
Even then, I never thought in 5 years, we would decide to sell our house in the burbs, downsize and move to state tax free, much better weather Florida
If they realize that the company cannot provide what you are looking for then they may not want to invest more resources in keeping you around, or keeping you happy. If they realize that you find some sort of intrinsic reward in certain work, then they might put you last for raises, because the money could help them more when spent on other people.
It's best to selectively reveal only your immediate short-term goals, only at the current company, and only as part of an ask. Always make them pay for information, if you are going to reveal what you want, then they need to reveal whether they intend to help you or hinder you in getting it. Slow answers, non-answers, pushing to next quarter, etc. All signal that they intend to hinder. It's rare to get an honest, fast "no".
> It's ridiculous to think that helping you build a successful career, which likely doesn't involve them or your current employer for very long, is something that they would do.
This is a very short term perspective. If I am a good manager to you, you are much more likely to stay because that’s an important relationship & you are benefiting. If it means you move on because I helped you gain the skills/confidence you needed, great, maybe sometime down the road you can help me when I’m looking for me next job or refer my next awesome employee. But who cares, at least neither one of us had to be miserable.
You always have to be _cautious_ but don’t let relentless cynicism keep you from good useful professional relationships that can actually help you.
This is technically true, but metaphorically false. Most readers, especially the younger crowd, are likely to be too trusting and not correctly recognize fundamentally adversarial relationships, like with their boss, with HR, with lawyers whom they don't pay personally, etc. Especially when those people present the relationship with a faux version of the same naivety that they intend to prey upon.
The only people you can trust at a company, are people who have demonstrated that they value your relationship more than the company's relationship. That's not impossible, but if they really need the salary, then the odds are stacked against you.
It's certainly nice to pretend that everyone is nice and trustworthy. In fact, most people will hold it against you if you don't sufficiently pretend to be trusting. Universal insincerity is part of the human condition.
This is a clear non-sequitur. Whether or not the situation is zero-sum is dictated by the situation not by the actions of people, or how they feel about each other.
If the situation is zero-sum, and one party doesn't realize, or is too trusting of other parties, then they just lose. And they might not even realize that they lost, or that the situation was zero-sum to begin with.
> basically at the same level in terms of power and influence?
Obviously not true, unless you can truly ignore your manager and still be successful at the company, then they have power over you. If they control more resources than you, or have more face time with people who do control resources, then they probably have more influence than you as well.
This whole comment reads like a sucker who doesn't know they are being scammed.
Yes.
But a first-line manager more often than not is just another human being caught in the system rather than a total drone. They have their own agency distinct from their org's, and you can consider trusting them, up to a point.
As a former career contractor who took probably 7 commercial jobs I didn’t care about for every 1 creative job I wanted to do but for which I was underpaid, this feels deeply true.
Can this ever be enough?
I am not sure. Is this even possible in current feudal corporate structures? I did spoke with some people from my work. One was afraid for his job because of another employee. Other was afraid of reorg and if there will be lay-offs. Another company and the merger there caused one guy to be afraid of loosing his job because system he build will be discontinued. Maybe their current position is not the career they really want and after the setback, they are afraid off, they will be able to advance it further in the direction they are actually aiming for... but what if not? What if they will never will be able to advance it further? What if they will never will be get back up?
At some point the only direction you can go is down. Is this all?
Even if you will be able to build your own company things may go wrong and you may loose it. Economy can change. Market can change. Your company may be bought or taken over. Nothing is truly sure.
Should you not invest in the carrier then? No, this is wrong. If you will not set course for you someone else will. And you may not like the place when you will end up. Setting up your own goals is very good practice.
But I am not sure if this should be your life goal because this is so dependent on so many variables. Variables you have absolutely no impact on. And with that uncertainty comes stress. I think that your life goals should be set to something that depends only, or almost only on you.
I don't think it's a matter of setting goals based on what you can do alone, life is lonely enough as it it. I think it's more a matter of accepting that life is a sequence of unpredictable events, and you have to just embrace the absurdity of it all.
Also where I hinted that pointless grind is something that should be a way to happiness?
That "decision" required a safety net most will never have
Designing your career isn’t about self introspection, it’s about leverage
And leverage is stolen from the invisible hands that keep your world running while you journal
The problem isn't individual, but systemic: why is the freedom to choose rationed so narrowly?
For a lot of people, work isn't a career to design, it's survival math