What helps me is keeping around my TODO.txt month by month, as well as a lot of screenshots and images of the things I find relevant for sharing in stand ups and meetings and such (as well as presentations).
So if I need to review the past month/year (e.g. when I want to update CV/site or catch up with management), it’s just a matter of going through a bunch of text and images without a lot of unnecessary fluff, like digging through Jira. Maybe if I want to get the approximate time/effort spent on particular stuff, based on the amount of activity there.
Alongside that, it’s also nice to document stuff that was particularly good, or all the ways software broke in (and what broke how often), as well as stuff that pissed me off and made me want to quit (sometimes people/mindsets, sometimes tangible code or practices).
When the default is just going with the flow and not documenting anything and doing no self reflection, every improvement upon that helps.
Typically I'll have a folder with a bunch of numbered files in the order that I want to talk about them, since it's easier to just quickly share my screen and run through then when I want to let others know what I've done, for example along the lines of:
01-migrate-gulp-grunt-to-vite.png
02-vue-prebuild-script-check-unused-translations.png
03-java-add-compile-memory-limit-ide.png
04-server-update-python-for-ansible.png
...
> It is well known the drunken sailor whos taggers to the left or right n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about sqrt(n) steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance sqrt(n). In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.
Just a tiny bit of bias towards a direction will get you very far very fast.
I once modeled+visualised this with a bit of javascript[1] and it's quite surprising to see the huge difference from even a tiny multiplication factor on each random/probabilistic decision.
Edit: well of course it is. I was thinking expected position (which should be 0) not distance
"expected distance" is average abs(coordinate), so for biased walk (and big enough time) it's simply abs(bias)*time, and for unbiased it's deviation==sqrt(variance)
For a binomial distribution of probability p and (1-p), after N steps the expectation value of right steps is Np.
The Variance is Np(1-p), so the standard deviation (or Root-Mean-Square) scales as Sqrt(N).
It does make me reflect on this piece I wrote 9(!!) years ago though, which hasn't completely materialized. I think I'm due for a re-alignment of priorities.
Most people, even when they do not sit down and think about it, follow one of the two career paths:
- Some people will actively pursue the next logical progression (senior, lead/manager, head/vp, exec).
- Some will happily stay in their position unless the next one is offered to them.
Being deliberate will always work better compared to being random, but it is not like all people who succeed in their careers deliberately planned to get where they are.
I would even guess that for the vast majority of successful careers, competency and luck played a much bigger role than being deliberate about it.
I think this is true. I had a while where my career was doing really well constant steps up, I was learning, getting promoted, was working on great projects and problems that were engaging and led to easy promotions. Then I got a new manager and it was downhill. Then I got a new job and the problems are insignificant and there's no room for growth of any kind. If my latest job was earlier in my career my career would be very different.
But I think it is the wrong view, as generally people do move into the direction they want to go. Take a person doing plumbing but wanting to be in art. The problem is not the direction, the problem is taking the first step.
In general, many people dislike changing jobs, so they don't take steps. The steps are the problem, not the direction.
Or someone else that “can’t get their stuff together?”
A lot of people never even “move”.
It can and probably will move as you age and gain experience.
But if you're thinking you'd love to be your own boss and, as you have that vision, you find something much more interesting, you can still re-assess.
Things change fast in our industry so being able to pivot to something nearby is paramount for maintaining a career in this field.
Not everyone has the fortune to spend 15 years at a FAANG or other large corporation. Sometimes you have to build it.
"If you don't have your own story, you become part of someone else's."
If you guide your own direction too strictly you will both risk moving yourself into a dead end, but also miss out on unexpected opportunities.
If you don't design your career, in most cases I guess no one will. In the comments are good examples, like the random walk of the drunken sailor. The cases in which you could use the phrase "someone else designed it for me" in a meaningful way seem rather rare to me.
In other words, the problem in designing your life is that you’re almost always going to pick things you already know. Maybe that gets you to the peak of your current profession over twenty years…but maybe some other job is actually a lot more fulfilling to you.
I’m not sure how to incorporate this into a young person’s real life experience, but I do think gap years, varied internships, volunteering, etc. are probably a good start.
I recently listened to a podcast with a guy that wrote a book advocating that young people spend 4 years getting a pilot’s license, working on a ranch, becoming an EMT, and various other useful skills/jobs. That seems like a great idea, although I didn’t like the hostility to traditional college he had in offering this plan.
https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/fatherhood/podcast-108...
The book itself is called The Preparation.
For example - working in a well-rated fine dining restaurant over a summer while you’re studying computer science seems totally unrelated and not optimal. But maybe that unique experience is what stands out on your resume, and maybe the knowledge about wine or food you acquired there builds a connection with an investor or manager, years down the line.
I tell my son all the time that I couldn’t predict what I’m doing now … 3 years prior. I didn’t have this insight or awareness but after running the SW/IT marathon for 25 years here we are. Trust your instincts, they weren’t developed in a vacuum. The more you explore, the more insights pop in your mind and every 3 years or so, a change presents itself for you to affirm or deny.
100% this. When I started working in recruitment, it was literally intended to be a temporary means to an end. I stumbled across Hacker News back in 2010 and accidentally uncovered a niche (tech startups) that has resulted in a career where over the past 15 years has evolved into holding VP level roles at YC startups to now running my own successful recruitment and HR advisory business for startups. I can legitimately attribute that entire path and growth to accidentally stumbling across this website and couldn't possibly have guessed the impact it would ultimately have on my career.
In my first year of university, a senior grabbed me by the shoulders and told me that I _have_ to try an internship or semester abroad. One thing led to another and I have just celebrated 10 years in Germany. It led to my current career, which is not at all what I studied.
To answer your question, I think that it requires a certain curiosity, and an appetite for experimentation. I feel like the system is teaching kids the opposite of that.
I've seen fear as the primary obstacle to trying something different when the current route is not working. It's really hard to step outside the comfort zone in those situations.
While you definitely need a higher than average tolerance for uncertainty, the big thing is just not seeing all the options. Many choices are occluded by the options presented to you by employers, the educational system, etc. The spectrum of careers, which is a continuous higher-dimensional blob of "things you can do to make money", is systematized in such a way that while there are paths to unusual career outcomes, most of those paths can not be expressed.
You may on some level want to reach some career or lifestyle goal, but often the path to that destination isn't obvious, and it's definitely never presented to you as an option among the things you can choose, and more than likely you'll have few if any role models or people to ask for guidance if you find yourself on that track.
My "career" is just a means to an end to put food on the table. Also being in my 30s I think I have mostly maxed it out anyway. Sure I might increase my wage a little bit but all in all as for being an IC it is a good as it gets. Sure there is always room for improvement but I am already constantly the person with the most technical skills in the room so it would not grant me any benefit.
I don't think your "career" needs to be a major focus in your life once you are set up at least. Especially if you don't do any meaningful work that actually helps people like being a doctor or teacher or something.
In the end my work just makes someone else richer, it doesn't have any meaning. It does not make the world a better place. Probably a worse place sometimes. I just do it to not starve.
This is something I struggle with a lot. I left companies before, because the job felt meaningless and making some rich guy richer doesn't sound meaningful to me. I am trying to come up with a business idea I can work on on the side, that actually is supposed to make the world a better place, but I am struggling to find anything I have enough experience in to pursue.
I am leaning towards activism now, because that is probably the most achievable thing to do for me. Just building info sites nobody reads, trying to make non tech people aware about how Amazon, Google and so on makes life worse for everyone. Or how anti privacy laws are probably a bad idea.
But that does not feel fruitful either. My everyday life is consumed by the desire of having some kind of impact, making the world better.
I think a majority of people already know this, that's why it feels fruitless. Also more negativity ("these companies are bad because of x, y, z") will also make you feel negative.
Why not make those sites, talk to those non-techy people, but provide _some_ form of thing they can do to make an impact in a tangible way, not just "don't use amazon", links to sites that put together local info for small areas, catagories of smaller online sites that you can use instead of amazon or something.
> My everyday life is consumed by the desire of having some kind of impact, making the world better.
Do you have something tangible you can look back on that you did last week that helped achieve this vision? If not, what small thing can you do this week?
Not too sure, I am pretty delusional about the impact part. I want to achieve something big but have zero ideas on what I could start with. I have a ton of time and want to use it for something I actually believe in, the difficulty is in finding something I actually believe in...
The job market and my visa status meant that it's either impossible or I need to make significant sacrifices.
So that's life.
Now that our kids are grown and self-supporting, it's wild how much simpler the risk calculation is. But at 52 with engineering manager being the dominant role in my CV, not particularly appealing to the small companies making big moves that I'm interested in.
What people need aren't more options. What they need is MONEY; which is the ability to obtain the options which exist. And the only way to give people more money is through political means. This is why I was interested in crypto; it seemed to get straight to the point...
I later quit crypto due to too much corruption in the space and launched a mainstream startup with a co-founder centered around helping people find 'the perfect job' but I quit as co-founder because the idea of it almost makes me want to vomit now.
The system is firing people en masse. The system itself doesn't want people to have jobs... So me, trying to work against the system by offering a solution that operates within the system feels futile and like gaslighting users and myself. It's selling a dream. There is no perfect job. Reality is our socio-economic system doesn't even have a shitty job for you... Let alone a perfect job... And most jobs seem like bullshit jobs anyway.
It's extremely hard to find an idea that's both truly useful and profitable these days. That's a shame because that's exactly what I want to do with my life but I feel like this does not align with what is possible within the current system. I cannot find any such opportunities in the tech sector.
Someone told me I should get into politics but again if I think about what the typical politician does, I feel nauseous. The only kind of politician I could possibly be is the honest kind that gets assassinated... And of course I don't want that. Besides, nobody would fund me... My hitman would probably have an easier time raising funding to 'take me out' of politics than I would raising funding to get into it.
I need to integrate with tools that prematurely deny me because I'm not a big company. I basically already lost, despite my tool being much more reasonable and maintainable (I've worked at the competitors and it was a mess).
The world doesn't care about good products, they just care about how it looks. Big companies look good, you don't. It got me demotivated early on. You really need thick skin to start selling a product.
It's true; what appeals to people is something superficial. The product has to be highly optimized to generate an initial 'wow' factor. But it's almost impossible to create such 'wow' factor without sacrificing something fundamental about the product.
The goal is to make such a good first impression that people will pay for your product and then will keep convincing themselves and their friends that your product is great... When it's not because actually there are many better alternatives out there which are higher quality and provide more flexibility.
Among financially successful products, I see a lot of rigid, inflexible products. They create a 'wow' factor by removing complexity; by removing flexibility... Targeting a specific psychological bias... These products seem 'easy' and magical at first but what makes them easy also makes them inflexible and fundamentally useless. Because flexibility is what gives a competitive edge... But flexibility also scares people away.
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
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.
My guess is that it's important not to be overly focused on the intermediate goals and the more debt you have the less able you feel to take risks.
*it may be more appropriate to say start than act as in the two cases that immediately come to mind they were both 10+ year journeys.
Step 2: [...] Think like a journalist and ask yourself: Why does this matter? What are the trends here? What happens if these trends continue?
Career paths and opportunities have been getting broken and changing so much in recent years that I find it hard to plan anything. I don't even know what kind of "goal" is sustainable, let alone what the path towards it is.
The only sensible career that seems to offer a steady trajectory is medicine. Apart from that, my most successful peers were the ones that followed immediate money and speed-ran into owning some kind of real estate, which is a game changer. Besides that, people try to do as many side hustles as possible and diversify their income to save as much as they can and brace for a possible recession. I find it hard to apply any of these 8 steps in such volatile reality.
hwhehwhehegwggw•2h ago
ramon156•2h ago
nottorp•2h ago
fifilura•2h ago
ManuelKiessling•2h ago
y-curious•1h ago
Turtles all the way down
ramon156•1h ago
So, I guess it would be "Turtles all the way up"
ramon156•1h ago
I'm at the bottom of the chain here and have no authority to change this. Given that I'm being let go soon there's not much reason for them to care about my mental state either.
But from the time I've been here, yes, you need to set boundaries or they'll do it for you. It seems like most PMs are used to talking to robots, because that's how they talk to us lately.
madduci•2h ago
georgeburdell•42m ago
paganel•2h ago
integralid•1h ago
Believing "most of the normal people" have no agency is condescending.
bboozzoo•43m ago
the_af•28m ago
Why is this condescending? It's not their fault, it's how the system works and their bad luck in not being born into a more privileged position. For people who cannot make ends meet, trying to make ends meet takes most of their available time and energy, there's not much left to ponder about life's choices.
What it is, in my opinion, is terribly unfair. I agree with the GP commenter that us here mostly ignore this reality. And that's OK, clearly TFA is aimed at privileged people like us, not most people.