I think that could give an indication of what might be wrong here, I can relate (somewhat!). I work for a top-flight tech firm, straight out of school, for about 5 years or so, and for a long time I felt just like that: I focused for a very long time on achieving the next goal - passing an exam, getting into University, getting that job, and not really focusing on what that was all for, not really focusing on my personal life etc. Once I got my job I was like “what is all of this for?”

So I changed tack, I rotated positions at my job, I tried to “live with purpose”, do something with a super-high impact, and not put myself under such relentless pressure to succeed. It may not feel like you have a super-high impact, but I’d say you do - the services you run help to improve literally millions of people’s lives. Try to think about it like that, instead of “I’m not living up to my potential”, think about the enormous impact you already have. If you just don’t find the work interesting, talk to your manager about the possibility of a secondment to another team.

I’d also advise that relationships are hard, and it is OK to feel miserable when they end. But one thing I only realised recently is that if your misery extends by more than a two months, it could be indicative that you need to see a doctor. Depression is a terrible condition that’s still (IMO unfairly) stigmatised and it’s often hard to disentangle from the rest of what goes on, but it is not a weakness to admit that we all need some help sometimes. If you need an impartial but sympathetic ear, you can find my email in my profile. Good luck! :D

Hah, I misread as "I work for top flight-sim firm" and though - aaaawww, I thought at least this kind of work would be fun.

Especially that one. I'll bet they know, by now (maybe they already did, and don't care. Google is famous for leveraging their -and our- data).

I've found that many corporations are willing to settle for fairly mediocre work, as long as the processes are followed, and the cheese not moved. Having especially brilliant folks in place, means that if there is a problem, they have the bandwidth to deal with it. If I were your manager, I'd probably be pretty happy to have you there, but I'd also be worried that you weren't being challenged, and see if there was something I could do to challenge you, while improving my department's lot (I would probably do some kind of "20%" project).

TBH: Most work is fairly rote. R&D departments are usually pretty small. Production is about a predictable, low-variance workflow.

What I did, was work on some open-source stuff. Some of it has turned out to be quite impactful.

But I was fortunate. I had an employment contract that didn't have the "shower clause" (where they lay claim to the ideas that you come up with in the shower).

I strongly suspect that your contract has a "shower clause."

And many European countries eg Germany just have it as part of the general labor law - so you wouldn't see it in a "contract"

This explains why Germans always seemed so surprised when I mentioned my extracurricular work to them.

Must make moonlighting difficult.

Also, I’m almost positive that the reason my company did not have the clause, was because they hired many high-level creative folks, with lifelong side businesses.

It was a photographic equipment company, and we had some really good photographers all over the place.

One of our lens techs was a well-respected avian photographer, and our Marketing department was filled with top-notch photographers.

You couldn't spit without hitting a first-class artist. Even the administrators and accountants tended to be pretty awesome casual photographers.

If you're at Google you're already clearly gifted and one of the leading people in your industry, and if you're cruising there then you're probably still doing absolutely stellar work.

You may not recognize it, but this is a statistical distribution argument. :) It is assuming that there is a steep gradient between Google and "outside-of-google".

It is hard to prove that this is true regardless of the intentions of the statement or what was left unsaid.

Don't go looking for the missing sense of fulfillment you have at work, either for Google or any other company. Crack some classic literature and take some long walks, figure out what you haven't been doing.

Keep slacking at Google. Unless you're ridiculously underpaid -- with a six year tenure -- you're probably in the top 2% in terms of income. You've probably got refreshers that have inflated in value quite handsomely. You're not going to find a better yielding security than your job.

Find something better to do with your time. Figure out what your goals are. Whatever they are, you have the resources. Make it happen!

When you don't have resources, you do have excuses. Oh, I can't do X, Y, and Z because I don't have the time or money or this or that.

Once you have enough money, there's a certain point where you run out of excuses. It's a little uncomfortable. But it's literally the best first world problem you can ask for.

On top of that, the wash out process isn't likely to be all that pleasant, particularly if this person has depression problems already. Getting negative feedback and the cold shoulder from their colleagues for months/years is probably very demoralizing even if they are still drawing a big paycheck.

They are simply asking for what they should be learning in order to be competitive in the job market.

Really? "...(the rest was on dating/dealing with breakups/dealing with depression/gaming/...)..."

> "... are getting negative feedback, or are about to wash out from Google."

Those are the long-term consequences of his current state, as I stated quite clearly.

Whether or not he finds meaning that way is a different question.

Find a role you thrive in, doing work that musters your enthusiasm. Whether it's at Google or elsewhere. Yes, it means giving up the cushy freeride, but there's no substitute for the deep sense of pride and satisfaction from solving a tough problem and building something you're passionate about.

However, one thing i disagree with you and a lot of other similar replies on is that finding another more challenging job is the only way to solve it. Wouldn’t OP working on a side project or contributing to open source with all that free time he has solve the existential problems he is having just as well? Not even mentioning the fact that doing so sharpens his technical skills, adds projects to his resume, with the main difference (as opposed to working an intense job) being that he has way more freedom to choose what he wants to work on and how.

I know because my thoughts used to be very similar to yours.

Finding a job that is challenging and mentally stimulating is very difficult. I know a number of people who echo this sentiment.

It's much more practical to find fulfilment outside of work.

Some of the advice is about how you milk your current position. You said 6 years in industry so I'll take that at face value. Without promotions I'm assuming you'll be working till retirement even at google. Even an early retirement at 55 or 60 is another 25-30 years of this. Unless you're a hero out of Dilbert fiction you won't be able to milk things that long for many reasons.

I'm an PE at an Amazon subsidiary so I end up getting involved with engineers and teams who are having issues a lot, so this is advice from what I've seen. I've also got a lot of mentees and all of them have hit lulls (short or long) in their careers. This can happen with high performers or career in role type people and those who decide software isnt' for them (managers and go do somthing elsers).

What I see often are people who think that they're treading water but to their managers and leads they're slowing degrading. Unless you are somehow objectively measuring your performance versus your past self this is very likely happening. Lowering motivation leads to slower work. Unless highly trusted, managers avoid giving critical work to unmotivated emplyees. And worst off I usually see people in your place turn salty / bitter / angry. Then things really start to go down hill.

The real enemy here is boredom. As yoda once said "Boredom leads to stagnation, stagnation leads to getting passed by, getting passed by leads to salt, salt leads to PIP."

So now you're 30, pissed at your current job, salty, and not sure what to do. Not a great place to be and it shows in interviews.

I have one friend who this happens to every few years. They get tired of their current projects and get frustrated. Then they stop caring and think they're doing OK. Then about 6 months to a year later they get the talk (pip, letting you go etc). By this point it's usually too late, salt and mistrust have built up and it's hard to break free. (Note: unless you have a manager who is very good at managing your carreer path, they won't notice this slide until year review time when it's likely to late). I have a deal with them now that whenever they feel bored they talk to me and we try and find a good new place for them.

There's nothing wrong with staying at a certain level forever at a company. Some people really like that and love the work life separation. You gain trust with managers and mostly you are able to build what is needed and go home at the end of the day. The deal here is to just make sure you a) aren't bored, and b) you are providing value to the manager/lead and they trust you, talk with them often, c) your company will allow you to stay at that level forever. The last one is a kicker, some companies will manage out people who say stay at SDE1 for more than 5 years as low potential.

I've dealt with others who were actually performing well for their previous role but had stopped growing. They were promoted into place so they would grow and fill the expanded role. After several years of that person (lead) coasting, the team wasn't in a great spot. I got called in to evaluate poor team performance. This ended up with the lead leaving the team and essentially down leveling.

What I'm saying is it can happen to anyone regardless of trajectory.

The fix, however, is hard. You need to find what motivates you. I can't answer that for you. This is the worst / most annoying advice I give my mentees, or hell my teenager. This is because you don't know what you don't know.

Some people find the fix is job hopping. This is a great way to stay well compensated and working on greenfield projects while in a up market. However it does make it quite hard to grow to a senior position as you don't stay long enough to build up those relationships, and is harder to do in a down market. You also take on the risk of the new position not being what you expected.

So again it comes down to figuring out what drives you, as this is the best overall fix. And to that, I'd say what I said at the top differently: "Go Find Yourself". You said you're coasting anyway. Figure out what actually motivates you. Both at home (don't just consume content), and at work (If you still have trust, ask to experiment with roles).

I'll plug a great New Years Resolution I did last year (2019) that really helped me: The Harvard Classics.

https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120612_1

It's very old stuff (pre-WW1), but a fantastic guided dive into the Western Cannon. It was SOOO worth it to me at only ~15 minutes a day of reading. You can jump in at any time, readings are not connected. Today's (Jan 5) reading on Mazzini still sticks with me a year later. I didn't pay for it, I just downloaded all the volumes and read those, but I should have paid for it, it was that worth it to me in 2019.

Maybe do a side gig and build something that you find interesting, could be a game for kids, a dating app, a music app,...

I've started getting into software development in my free time and planning for a career change but I feel as if I'd be trading my free time for more money. And if there's a kid on the way, what's more valuable to get from your dad? A dad that makes lots of money but isn't around much or a fad that is around a bunch but can't support you as well? Maybe real life isn't so cut and dry and I can find a happy medium between the two in software. Any advice?

You got hired as a manger, so at the very least, you must have had a pretty prosperous and impressive background as an engineer for some time.

You might be cruising now, but snapshots of one's life are hardly the full story.

A lot of exciting opportunities open up when you don't need to care about money. You can do experimental, innovative stuff just because it's worth doing, and not just because a VC investor wants another cash-out.

Although, given Google's policies towards employee IP, that alone might be a reason to look for another company to work at -- keeping in mind that you almost certainly will be accepting a drop in pay if you leave.

Work is work; it doesn't necessarily have to be the most satisfying or fulfilling experience ever. That's always going to be the case if you're working for someone else. Earning a boatload of money (and saving it) to retire early isn't anything to scoff at.

This also assumes one can find a more fulfilling job elsewhere (with ideal compensation). Which is just that, an assumption. If, and only if, such a job were lined up, then it might be time to move on.

Edit: I think maybe I didn't communicate well. I just mean that being fulfilled at work can be _very_ significant because work is such a huge part of our lives whether we like it or not. And so not _seeking_ fulfillment in work can be a huge blind spot.

I didn't mean to imply it should be prioritized above all else, or that it's shameful not to have the luxury to achieve this to a high degree, as the OP presumably does.

There is only so much interesting work to go around, and you're usually not going to be doing it. You can seek fulfillment at work, but you also have to be prepared not to find it. Seeking fulfillment elsewhere is the secret to not burning out.

The Reality that most people live in is that we need money to pay the rent, like right about now. This limits the opportunities available to us because we simply cannot wait to find a fulfilling and justly compensated job.

I simply will not work for low(er) income just to satisfy my need for fulfillment (at work). You know what's better than that? Financial security. Retiring Early. Owning my own house instead of renting.

I would rather get paid a lot of money and not really work on very interesting things, if that meant I could retire a lot earlier and then do whatever I wanted for the rest of my life.

When work ends for the day, I work on my personal & open source projects, or engage in other intellectually stimulating activities like learning a language, etc.

I think the only exception at this point would be me taking slightly lower pay if it meant living and working comfortably abroad, because I want to live abroad for an extended amount of time, personally, so that tradeoff would be fine for me. In all likeliness that's going to be exactly what I do after I own my own house (at 26yo), and work under my own consulting business.

Therapy is the answer here. You have to un-brainwash yourself from the notion that your job is your life and figure out what really matters to you. Then focus on that, and use your job to fill the boring hours in between.

I agree that you need to push yourself and discover who you are -- but the answers to those questions aren't going to be found at work. This sort of mid-life crisis is pretty common for career-focused people in their late 20s - early 30s and the solution is to find interests and friendships outside of work.

Come back and say this after you’ve had to fix concurrency bugs or had to maintain some overseas contractor’s terrible codebase with no documentation.

It takes a certain kind of mindset; attention to detail and an ability to visualize and work at high levels of abstraction.

To do it well, that is. Copy-pasting framework cruft until it sort of works is simply boring and the world would be a better place if we stopped doing that.

That's interesting, I've never thought of it this way. I'm bored out of my mind at work more often than not due to not having full access to a monolith where it's actually possible to understand/work on the whole thing. Instead, I have to work until I hit a black box/3rd party and I have to either work around it or knock on the black box and ask the proprietors for help. I know that's a generalization, but it's a real cost of componentization of everything into services and the like, at least in the web world. It's _super_ fucking easy to get like 95% to a solution to almost anything on the web, but that last 5% where you spend the most time is like a constant root-canal.

I think you could almost say: if those things aren't hard you are working to slow and if you are bored you could benefit by raising your own expectations for yourself?

Vast majority of software engineering is tedious and boring. Almost no developing cutting edge optimal algorithms. Occasionally interesting design/architecture problems but the majority of the time spent on those is on writing docs, consensus building/communication, and implementation. It’s hard to find the motivation and force yourself to spend week after week chasing down bugs through poorly written code, but almost no task itself is challenging.

It's the equivalent of building a bridge, watching it fall apart, then figuring out how to artfully tie a rope around the bridge to keep it upright, rather than just designing a bridge that can stand on it's own. Most practical knowledge is therefore about artfully wrapping different ropes in clever ways around various problems, rather than fundamental theory on how to build the best design.

As a result of these thoughts, I doubt my code, I doubt everyone's code, and I've lost that naive optimism about technology. Good enough is good enough to ship, after all.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html

You’re going to spend more time at work than doing almost anything else during those years of your life where you work. Why not do something meaningful with those hours if you can? And if OP can get a job at Google they almost certainly can.

Contrast with teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, etc., almost all of whom I think would say they do something meaningful.

I have no idea what proportion of software engineers consider what they do meaningful but the team who work on Google Scholar have done a great deal for me and I’m not even an academic. The drivers at Uber and Lyft and their riders have almost all had their lives improved by their existence. Amazon has made the experience of buying books so much better it’s ridiculous. Lambda School is taking 1000s of people from basically useless as programmers to a new career. Those are all pretty meaningful, at least as meaningful as your list, which seems be about displaying caring as much as actually effecting people’s lives.

If you build something people want and it isn’t harmful you’re having an effect.

And what they've done to the publishing industry is a whole nother beast.

The next recession is going to be a bloodbath for a lot of low-income people when the demand for the gig economy dries up.

Can you really blame Amazon for destroying community centers because they put bookstores out of business?

Bookstores aren't the only viable community center, after all. Most cities and counties have a public library that's supposed to exist for the community's benefit. Additionally, in rural parts of the US, the only real community center you used to find was a church, not a library or a bookstore.

Personally speaking, my community centers exist on Signal, WhatsApp, IRC, Mastodon, Slack, Twitter, Telegram, and Facebook. (And I neglect half of those entirely.) I don't see any need to have a physical watering hole.

Also, I'm from rural US, and those places do revolve around churches, but the pockets of enlightenment revolve around bookstores. IMO, a healthy community has a strong group of intellectuals. Intellectuals tend to gravitate to bookstores.

And yes, you can definitely blame Amazon for putting bookstores out of business. I'm too lazy to find stats to support that, but there is definitely evidence that Amazon is to blame.

And sure, libraries are for the community's benefit in an ideal world, but I'm talking about the real world.

If communities die when bookstores die, sure, you can blame that on what killed the bookstore. But regardless of blame, whose responsibility is it to ensure communities continue? (This isn't the same thing as blame.)

My point isn't "bookstores are the wrong answer". My point is "bookstores aren't the only correct answer". Diversify.

Software developers invent the tools and environments that enable other people to do more efficient work. Sometimes it enables entire classes of meaning work that weren't possible before. How can that not be meaningful?

For better or worse, everything is driven by software these days. All work is, directly or indirectly, powered by software. Being in software is like the most meaningful thing you can do.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

In addition that study notes that teachers are more likely to work a second job, something a Google engineer wouldn't need to do to make a decent wage.

> The average salary of public school teachers in 2017 – 18 for the State of California was $80,680. [2]

Teachers make a perfectly decent wage as is, more than the average household .

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSCAA646N

[2] https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp

[1]: If anything, I think teaching is more meaningful, using the same argument: do software engineering and you can do one human's job of software engineering. Teach 10 software engineers and you are by extension doing software engineering as 10 humans.

On a side note: if anyone here hasn't tried tutoring/teaching natural sciences/programming in a one-on-one setting or very small group, I seriously recommend it. It's surprisingly similar to software engineering; in many ways, it's wetware engineering! You get to debug the logic in people's brains as they work through problems.

1) I agree that this is often true! Code can be pretty boring. That doesn’t mean there are no interesting problems that you can tackle with programming. It just means most people work on incredibly boring stuff and think that’s all there is and totally fine. Find something that’s a better use of your time.

2) There is more and less difficult software engineering. If yours is really boring why wouldn’t you try something more challenging? It doesn’t always pay as well but it can be a lot less terrible to experience on a daily basis.

3) Most of the hardest problems in making interesting technology that touches the world isn’t in exactly how the code is written. Learning this is the first step towards starting to be equipped to tackle the actually hard problems in our field. Which you could work on directly, if you wanted.

None of this is to say that anyone has to do this. You don’t have to have fulfillment in your job. Though you and most others should frankly probably look around and make sure the code you’re writing is doing actually good things in the world rather than bad ones, that’s an ethical obligation but one that is pretty orthogonal whether or not you’re working on interesting problems. (If people optimize solely for money though, they bend towards writing code that makes that empowers companies over people and generally makes the world a worst place. People have a responsibility to evaluate this and try and avoid the ones that don’t.)

Mostly: it’s fine to make the choice to not work on something fulfilling. But stating that there’s nothing fulfilling to work on in this world is just nonsense, defeatist and mostly means you’ve resigned yourself and everyone who takes your advice to unfulfilling, boring and miserable work that doesn’t grow you worth a damn.

And that probably sucks. So why take that approach?

Tech has a nasty age bias once you hit 40, and I've seen people fall apart when they get laid off and finding a new job is hard for reasons that aren't exactly fair. Finding meaning in your life outside your job is how you keep sane when economic circumstances aren't working in your favor.

(Also like, to be clear these roles aren’t all high paying if you’ve adjusted your life so that without 300k/yr you can’t function then like, I agree you have boxed yourself into a harder corner. That said, I currently have found a combination that is both impactful and lucrative. So that’s super cool when it works out. I am desperately trying to structure my life so I’m not boxed into needing this to be true in the future because meaning in my work is still more important to me than money from my work.)

You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to cobble together work during a downturn like that if I were to lose my primary job and be unable to find another. I would likely take the most fulfilling work I could find. Then when times were good I’d resume more fulfilling work. Just like I’ve done through out the time I’ve been in the field so far.

Given that we have been in a 12 year period of one of the largest tech expansions in the history of our industry, I don’t see why it makes any sense to argue that people shouldn’t be seeking fulfilling work now.

But there are a lot of folks like OP who were focused hard on getting a job at Google and making boatloads of money and never took the time to figure out what they wanted in life besides a high paying job. For people in that position, I would say keep the unfulfilling job, let it be unfulfilling until you know what drives you, and figure out what you want in life. Then you'll be in a position to decide whether to seek meaning at work or not. I personally chose to find it outside of work, which has made the career bumps a lot easier to handle because my identity isn't wrapped up in my job.

Yeah, but where is the guarantee that therapy really un-brainwashes instead of re-brainwashing you to just be content with a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. I guess it is a totally rational strategy if you want to maximize happiness (whatever that means) but it still feels like a cop-out.

Surely that depends on the problem being solved, right? Some problems are harder than others. The variety of knowledge domains presented though the lens of engineering here at HN always surprises me.

I find doing it well constantly really hard.

If you're ever feeling this way, move to a games company. Plenty of hard programming problems...

That doesn't even make sense. Software engineering is using software to solve problems. How hard software engineering is depends entirely on the problem you are trying to solve.

This hit me very hard.

This is every job after you've mastered everything you need to be successful. The key is to keep learning more or just completely find a new challenge.

" ... find interests and friendships outside of work."

100% agree.

I miss this every day.

??? I thought that middle age was where you still had the energy and the brainpower, but also had a bunch of hard-earned experience to bring it all to the highest level.

Oh, wait. I forgot. You slacked off when you were in your 20's and 30's so you don't. Never mind.

I agree with this, but it's not going to happen with any job. You'll never discover yourself sitting in an office. If you look at jobs as a means to an end to let you live you're real life I think your better off.

At this point in my life, an "exciting" software job is for suckers

AND, I am not a sucker.

I think you've got the right mentality - that staying where you are isn't the best long term move at your current stage of life.

Ask yourself what is it that you want to try? ML, FE, BE, Full stack? and simply build a project out of it. Dabble and dabble. It'll likely be hard at first since there's a mental rut, but at some point, something will pique your interest.

From there it's just diving deeper and deeper until you're ready to jump ship. You may even find it at the current company through a transfer.

I don't recommend jumping ship until you're sure. You've got a fantastic backstop.

1. Consulting on the side? Surely you being G employee will open lots of doors.

2. Side project/your own startup .

I think you are getting a great value for 10% of your capacity. I would just keep milking it till you get something on side get started.

PS: I don't think 'deeply learn the FE/BE technologies' is good investment of time.

He works for Google, and I bet Google would say "we own your work, all of it".

You might try deep diving into Linux. Buying a book and studying for the RHCSA is a great way to get started with an achievable and valuable goal (disclaimer: I work for Red Hat and have the RHCSA). It is mostly applicable to all Linux, maybe 5 to 10% is RH specific.

I also bought some Great Courses on philosophy and that has been stimulating. I can highly recommend the courses from David Kyle Johnson.

You may also try starting a new project. That is the best way I've found to really learn BE/FE. Elixir is an incredibly fun language, and it's gaining traction. Get the Dave Thomas book first, then the Chris McCord Phoenix book. Being at Google there's probably lots of great people to ask for advice too.

Just my thoughts. I'm no expert at this, just sharing what worked for me.

Since you are new grad employee, I assume your comp wasn’t competitive as it could be. 6 years at L4 also probably indicates you are at/below median comp for that level/location. You might be due for a change if you want more money.

In my opinion, Google is still an amazing place to practice all sorts of different technologies. Internal education programs and mobility between teams would let you work anywhere in the company that’s interesting to you. I suspect unless you find that passion, this might repeat anyhwere you go.

If you want to change Google into a better company or alternatively build or find a better place to be, here is a reading list I've put together which might help: https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations...

Since you mentioned depression, see especially the related health sections.

All the best and good luck!

P.S. Something I wrote in 2008 on ideological challenges inherent in Google inspired by contradictions in the "Project Virgle" April Fools joke: https://pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Proje... "Even just in jest some of the most financially obese people on the planet (who have built their company with thousands of servers all running GNU/Linux free software) apparently could not see any other possibility but seriously becoming even more financially obese off the free work of others on another planet (as well as saddling others with financial obesity too :-). And that jest came almost half a century after the "Triple Revolution" letter of 1964 about the growing disconnect between effort and productivity (or work and financial fitness) .... Even not having completed their PhDs, the top Google-ites may well take many more decades to shake off that ideological discipline. I know it took me decades (and I am still only part way there. :-) As with my mother, no doubt Googlers have lived through periods of scarcity of money relative to their needs to survive or be independent scholars or effective agents of change. Is it any wonder they probably think being financially obese is a good thing, not an indication of either personal or societal pathology? :-( ... Google-ites and other financially obese people IMHO need to take a good look at the junk food capitalist propaganda they are eating and serving up to others, as in saying (even in jest): ... "we should profit from others' use of our innovations, and we should buy or lease others' intellectual property whenever it advances our own goals" -- even while running one of the biggest post-scarcity enterprises on Earth based on free-as-in-freedom software. :-( Until then, it is up to us other ... "semi-evil ... quasi-evil ... not evil enough" hobbyists with smaller budgets to save the Asteroids and the Planets (including Earth) ... from financially obese people and their unexamined evil plans to spread profit-driven scarcity-creating Empire throughout every nook-and-cranny of the universe. :-("

To me, it sounds like you have a lot of questions to resolve first. I would do that before you change anything. For example why do you think you are doing a minimal amount of work and does that actually mesh with reality? How do you define and measure work output anyway?

You mention dealing with depression for example. In my experience dealing with depression itself is a full time job. That you held down a second job during that experience is a major accomplishment. Go easy on yourself.

Remember above all that your thoughts create your emotions. Ask yourself why do you feel that way. What thoughts underlie the feelings. Question those thoughts.

If you are in Mountain View or the bay area, I'd recommend going to the Feeling Good Institute. I'd also recommend reading Dr. David Burns book Feeling Good.

Consider CBT as a set of tools for your brain and human operating system. I would start by learning those tools first.

Talking to yourself about yourself and seriously debugging, can be a lot of effort but long term, it is very rewarding.

I always say to people, “Emotions and intuition are just a complicated set of logic you don’t understand yet”.

Emotions can be a fog in your mind, blocking you from seeing the path from where you are to where you want to be.

Putting in the time to understand the root causes of your emotions, start to help map your mind and you can better navigate and find paths to your final goals.

It's probably good advice. Although, I like to combine all three by doing painting and poetry. These activities might be better suited to some hackers.

“All I do is copy code from the internal codebase and patch things together until they work” — this is exactly what established tech companies mostly need from their engineers. They want people with enough CS competence to not fuck things up while patching together new solutions from the institutional code soup that everyone knows how to navigate and review.

If you can do this reliably at 10% of your capacity and don’t have ambitions of applying creative solutions with unproven tech, you’re a real asset. Don’t leave rashly unless you’re genuinely bored or frustrated.

The failing for google is not providing this person a path to do more or at least understanding their ambition to do more.

That's what we call "the perfect job." It pays the bills, but leaves you the maximum amount of (mental|emotional|psychological|spiritual|whatever) energy to work on the things that really interest you ... outside of work.

Of course different people will approach this differently, but I don't want my job to be interesting. I don't draw any sense of self-worth / self-satisfaction / joy-in-life / etc. from my job. My job is just a means to an end, where that end is to pay the rent, pay the electric bill, buy food etc. I have enough other ways to achieve those other things, and an "interesting" (and by extension, "demanding") job just gets in the way.

That's probably not the case. It looks counterintuitive but being bored and feeling unmotivated at work can leave you at the end of the day with much less energy than an very intensive but interesting work.

Your 2nd paragraph makes sense for a person like you, but I'd guess that the OP is one of those different people, for who self-satisfaction at work is a key thing.

I actually agree with you on that. With the caveat that this is true if you do (by choice, or by inclination) really want your job to provide self-fulfillment / self-actualization / blah / etc.

What I'm not sure about, is whether or not that is a personality trait which is basically fixed and can't be changed, or whether this is something where you can make a conscious choice to change. I think it's the latter, because my own subjective experience has been that I used to be more of the "if my job is boring that leaves me feeling dis-spirited" or whatever, but over time I found that I cared less and less about the "day job" and more and more about what I chose to focus on outside. But I'll freely concede that this just one anecdote, and that what makes sense for me may not work for others.

Now for your second point, I completely agree--I don't want to feel like my job is my worth or joy in life, and it isn't. But at the same time, I wouldn't take a job at an assembly line even if it paid $1M a year.

In fact, I've changed jobs roughly every 2 to 3 years precisely due to boredom.

It sounds nice to be able to get by day-to-day in a full job but it's not a good fit for me personally.

The issue seems to be hiring the highly educated and entitled to do boring but necessary work. GSUs can only motivate people so much.

A company I worked at hired smart engineer with a masters from Berkeley, and then tasked him with breaking down cardboard boxes and other mundane tasks. The fact that they were grossly overqualified for any of the tasks was a advantage because they were flexible, and reliably needed no oversight.

If money isn't an object, why not get the best tools possible.

Look at the political discourse spewing out of Googlers at the moment. It's bursting at the seams from internal ideological friction.

That's not a failure of Google. People need to be self-driven.

People who want to do more should talk to their manager about it, or pursue other opportunities within the company, or leave. Google and all the other big tech companies offer plenty of things to do for ambitious people if they express an interest.

Google is failing to identify and extract more valuable labor from OP.

OP failing to manage their emotional engagement is a separate criticism.

Google is doing a pretty good job extracting labor value in general. If they miss a specific individual who doesn't seem very motivated (to the extent of being a self-described slacker), I wouldn't view that as a failing. Ambitious people generally make themselves noticed, and trying to extract ambition from every slacker in the company is probably not very rewarding.

The fault is on OP here, for not moving on earlier. FAANG is not the end all be all of software development. Consider joining a startup where you'll have a much larger influence over critical pieces of the software stack.

BOB PORTER I'll handle this. We feel that the problem isn't with Peter.

BOB SLYDELL Um-um.

BOB PORTER It's that you haven't challenged him enough to get him really motivated.

BOB SLYDELL There it is.

BILL Yeah, I'm not sure about that now.

BOB PORTER All right, Bill. Let me ask you this. How much time each week would you say you deal with these TPS reports?

- Management Consultants get paid handsomely to clean spreadsheets and make nice charts

- Software Engineers get paid handsomely to copypaste a couple of lines of code here and there.

Lots of these people sacrificed their youth to get into the right school and work.

But still a lot of them are stuck with menial task for years and years.

In the end, you don't get paid because you're so damn smart - you get paid for your time, and the assurance that you won't fk up things.

A lot of the interesting work sadly doesn't come before years down the road, after you've proven yourself, and made it through the promotions.

Welcome to working.

Follow your passions.

One is very smart, but he's been telling me literally for years that he has zero motivation, to the point where he sometimes won't actually start working until 6PM. He's moved around within Google trying to find something he's interested in, but it's just the same thing on a new team. I've suggested a number of times that he leave and find something that inspires him, but he's too used to the salary, perks, and lifestyle to try something new.

Another friend is very similar - nice guy, but there was a consensus at his last startup that he wasn't really accomplishing very much, and he would have been fired if he hadn't left voluntarily.

Another friend is a nice guy, but the most irresponsible person I know. He's been fired from other jobs for being unable to show up before 1PM, and he keeps making some truly irresponsible life choices (ghosting people, drugs, prostitutes).

I know this is anecdotal, but do other people have this experience with Google engineers? It seems like Google is the kind of environment where (at least if you're an SWE) you can get away with doing the minimum for a very long time.

Google is like an ivy league school: the hard part is getting in.

Having worked at Google myself, unfortunately this sums it up just perfectly.

Not that some of googles published api's and standards work can sometimes a little shonky and could do with a lot more rigor.

come on...

I joined Amazon as a new grad and spent 3 years there. I went from a 0% callback rate on cold applications to like 60%. I've been at Google for 2 years, and I am approaching 80% callback. A third of the time, I get to skip phone screens entirely and go directly onsite.

I don't think that the vibe irl is the same as on HN. I never get the impression that people are weary of Googlers. Maybe my Amazon experience is the difference maker? I think if anything, sometimes I get the impression that the person interviewing me is a bit defensive at the beginning of interviews as they feel me out.

god damn this site can be ridiculous at times

Is this by design? i.e. taking talent out of the marketplace and placating them comfortably while working at <100% to ensure they don't go to competition, or prospective competition, and churn 100%+?

For most people, that meant not being worked at 100% until they burn out. It also meant giving people latitude to transfer teams, take on side projects, and find work that resonated with them. That works for a lot of people, but others work better with more pressure or more structure.

0: I can personally recommend TalkSpace. Fixing my anxiety and ADHD has made my work life nearly immeasurably better.

1. you work for a company that is an excellent resume booster outside of the valley. I'm from central texas and most everyone I know in tech has worked at Dell and once complained how boring it was to work at Dell. The moment they decided to move away from Austin their Dell experience made them very hot commodities to non-Austin tech companies. Every day you stay at Google the more valuable you become.

2.you presumably make enough money to not worry about your monthly Bills and probably have enough to save as well. At age 28 you are well ahead of the vast majority of 28 year olds from the last 100 years. Not saying you should be content but still...

As others have said you have a great opportunity to do some new things, both in terms of mental and financial capacity. Nevermind learning more tech stuff...get a hobby. Try different things to make you the kind of person you've always wanted to be. Most people are not able to do that because of stress at work or stress about money. You seem to have neither.

100% agree. A lot of young tech people seem to go directly from school to career level job without developing hobbies/interests outside of work. While that’s fine...you should at least see if activities outside of work/dating/breaking up appeal to you.

Buy a mountain bike, get into woodworking, learn about bird watching, or anything else that interests you. Maybe getting more enjoyment outside of work will make having a chill job an asset instead of a source of stress.

Ehhh, to a point. Straight out of college and then (e.g.) 10 or 15 years at the same company says a lot about a person.

A mentor of mine told me about his dot com bubble experience: he was in a company that was in trouble - leadership changes, the mission became diluted, and top talent started planning exits. Rather than leave, he stayed, they improved, he became CTO.

I took his advice when my last job was going through a "digital transformation": read "downsizing and outsourcing". I knew where the winds were blowing but took his advice because it was a large enterprise and these changes move slowly. Waiting gave me a measurable impact in terms of salary, bonus, and title – and that impact carried over.