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What sticks out to me is that you're good at your job and you really enjoy it. Under those circumstances, I see no need to change. However, you do mention wasting 15 years of your life, if you enjoy it, I don't understand this line.

In terms of impact, is this driven by comparison to someone you know? Does it seem like you're creating a problem unless this has been organically eating you up for a bit? With that said, is it possible through networking you could get access to the board level roles/work, now? If it's just for this... (read more)

Careers Questions Open Thread

shicky443y2

which path sounds the most interesting to you right now? From what you've written, the impression I get is that you want to do mathematics. Sounds like you're plenty smart and will succeed in whatever you put your mind to!

Zedtho

Thanks a lot for the encouragement! You'd certainly be right with that haha, but I am gladly willing to guide my degree choice along different lines for it to be more effective. Perhaps I subscribe a bit too much too 'tabula rasa' thinking haha but I've tended to get passionate about whatever I spend a lot of time on.

Careers Questions Open Thread

shicky443y4

wow, impressive to go from coding bootcamp to FAANG in that period of time! Did you get a degree or any relevant experience beforehand? What tech stack do you work in and how did you manage that trajectory?

I would certainly give FAANG a try to see if you like it, as you mention it unlocks an impressive earning to give model. I'd make a shortlist of health tech based companies you're interested in and begin networking now, I imagine you could worst case help out in some way to help with testing the field out while proving competence.

Option... (read more)

Careers Questions Open Thread

shicky443y1

Surprised to hear the above is put into words well, it felt like incoherent babble. Glad to know I'm not alone and others here could potentially benefit as well. It seems like this is a common problem, most likely without a common answer but its really frustrating to not even have a loose direction.

I guess the experiments above I considered my loose direction but I feel like I've done years of them without truly moving forward

Careers Questions Open Thread

shicky443y17

I'm 36, live in the UK and I'm paid pretty well for my location as a software engineer specialising in testing (SDET), I'm in fintech at the moment but have tried other domains. I went to fintech because I worked in a healthcare company and although I enjoyed it, a lot of it felt like the same s***, so I figured I may as well get paid a slight premium and increase my earning to give.

Nearly ten years ago I discovered financial independence, I was working in London, my then-girlfriend (now wife) got sick and had to move home from university. I wasn't in love... (read more)

Jakob_J

I think lots of people can relate to this sentiment! I could recommend having a look at Escape the City which provides a list of career opportunities for mid-career professionals wanting more social impact in their work: https://www.escapethecity.org/ If you are interested in short or long term volunteering with your tech skills, I can recommend a number of organisations that provide ample opportunities for this in the UK: https://techforuk.com/ "Tech For UK aims to enable people to transform British democracy through technology and digital media that impacts the systems not just the symptoms of its problems." https://democracyclub.org.uk/ "We build digital tools to support everyone’s participation in UK democracy. Our services are trusted by organisations in government, charities and the media, and have reached millions of people since 2015." http://md4sg.com/ "Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) is a multi-institutional initiative using techniques from algorithms, optimization, and mechanism design, along with insights from other disciplines, to improve access to opportunity for historically underserved and disadvantaged communities. Members of MD4SG include researchers from computer science, economics, operations research, public policy, sociology, humanistic studies, and other disciplines as well as domain experts working in non-profit organizations, municipalities, and companies."

alex_sanders

Out of curiosity, how long did you do your experiments in UX / Data Science / etc. for? Maybe it would pay to try spending more time in these functions? You could transition to data science and work for a year and half, then work for a year in UX for example (maybe do a bootcamp as a refresher / to build career capital). Of course this is easier said than done - but I feel like it might take a long time before you can really assess how much a role aligns with your strengths, as it might take many months just to onboard to the role. I'm in my 20s working as a software engineer for a large US tech company and I hope to transition to some other roles for a few years if possible before committing to one role. Also, maybe it would be worth transitioning to a different company or team where you can feel that you work is having a greater impact on customers / on the world? I feel like it can be a bit hard to feel your impact as a software engineer because usually you are usually not client facing. But I imagine that your work might feel more impactful at a mission driven startup or if you are working as sales engineer and get to work with clients face to face periodically.

HStencil

I think a lot of the day-to-day feelings of fulfillment in high-impact jobs come from either: 1) being part of a workplace community of people who really believe in the value of the work, or 2) seeing first-hand the way in which your work directly helped someone. I don't really think the feelings of fulfillment typically come from the particular functional category of your role or the set of tasks that you perform during the workday, so I wonder how informative your experiments with data science, for instance, would be with respect to the question of identifying the thing that you feel you "must do," as you put it. If I had to guess, I'd speculate that the feeling you're looking for will be more specific to a particular organization or organizational mission than to the role you'd be filling for organizations generally.

Michelle_Hutchinson

I’m sorry, that sounds like a really frustrating position to be in. From my standpoint, getting to financial independence itself sounds impressive and worth it, rather than a waste. But I see why it wouldn’t feel that way given how hard you need to work on the skills. While I really like ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’, I do wonder if it’s setting this crazy high target to say the work you do should be work you’d do whether you got paid or not. It feels like the ‘meaning’ we get out of work will often need to be a bit broader than that – for example being what Jack mentioned that the purpose is coming from being able to donate more than you would otherwise and thereby help others. I wonder if you might enjoy this person's take on how to find meaning in work? I think what I’d take from what you’ve said and the above is that the other things you’ve been trying out sound pretty good, and that it could be good to think more about whether you could be happier doing any of them (for example, you mention data science as something that would be useful outside a corporate setting), and if so, going further into learning about or trying them. (By the way, on data science you might enjoy this podcast of ours.) Personally, I found the Happiness Journal and the book Designing Your Life pretty useful for getting a better sense of my North Star, though you might not like that kind of thing!

Jack Malde

Sorry to hear about your struggles. I'm actually strongly considering pursuing an earning-to-give route. I don't expect to be in love with an ETG job, but I do expect to derive significant purpose and meaning from it because I would be doing a lot of good by donating more money. I would also plan to have at least a little bit more money to personally spend (although who knows maybe I won't feel I need it). If I pursue ETG I plan to put quite a bit of personal effort into determining where I should donate, which I expect to be quite an interesting, intellectually-stimulating and rewarding exercise. I also plan to share these thoughts with the EA community. I think I would identify as an 'ETG-er' and may even try to make a name for myself as someone who can advise others on where to give (I'm uncertain how well that might work out though). Do you think that you may be able to pursue ETG and derive the meaning and purpose that I hope to? One really can do a tremendous amount of good through donating money and it sounds like you have good potential to do so.

AdviceSeeker

^This. I have been battling with the exact same issue for the past few years. Thank you for putting the feelings into words so remarkably. Eagerly following this thread to see what other members have to share.

Effective Altruism and Meaning in Life

shicky444y1

would be interested in hearing what direction you go as I hit similar issues, though I'm further into my career already unfortunately!

Effective Altruism and Meaning in Life

shicky444y1

Thank you for posting this, I really REALLY enjoyed it and it hits the nail on the head in terms of something I've been struggling with for a long time. What lies below is what troubles me the most, do you have any recommendations on how to go about finding/uncovering your voice? I previously optimised for learning/skills/money and found myself at a similar crossroads to you, now I'm laden with modern day responsibilities (wife and kid) but feel like I cannot risk their safety etc much to experiment with different jobs that I may find more fulfilling.

find our voice

How do you optimise career choice based entirely on personal fit?

shicky444y1

perhaps the best higher level question in terms of resources is - where does one go for the best career advice?

How do you optimise career choice based entirely on personal fit?

shicky444y1

apologies for being unclear. I guess the crux is, how do you figure out the best career for you based on personal fit alone? I'm considering switching careers, based on sunk costs, I would guess I'll need to stick within IT as not to lose too much ground in terms of my wage, but my aim is figuring out a number of potential career paths based on personal fit, then trying those to see which are viable?

Is that a little better? My personality is that I will always be working on something, therefore it makes sense to me to make that work as enjoyable as possible. Happy for that to be turned on its head though!

Effective Altruism Forum
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