Of course, my parents wanted me to be a doctor. As a software engineer, I have disappointed them for a life. It doesn’t bother me anymore, they are from different generation where security especially financial security was hard.

There were other pressures too like as kids we were constantly reminded about our duties to take care of them when they are in their old age. And how we will never be able to take care of them because of our average grades, which means we won’t get decent jobs, which means we won’t have enough money to take care of them. I used to worry so much about that I never spent my pocket money. Still bitter about it.

They pressured us but never provided any support. Other kids who did good in the school had tutors, parents were very involved in their lives. My parents just yelled and said work harder.

Same with sports, never played cricket with us. Never even taught us how to play it. But expected 5-7 years olds to know how to play cricket when we met up with our cousins in Pakistan.

Also SaaS like Deel make it easy for employers to hire anyone around the world. The problem is educating the employers. I would perhaps add a blurb about getting paid via Deel in cover letter.

A new goal for myself is to always be interview ready. I ll resume LeetCode pretty soon.

Or some day, they will decide that one part of our service should move from one network to another for security or compliance reasons. But they have no idea how to do it, who to talk to, etc.

But since it is security issue, we will need drop everything and figure out how to move part of our infrastructure to another network. Things like these were pretty common.

The house is a bit more expensive than I would like but we can afford it. And we could have afford it before too, but I probably subconsciously thought that I don't deserve it.

BTW I thought about divorce but never said that word to my wife. Those thoughts luckily were very brief.

But I highly doubt there are many people who can prevent their internal mental state from affecting their relationships.

I was not able to see her point of view when I felt like a loser. Once I decided that I will get a new job, we were better able to communicate and figure out our next steps.

I thought I hated programming and was ready to quit or even divorce my wife. I was not able to have a normal conversation with anyone. I was burned out but I thought I was having midlife crisis.

My wife wanted to buy a big house and I kept blaming her for the stress.

My job was easy and I had a lot of control over my time, work location, etc. I didn't think it could be the job that was causing me feel depressed.

What I didn't realize while my work gave me freedom on work schedule, it didn't give me any real freedom to make important decisions. We were checkmark driven company. I was forced to do a lot of compliance and security related tasks which added zero benefit to our service.

After my post, I decided that I either move into management at my last company or get a new job. I worked longer hours and spent all my free time doing LeetCode.

LeetCode was hard and pointless. But I was motivated and was able to solve most easy and medium question in 30 mins. However, that was not good enough for FAANGs.

I applied to some smaller companies and got a few offers. I picked one really great Series D startup. I believe in their mission and I have freedom to make real decisions here. I got a decent bump in my salary but not really FAANG TC.

However, more importantly, work is 1000 times more exciting. I feel alive again. Wife and I are not fighting anymore. I work longer hours but have more energy at the end of day.

I just want to thank everyone that responded to my post and tell everyone that if you find your work or life unfulfilling, change your job now!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31732048

Points: 564

# Comments: 213

This is really important. We were fighting over nothing. Switching jobs is cheaper than couples counseling or divorce.

Wondering how much Amazon outages can actually increase revenues for smaller companies.

My job was not bad, I worked 30 hours or so. Had excellent benefits. My team was great and my manager was super flexible. So I thought it cannot be work that was causing me feel depressed. But I decided that I need to get into FAANG and started studying LeetCode. Also my backup plan was to move into management in my current company. I worked longer hours, and studied late into night.

However, my happiness increased, I was motivated.

About a month ago, I gave my 2 weeks notice. I didn't get into FAANG or got FAANG salary but still got a decent bump in pay raise. More importantly, I cannot remember when was last time I felt this relaxed. My average HRV increased from 40ms to 100ms.

I realized that I was not going through midlife crisis but rather feeling burned out because in my cushy job, I had no actual freedom. We were doing checkmark driven development. I could not use my best judgement to do anything but most trivial things.

It wasn't the money that was the issue also. At my new job, I believe in company's overall mission. My last company is known for being backward and surviving by financial engineering. My new company is a smaller company, so it seems I can actually make important decisions.

And most importantly I feel I am in control of my career now. However, my default will be to leave after every 1 year, unless company and work convinces me to stay for another year.

And yes I realize that I am feeling excited because of my new job and may settle back into my low state. If that happen then I will focus on moving into management or different career.

But I guess to answer your question, work has a great influence on you. If you are not feeling good about it or life, then change work now! I say that because I almost thought about divorce because I thought my wife was giving me stress.

EDIT: Thank you, HN!

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709273

I get kids, go to park, pool, etc. Bring sandwiches or pick up junk food. One kid is baby, so usually drop him at home with mom.

Sadly most parents especially dads work late. So I am not able to make plans with moms for after school playdates. And my wife is not very social and she doesn't like Texas afternoon heat.

But there are a few dads who leave work early and we try to arrange pladates after school.

Not sure if one whole day off would create as many opportunities for play as shorter work days.

In my 20s, I was as happy as one can be. I posted a lot on social media and enjoyed posts of my friends. Loved food posts cause that gave me new resturants to try out.

Vacation pictures, I couldn't afford a nice vacation but vacationed via those pictures. Asked friends to post more pictures.

Friend got a job, it meant time for a party.

Now I am not as happy as I used to be. Now I do get annoyed with food and vacation photos. Feel jealous when friends are promoted. I rarely go on social media but when I do I immediately feel bad about myself.

Maybe I am just getting old.

Oh and yes when I was on Facebook, no one posted about politics. In fact, I remember reading my first few political posts of my friends and thinking whats wrong with them.

My fiends and I really wanted to do good when starting our careers and looked at many non-profits, all of them pay sub-market rates. And then we learned secondhand that most of these non-profits were run by narcissists leaders with worse office politics than regular offices.

We got jobs in regular companies building some of most critical infrastructure of the internet. We felt like we were contributing to advancement of humanity and freedom. But after 10 years, we realized we just made rich kids richer, divided humanity like never before, destroyed privacy, and made sure everyone is addicted to their screens.

I mostly helped in the building of the cloud, and I know what business most of our clients are in. Very few are doing something that is not harmful.

Teach in bootcamp? So that these rich-kids will have more workers?

Start your own business? Consulting? Helping other companies do evil? Another app to get hooked on? Restaurants? There is already obesity epidemic? Build new homes or rehab? I can respect that but it is capital intensive.

Anyways, I see whenever trading is mentioned people call it a useless activity while most of us are engaged in actual harmful activities.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling really low and asked for similar advice. It really helped writing down my thoughts and reading various comments.

Since then I am feeling really motivated and sort of high on life. I think having an achievable goal is really important in life.

I decided that I was not happy with my work, so I will definitely make a change. Which was a huge stress reliever.

Then I told my boss that I am not feeling motivated at work and I need to move into management. We will see what comes of it but that made everything concrete.

I also started doing leetcode daily, it is boring and pointless but gives me peace of mind since this is plan b.

Then in personal life I am really focused on getting 8 hours of sleep, and other relaxation related activities.

Anyways my suggestion would be start with relaxation. Fix sleep, get massages, hire nanny or housekeeper.

I was also minimalist before marriage, and my wife’s consumption habits are really stressful for me. It is not even about money. I hate stuff and give away things for free rather have them take up space in my house.

I realized I cannot change my wife’s habits, so I am just focused my reaction to her habits. I have all my minimalist gear in one backpack in the house. Working on reducing my wardrobe right now.

Since you have a successful business, Selling it would not be my first step. But if business is still making you feel miserable then sell it.

I think my main point is make a decision to change something and work towards it.