I figure I could take a sabbatical and explore some new areas, try to transition to contracting, or look for jobs outside of the big tech/web startup scene. Ideally I'd like something that requires rigor, with a focus on software architecture or algorithms/optimization. I'd also like to minimize the type of workplace politics I've experienced at FAANG. I'm open to suggestions that don't exclusively have to do with software. Part of me is tired of spending so much of my life in front of a computer.
Here are some disorganized ideas that might give a sense of my interests:
- Cryptography and security (not cryptocurrency/blockchain): I have a math background and I was always an algebra/discrete math person, so this seems a potential fit.
- Formal verification / theorem proving
- Open messaging standards (e.g., Matrix): I find the current state with siloed proprietary messengers a travesty
- Open repositories of knowledge (e.g., Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap)
- "User-empowering" software (e.g., Emacs, Ableton Live)
- Distributed systems
- Programming language development (compilers, libraries)
- Graphics (though the gaming industry isn't exactly the place to recover from burnout)
- Research in cognitive science, psychedelics (lots of hype here though), complex systems, physics
- Studying music composition or audio engineering
- Helping out with homelessness, loneliness, the elderly or disabled
My complaints with FAANG have to do with perverse incentives that reward nonsensical decisions, poorly thought-out and over-engineered projects, grandiose documents, duplication of work, selective reporting of metrics, etc.
The few times I had a really good manager, a sane environment, and fulfilling work only lasted until the next reorg. It seems like most organizations are either stressful with a lot of adversarial behavior, or have almost nothing to do but depressing busywork. I also find the social aspect lackluster if not downright alienating. I feel at a dead end both in career growth and opportunities to learn on the technical side. I could roll the dice with another team change, but I'm not eager at the prospects.
Most of my work experience is in ML, but I don't want to box myself into that. I find the current hype around generative models insufferable, and the typical ML project today consists of somewhat sloppy Python and a lack of good engineering practices. I'm also tired of the increasingly long and opaque feedback loops (come up with an idea, wait for your giant model to retrain, hope that some metric goes up). I'm still passionate about some aspects (e.g., learning representations, knowledge grounding, sane ML workflows).
I hear that academia has similar issues (though again I mostly know about ML), and I imagine lots of industries have worse conditions than tech. I realize that sloppiness and politics are a fact of life, so I'm wary of falling into the "grass is greener" trap.
Take your sabbatical, do something crafty but not-at-all-software-related*. I chose ceramics.
When you reach the point where you start programming tools to help with your new avocation, it's time to go back to the job market.
Took me about 5 months. I made some beautiful (and ugly!) things, learned maybe the equivalent of an accelerated BFA with a minor in chemistry, have a new hobby ongoing, and am excited and enthusiastic about joining a new company shortly, doing something new and different, where my skills matter.
* Woodworking, machining, welding, weaving, sewing, painting, bricklaying, stone carving, raising livestock, growing bonsai or orchids, meditation, long distance running. Whatever it is, pick something physical, grounded, and engrossing, where you can put a bunch of time and effort in, to achieve a real change of pace.
If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness.
-- William Gibson, Johnny MnemonicWhat a legendary quote. And very true. You might find that 'crude' things are technical in their own way.
These companies are bad news, completely random management, dead end projects.
Worse yet, if you work there, you are dramatically disconnected from the startup market. And prevented from getting modern skills.
At least in startups in theory skills are mor transferable because the market is larger.
I found large companies deeply unfulfilling and do not see myself going back: they are recipes for total frustration.
I’m working on this with a dozen or so loosely connected, values-aligned people distributed across the globe. Matrix is a key part of the puzzle. You’re very welcome to just hang out and see if anything our collective is engaged in sparks your interest.
On the other hand, after you've dealt with your current state of mind, I'd love to have a chat with you because I see that we share some passions and I'm building something new in the AI space to help people build sane ML pipelines!
The things you are going to regret not doing are things that you have interest in, but otherwise have no motivation to do because work is taking up your time/energy (both mental and physical). You aren't going to regret working at more "boring" job if it gives you the ability to do those things.
I came across an interesting legal concept a couple of jobs ago - "quit for cause". Among other things, changes in management structure can meet the requirements "for cause'.
If you've got the pull in negotiation, it might be worth looking into adding something a quit-b/c-reorg cushion.
(I don't expect it to help with many things here, but there's worth in setting things up so you don't need a situation to stay a certain way, because you're safe to exit)
I don’t know if I will ever retire, but I’d rather be poor and retire by voluntary means then have to work at big companies doing hateful work dealing with hateful politics in exchange for my only remaining time on earth.
I got YouTube Premium, unsubscribed from all the "funny stuff" and subscribed to makers, builders, creators, electronic, aviation, etc. channels only. I am AMAZED at what you can build right now in your own home. I am building an electromagnetic jet engine from scratch. It sounds crazy when you say it out loud but it's the 2023 equivalent of assembling model gliders from balsa wood decades ago.
Here are a few channels that inspired and helped me the most:
Fantastic explanation of how electricity/circuits/elements work:
https://www.youtube.com/@ELECTRONOOBS
https://www.youtube.com/@greatscottlab
These guys are into aviation and actually iterate on their projects:
https://www.youtube.com/@rctestflight
https://www.youtube.com/@TomStantonEngineering
These two are wizards of explaining physics and engineering:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheActionLab
https://www.youtube.com/@Nighthawkinlight
I can't even comprehend the level of engineering this guy does in his garage:
https://www.youtube.com/@StuffMadeHere
PS. If you're getting into electronics from programming it's really, I mean really easy, to do the programming bits which most makers struggle with (because they are pros in circuits and other things). A lot of the learning curve is stuff like "what is a compiler" or "how to install an IDE" which you got covered.
https://www.youtube.com/@rctestflight
with lots of autonomous vehicles, solar driven power etc.
https://youtube.com/@AndreasSpiess
He has also a second channel for HAM radio.
Sports/activities are great. I don't know how old you are, or if you have kids or not, but if you have little responsibility, I would pick an activity and then move somewhere that the activity is easily accessible.
If it's surfing, then move to somewhere and live on the beach. If it's skiing/snowboarding, live on a mountain during the season. Hiking, move to near mountains with fairly good weather (or bad weather if that's your thing), etc.
It's the advice I give everyone that feels like they are burning out since it helped me, but obviously everyone is different.
For what I understand, burnout happens a lot to people who are/were really passionate about their job or at least some part of it. Their passion became their job, and at some point they run out of meaning or satisfaction arising from it.
At this point, as you say, sports and hobbies help, but it's a bit hard, because the temptation is to get hobbies related, say, to coding or computing; or other intellectual hobbies that may be difficult when you come home tired at the end of the day.
Hikes, surfing, skiing, are very nice options, but so could be, say, playing soccer with friends once a week, building model trains, learning to paint, trying a new sport, going to the cinema more often, getting into baking, and many other things.
I had really enjoyed it and then just felt like I had done it all.
It took a completely new market arriving with new technology and a new culture in the environment to finally snap me out of it.
The doldrums were f*cking awful. Eventually I realized I had to quit because I was so chronically unhappy and bored and underutilized.
my curiosity is the only thing that let me know when it was time. I simply couldn’t find anything better until I started fiddling around and fell deep into my side activities and finally had enough and quit.
If you are like me, you may literally have to leave behind an entire career in one market or skillset and plan on another ten year arc in some new growth market where all the fun is.
Financially this has been a heavy burden. I may or may not make it.
What I would like to add is have purposeful time off. Reconnect with friends and family. Do all the things that you have not been able to for the first couple of months. Read, exercise, laugh, cry, meditate, but most importantly LEARN. Make it a habit to get into the thought process of learning so you are intrigued again. Once you start to become curious again, you won't NEED to be motivated externally anymore, you will just be motivated internally.
Most importantly, if you can, go and talk with someone, either a mental health professional or a friend that will keep it 100%. Once I got full control over my emotions and how they were affecting me, it is as if I unlocked a superpower. Knowing how to cope and deal with the day to day stresses of life and not having to be feel bad or compare has been so you relieving you have no idea. I have gotten better sleep and am way happier than ever before. If you are not dating, I highly encourage dating just to date. Go in with no expectations, and be fully transparent about your intentions. Having someone to spend time with through part of your journey can also be beneficial. Obviously everyone's mileage will vary, I wish you well. Also, take some time away from electronic devices and try and do things with a purpose and do other things without it. Go and read to just read, go for a walk, just to walk. The entire process/purpose of a sabbatical is to recharge your batteries, reevaluate, assess , relax and plan for the future.
Best of luck!!
this seems to be what everyone is craving these days, saturating the job search market, sadly :(
I am on month 7 of my sabbatical and it has completely changed my life for the better
Is that very common?
I know a non-tech company in my area that did that thinking everybody would love it. All the employees just wanted to make more money and be open Friday's too, so if they weren't open the staff just found somewhere else to work on Friday.
100% sounds good but largely seems to depend on your own financial situation.
I left my job a few months ago as the burnout got so bad I wasn’t able to conjure up the motivation to tackle the simplest of tasks.
First couple months I didn’t feel any better and I was getting worried. But I’m _just_ starting to feel better now. I’m finding myself more positive and less stressed.
So what am I doing? I’m living out of my car travelling around NZ, doing a crazy amount of hiking, and a tiny amount of freelancing.
That sounds completely reasonable and not absolutely, in any way, privileged or insane.
Being able to take off a year to recover from burnout, without dealing with the stress of having no income for a year, means you are probably post money if not close.
If that’s the case and the OP has interests like they listed, just start a company doing something you like. You won’t get validation from building someone else’s product.
If you're open to a, maybe severe, change in lifestyle, you'll see that you don't need much to live. To those that are interested, I recommend reading "Vagabonding" by Rolf Potts and watching "Minimalism" documentary by The Minimalists as a start point.
Which part exactly of this is privileged?
I left my job 2022 February to not sit in meetings and mostly be a preventer of bad engineering rather than a builder of good stuff. On a good day, I told people how they were wrong - on a bad day, I told them how they were wrong, again.
If you have the option of taking a sabbatical, I would recommend taking one out of your own choice rather than being an unemployment statistic due to your own lack of motivation.
I quit rather than a sabbatical, because I could hand-pick my successors for the roles I occupied and it was better to kick about 3 people into core roles & get them promoted for it, than have them do the work only for me to show up 8 weeks later to hand it all back in for no benefit to their careers.
Took me 3 months before I didn't feel the need to "accomplish something today" to feel good about my day and mostly I went through my Netflix list, read through a ton of books that I've always meant to read and went for walks to the coffee shop instead of driving.
This isn't the first break of my life and it's technically possible to double your summer break in a year, because we've got options for winter.
The biggest thing that has always helped me in these situations is to head to the other side of the planet, because being in a cold place with short days feels bad when you wake up and there's nothing to do immediately on your mind.
I just got back from a trip to Patagonia and the only reason I haven't headed back to New Zealand again, is because I'm now interviewing again for jobs (also kids, kids need to be in school).
If you are talented, with a significant experience going back years, the fact that you took a break from your career to do something else for a bit isn't going to matter to a single employer. Oddly enough, I also spent enough time away to be out of the no-competes for a few work related systems, so my open areas expanded because of a break.
If you're tired of work, don't find another job - you probably need to remember who you are outside of work, before you can go back in to do something else.
You sound like a great guy to work with with all this modesty and open mindedness.
Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss further.
7 years ago I decided to just leave it all, reset my life, and try something new. After trying some different things I found a new passion for photography. Which in turn lead me to start a youtube channel about photography. Which is now my full time job. Never been happier in my life!
If anyone is curious about my story, I have a 20 minute video about the transition from tech entrepreneur to photography youtuber here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfHvh87gm7M
Now it has become fcking drudgery; I can’t understand why anyone would want to become a developer now. You don’t get any creative freedom and just get assigned tickets and treated like a robot by 75 layers of middle management.
Programming as a creative act is wonderful. Programming as a career puts you always at the bottom of the pile, whether you like it or not.
“Oh you
shudders* code?”Being a developer is a low status occupation despite being high paid.
No need to hesitate - you've worked 10 years in FAANG, you'll get 10 jobs offers per month if needed. So, just do it.
But remember, freedom is responsibility.
So, have fun while doing 3 or 4 projects of your list. Switch between them to keep it light and fun. If you get depressed or if you start to just consuming full-time (gaming, Netflix, sleeping, party/drugs etc) for a prolonged period (>month) you don't have the "rigor" and you should get back to a job where people tell you what to do.
In essence, be your own best parent/teacher.
Good luck.
Related
Are you certain this is sound advice at the current time? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34725047
My friends at Amazon are killing themselves.
The ones at Google, well... I'm impressed by how little they can do.
I guess it's also heavily management dependant. If some middle manager doesn't give a crap and somehow can get away with it those below can slack as much.
If the cause of burnout is disillusionment - aka, you are such a small cog and your work doesn't seem to matter, despite how hard you actually worked - then moving to a different, but still big company, will not change that. Startups, imho, is where to move to, in order to feel impacts.
If the cause of burnout is project-based - aka, you just don't enjoy or feel the project is worthwhile - switching companies might work (a different project).
There's many other causes of burnout, and each will require individual solutions - there's no one size fits all.
The top companies are political nightmares because the pressure and competition levels make them insane.
Sitting in front of a computer sucks less when you're working for yourself rather than making money for others.
As a reminder, what you are passionate about and what you do for work does not have to be the same. I would say it's best to keep it separate. Keeping it separate helped ground myself and care less about my career. At the end of the day, I can't say the last 10 years of my career was something I am proud of sharing with my friends and family. No one cares that you built a dashboard that saved the organization a million dollars; I certainly don't. People care about your passions and what drives you, and I care about working on something that I can be proud of.
My suggestion would be to just pick anything you are interested in and just go with the flow. When you get to a point where you are no longer interested, next.
Let yourself be and you'll see.
But seeing that your experience is mostly on FAANGs and big companies, have you thought of going with a smaller early-stage company? These are environments where people usually expose them selves to a broader spectrum of things, even having the ability to choose specifically what they want to work on.
Workplace politics unfortunately are everywhere, small or big companies. You can't really avoid those.
I also can't stress enough other replies here about really exploring your self outside of work. What do you like spending your time on outside of working hours? Any hobbies that take your mind off? If there aren't any, can you start exploring new activities (without necessary having to take a sabbatical or move to another place?)
You list complex systems research. What about looking for marine research adjacent jobs? They are trying to understand complex interconnected systems and need help integrating so many different projects across many universities. Not sure if MBARI or UCSC have something interesting where you could go on a boat out to sea but back in the late 90s there some really cool jobs relating to that that would have recharged me. Improve the world's knowledge, on a boat out at sea, and maybe a little scuba. Heck yeah!
I'll grant that something like this is not a panacea - we need good solid media literacy. But I think a technical solution will help us out.
The issue will be once someone breaks the secure enclave in the CCD, all of the video they produce will now be trustworthy. CCDs are pretty lightweight in general as most of the heavy lifting is meant to be offloaded to the ISP—so the on-die processing for the CCD is generally very lightweight and wouldn’t have buffers large enough to sign each frame. Also there is no standardized way of creating a secured MIPI connection. You can do some clever things to mitigate for this, but it is far from what I’ll call “best practice” and more along the lines of a bespoke solution.
Michael and Dalton touch on this on a recent video where they compare modern FAANG with Goldman Sachs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7IKW0yuG0
The founder culture is so full of kool-aid that it can be tough to find those people there, too, but I found overall that that was the best place for me. Interestingly, I found the older and more successful people to be much more sane, and super happy to meet smart sane young people. I have a lot of older friends now; many are founders of large companies who are just glad to have normal conversations - the kind of people that as a FAANG middle manager would be status contacts to brag about but now are just nice folks to grab a pint with.
The good people in tech still exist, and they’re often at key positions. But at Goldman Sachs I mean FAANG you’ll have a tough time fighting through middle management. And BOY was that FAANG culture bad for my mental health…
I hope this makes some sense. Watch the video, I think it will cheer you up big time:).
Only thing I'd say about that video is they don't mention privilege. Joining an early stage startup in the US was only really possible if you were coming from a place of privilege imo, even when it was "uncool". At least that's what stopped me - I had 80k in student loans to pay off with a 10% interest rate, so I couldn't really take risks at that point in my life.
You sound like you’re going to have to trade your labour for money (ie you don’t have enough to become independent yet) so if you accept that fact, perhaps you can find a non stressful job and discover meaning in the Real parts of your life. Good luck
The faster this tech bubble bursts and people stop flocking to engineering the better.
if you are not someone who is already trained at this field, it's inefficient to start on your own. You'd be giving up your expertise and productivity in tech, in return for mediocre output in the research.
Much better option is to keep working in tech, earn as much money as is feasible, and then funnel the excess funds into companies that _do_ longetivity research.
THat's a good idea. But I think an even better strategy would be to start a cryptocurrency hedge fund and later start an associated exchange.
This will allow us to maximize the amount of money we earn, so we can have the greatest impact on companies that do longevity research.
I'm not particularly concerned about partially starting over in a new field - I'm not that old so my skillset is not particularly tremendous. If anything, I feel coming from outside the traditional system and already having financial freedom is a positive. When I was in academia (not CS) I didn't feel the standard of the people there was particularly great and my trust in top-down organizations is generally quite low.
A 1 year break is a good idea, if you are at the burn-out stage with persistent neck pain, and constant illnesses due to immune system stress.
The ikigai chart is pretty good guidance: https://management30.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IKIGAI--...
Generally, most take a graduate course, or pick up a new certified skill.
Synthetic biology study is interesting, as it approaches some problems in unique ways. Also, a course on Human Behavioral Biology may be interesting if you are interested in Neuromorphic engineering.
Different people have different ideas of fun. =)
If you have a passion and want to share it, see if you can contribute to home assistant, there's a project to add a chat gpt like to it although it looks more like a decision tree.
In your place, I’d read, exercise, or just dig deeper into something I’m interested in.
Personally, whenever I feel I’m close to burning out, I realize it’s not because of how much I work, but because of thinking I have no purpose. Choosing my own path gives me purpose, and that’s very helpful.
Maybe that’ll give you some food for thought. Hope it helps.
I'm mixed on sabbaticals. I think the key thing with a sabbatical, for me at least, is it should be treated as doing another job for a while - pick a personal project, some open source you are interested in, and deliver some major functionality on it over a few months. You mentioned Emacs - there is lots of work that Emacs needs for improvement, so it is ripe with things you can pick up and work on. The worse thing for me is just sitting around and doing nothing, that leads me to depression if I do it for long enough.
As others have said, I'd also suggest working on your relationship to work. Seeing a therapist may help with this. If you can find fulfillment outside of work, then the work itself becomes less big in your life and it's easier to avoid burnout.
There's lots of cool stuff happening with zero-knowledge proofs at the moment, if you want to look in that direction.
It may not immediately reveal what the best option is. But you won’t regret traveling, and this sounds like the perfect time to do it.
I decided to buy and move to a farm we're I will renovate it myself and create an environment which is quite, green and lively.
I also hope that this will give me the balance and allows me to look outside in my future park while working and also being able to transition into life work balance which is worth it.
Then I will try to design a sustainable day to day schedule for enough time for outside and study time. The study time itself will than be containing all the things you mentioned like learning music or another language.
Otherwise, I'd say if you have a musical bent, certainly any Ableton like project would be a bounty of "fun" (I've always wanted to see a drum programming rig that equal parts Ableton and Reason)
I would offer that the more clearly and honestly you formulate those things, the more likely it is that the right opportunity will present itself. Nothing magical about this philosophy, it's a simple consequence of being able to say "no" to the many possible wayward paths that we normally waste precious time on.
You're going to find workplace politics everywhere. I suggest you make professional communications your next vocation, which will teach you how to master like a ninja all those uncomfortable political behaviors and situations you dislike and turn you into the technology achiever you want to be. Possessing professional communication skills teaches one how to slice through politics with katana sharp language and words.
Would be more than happy to give you my perspective and what it's been like as a small, moderately successfuly SaaS founder. Ping me at scottmas@altmails.com
Transition to contracting can provide a change of pace and allow you to have more control over the projects you work on and the clients you work with. This could give you the time and help you determine if you'd like to stay in the tech field or venture into something different.
If you really want to get outdoors a lot and also do something technical, move somewhere really rural with low cost of living and start a wireless ISP or tiny regional fiber to the home ISP. Depends how good your network engineering knowledge or ability to teach yourself is, and level of interest in doing residential access ISP operations, of course.
I suggest lookin the following page
i see googlers on linkedin making a big drama they are fired. really? you made all this money, who cares? you can go do something else or retire. how many people have been waiting for years to get a FAANG job? as a googler you need to wait a year and you call that a problem? people are so far of from reality it is mind boggling. and they think because they worked at google they are entitled to a job tomorrow pronto.
Don’t know which one it is. It’s not liquid.
Depending on if the economy improves could go either way.
I recently started to make mods for various Unity games. It is a lot of fun, I do it in my pace and the way I want it.
like half a year or more. call it a sabbatical.
if you have kids and/or a significant other, take them with you.
you are already thinking about what to do next. find a way to not do thing, other than sun and relax and maybe some bodily activity.
(From my experience, had more than 1 burn out over the years).
I think solving problems in that space or just helping out will give huge amounts of good vibe energy and eventually lead to something you want to do in the long term.
Read Interaction Nets paper
I would say they are all great ideas.
Do wonder why something tangential to climate crisis isn't on there?
Lots of interesting work in green-tech. It's all heavy on distributed systems too.
I find it mind-blowing that people actually need advice on what to do with their free time.
You could use your sabatical to learn F*, Agda or similar.
Easy to then transition to a nice, slow moving and meaningful engineering position.
if it sounds like this might fuel you rather than consume you, email me: dbreggs22@gmail.com
small tech
I mean for 10+ consecutive days. Completely disconnected from work. No email etc.
(Cruise, for example - have a friend who works there)
You will recover.
>all tech roles
You spent > 10 years at a FAANG and you are burnt out. Oh-kay, if you played the cards even half way right, you have more money in the bank than any three of us, and you can just leave and figure out which one of those (good) ideas you listed you would like to do. Heck, you probably made a lot of good connections there, and could take your (deserved) abbatical and then create a startup with friends exploring one (or more) of those good ideas at your own pace.
To me, in my eyes, what I just wrote down sounds like a pipe-dream. If I could I would...
