The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I'm at a real low point in my life right now. In addition to all of the health issues I've been experiencing lately, I'm struggling a lot to find a new job.
Long story short, I work in tech as a SWE, worked in FAANG for 5 years, then worked at a VC-backed company I cofounded for 4. I left my last job to go start something with a friend, but he decided he didn't want to do it anymore after months of exploration. I really regret leaving my last gig:
I very much don't fit into a consistent bucket anymore, I'm much more of a jack-of-all-trades kind of person in a sea of specialists after doing most of the full stack, platform eng, frontend and backend eng for my startup and I enjoy that work.
I'm finding myself feeling awful about myself and my abilities. The rejections and non responses are starting to get to me too. We were unable to raise at my startup, after 4 years of hard work, and I'm starting to wonder whether these interviews are just accurate representations of my real abilities. I'm feeling like most of my life is characterized by intermediate beginner skills, from meditation to work and everything in between, and that I'm incapable of change or improving myself.
I spent most of my time at FAANG living very frugally and saving cash, and I'm very lucky to have a substantial moat to find the right gig, but I'm just so in a rut right now that it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This is all just multiplied by my health problems (pancreatic insufficiency out of the blue, joint pain) as a young guy. It feels like I'm staring into a void, I can't really visualize my future anymore.
Can't you go back to the company you cofounded?
Or was it a bridges-burned moment.
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Most startups fail. Your startup going well enough for you to not want to pursue FAANG money for four years is a huge win. You should, unsarcastically, feel entitled to brag about it forever.
If you ever want a practice interview/some leetcode tips/to vent, DM me. (Current FAANGER).
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I don't have much advice to offer, I'm no FAANG engineer or VC-backed startup founder.
But the fact that an ex-FAANG founder, is having difficulty finding any job at all, that too ones low level enough to make you do a leetcode interview, is dizzying to say the least. The tech job market seems to be beyond fucked right now.
I'm no corporate shill, but as someone at 1 YOE at a somewhat well known company right now, I would probably kiss the floor of my workplace if I could. If I ever get laid off, I will probably never make it back into the field ever again at this rate. Things seem to be really really fucked up.
Maybe... look outside the US?
The market is much worse, and pays much worse in just about everywhere else in the world, but in many places employers will get you a personal sex slave and a fulltime personal butler for someone with your profile.
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If you have founded your own company, you probably have some leadership ability. Should you apply as a manager, or even a program manager? Even if that's not what you want to do long-term, it'll get you in the door.
Almost everyone has only intermediate-beginner, non-specialized skills. For a long time, that was enough to make sure you are well-paid in software. The industry runs on the ability of managers to take fungible engineers and turn them into productive engineers who they can apply towards their specific ends.
With the recent landscape changes (both the recession and chat GPT maybe starting to replace people), maybe that level of skill isn't enough anymore. I can't say but I haven't yet seen that trend personally.
Also, I think maybe the issue could be trying to get by on just your engineering skill. Technical ability is great, but if you're not a genius then it may not be enough to make you stand out. But having middle-level technical skill and reasoning ability combined with ability to lead, communicate, and make transparent decisions will make you much more marketable. As I said above, from your startup experiences, you probably have the leadership and communication, so you should leverage it. Apply to roles that will use that, and think about what experiences show off that ability that you can write about on cover letters and talk about in interviews.
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