Balancing Ambitious Goals and Burnout
Realistic framework for high-achievers
If you want to achieve anything remarkable in your career, you’ll need to grind.
If you grind for a long enough period of time, doing something you’re not in love with, you’ll burn out.
To achieve what I believe is something significant within CS careers, I had to grind a lot.
I loved a lot of it: the CS “sub-culture” and “modernity” of the field, the flexibility of CS jobs, CS as a science (the abstraction of it yet its enormous implementation potentials), I liked how close it was to mathematics (my favourite science), the internet, etc.
Did I love all of it? No.
Did I burn out a bit? Yes.
If instead of switching to CS after my BSc in Automation Engineering, I had sticked to Automation Engineering, could have I achieved similar results? Yes.
At least in theory.
Since there were too many things about Automation Engineering that were bugging me, I would have probably burnt out much more.
Now an anecdote:
Before joining Oracle, I had an interview with an SVP there.
I asked him if he had any advice to have a remarkable career in tech.
He said: "Work very hard, at least early in your career. Later on, as your skills compound, you can relax a bit."
I asked: "How do I avoid burning out when working a lot?"
Him: "Try to work on things you genuinely like. You'll still burnout. But you'll burnout less."
I love this advice.
It's harsh, but it's true. At least in my experience.
I'm not saying it's worth it to grind to have a remarkable career. This would depend on the individual’s personality, values and overall life goals.
I'm only saying that IMO a high degree of intensity and hard work is required to achieve anything significant, especially in highly competitive fields.
And that it's easier to be intense if you genuinely love what you do.
