Existential crisis: how to grow your career while avoiding the rat race and keeping balance?
For context, I was making pretty good money at Capital One when bad depression and harassment from my manager led to absenteeism that got me canned. I didn't pursue claims; I just took the severance and left. The culture was sycophantic, and I was glad to be rid of all the politics and "radical candor" hypocritical doctrine. I wound up getting a higher paying job at American Airlines with significantly worse co-workers that barely grasped good design and jerked it to design thinking/agile transformations non-stop. Then COVID-19 hit, and I took a voluntary exit package to cash in on an offered severance including 10 years of flight benefits. AAL was wooing people to leave before the layoffs came following the CARES Act's expiration. Now, I'm reliving the same goddamn "digital transformation" nightmare all over at an even higher-paying job with managers jerking it to SAFe and useless metrics that they can't even define. I have to sit in meetings and hear concepts introduced that I was exposed to 6 years ago make waves among the technically incompetent. I'm a smarter-than-average designer with a background in web development. I have no networking opportunities here because, again, I'm the best designer here and I don't really enjoy mingling with the folks who can barely operate Sketch and run screaming from code. Any growth I achieve here, I have to actualize myself, and I hate teaching others what they should really already know to even have their job. That said, it's easy to coast by and cash in on money with little effort. I work remotely, and my team is basically an internal open-source team. Once normalcy returns, I hope to actually utilize my flight benefits and work remotely all over. I know I have it good with work/life balance, but I also feel unfulfilled, disconnected, and pigeon-holed into a career trajectory that's been influence by things outside of my control (stubborn depression, pandemic, etc.). What do I do? Be happy with what I have and pursue avenues outside of work for networking/growth? Or apply and try to land a tier 1/2 tech company? I'm so torn with the "grass is greener" paradigm. TC: 143K YoE: 7, self-taught designer #tech #advice #existential #growth #happiness #mentalhealth
I have 17+ years of experience, have scaled career ladder in top tech firms, running my own multi-million dollar firm and yet I feel I know nothing and have so much to learn from everyone around me, including the fresh grads. Here are a few tips: 1. Be humble. Throw this arrogance from your mind that you know a lot and focus on what you can learn from each person around you. 2. Focus on excellence. Produce the best work of your life every time you’re assigned a task. 3. Work even harder to explain it to others so that they can appreciate the depth and breadth of your art. Yes, I believe UX is more of an art than science. 4. Introduce a process of peer reviews. Review the heck out of your peers work and make sure it is of highest possible standard so that your entire org’s design standards go up. 5. Build industry-wide expert relationships and work with your boss to invite industry experts to give your team talks on design excellence. Likewise, you go to other firms giving talks on similar topics. Money will follow you and your career will catapult to next level if you’re able to do the above. Bonus tip: Read “Rich dad, poor dad,” to learn to escape the rat race.
Insightful! Thanks a lot!
If you want competent coworkers, join a proper tech company. My coworkers impress me daily. Otherwise, have a big slice of humble pie and enjoy your situation 😉
You have a huge ego problem and sound like a terrible coworker. If you come off the same way in interviews you're shooting yourself in the foot. You have no networking opportunities because you don't know how to smile and nod like the rest of us lol. But at least you got out of capital one
What you do career wise is a question you only can answer satisfactorily. But I would recommend you work on your attitude towards your peers who might be new to the things you already know. If you haven’t tried it, there is nothing like wholeheartedly applying yourself to making others better to lift your own spirits and find meaning even in drudgery. Might be the thing that turns your mental health around. Good luck to you.