When I joined FAANG five years ago and started living in the Western world, it felt all dreams came true. I felt valued. I felt like I finally can become a worthy human being. For the first time in my life I was excited about building my own future. Then the shit happened (the details at the end of the post). You just need to believe that I was trying to be good person. I was trying to do what my moral compass suggested, I tried to help somebody else while sacrificing my needs and dreams, and it turned out to be a catastrophe. Fast forward three years. I'm getting more and more resentful over these years. I am becoming angry and envious person - not who I wanted to be. I've been destroying my mental and physical health, as well as career and personal life opportunities. I am pretty confident I will never be able to fix this. So if you see me coasting, it isn't because I had some evil plan to get hired and then relax. I really wish I could perform and be as enthusiastic as I was 5 years ago. It just it seems meaningless to me now. Besides, it is really hard to focus on work when 90% of the time I'm thinking about my regrets. Sorry about this mess. I have been seeing a therapist for three years, but they just won't understand and nothing ever changes, except getting worse. I am hoping people here could understand me somewhat. TC 200k, somehow kept getting mostly GE/EE over these years, but it seems I can no longer pull it off. Thanks for reading. P.S. - I'm not obsessed with TC and I don't think people should be measured by it, it just seems to me it is a culture of Blind to include it, so I'm playing by the rules. P.P.S. - here are the details of what I mentioned as "the shit". I didn't really enjoy life before moving to US and starting to work. I had disfunctional family, and probably low EQ and some mild form of autism, and some other circumstances. So I wasn't able to form friendships or participate in social activities. Apparently in Bay Area it was easier to become valued, and compensate for the lack of other qualities. I did put my effort to improve in what I was lacking. Even though I enjoyed work, I had put special effort to meet people, to travel, to pick up hobbies, to get balanced interests, to make friends. I was making tremendous progress with every month, and felt like I could fix everything and become a normal person and catch up on all I missed in youth. And then I tried dating, and met someone. She was much less skillful, less smart. She didn't have visa, didn't have those opportunities that I had (her goddamn TC was $20k), I couldn't hold an interesting conversation with her, her spelling mistakes made me cringe; but she treated me nicely, and loved much. So I felt really grateful, and guilty and sorry for her and wanted to help somehow. Unfortunately the only thing she wanted was to marry me. This would be a disaster as I hoped I could marry one of those educated equal women that the western world has, and only after I catch up on the sex life and am ready to settle. However I knew I couldn't just leave her behind and proceed building my happy life. I couldn't abandon the weak. So I had to put a lot of self-persuasion, and make myself marry her. To make sure I don't change my mind later, I had to destroy all of my other opportunities, i.e. abandon all life outside of coding, so I ruin all of my newly acquired feeling of self-worth. I had to make sure she is my only remaining close person, so I never leave her. I had to give up all ambitions. I had to destroy the very thing that made me succeed: my intelligence and passion for tech. To top it off, I still feel that I'm in a position of power imbalance with her, so I can't let myself be sexually active with her, since I won't know if she really wants to be with me, or pretends in order to make a family, or (now) does it out of compassion what I've become. By doing this I brought myself into a deep shit, which I can't get out, and it would be crazy to ask her to help. I just wanted to learn how relationships work, why did that have to happen? Even if I get out of it by some miracle, I'd be in my early thirties, when it will be too late to race to fix anything. That is not even to speak what'd happen to her being without skills and 30 years old.
Take sabbatical. Get things together and start all over.
I feel you. Make some friends outside work, hang out with them and go traveling will probably make you feel better.
Thanks mate. That's exactly what I did back then. Making friends, making hobbies, traveling, doing stuff outside of work is what made me feel great 5 years ago. This is how I started feeling like a human and not just some disgusting person that can write code. Problem is, over the past three years I've been destroying all of this. I stopped traveling, abandoned friends, and basically did all of the self-development shit but in reverse. I know this is stupid, but this is what I had to do.
Did something horrible happen three years ago? I know it's often easier said than done, but for me I force myself to meet and talk to people when I feel down. Not necessarily seeking for help directly, but hearing other people's story generally makes myself better. You may start with calling one of your old friends and check how's him/her doing.
In the professional world, ALWAYS put yourself first. Not saying you should never help out teammates, but helping somebody else to the point of "sacrificing my needs and dreams" is a big no-no. No good deed goes unpunished. Reading your post, sounds like you put way too much importance on your work. Aways remember that no matter how nice a manager is to you or how awesome the three free meals a day are or how everyone is so focused on making impact, the company will not hesitate to lay you off whether for the right or for the wrong reasons. Never be loyal to a company. You are working first and foremost to get paid and to maximize learning and networking. Separate work from life, deliver efficiently but don't go over and beyond hour-wise. Lastly, never get emotionally invested in those silly ratings. The feedback can be important and you should apply them to better yourself, but no one on their deathbed is going to regret that one cycle 40 years ago where they got a GE instead of an RE. Hope you get better, like others have suggested a vacation / sabbatical might help.
Thank you for the response! I guess there is a bit of misunderstanding here, fault on my part being too vague (I've updated it since). I wasn't really focusing too much on work. It did change my world, and I was enjoying it a lot, but I was very conscious about using that energy to work on my weaker areas (outside of work). The actual shit that's happened was outside of work.
What's GE and RE?
I took a year off after working 6 years. Working was addictive but a cage. Saved up to live minimally for a year. Travelled to 6 countries. Got married. Found hobbies. Changed person. Remember job should be what you are good at, and hobbies should be what you love to do, not the other way round. Cheers amigo.
Was it easy to make a comeback after the break ?
No, it was a lot of work, but I knew the mistakes I made before. Had more sense of control and purpose in life. Read a lot of books. Took up music producing and art. Did some side gigs on freelancer.com. met people through meetups. A break was needed to get out of that rat race and figure out what is the purpose of my life. I feel once you've accomplished everything you wanted in college, you need to step back to plan for the next 20 years.
hope this may help https://www.365give.ca/about-us
Look. Take a sabbatical. It's a marathon, not a Sprint. Go to East Asia or Europe backpacking. Learn to see the world from outside the eyes of tech, compensation, work and regrets
Facebook is bad
Are you seeing the same therapist over last 3 years? If a therapist is not helping, you need to go to another until you find the one that helps you.
Nope. Had two long-term ones (more than a year with each of them), and a few more before which I rejected the moment they were trying to give me good advice.
Get a new gf. You married the TC $20k girl, do you get a green card at least? That's worth $500k-1mil on EB5. Let's call it a business transaction. Someone who loves you will not ask you to give everything up. I wouldn't expect that of my girl and neither would I tolerate it. If your situation doesn't improve find a new girl. Oh make sure your GC is real GC and not conditional before you do so. Btw in America there is thing called divorce. You don't have to be with her forever if you don't want too. Do what an American would do.
I didn't get a green card, she was an immigrant and I helped her with a visa. This is also why I can't divorce her, since that would mean she'd have to go back to her country. If she was American, perhaps I wouldn't feel so much responsibility over her. She did not ask me to give everything up, it is just in the first months I didn't want to tell her the truth, as she was so happy and I didn't want to ruin it. When I did tell, she was crying at first, but then was letting me go, but I felt I could accept such sacrifice from her side. Obviously she wasn't telling me to abandon my friends or dreams, she just wanted me to be faithuful husband, and I knew that it would be too tempting to meet and spend time with, and fuck more interesting people than her, so I had to avoid the risks. Perhaps I was too successful manipulating my future self, as the past me ensured that now I can't imagine life without her.
Because you’re spoiled now. It’s called life.