Why does everyone hate their job.... I love my job! Does anyone else love their job?
I was reading through the recent top ranked posts in the sub and it was super negative and made me sad. These were the titles:
[Is there no hope to start a career in software engineering without an internship?](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/wwwqk3/is_there_no_hope_to_start_a_career_in_software/), [I just don’t care about the job anymore. What happened to me?](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/wx3w70/i_just_dont_care_about_the_job_anymore_what/), [Verbal attacks at Work. What now?](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/wwiknn/verbal_attacks_at_work_what_now/), [Post Graduation job search isn't going well and I'm under a lot of stress, worry, and concern right now because of additional situations.](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/wwu7mo/post_graduation_job_search_isnt_going_well_and_im/), [They lied. Work is harder than school](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/ww1qu6/they_lied_work_is_harder_than_school/)
I graduated college in Canada in 2009. I was supposed to go straight to grad school and did a Facebook internship in Palo Alto in between. It was the best summer of my life. I was working 24/7 because I just loved what I was doing. There were just over 200 engineers and 700 employees at the company at the time so it was relatively small. I would read every single manager's weekly report to see what was happening at the company. I would look at every data dashboard daily. I opted into every single internal feature test. Just for fun I cloned the entire Feed codebase and hacked it up so we could have our own internal Facebook feed of employee activity. I was out of control! And I made lifelong friends.
I didn't make it to my first day of grad school and accepted a Facebook full time offer 8 weeks into my internship. My starting salary was $85K and I didn't bother to negotiate. I stayed at Facebook for 8 years, become an E7 level principal engineer, worked on dozens of products, features, tools. I met my wife and best friends there.
In 2017, I needed a break. I left and joined the fledgling startup my wife had started to help teach people who didn't know how to program, the basics of iOS to make them employable. I was fairly part time at first, but we raised some venture funding and started over by building a really cool platform from scratch to help experienced engineers grow in their careers and improve their fundamental skills. Every day I get to work with early career engineers and help them find THEIR dream jobs like I had found in Facebook many years ago now. It's extremely rewarding and fulfilling and despite being financially independent, I voluntarily work 16 hours a day (... I have to sleep) and I love it.... wouldn't want to do anything else.
I would love it if people could share their stories of growth, and life changing impact and help remind us why we are all here!
u/WackCSCQAdvice wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Yeah you had a good run a Meta
Then you work for yourself
Don’t you think your experience is the exception not the norm?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Honestly, it was absolutely the norm/average for people at Meta in 2009/2010/2011-ish. It is absolutely NOT the norm if you join now haha.
But I do think there are the "2009 Facebooks" out there for everyone right now and if people find them they would be a lot happier than what I'm reading in this sub.
u/WackCSCQAdvice wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Tesla was like that before Elon became a kook. I drank the koolaid too, never doing it again.
Now the “2009 Facebook” is probably databricks.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I'm friends with one of the many founder yeah and I agree, Databricks is one of the hardest companies to get into and most talented teams around right now.
I don't want to name drop here, but I think Figma and Notion are others in this bucket of special companies right now.
u/ufakefekomoaikae wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I love getting paid
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I think if you join some rocketship companies now you'll make much more in the next 5 years than making $250K at Jane Street or similar cash heavy comp company annually now for five years.
All of the richest people I know were so passionate about what they do, they became uniquely talented at something in that space that made them worth 8, 9, 10 figures. Even if you make a steady super high paycheck, relatively speaking these people will make more than your by an order of magnitude and you can never catch up. So IF MONEY IS YOUR MOTIVATION (which it is NOT for everyone) you will only be relatively rich by joining a rocketship you are passionate about... and you will be perpetually sad chasing that by accepting cash heavy crazy high offers.
u/nutrecht wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
> I was reading through the recent top ranked posts in the sub and it was super negative and made me sad.
I hope you understand how 'forums' work and how people generally only come and ask for help. The people who are just happy with their job generally have no interest at all
u/michaelnovatireplied·
That's fair, I made a qualitative and biased-ridden observation, and 100% agree. I often tell people that the high performers are not on Blind and Reddit complaining because they are busy.
It was an emotional reaction on my part, but I'm human.
u/ufakefekomoaikae wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Thanks for sharing your story in post
So happy for you
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Feel free to DM me and happy to share to share some advice. Did not mean to offend, sorry 😔
u/ZealousidealAct9665 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What do you like about programming?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I like building something out of nothing, and then seeing that thing help improve people's lives/save people time/enable them to do something creatively they haven't done before.
u/ZealousidealAct9665 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Cool. That’s why I’m learning now. Any tips for a beginner? I’ve been learning on the Odín project and want to do a bootcamp soon. I was also at FB (designer for 2 years)
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Awesome you probably lean towards product then and this resonates. I would build projects that leverage your experience. Maybe some kind of integration with the Figma API for example. Then leverage that to try to get an interview there... or hit up some ex-FB colleagues who might work there and show it to them :)
u/ZealousidealAct9665 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Oh! Can I ask you another question please?
I’m looking into bootcamps and see Hack Reactor is mainly JacaScript focused, whereas others like codesmith are full stack/more evenly split. Which would you recommend?
I’ve heard it’s good to get depth instead of breadth, but I worry
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
You won’t learn enough in a bootcamp to gain true expertise any stack, so as long as you aren’t learning like a new stack every week it doesn’t matter thaaaat much. Both Hack Reactor and Codesmith are solid choices. Check out Rithm too. All of these are intense… Codemsith is 11 hour days, so making sure the day to day is a good fit is far more important than the stack.
u/bergschrundly wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I think you underestimate how lucky you are. You are fortunate to truly enjoy something that pays as well as it does during the economic wave you rode. Yes, hard work is essential but please recognize your position in relation to an entire industry.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I agree I was absurdly lucky, but I do think others can try to make their own luck to have a better shot at that. It doesn’t have to be two binary outcomes. (Not through raw hard work, but aligning your passions)
u/ZealousidealAct9665 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Thanks so much! Are there any others you recommend or just those 3?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yeah look at Launch School as well. That is a good spectrum day to day differences
u/Bananape4l wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
idk what you've heard about spacex compensation but their packages were decidedly smaller than software even 10 years ago and even today most likely. is the private stock worth that much to compensate? i'd guess not.
i think blue origin lags amazon's sde compensation, so idk th
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Thanks for the push back! It’s a very good point that a lot of private stock might not be a rocket ship.
So what I saw at Facebook was that people with this passion alignment progressed in their careers crazy fast, maybe almost too fast. So after a few years, if the company failed, you might be a whole level or two ahead at typical FAANG. So I would argue that there are other ways it can pay off in your career other than annual comp year to year.
u/Jay_Acharyya wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I think it's because what the industry trend was like during your time, and what it is now - there's a clear dissonance. I'm working as a security guard, and going for my CS Degree in my time frame, with a single IT campus job beforehand.
So far from my experience and from what
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Thanks for sharing your views. I hope I didn't come across like I was making a judgement. I work with a lot of people early career now, and I understand and appreciate, the real diversity in backgrounds and goals people have. I do think that all things equal, people can try to align their passions and interests with their jobs to different degrees, and doing so will result in a more successful and happier career over the long term. Doesn't have to be as extreme as maybe I made it sound.
u/eightbathrooms wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It absolutely makes me so confused as to why people would have the energy or even care enough to post content like this.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
To start a healthy discussion hopefully and bring out different points of views.
u/Bananape4l wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I thought you meant rocketship as in literally the space companies. My mistake.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Oh that's funny, yeah I don't know about actual rocketship companies hahaha, or Elon's companies in general. I mean like solid $10B valuation high growth companies with very good products and lots of paying users.
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I think if you join some rocketship companies now you'll make much more in the next 5 years than making $250K at Jane Street or similar cash heavy comp company annually now for five years.
All of the richest people I know were so passionate about what they do, they became uniqu
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Was looking through comments and realized this got downvoted a lot. Can I get some insight into why so I can understand more?
u/Tbh_idk__ wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Thank you for sharing your experience! That's great you found your passion so early in your career. I have a few questions, I'd love to hear your opinion, please!
1. It seems like you found your passion right away, which is very lucky for you! Do you think this is a field in whi
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Hi,
1. I actually started programming very young. In elementary school I did a LEGO Mindstorms robotics club without even realizing years later that I was doing programming. I also found computers in the garbage on junk day and found very old random programming books and used them to to learn C++, which make no sense but gosh I tried. Oddly enough I went to college for general engineering, and thought I might do physics or nano engineering, and was just naturally drawn to web programming and building things in software.
2. Yeah never too late! It sounds like you want to take baby steps first and get a stable decent foot in the door job first, but everyone has their own journey!
u/Tbh_idk__ wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
>Do you think this is a field in which someone would know they're passionate right from the start?
What about this?
Also, my hypothesis was that trying it out *before* doing a bootcamp is necessary to de-risk. You also need some background before enrolling. So I don't really s
u/michaelnovatireplied·
No, I think it takes time to see if you like programming or not and what aspects you like. Some people like theory and some poeple like building. Very different things.
u/teganlinux wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Glad to hear that you love what you do and you do it even though you are already FIRE and financially independent.
I also love my job! I teach at a bootcamp (one you mention sometimes in your posts), and I also really enjoy seeing my students grow, and attain their dreams. Howev
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Hi, nice to meet you, lots of questions I'll try to address.
RE: Formation fit. Yes, 1+ years of real SWE experience, even if it was in the past, and teaching experience is a good fit. We've worked with a number of people that have taken multi year career breaks, and it's a very good fit not just for the technical aspects, but for building confidence in your behavioral narratives. For FAANG companies, you don't need to so much worry about updating your practical skills to the newest frameworks as much as building confidence in the fundamental skills and story, and building confidence happens day by day as you practice and get feedback that you are improving.
RE: Timing. It's not the best time for classic FAANG, but it's still a decent time for FAANG-level companies. Depending on how much experience you have, you could be aiming for mid-level roles. One of the nice things about Formation is you can do it part time and ramp up or down your weekly workload, so as long as you are actively job hunting and expect to get a job within well within the next year, it's a good idea to start earlier and be ready when the opportunities arise. It's something unique about us that is absolutely a strong value proposition for Fellows right now in this market.
RE: the FB of 2009. Two ways to look at this.
1. Double down on your super powers. So maybe Duolingo is something you would like for example. I don't know if it's going to 100X like FB did since 2009, but you might do very very well there, progress fast, get bonus stock, etc... and do quite well for yourself.
2. Try to find the objectively 100X'able companies. So it's simple math. $1B now -> $100B is 100x. So look at the "unicorns" and see which ones you could see becoming FB/Google/Amazon sized in terms of revenue and profits. Are the companies making revenue, do they have a very profitable business model, and can the market size justify tens of billions of dollars of revenue in the future. Another path is joining a startup that might be valued at $100M and it becoming a decorn at $10B, that's 100X. Stripe, Instacart, Doordash, Uber, are all companies at around the $1B mark had the 100X potential and ended up 50Xish roughly. The $100M companies are very hard to identify, don't have time to write a novel on this, but some you are looking at Series A and B companies that have properties of the $10B valued companies of today. Stripe was one at that stage, Databricks is another one that would have been a great choice at that phase.
u/someone wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Thank you for your thoughtful response! That is really helpful. Building confidence is definitely a major factor, and I’m glad to hear that you think Formation is a suitable fit.
One thing that worries me is that I’d be hoping not to awkwardly run into any of my students at Form
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
So we actually always wonder like what if you meet a cowoker on Formation or someone you knew from a bootcamp, and at least with colleges and bootcamps that's not uncommon. We genuinely have some people out of bootcamps, but we also have people many years out of bootcamps that TEACH at bootcamps WHILE also at Formation. Because of the way you progress independently week to week, we are trying to put you in sessions with people at your level on a given topic, so you kind of find your pocket of people naturally.
Similarly with mentors, we have Fellows who work at FAANG companies right now, or were laid off and someone from their company might be a mentor at Formation. We also might have a super senior mentor who gets laid off and wants to join Formation as a Fellow because while they are fantastic at coaching the thing they are mentoring, they might need a lot of practice with System Design, or senior/staff+ behavioral interviews.
I'm pretty excited to see how Formation grows and supports people from all kind of backgrounds! The underlying dynamic scheduling technology can power a lot of cool things, and we're just getting started with a this specific area of focus.