I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Thinking about my career, what I want from life, what my passions are, and all that good stuff. There are a few realizations I’ve had in the past few months.
Passions !== ways to make money
I’m not doing this anymore. Everytime I’ve taken something I really enjoy and monetized it, it stopped being a passion and started being a job. Lately I’ve been thinking about doing things for the simple enjoyment of it. If it makes money, great, but that’s not the goal anymore. It’s not that I’ve become independently wealthy (even though I keep running retirement calculations that don’t add up).
I’ve just been burned out so many times over my career that I know I can’t keep the same pattern. When work starts to bleed into my “real” life, it eventually becomes all-consuming and I lose sight of the joy I once had. At one point, it was almost impossible to separate me from a laptop. Now you’d almost have to physically force me to use one outside of work.
I love code and learning new things and generally being part of the tech community in every way possible. But it became too much. So I needed some space.
That’s one of the many reasons I got my pilot license. Even now I have people asking when I’ll fly professionally and I think about it from time to time. But it’s just a hobby. At the moment I’m a fair weather pilot and I like it that way.
The tradeoffs
There have been days, months, where I spent 14+ hour days between working on code and then learning more about code. It blotted out everything else except sleeping, working out, and ocassionally eating. Although this helped me grow exponentially professionally, it also had a bunch of negative effects.
My health took a massive hit, there are some relationships that I had to work incredibly hard to repair, and I’m still mentally recovering from all of the crazy work hours, both paid and unpaid. Was it worth it? Eh, sometimes I think so when I look around at all I’ve been able to accomplish and the things I’ve been able to provide for my family. Other times, I think about how it’s taken 18+ months and numerous specialists for me to get my health stable again.
It would depend on the day you ask me, but generally the good does outweigh the bad.
IC path vs leadership path vs tech ed path
This is probably my biggest career question right now and it has been for about… 2 years. I’ve floated in and out of management and individual contributor roles. I’ve been a senior staff engineer and I’ve been an associate director. Both paths appeal to me for different reasons.
I love being in the code. Going through the most complex problems in tight deadlines in systems that are unclear is where I thrive. I can lock in and get things done both extremely fast and in a maintainable, explainable way.
On the other side, I love working with people. Helping others on my team figure out how they want to grow professionally and then making it happen is an amazing feeling. I have a number of stories where my direct reports grew tremenduously and it makes me happy every time I hear where they are now.
Then there’s education. I love teaching people how to do complex things and make it easy for them to implement in real world situations. That’s why I’ve taught classes with Pearson and LinkedIn Learning and wrote a whole book with O’Reilly. When I have time, I even volunteer with Urban Coders Guild, a local non-profit that teaches kids how to code. Whether someone is 47 or 12, it’s an incredible moment when you see the light spark in their eyes from finally understanding how to do something.
That’s why I can’t pick a specific path. Each of these areas brings me a different type of joy. So I tend to gravitate towards roles that need one or more of these gaps filled and I tend to sway between them all as time goes on. I don’t have a career path. I do what I need to do.
What I actually want to do
When I became a mechanical engineer, I honestly didn’t know what it was. I thought it would make me a super qualified mechanic and I could go work on really cool cars. I even got to build a couple of race cars in college with Formula SAE. So being hands on and building physical things has always been my jam. Even now, there are times I take on bigger DIY projects around the house than I should.
I’m an inventor at heart and that’s what I want to get back to. I’m going down the startup path right now with FlowVault, but I really want to get back into hardware. No matter how many problems software solves, it’s still not going to change our physical realities. We can make apps to try and help with recycling, but it won’t physically clear out a landfill.
I’ve been thinking about a lot of different things I could make and most of them come from personal experiences. It could be something in women’s health, recycling, aircraft, or water filtration. Those are some of the general areas I’m really interested in and I’m going to start putting more energy into it.
The hardest part for me is choosing one thing to start with.
Next thing: hardware
That’s been a huge part of what I’ve been thinking about: what’s next and why. It’s going to be something hardware related. I’m also going to continue working on FlowVault for a number of reasons. But one of the first steps is getting a 3D printer and making some prototypes.
There really is a difference in doing things with intentionality and for doing something without worrying about money or “success”. That’s what I’m doing with this next thing. I’ll keep y’all updated!