In my previous post, I wrote:
Partly due to having worked on infrastructure for the past 2 years and wondering, is there more to life than making things run at scale?
Lots of people would love to work on making things run at scale. The point I’m trying to make is, I got into it for the wrong reasons.
My first role in software involved being better at statistics than any software engineer and better at software engineering than any statistician. I was self-taught, and tried to get over not having a CS degree by doing lots of courses.
I pursued making things run at scale because that’s what everyone else wanted to do. It’s the type of work that gets you on the front page of Hacker News.
Ironically this mirrored my first job out of college. I remember reading a post by Nick Chirls describing his journey, and more recently, Alex Rampell.
If you're in a competitive thing, “I want to win” in high school, you want to go to the best college. Part of winning in college is you want to get the best job… If you're 22 and working at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs and the pay isn't even that good relative to other things that you can potentially be doing with your time if you know how to optimize it, it has the imprimatur of “Wow, you are a very successful person!” and that's the hardest job to get after graduating from a school like Harvard.
What’s the plan now? I’m not sure yet. I do know it involves a lot of reflection and talking to lots and lots of people. It involves being a better programmer at RC.