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I'm 26 years old, living in US so I don't know if I have the best experience as we're probably in similar boats career wise. I don't know if I have the best advice to give but maybe you can find some wisdom in some of my experiences. I was really frustrated earlier this year, left my job, got a new one that I was really excited about. It's a remote software job in game dev. It's a good job and I'm excited, but what I realized is that it wasn't some magical bullet for all my frustrations. Life is complex and I think I'm starting to realize that it can't all be boiled down into one thing. I'm not just interested in doing one thing. I want to work on cool things, I want to become really good at my job and pick up skills and experience, I want to get married, I want to waste time playing games and doing other experiences I enjoy, I want to pick up random skills that won't really benefit me in any meaningful way but I would enjoy having. And the list goes on. I don't think I can distill what I want or who I am into one thing or one goal. That said I'm very aspirational, just like a lot of engineers/geeks/nerds. I think a common path for many engineers in life is to try and reach some technical peak. There's the idea that if I could just get good enough, if I could be really competent at my job or some skill then I would derive satisfaction from it. I think I would if I reached that peak. But I think reaching that peak would be a bit like this new job I got; it wouldn't be the answer for everything. That doesn't mean I'm not going to go for that peak, I am, it's just I no longer have the illusion that it will profoundly change who I am. So I think I maybe see some parallels with what you want. You're looking to get into FAANG, ML, or even looking into moving to a different city/country. I don't think any of these things are going to profoundly change who you are or how you feel. I'm not saying don't do them, pursuing those things could be some of the greatest things you do in your life. Again not to try and be annoyingly profound, but try to find out who you are instead of defining yourself through your aspirations. Little things can end up having a large effect on you as well, not just huge life changing decisions, which I'm guessing you're hoping will get you out of this malaise. I don't think working at facebook or moving to London, will change your mindset. They might faciliate that change, but the change ultimately will be internal to you. |