Do you know what you truly want?
In Founding Engineers, Part I, I mentioned that “I don’t know what I want yet” would be a great future topic. This week, I had a few conversations that made this a top of mind, so it’s a perfect time to get to it.
Let me first reveal the high level summary:
I believe it’s important for everyone to figure out what truly matters to them, and this comes from internally self diagnosing emotions and rationales, and externally understanding different culture systems.
This is not an easy task, and likely will take years to get there. But once that has been figured out, happiness will jump tremendously.
How did I come to these? Let me first go through my own career journey to illustrate the challenge and the progression.
Stage 1, I had no idea what I wanted
When I was a kid, my STEM grades were great, and that was the only thing I knew. I got accepted by Tsinghua University, but I had no idea what majors to pursue - in fact, I didn’t even know what each major meant. My parents picked the choices for me, and fate determined that I got enrolled into the Department of Automation.
Graduating from Tsinghua, the only thing I knew was I’d apply to US grad school. I had no idea how grad schools in the US work. Through fate again, I got to Drexel University studying for a PhD in Computer Networks (which I didn’t actually apply to).
Stage 2, I thought I knew what I wanted, but I was wrong and it’s obvious to detect
During my PhD, I enjoyed the journey of doing theoretical research and publishing papers. I thought that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. When graduating, I only had eyes on faculty positions, and applied to all open academic positions.
But the economy wasn’t good that year, and I didn’t get any academic interviews. The only interview I got through that entire year was from Microsoft, and I received an entry level software engineer offer. I accepted it only because I had no other choice. In my mind, this was purely a temporary solution; I’d be back in academia in no time.
I worked on payments. We were building the payment solution behind MSN, Xbox, Bing, etc. I was so surprised by how much I enjoyed building real user facing products.
I thought I wanted to do research, but I was wrong, and it only took me a few months of product development to detect this.
Stage 3, I thought I knew what I wanted, but I was wrong and it’s not clear that I was wrong
Now that I knew I wanted to build real products, I poured my heart and soul into it.
I was quickly rewarded by good performance ratings, fast promotions, larger scope, etc. Every time I got an excellent performance rating, or a promotion, or a larger scope, I was so happy. Every time I got a normal performance rating, or promotion being delayed, or someone else got a larger scope, I was so upset.
Clearly “good performance / promotion / larger scope” was what I wanted. I had my own genuine emotional reactions as evidence. And I could observe everyone else around me was also behaving the same way.
Unfortunately I was wrong about what I truly wanted, and what’s worse, I couldn’t detect that for years.
The problem was, the entire system around me acted as a mask hiding the true me. People around me, we were speaking the same career language, and had similar desired career goals. I was easily influenced to believe the entire world would be the same.
My unhappiness gradually grew, though I still associated my unhappiness with the fact that I wasn’t getting what I wanted, without realizing there were deeper issues. That growing unhappiness led me to the final decision to leave big tech and jumped into the startup world.
Fortunately for me, that changed my viewpoint for the better.
Stage 4, I truly knew what I wanted
I was suddenly immersed into a world where I didn’t need to worry about my performance, or my promotion, or my scope. I just needed to worry about building products that users love.
I finally experienced true happiness for myself. Building products that users love, and helping people grow; doing these two things without the need to worry about my own performance or promotion or scope; that is what I truly wanted.
Looking back, now I understood why I was unhappy before. I thought I wanted better performance rating, promotion, bigger scope, and while chasing those, I had to make some decisions that were not best for our user experience. My unhappiness came from the fact that deep down I didn’t like the decisions I had to make, and I was disappointed at myself for making those decisions.
How to figure out what you want?
I strongly believe it’s important for everyone to figure out what they truly want (and the answers will vary per person).
The question is: how to figure out?
Looking at my own journey, I think there are 2 key aspects:
When you feel happy, keep asking yourself “why am I happy now?” Vice versa for when unhappy. Don’t settle for surface answers; must go deep here.
Understand different company environments and how they affect you.
Go deep on “Why am I happy now?”
When you get a promotion, you’ll be happy. That’s well expected. However, it’s worth digging deeper on what’s the real reason beneath the promotion that makes you happy.
Maybe it’s because now you will get paid more. If so, you should ask “at what point, more money doesn’t bring extra happiness for me?” And “what are the alternative approaches for me to get to that financial point?”
Maybe it’s because you feel your new title reflects your skill growth. If so, you should ask “what other skills do I want to grow next?” In general, a title is only a proxy, and not an accurate reflection of a person’s ability.
Maybe it’s because you feel you finally get recognition. If so, you should ask “do I need extrinsic validation, or intrinsic validation?” And “are there faster ways to get the validation?” Promotion normally isn’t the fastest path for such validation.
There are other reasons too. The point is, be honest with yourself, and whatever the reason is, it reveals something about yourself. This is a great opportunity to self-diagnose what’s the root reason that you care deeply about. Focus your energy on the root reason.
Understand different environments
Every company is a different environment. Culturally what it promotes and what it discourages can be very different. You need to understand a few of these cultural systems to understand what resonates with you and what doesn’t.
If you have worked for different companies, then you probably have a better sense.
If you have only worked for one company, and you happen to thrive in that one company, this is where the most misunderstanding happens. As time goes, you’ll subconsciously perceive how this company operates is how every company operates, and you’ll unintentionally build muscle memory of how you operate based on how the company operates.
To truly break out of this, you need to eventually switch companies. And I know that’s not easy to do. So short of that, you should try to talk to people from different companies, and learn as much as you can how each company is different, and how they reward different types of behaviors.
Summary
It’s important for everyone to figure out what truly matters to them, beyond the surface answers. And this comes from internally self diagnosing emotions and rationales, and externally understanding different culture systems.
This is not an easy task, and likely will take years to get there. But once that has been figured out, your happiness will jump tremendously. I wish everyone to enter that realm soon.