Prioritize mental health over anxiety or titles for a successful career

0:03 hey kyle how are you today i'm good how 0:06 are you 0:07 thank you i'm doing good 0:09 i really appreciate what you do for us 0:11 you know we're a young non-profit and 0:14 you have been so generous with your time 0:16 and your skills 0:18 and i really appreciate all your help i 0:21 also know that you have this 0:24 you know you've been at google for a 0:25 while 0:26 and 0:28 you've gone from different paths right 0:30 software engineer manager individual 0:33 contributor 0:34 and 0:35 you know you've been in in us then you 0:37 went to canada you've had a lot of 0:39 different roles in your life you want to 0:42 tell me a little bit about why you move 0:44 from one place to the other Starting out as a software engineer 0:46 yeah yeah so you're right i started off 0:48 um out of college as a software engineer 0:51 um i just thought my career path was i'm 0:53 gonna be a coder my entire life and i'll 0:55 just you know go up a ladder you know 0:58 whatever that meant but i wasn't 0:59 thinking too much about it 1:01 um and then after about five years in um 1:04 i started to realize that i was i was 1:06 getting a little bit um bored or 1:09 just not learning you know that i was 1:11 just doing a lot of the same stuff over 1:13 and over 1:14 um 1:15 and at that time it happened to be a 1:16 good time in my team 1:18 that we were expanding and needed a 1:21 manager to join um so i volunteered i 1:24 said yeah hey can i try to be a manager 1:26 yeah 1:27 and uh and i did and 1:30 that worked out really well so i was i 1:32 was excited and interested in doing that 1:34 yeah 1:36 and then yeah as you're saying also i 1:38 was getting a little bit bored in my 1:39 position as a manager and then there was 1:41 an opportunity to move to toronto to 1:43 open up a new office 1:45 um so i did that and that was a lot of 1:48 fun um 1:49 now yeah 1:51 eventually decided management 1:53 was i've had enough of that and now i've 1:55 come back to being a software engineer 1:57 back to being an individual contributor 1:59 so i mean everybody aspires to be a 2:01 manager right you look forward to doing 2:03 the role that you report to 2:05 and you wanted to step i would say uh 2:09 step down to become an individual 2:11 contributor and what was the reason for 2:13 that Being a manager 2:15 yeah um it's kind of like what i was 2:17 saying before in that um 2:19 as an engineer i kind of got bored or i 2:21 wasn't learning 2:22 as a manager i kind of got to the same 2:24 point after being a manager for about 10 2:26 years 2:27 that was one part of it of just like you 2:29 know i'm starting to get interested 2:30 again i want to go back and learn 2:32 different technologies 2:34 but then there was also like the the 2:35 anxiety about it um being a manager is 2:38 hard um it's uh difficult when working 2:42 with you know real humans going through 2:44 situations in their life 2:46 um trying to help the people that are 2:48 really good be as best as they can 2:50 but the really hard part for me was 2:52 always 2:53 with poor performers you know trying to 2:55 help people that aren't doing well i'm 2:57 giving them feedback helping them out 3:00 and it i would just internalize a lot of 3:04 it and think that it's like this is my 3:06 fault what am i going to do tomorrow i'm 3:08 going to dread tomorrow because i know 3:09 i'm going to have to talk with this 3:10 person and it's just going to be a 3:12 difficult conversation and 3:14 i just couldn't take it anymore 3:16 yeah the performance reviews are 3:19 particularly bad 3:20 not only for uh employees but also for 3:23 managers i wish i had a manager like you 3:25 because 3:25 [Laughter] 3:28 thank you 3:29 my 3:30 i actually had a lot of good managers 3:31 but 3:33 one was a particularly bad manager and 3:36 i think you would need to remember the 3:37 bad guys mostly yeah 3:40 and i'm sure plenty of people along the 3:42 way also thought that i was a bad 3:43 manager you know i had i had my things i 3:45 was good at and i had my things that i 3:47 wasn't so good at uh you know 3:49 recognizing that's part of part of 3:51 everybody yeah 3:52 yeah so i think i guess using the mental 3:54 health aspect of it made you you know 3:56 find more happiness over um a title Optimizing for happiness 4:00 yeah exactly um you know generally i've 4:03 been thinking about my life and my 4:04 career as optimizing for happiness on a 4:07 day-to-day um 4:09 day-to-day 4:10 career day-to-day 4:12 responsibilities i guess my duties yeah 4:16 i know plenty of people also friends 4:18 that were very like career driven to go 4:20 up and you know focusing on titles um 4:23 want to make a lot of money and that's 4:24 great and everything um but i was never 4:27 like that i've i've never really been in 4:29 that for the money um by all means i'm 4:32 doing fine um but i never you know i 4:35 never optimized never tried to make my 4:36 career path um go up as fast as possible 4:41 yeah 4:41 i guess the style yeah i know that's 4:44 fantastic to hear that you chose 4:45 happiness over 4:47 you know 4:48 just the titles 4:51 for 4:52 that's that's such a great story 4:54 and thank you again so much for being on 4:56 our platform i'm sure there'll be a lot 4:58 of people who learn from your journey 5:00 thanks kyle great yeah thank you 5:08 [Music]