It can be easy to lose sight of one’s values, when surrounded by a culture that doesn’t share them. Living in the SF Bay Area, I’ve met a lot of hyper-ambitious people with visions of the changing the world, who live and breathe their missions. It’s impressive and inspiring, and I have nothing but respect for them – but it’s not who I am. I began to try to mold myself into one, to sell myself as one, but lately I’ve been reflecting that I felt unnaturally contorted, and it showed in the half-heartedness of my efforts. I wrote this essay for myself, to clarify my values so I can fully align my actions behind them. Now, I’m publishing it to share that clear, honest picture with you.
What I Care About
My core values in life are connection, understanding, novelty, and luxury. Here’s what each of those mean to me and my career goals.
Connection
I’m primarily driven by personal connection. I’m at my happiest when I’m surrounded by friends – talking, gaming, partying, the activity doesn’t matter much when I’m with good people. I pay a lot of attention to social dynamics, greedily gathering information about how the people around me relate to each other. I want to be a positive impact on the people I encounter; when someone offers a way I can help them, I eagerly spring into action.
In my career, this means I want to collaborate closely with my team. I want projects to be group efforts with sharing of ideas on strategy and design, with pair programming and code reviews so each person on the team has a sense of what others are doing, rather than each of us doing head-down work that only occasionally interacts with the others. I want to interface with teams beyond my own, integrating into the larger structure of the company.
My drive for connection also means I want a culture of socializing with coworkers. For instance, in past roles, I’ve enjoyed biweekly Friday gaming sessions, and chatting in Monday standup meetings about our weekends. In my younger days, I thought of socializing with my team outside of work as an imposition, but I’ve realized it’s something I actively want; it’s important that I get along with my coworkers on a personal level, and after-work hangouts both signal and promote that.
Understanding
I want to know the Truth. I constantly strive to refine my mental models, excited to find ways reality disagrees so that I can understand it better. I’m precise in my speech and writing, and put a high value on honesty in myself and the people around me, cognizant of the way a single innaccuracy propagates through a connected web of belief. I like to know the intricate workings of systems, from atoms to economies. The world is vast, with far more detail than a human can comprehend in a lifetime, but I continue to expand the frontier of my knowledge.
At work, I want to form a detailed understanding of the systems I touch. I want to take the time to grok codebases, filling in my conceptual map rather than just making quick patches. I also value opportunities to learn complexities with less immediate relevance; for instance, I fondly recall a presentation about SQL database implementations at an offsite in my last role.
Novelty
Closely tied to my drive to understand the world, I’m excited by the variety of life. I travel to new places and seek out novel experiences, like the tingling of an electrified hot tub or the salty crunch of a fried scorpion. I enjoy having some structure, but that structure must build in variance or boredom will drive me insane.
In the workplace, novelty means opportunities to work on different projects over time, and sometimes take on responsibilities beyond the core of my position. I want to face problems that challenge me, forcing me to think creatively rather than just apply a standard toolkit. As well as varied work, it’s important to have slack in the week for playing around with new technologies and learning new skills when they seem exciting.
Luxury
The least important of my core values, luxury means comfortable environments, pleasant sensations, and space to relax. I’m a very chill, grounded person by nature, and I like soft beds, warm robes, and fine meals.
Luxury in my job looks like a sustainable and predictable pace of work, as contrasted with the always-sprinting founder mode I often see around me. I want a culture that understands that it can be counterproductive for a knowledge worker to try to focus for more than 4 or 5 hours in a day. I understand the occasional need for work to bleed into evenings or weekends, but I see it as a problem to fix; let’s make sure things are working well, so at the end of the day we can go back to our nice homes with minds clear of worry.
Where I Am
The Challenge I Face
I’ve written before about mistakes I’ve made in my career. Instead of focusing on making an impact, I was just trying to Do Work. As a result, I don’t have strong metrics to put in the experience section of my resume, and I don’t have quite the level of domain expertise I want. On top of that, I’ve now been out of work for After getting laid off, my intention was to take a break for a few months, but it turns out habit is a powerful force. It's been a pleasant time, but I'm tired of not contributing to humanity beyond my immediate social circle. A sense of purpose is an important factor in thriving! and by all accounts, this is an unusually bad time to be looking for work as a software engineer. In some ways, despite my past experience, it feels like I’m starting my career from scratch. I wish I had done some things differently, but I can only start from where I am. With that in mind, let’s take stock of what I do have going for me.
The Advantages I Have
I’m smart and curious, and I’ve been writing code for more than a decade. I got a combined B.S./M.S. in Computer Science (plus B.S. in Economics) in 4 years. I’ve learned several programming languages with a variety of paradigms, and I’ll readily pick up new ones as needed. I’m familiar with the standard suite of developer tools, like Git, SQL, and Bash, and also have some experience with deployment technologies like AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform, although I know there’s much more to learn.
Luckily, I’m a quick learner, and I’m well-versed in using LLMs to shore up gaps in my knowledge. I’m dependable, with a strong aversion to falling through on any commitment I’ve made. I have an innate pride in the quality and details of my craft, that I’ve learned to temper with understanding of the value of fast feedback loops. I enjoy tinkering, and I have the projects to prove it, including this very website, which I set up off of the beaten path of Wordpress/Substack so I could customize it to my liking.
On top of my technical abilities as an individual, my drive for connection makes me a great team player. I believe a well-functioning team can achieve much more than the sum of its parts, so harmony and morale are critical ingredients in success. People’s days are happier for having me around; I’m reliably friendly and likable, and I don’t cause drama. Teammates in my past roles have commented that they enjoy the wit I bring to meetings.
In collaborative problem solving, I focus on finding the best answer, not egotistically defending my ideas. I strive to facilitate people in achieving their goals, whether by bringing my own expertise or just helping them think things through. I aim to present people in a positive light when I have the chance, and make sure people get at least their due credit for team efforts.
All of this makes me a solid individual contributor, and a top-tier personality hire. With these strengths, I’m confident the job that’s right for me is out there. I’ll persevere in finding it, and be a great addition to the team when I do. Please reach out with positions I would fit well!