The incredible mobility of tech workers
Bored and empty in tech? Don’t squander your (many) options
I’m at a conference where everyone seems like a genius. It’s hot — it’s Florida — but I’m wearing my jacket because it has my company logo, and everyone recognizes it, in this microcosm at least. I hope they’ll see the logo and think I’m a genius too. They all have PhD’s here, biology, biochemistry, some other bio thing, and they’re doing amazing stuff that I can only 25%-understand if I pay 150%-attention. I’m writing down notes purposely messy, terms that are probably rudimentary, but I scribble so no one can judge. I’ll Wikipedia them later.
People drop acronyms everywhere here, like TIL. TIL I learned TIL is not just “Today I learned”, but also, “Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes”, really badass white blood cells that infiltrate and attack cancer cells. It blew my mind when I learned that our own immune system can be the most effective way of curing cancer, and that a recently developed method involves taking out our immune cells, super-powering them against the specific cancer, and injecting them back in to unleash their new powers.
There’s all these things I never knew like that, which I had never thought of before.
Less than a year ago, I was at another company, a pretty stereotypical consumer tech company. Most people barely tolerated their jobs, focusing instead on food, alcohol, and shopping. Practically no one had their PhD’s. Like me, they’d gotten their Bachelor’s (and in rare cases, their Master’s), bumbled around, ended up in tech, and discovered they could make good money without much effort. Like me, they probably felt pretty satisfied with themselves, but also a little empty.
In comparison, the people here are flush with passion for their work. They struggled for years on a graduate school salary, being their own proponents for their projects, often without much help or mentorship. When they get together, they talk about work — and not the work gossip I’m used to — but science and new discoveries. I, experienced with burn out, expressed concern to a coworker that people might work too hard and burn out. She laughed and said, “It’s hard to stop working. It’s too fun.”
By the end of the four-day conference, my brain was feebly struggling to go on, and my self-esteem had taken a beating. My attempts at watching educational YouTube videos and reading Wikipedia articles were insufficient to have real discussions with people who had lived, loved, and breathed this stuff for decades. I was convinced my uneducated questions sounded not only idiotic, but confusingly idiotic (imagine you’re having a conversation, and someone butts in, asking if vanilla ice cream is made of marshmallows. You don’t even know how to begin).
But, as I’m on the plane back, I only feel happiness. I’m no longer bored, doing work I find little meaning in. I get to be surrounded by people who love learning and making a difference, who know way more than me and somehow let me infiltrate their circle. If you’re a designer or engineer in tech, you must know — you’re pretty blessed. Your skills are in high demand and transferable to other industries. You can leap into fields people dream of getting into — healthcare, finance, transportation, politics, virtual reality — with a mobility known only by actors (the famous ones, I might add).
It’s no secret that tech workers move jobs often. Nowadays, it’s rarely frowned upon, and even encouraged as an effective way to raise title and salary. But our current (and I stress current, because I don’t think it’ll be this way forever) mobility shouldn’t be centered around money — it should be seen as an incredible opportunity to enter new fields and be around interesting people. And the crazy thing is, you often don’t need to sacrifice salary to get it. So, if you’re bored or unsatisfied in tech, why not move?
Are you in an unconventional field in tech? Please share, I’d love to hear about it. Also, if you’re interested in learning more, I’m hiring: https://www.10xgenomics.com/careers/product-designer/
