Balance or Burnout
It’s hard to sit still.
Something has always stirred in me…
“Keep learning. Keep stretching. Do more. Get better. Apply it. Show others.”
I don’t know when this started as a kid. I had a knack for learning things, practicing, and then excitedly showing others. “You can do this TOO!” I’d sit and make my friends play a jingle on a piano. Type some BASIC code on my Commodore 64. Make something practical/functional out of Lego building bricks. Never with the mindset of “Ian taught me”, but to encourage “I can do this new thing.”
High schoool: same.
College: same.
In my tech career: plenty more of the same.
This is why I’ve been such an advocate of the Agile methodology and Test-Driven Development. Constant feedback, constant tweaking, constant growth.
Jeff Casimir sent me a DM on Slack in the summer of 2017. What would it take to join the staff at Turing? It was an easy decision. I wrote about it here.
Turing has made me a better instructor. We’re consantly trying new ways to present information better. Or encourage learning within our students and more. We’ve studied inclusion, equity, compassion and empathy. These have resonated with me and have helped me grow as a human.
In March 2020, Turing went remote with most of the world. I wasn’t a fan. I missed being in the classroom. Student engagement is harder in a remote setting, especially for introverts. Turing made it work. We came up with new ideas, new goals, new structure.
I overspent on hardware. New monitors, desk, lights, cameras, bandwidth. Whatever made me feel I had everything to be present for my students.
The cameras and lights only gave spotlight and stage to my workaholic tendencies. It happened earlier in my career when I did freelance work in California. Apparently, I have no off switch without a commute to an office. Something about that drive helps me unplug on the way home.
Turing staff were told in December 2020 that we would be remote on a permanent basis. We would announce it in February 2021. I spent most of the Christmas season in a state of mourning. I was never going to get back to a classroom, and I was losing my battle with overworking.
Turing’s enrollment is stronger than ever. People didn’t have to move to Colorado to attend our classes. We had people around the world applying to attend Turing. I currently have students from all over the United States and it’s freakin’ FANTASTIC.
But I was getting antsy.
I wanted more.
Can’t sit still.
Do more, work more … how can I teach more? MORE!
Even my side hustle on interviewing.io was starting to feel routine. I thought I needed a new challenge.
Trying to do More with Less
I approached upper management at Turing and shared my ideas for “electives”. Maybe I could write some new curriculum around deeper engineering topics. Students could explore topics and workshops on subjects that could direct their career. Perhaps other instructors, as well — I care just as much about THEIR growth, too. Turns out management had been thinking the same thing. I was the only “senior” instructor on staff, and they were already discussing utilizing my experience at the school in new ways.
But my work hours were leading me to a place of burnout, and emotional exhaustion was setting in. My anxiety heightened in the spring of 2021 with a student and I found myself emotionally overreacting. I was near a breaking point.
But … MORE!!!
Other things happened in April and May of 2021, that I won’t go into here. I’ve often dealt with “imposter syndrome” in my career. But this took on an entirely different feeling. Not the typical “I’m not qualified to do this job” kind of imposter syndrome. I was made to feel that I was being viewed AS an imposter. I’d been in the community for 7 years, but I wasn’t “of” Turing. I had never been a student at Turing like most of the other staff. I felt very often that I never “belonged” there. And that feeling got magnified.
It took my already-heightened anxiety to new levels, and I was sleeping less than 3 hours per night. Chugging coffee and Diet Dr Pepper to get through the day. Crashing on the couch after dinner. Then being wide awake again into the wee hours. It was draining the remains of an already-empty tank.
It made me a little loopy, not gonna lie.
It helped me see and set appropriate boundaries for the first time in AGES.
It also drove me to seeking therapy.
This whole experience drove me to seeking external motivational help from any source I could find. The comedian Kevin Hart, despite his foul language, narrates an audiobook that was surprisingly eye-opening. I’m on my second listen already.
As I would learn, external motivation is like a sugar rush — it only gets you started. You need to find INTERNAL motivation, purpose and meaning, to keep you going.
The circumstances made me pause for the first time in a long time. I started to have some quality “me” time, while I reflected on things. I journaled. I shared my feelings. I found confirmation that something needed a change.
A new job, maybe? Aw, f__k, I’m gonna have to go on interviews?!?!
Turns out other things were lining up anyway.
I worked at Stream right before Turing. With a fresh round of funding an new offerings, Stream is growing at a wild pace. The CEO never wanted the company to be bigger than 50 employees in 2017. In 2021 they’re on track to hit 200 employees, including 60 engineers in the second half of 2021. They were also planning to have someone on staff to help teach/onboard those new engineering hires. Doing so would help them focus hiring on “good, smart people” who Stream could train in their desired tech stack. Ideally, this would open their hiring process to be more equitable.
I took an afternoon off, and a 90-minute conversation turned into a job offer.
For the fourth job in a row, I had no real formal interview process. No whiteboarding, no leetcode.
Reputation and merit alone granted me a role of Director of Engineering Learning.
Onboarding curriculum, video tutorials, blog posts, occasional live (!!!) teaching — to the engineering team in Amsterdam, hopefully! All on those deeper engineering principles I’ve been yearning for. Go, RocksDB, PostgreSQL, scalability, data security, AWS, Git workflows, deployment strategies. All with a promise that I can open-source anything not containing proprietary secrets.
“This isn’t the only way, but this is Stream’s way” will be the motto I will carry into this new role.
What about Turing?
I still believe VERY much in the mission at Turing. It’s a great coding school to learn the basics of web development in Ruby or JavaScript. The curriculum is great. The career support is second-to-none.
I have learned SO much from many of the instructors there. Some of them were my own students or mentees. I wouldn’t have grown in areas of empathy and humanity as quickly without amazing examples. Dione, Leta, Meg, Tim, Pam, Erin, Amy, Travis, Josh, and more.
But it’s also time for a break.
I’ve been a part of the Turing community for almost 7 years (~3 as a mentor, ~4 as an instructor).
I’ve given of myself.
My time, my sweat, my energy, my tears.
Tank’s empty.
Oh come on, there’s always a side gig…
I have no plans for any side gigs for a little while. I’m taking some much needed time off before I go back to Stream. And I have a lot to ramp up on myself and a ton of work ahead of me.
Mostly I want to focus on self-care, and finding balance. That means scaling back on one-on-one coaching and finding ways of reaching groups of people instead. I’m going to try some live streaming around interview prep later this summer.
You can track my doings on Twitter, LinkedIn, and my tech interview preparation guide.
