What Should I Do with My Life?

What Hacker News says

1. alexpotatoJul 2025
   LOTS of thoughts here:

   > If you think no one would answer “yes” to those questions, you’ve missed the point: almost no one would answer “yes” to those questions, and those proud few are the ones who should be surgeons, actors, and wedding photographers.

   In "What Should I Do With My Life", Po Bronson has a great quote:

   "Everyone thinks their dream job will be smooth sailing. But let's face it: EVERY job has shitstorms. Thing is, in the jobs you love the shitstorm is part of the 'fun and excitement' of that dream job."

   I can 100% attest to this with a personal example: having been an SRE for many years I LOVE managing outages. I don't love that there ARE outages but I do love running them. I can imagine a librarian or other similar field that loves peace and quiet and predictably recoiling in horror at this statement. But that's the point. People are different and have different preferences. As patio11 said "everyone's preference space is n-dimensional".

   > This is why people get so brain-constipated when they try to choose a career, and why they often pick the wrong one: they don’t understand the craziness that they have to offer, nor the craziness that will be demanded of them

   This is why the advice of "pick the job that involves the thing you can't stop yourself from doing" is good advice. In my case, it's writing documentation. It's an urge I can not stop. And it's been great in my FinTech SRE career as it saves future me and other people lots of time during outages.

   > You’ll discover all sorts of unexpected things when unpacking, like how firefighters mostly don’t fight fires,

   My wife's cousin is a firefighter and he was mentioning that due to improvements in smoke detectors, fire alarms etc, it's becoming rarer and rarer to actually fight a fire. He seemed sad when he said it.

   Show morethread
2. jeffrallenApr 2025
   When I was in a situation like that I used Po Bronson's "What Should I do with My Life" and the Strengths Finder survey. It helped confirm something that I was already planning.

   I also came back to software later.

   thread
3. fm2606Jan 2023
   I can relate. My undergrad is in engineering as well and after 6 years of jumping from job to job I realized I didn't care for engineering.

   _What Should I Do With My Life?_ by Po Bronson really showed me that it was/is okay to not be happy with my job and to make a change.

   I've written about my career changes here [0] and here [1].

   My advice to the "directionless and lost" is to find a job that has meaning beyond paying the rent and food, and that you enjoy, but gives you enough time to pursue your other interests. This helped me tremendously

   [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33126861 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30204355

   Show morethread
4. fm2606Dec 2022
   _What Should I Do With My Life_ by Po Bronson

   There are a lot of stories of people who hate their jobs and make a switch.

   One was a lawyer who became a truck driver. A doctor who became a programmer (iirc ... I do remember she was in tears because she didn't want to disappoint their family not sure if she wanted to be a programmer or not).

   This book gave me the courage to leave engineering field and become a firefighter paramedic. 1st best career decision I made at the time

   Show morethread
5. gnatNov 2022
   > trying to focus less on the things I do at work and more on the things I do outside of it

   This is an under-recommended but totally solid approach to a happy life. The takeaway I got from Po Bronson's "What Should I Do With My Life?" was that vocations are overrated -- your job might be funding the things that make you happy today and that's just fine. The secret is to be happy today, not to be miserable now because <some story about future happiness>.

   Show morethread
6. jeffrallenMay 2022
   I read "What Should I Do With My Life" and also used the Strengths Finder system, both of which confirmed things I knew about myself and have me the evidence I needed to make a radical change.

   Good luck.

   thread