Profiles in Tech, Part II: Chasing the Carrot of Success

When asked, Morgan, 39, wouldn’t call his job as a front-end engineer his dream job. It’s also not just a means to pay his bills. For Morgan, work symbolizes something else: mainly, something to question.

“When people look at computer engineers, they see us staring at some code in front of us on a screen, typing away,” Morgan said. “They don’t know how mentally frustrating it is or how super boring it can be. The only moments of joy are fleeting — you work on one thing for a day or a week, it works, you celebrate with a cup of coffee for five minutes, and then you get back to work slogging through some more garbage.” 

Morgan didn’t always plan to be a programmer. He grew up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest and studied literature in college. After graduating, he went abroad to teach English, first for two years in South Korea, and then for a year in Japan. According to Morgan, he loved everything about it: being in front of the classroom, working with students, living in a foreign city. 

When Morgan returned to the U.S., he spent a couple of years living in his hometown working odd jobs before ultimately moving to San Francisco “on a whim,” as he puts it. He stayed on a friend of a friend’s couch in the Outer Sunset and started tutoring high schoolers to bring in some income. However, Morgan soon realized that if he wanted to live in San Francisco, he was going to have to get a better-paying job. “It felt like everyone that was successful worked for tech companies,” he said. “And the most successful people were the ones becoming software engineers.” 

Morgan dropped everything in order to apply to and attend a three-month, full-time developer bootcamp. He spent 12 hours in class Mondays through Fridays, eight hours in class on Saturdays, and all day on Sundays working on assignments. “Your whole life becomes school,” he said. “As soon as I started, I felt intimidated by other students who had much more experience than me in programming. I’d been studying for a couple of months, but some already had four-year degrees.”

According to Morgan, he worked extra hard to learn the material, complete projects, and get the extra help he needed, but it still took him longer than usual to finish the program. More so, he was disappointed that the program didn’t do more to help him land a job after completing the bootcamp. It took hundreds of emails, dozens of coffee dates, and countless networking events before Morgan was able to get in front of a hiring manager at a local startup. 

He got the job, but the company went under within a year. After five months of unemployment, Morgan landed another software engineering job, where he lasted a little over a year. He left that role for a different company where he stayed eight months. In the past five years, Morgan has worked at a half-dozen Bay Area tech companies, staying at each for stints ranging from three months to two years. 

“For me, I don’t get excited about writing a new little piece of code,” Morgan said. “Plus, in my current job, I have a lot of stress associated with an executive who has a really difficult personality. He’s just hard to communicate and work with, but he’s friends with the CEO, so I’ll probably end up leaving before he does. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the fact that every engineer gets paid more than it seems like they should, but if you count how much stress we’re under, I think it works out.”

As Morgan eyes San Francisco’s job market yet again, the reluctant computer programmer wants a role where he feels a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and joy. He’s considered returning to the classroom, but he’s concerned that he won’t be able to make ends meet in the Bay Area as an educator. So Morgan’s keeping his job search to local tech companies. However, he’s open to pivoting to a more customer-facing role or potentially shifting to a different path altogether within the tech sector. He’s thought about user experience and product management, and has even considered going back to school to get an MBA.

“I feel the best when I’m directly able to help someone,” Morgan said. “That’s what I want.”

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Forward motion

What leads you to get out of bed in the morning? What motivates you to start your day?

We all need to feel propelled forward by something: a career goal, family, homeownership, etc. 

However, for some, that forward motion too often derives from anxiety: knowing we’ve got a million things to do, fearing a less-than-stellar performance review, wondering when’s the best time to start a family, worrying whether the company will have enough money to survive another six months, fearing an unexpected change in our living situation.

But should anxiety really be what powers us through our morning routine and gets us to the office? Should it be what drives us to begin that project we’ve been putting off?

Of course not. However, too often, it is.

As many of us know, anxiety harms the body, and the effects of excess cortisol (the “stress hormone”) are well-documented. That’s why instead of allowing ourselves to be driven by cortisol, we, like Morgan, need something different. 

Craving dopamine

Morgan’s experience may reflect the experience of other software engineers who long for some intrinsic reward from coding. As he describes it, after creating the code to make a feature happen and seeing the feature work, he takes a 5-minute coffee break and then moves onto something else. No pat on the back, no “good job.” Nuthin’. 

What would be more motivating? 

Dopamine. 

Most of us associate it with pleasure; however, our brain also produces this “feel-good” chemical when we anticipate something important is about to happen, as when we perceive stimuli that are associated with a reward. [Roughly similar to Pavlov’s dog.] Completing a task or meeting a challenge usually provides that chemical reward. 

That being said, if a feature “working” doesn’t result in positive reinforcement, and when “the only moments of joy are fleeting,” the programmer doesn’t experience the dopamine hit that the brain craves. Given his experience over time, it’s understandable that Morgan wouldn’t be excited to keep “slogging through.”

Craving other feel-good chemicals

Morgan spent three years teaching abroad and loved it. For many of us, helping people is consistent with our belief system or a moral code. 

But guess what else it brings? 

More of those feel-good chemicals. 

Studies show that altruism releases oxytocin, which relieves stress. And altruism may trigger dopamine (it’s everywhere!) and endorphins, the brain’s reward circuitry. It’s no surprise that Morgan felt great about this time in his life, and is considering returning to the classroom to get that feeling back. 

Craving human interaction

Another thing our brain craves is social interaction. Before we’re even born, we’re genetically programmed to seek it. Countless studies demonstrate how maintaining social connections helps to alleviate depression, prevent disease, lengthen the lifespan, and even preserve memory. 

However, the work of a programmer can sometimes have a solitary feel. Save for brief stints of “pair programming” or during code review meetings, it’s still common to spend hours a day on your own: just you and the screen. 

In contemplating a customer-facing role, Morgan would likely satiate the social brain and find greater fulfillment. A user experience role would also allow him to interact with others (albeit indirectly) by shaping how they feel when using a product.   

Optimization

Given Morgan’s feelings about his chosen vocation, it’s no surprise he’s thinking about how to make things better, surveying what’s out there… seeing what sort of work he’d feel more excited about. That’s common in today’s world, and developmentally appropriate for 30-somethings.

Our thirties can be a time to pause and take stock of what we’re doing. If we’ve found ourselves in a first or second (or third, or fourth ...) career without little aforethought, it may turn out that what we’re doing is a bad fit for us. Unlike decades ago, fewer of us are okay with being corporate drones stuck in a cubicle farm, gaining little from the experience other than a paycheck and benefits.

However, busy schedules (and a lack of intentionality) can prevent us from stopping to purposefully take stock of our situations. With meetings to attend, work to do, and deadlines to meet, we may not realize that anything’s wrong. We’re just doing our thing, and on the surface, things seem just fine. For some of us, we don’t realize that stress has been driving us for months or even years.

Besides feeling sorta unsettling, this realization is often synced with feeling a lack of fulfillment at work. That’s when other aspects of our jobs (difficult personalities, long hours, etc.) may begin to wear on us. Over time, a creeping “meh” feeling can set in. 

At that point, it’s time to recalibrate and optimize our experience. Some of us have the resources to change course completely (new job, new career, etc.). For others, financial necessity (e.g. housing costs in San Francisco) keeps us locked in place — at least for now. 

Either way, like Morgan, we want there to be something about our work itself — what we’re actually doing on a day-to-day basis, the purpose it serves, and how it makes us feel — to drive us forward.

TLDR

Optimization may not require wholesale changes, and you don’t have to quit your job to step off the stress train. 

If we set incremental goals, we can hack the dopamine system and get the feels from completing minor tasks. By learning how to ask for what we need in an assertive manner, we’re more likely to get our needs met, and by engaging more with our peers, we may reap the benefits of being part of a community. 

The bottom line, my friends: Greater fulfillment at work is within your reach.

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This story is part of a larger series called “Profiles In Tech,” which is intended to highlight the unique mindset of those who work in tech… their outlook, their concerns, and their quest for fulfillment. Stay tuned for more to come. Feel free to share on social media with the icons below!

While you’re at it, check out Part I, which chronicles one programmer’s struggle with what it means to be productive, and the important role that coding plays in his life.

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References

Berridge, KC, Robinson, TE. What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience? Brain Res Rev. 28(3):309-69 (1998).

Dubol, M., Trichard, C., Leroy, C. et al. Dopamine Transporter and Reward Anticipation in a Dimensional Perspective: A Multimodal Brain Imaging Study. Neuropsychopharmacol 43, 820–827 (2018).

Sonne, James WH, Gash, DM. Psychopathy to Altruism: Neurobiology of the Selfish–Selfless Spectrum. Front Psychol. 9: 575. 9: 575. (2018).

Umberson, D., Montez, J.K. Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy. J Health Soc Behav. 51 (Suppl): S54–S66 (2011).