I’ve been waiting to finally make the career switch ever since I started my degree in 2019. So even though I’m so close to my goals – finishing this degree, getting a SWE role – I was confused on why I sometimes still felt some anxiety and unhappiness about my future. Then when I read this post by another OSU student, it suddenly clicked for me.
“I will always move the goalposts for myself about what is going to make me happy or feel proud of myself. Like last year, I went into recruiting season thinking I would be happy with ANY internship. And then as recruiting season progressed, and I did more interviews/got offers, suddenly the goal was that my internship needed to be FAANG/unicorn. And I was disappointed in myself when I didn’t end up with a FAANG/unicorn internship… but I’m really trying to not view it as a metric of success for myself (even if many other people in this industry do) because it’s a game I’ll never win or be happy with“.
When I started my new grad job search in September, I was worried about getting any offer at all given the constant news of layoffs and hiring freezes within tech. And then once I started getting multiple offers, I felt the pressure of why I couldn’t get an offer from a more prestigious company like my other peers did. And even when I finally received a return offer from my internship, I found myself not as excited as I had imagined.
It was simple in hindsight – my mind kept moving the goalposts each time. Though I shouldn’t take a horrible offer out of desperation, I was still caught in a cycle of anxiety where I couldn’t be happy with my offers and always craved shinier, better, impossible things. It didn’t help that the tech field could sometimes feel very competitive, where everyone seems to be bringing in MANGA/FAANG offers and anything below $200k TC was worthless. I suffered from an immense internal pressure to keep dragging myself through more interviews and job applications, to keep chasing after more and more.
But reading that post helped turn on a lightbulb in my head. It helped knowing that I wasn’t the only person feeling this way and I found it enlightening to finally put into words exactly my dilemma. How this was not healthy for my physical and mental health. That I was chasing a moving goalpost that would never stop.
Nowadays, I’m kinder to myself. I feel grateful to have the privilege of choosing between different offers and rejecting companies, something I never thought I’d ever do. I’m trying my best to negotiate offers and make sure that I’m being paid for my full worth. And I’m looking forward to finally signing off on a job offer and starting my professional career in tech.
