I used to think success meant making a lot of money. Climbing the career ladder, and getting the highest, fanciest job title possible. The first few years, it was fine. Like anyone else, I needed money. Money to survive post broke college student life.
But after I hit the first couple promotions and built up some savings, I started asking, “is this is?” I hit a wall, faced major burnout and depression, and had to make several big life changes.
How can someone with all the paper credentials, money, relationships, status, feel so horrible inside? Didn’t I have it all?
Recently, more of my peers have been asking these same questions.
Here are some reflections on this phenomenon from through the lens of having been a software engineer in big tech.
And, what’s next for you.
Some Background from Big Tech
At a large tech company, there are A LOT of metrics. Some people spend 40+ hours per week building extensive dashboards worth of graphed data, metrics on how users progress through screens, records of where and when they click and where and when they don’t.
We had a dashboard for the dashboards.
The hardest part of the job is determining which metrics actually MEAN something, and beyond that—which ones mean the RIGHT thing?
We use metrics to quantify and measure goals. Goals define what direction you’re taking your life, hobby, company, whatever it is. In order to know if you’re getting closer to your goal, you need a metric to measure your progress.
Why This Matters in Life
For example, most people want to live a happy, fulfilled life. Say, that is the goal. Most people use money and status metrics to measure “happiness” and “fulfillment.” So they chase money and status.
The problem is, in this context, money and status are vanity metrics.
Vanity metrics are the metrics that make you look good on the surface but don’t tell the full story of your performance. For most people, more money doesn’t directly mean that you are more fulfilled, or even better at your job. Same goes for status.
In reality, the concept of “happiness” aligns better with → “freedom to use your time however you want.”
As for “fulfillment” → “a clear purpose and drive for what you are doing.”
Money can buy products or services to free up time, and status can come along with finding purpose. They might be stepping stones or side effects of success, but not a true measure of how fulfilled or happy you really are.
More examples of vanity metrics include:
Word count to measure how informative an article is
Hours worked at a job as a proxy for how effective an employee is
Subscriber count to measure how “good” a YouTube channel is
In my case, paper credentials were vanity metrics, while I failed to understand my true metrics for happiness and fulfillment.
Vanity Metrics are Deceiving
The issue with vanity metrics is that any metric can be a vanity metric. And any vanity metric can be a useful metric.
Money might not be the most accurate indicator of long-term fulfillment, but you probably have at least a short-term goal of financial stability. In that case, money in savings is the perfect metric. For now.
As a further example, let’s take lines of code:
I’ve seen a single line of code cause an hours-long global outage at a major tech company.
This line of code had more company impact than 100,000 lines of code combined
Is the person writing 100,000 lines of code doing more work than the person writing one? It really depends.
On the other hand, if your goal is to reduce your file size, then yeah, number of lines of code deleted is the exact metric to use.
The point is, any metric can be a vanity metric.
It all depends on the context of your goal.
What’s Next for You?
In order to understand if your metric is a vanity metric or not, you have to be really clear on your goal. Ask yourself:
“Does this metric going up or down help me decide what to do next?”
If the answer is no, or I’m not sure, there’s a good chance it’s a vanity metric.
In the context of “success,” it all depends on how you define it. If you define it to be maximizing your pile of sand in life, then great, make much money as possible and you win. However, if success means to live a happy and fulfilled life, maximizing your pile of sand beyond a certain point might not be the right move.
Keep an open mind about what you define “success” to be.
In life, if you’re chasing freedom to spend your time how you want doing what you want, your priorities (money, learning, life experience, adventure, family) can change depending on your age, financial situation, health, relationship/family status, etc.
What could be the right metric one month could be the absolute wrong metric next month.
Get really clear on what it is that you really want, what your short and long term goals are. Why are you chasing what you’re chasing?
This Week’s Update
Last week, I wrote about pushing past self-doubt to build confidence.
Well, I did it.
I made an Instagram account to push past my fear of making short-form content. There’s a sea of brain rot content out there. This is my attempt to cut through all of that.
Give it a follow if social media’s your thing.
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— Kat