Good partner, Good Life, Good Work

Note: this post is part of a series of blog posts to grow your engineering career.

One typical mistake I’ve seen in young developers is to brute-force their careers, work until exhaustion and get promoted. It works very well for a few years, it can put your career on steroids, but you will hit a plateau.

By prioritizing your work and burning the midnight oil, you will climb the corporate ladder fast. This will be done at the expense of your personal life. By the time you turn 30+, many of your friends are married or settled, and you will become more isolated. Your options for meeting interesting people shrink over time. You meet less potential friends or partners. Gradually, your life becomes your work, your mental health decreases and your work performance is significantly impacted.

It’s important to invest in your personal life early. Either having friends, a girlfriend, marrying someone or having kids. Developing your personal life brings mental balance and peace of mind. Being socially connected prevents you from living in an ideological echo-chamber. It exposes you to different ideas and helps you break your mental silos.

The more you advance in your career, the more your social life will help you and support your personal growth. This personal growth will fuel your career past your initial technical achievements and expose you to new challenges.

I have seen the impact of my personal life on my work. From breaking into big tech at AWS/Twitter to building Codiga, my best years were always when I was regularly in touch with friends and committed in a stable relationship. It gave me the mental fuel to build every single day and the stability I needed when I faced hardships. Looking back, my main mistake has been to not commit and marry during those years, which is always easy to diagnose after the fact.

If you are just starting in your career and start getting recognition, do not put your private life on the back burner. Slowly invest in building relationships and making friends. Do not be afraid to commit, engage. Mistakes can always be fixed. Regrets cannot.

You have one life. Do not live only your work-part of it. Live your life to the fullest.