The Most Dangerous Email I've Sent

I think you can all imagine how I felt when I hit send on what I felt was one of the most dangerous emails I’d ever sent in my career. There was an instant desire to undo what I’d just done - to claw back the packets from the ether and pretend like nothing ever happened. Then the stomach sank to my feet and slight dizziness as adrenaline wore off. The panic over where I left my resume, and how long it would take me to refresh it; the worry about the current job market and how my wife would react if I was let go. But then, after that storm of thought and feeling - there came a peace of mind and calm that I’ve rarely felt in my life. I still didn’t know if I’d made the right decision - but what I had done was an action that was true to myself and those around me.

A little over two years ago I accepted a new position at my current employer. I had started there as a software contractor, and then moved into a full time engineering role after a few years. I worked on high-impact and high-visibility projects - so it wasn’t long until I became an integral part of the department. To celebrate that, and to help spread my knowledge and experience around I was promoted to Lead Software Architect of the digital engineering group. I was not only responsible for the applications previously developed, but now I was on board with helping all our projects software aspirations develop and succeed.

The elation of my new position was to be short-lived. While I deeply enjoyed the technical aspects of the position, and the mentoring opportunity it afforded, I was quickly moved into managing the architecture and development on bigger and bigger projects. Through no fault of my managers or department head, I became siloed on individual projects and my time was suddenly stretched between meetings, on-sites, and bureaucracy - leaving very little time for actual work which produced any kind of real artifact (such as coding). I kept getting involved in bigger and bigger things until suddenly, I was the chief architect over a multi-lab data management project that captured all my time.

I was initially very excited and enthusiastic. It was a greenfield project, and early on there was a lot of room for prototyping and trailblazing. I got to give presentations at large conferences - like this one at Databricks AI Summit and rub shoulders with some of the giants in industry and government. I got to travel to new places and try new things, it was shiny and new - and it was slowly killing my desire to work at all.

Like all my positions before, this was being viewed as a stepping stone by those interested in my career. I was taking on more and more responsibility - managing more and more people and features and deliverables. I was on hundreds of email chains, what felt like hundreds of working groups, and my day consisted almost entirely of sitting in front of a screen either in meetings or writing replies to emails - with very little time left over to myself for development. I was asked to travel more and more often - leaving my wife alone with our two young boys and missing my time with them dearly.

For some people, these kinds of work tasks are desirable. They work well with politics and bureaucracy, thrive in a public and meeting setting, and enjoy the chaos that is getting any group of people to agree on anything. They can stay on top of long-lead items easily, understand and revel in the minutiae of managing large groups of people, and seem to effortlessly switch off in time to enjoy family and leisure activities.

That wasn’t me.

In fact the above experience was so far removed from the things I actually enjoyed that I was getting physically ill by the amount of stress generated in dealing with it. I gained weight and my maintenance medications were suddenly not enough to deal with depression and mood swings. By the end of the day I was just a lump on the couch, consuming the same old movies and tv - not finding enjoyment even in things like games or personal coding. Previous projects at work were floundering without solid technical leadership, and some of my biggest triumphs were turning into sources of extreme embarrassment and daily stress. I was letting my family down - not having the mental strength to be patient with two growing boys or give them the time they needed. I give daily thanks that I married an extremely strong, independent partner who has been able to help me through this - but she too was getting extremely strained by my lack of attention and effort in anything unrelated to work.

So we moved across the country to Maine.

For a while, it helped. The new house, experiences, and general overwhelm of a move helped drown out the lack of joy at work - but a festering wound in your life does not take long to become septic. I was quickly back to the point where I dreaded every phone call, every email, every meeting. I took more frequent naps and tried to ignore the rising sense of panic and dread as deadlines approached for the project - not because we weren’t succeeding - but because we were. The success of the project meant I would be trusted with bigger things, and there were already plans in the works to give me those bigger things. I started to dread that with every passing minute.

It wasn’t until I found myself on my phone with my therapist, nearly in tears, that I finally, honestly asked myself if this is what I wanted. I already knew the answer - and it was no. Then we worked through why I was doing it; why I felt obligated to take on these roles and continue on in this ladder. It came down to a few things.

First, I felt like if I didn’t take these roles - then the department I worked for would suffer. We are a young group and currently lack experienced personnel - making the pool of who leads a project small and hard to work with. For a long time I took that as my responsibility and burden and acted accordingly. I’ve learned since then that it is not. Those in charge of hiring, training, and personnel development as well as strategic planning should address that issue - and not by guilting those who don’t enjoy it into doing it.

The second and more devious reason I was doing it was because I believed that my ability to be a great engineer had a short lifespan. I felt like by 40 I needed to move on from engineering because if I didn’t, I’d be like the few older workers I’d dealt with in my career. I felt like they moved too slow, were stuck in their ways, and unable to change - even when faced with evidence to the contrary. I wrongly believed that if I didn’t make the transition then I would be unable to provide for my family past 40 and we’d never retire, or retire in shambles. I still struggle with this belief - but with my therapist’s guidance, and the ample evidence in my life - I could continue to be an effective engineer until I retired as long as I was willing to do the work. Once I finally accepted those truths - and realized that I couldn’t continue on like this or risk everything I valued in my life - I sat down and wrote that super scary email. This is most of that email, with names and certain information redacted.

I think you’ve both worked with me long enough by now to know my strengths and weaknesses. I excel at technical problem solving, debugging hard technical and people issues, and generally getting my thoughts into code and getting features and solving problems out the door. I have big ideas and prototype quickly – blazing a trail for others to follow. I help others understand and learn technical things quickly.I love giving technical presentations and talking to people – and learning about new technical aspects, languages, and procedures etc. I’m weak in my abilities to manage the minutiae of a project though – such as budget and time. I struggle with sitting through meetings that aren’t directly related to my project or technical aspects of it (policy can be fine though. I don’t do well leading large groups – much prefer and do better with small, high performing teams. I also struggle immensely with long-lead items (thanks ADHD!). What’s worse than these being weaknesses though – is that I find almost no joy in doing any of the higher-level management work not directly related to a technical product or project. While I know that not all things, even technical things, can be fun and full of joy (writing documentation for example) – I think I’m to a point that most of my day job is unenjoyable, and I struggle to accomplish and produce actual work artifacts.

……….talked about specifics and the beliefs mentioned above……….

I don’t think that belief can serve me any longer and I can’t continue like this without letting you and the department down and most importantly, letting myself and my family down as I choose not to be true to myself.

I cannot and will not take more leadership responsibilities, even with a project manager. I think it would be a complete disservice to everyone eventually if that were to happen. I can continue my role as chief architect and architect as the department, but I think it’s become clear to myself, and others, that this is as far up this ladder as I should climb. I understand if this means things need to change – but I think we can find others who are more well suited to the roles you’ve imagined for me.

I strongly believe that I am one of the department’s strongest programmers, top problem solvers, great technical leader, and one of the people most likely to deliver the features and programs you need when you need them. I think we need to re-evaluate my responsibilities and current trajectory to maximize those aspects for both the good of the department, the projects, and my mental health.

If you are in a similar position as I was - and you can safely do so without risking your livelihood or the support of those who rely on you - know that I feel for you and that you need to write a similar email, or have a similar conversation with those who can make positive changes in your career.

I am not naive enough to think everyone will have that same opportunity, or have the same bosses I do. I am lucky enough that those who I penned the email to, while disappointed, understood and didn’t try to convince me I was wrong. But if you can, you must make a change in your life like mine before it becomes too late and you’ve either lost what you value the most, or have killed any desire to work in an industry that once inspired you.

I’m here if you need to talk.