Nobody but you can decide how much you care about your career. Or how much you like your employer, colleagues, or industry. Not everything is in your control, even in a field like software engineering where autonomy and flexibility are widely available. I recommend you choose one of two paths. If you want to move your career or industry forward, focus on the positive parts of your role, and spend energy making things better. Alternatively, if you don’t want to advance your career, spend the right amount of energy to stay where you are. Then, instead of joining that whiny waterhole, go home and mow the lawn, play with your dog, take a walk in the woods with your kids, or whatever you enjoy.

These complaining places aren’t just bad for your career, they’re bad for your mental and physical health too. Avoid them even if the content resonates with you. Especially if the content resonates with you.

Career advice, or something like it - Marc's Blog

Doing this is socially hard. It, at least, requires directly modelling what good looks like. Sharing the perspectives you want to see. Doing the work that needs to be done. It also requires some level of moderation, which is tough. It’s especially tough to turn the trend around once the echo starts.

Hallelujah! This is one of the reasons I desperately avoid Blind and similar communities. I am also starting to observe this happen in some reddit communities that I am part of. As the post says, the goal isn't to be in denial, the goal is to care for what you want.

Paradoxically, it's been established in neuroscience that depressed people actually see reality for what it is. It's the non depressed people, who live life on hopium. Again, paradoxically, that's needed for your mental state to be more resilient and enjoy life.

Related, is the concept of resilience. As humans working and trying, we will face adversity. It's a fact of life. Handling adversity often requires us to do the magical thinking of ensuring that we are not fretting over problems non stop. When you think about it there are so many problems you can make a part of your life.

There are a lot of you I haven’t talked to in a while—maybe never—but I’ll bet against the house that you’re doing this too. To all of you, spoken to or not: this applies. Don’t carry the weight of a decision that is not in front of you right now.

We already have too much on our plates. The last thing any of us needs is to keep piling on at the Circus Circus buffet of potential problems.

Going all-in on maybe.

This is important for resilience too. Don't feed your mind problems from the negativity blackhole. Don't let that also burden you.