Why High-Achieving Engineers Still Feel Something's Missing with Ben Fox, Career Coach for Engineers

Ben Fox (0:00)

The funny thing when I've done this, Joel, I've had more than one person tell me, you know what, if I got fired right now, I could actually retire. I just have to change some things and maybe spend a little bit less, but I'd be fine for the rest of my life.

Mind boggling. There's a whole genre of podcasts, financially independent, retire early. There are people who go for that goal, and you have it, and you feel like you can't leave? Strange.

Joel (0:34)

I want to start at the top. I got your profile, I read about what you do, and I was like, this person is someone I want to talk about. For people who don't know, can you just explain briefly what it is, how you describe what you do?

Ben Fox (0:48)

I help burnt out or misaligned software engineering leaders, leave toxic situations, and get clarity about what they actually want next.

Joel (0:59)

How did you get into that? Were you an engineering leader in a toxic situation, you got yourself out? How did this start?

Ben Fox (1:04)

That could be the ideal, but back in 2019, I got a full-time job at a coding boot camp as a career coach.

I haven't worked specifically in tech with software engineers, have been coaching since 2016, but I loved this group of people. Like, they were go-getters. A lot of them were changing careers.

But I saw that these folks were expert technical problem solvers. I'm not, but I'm an expert emotional problem solver. And together, I just found this symbiotic relationship that worked really well. And I've been working with this group of people ever since.

Joel (1:53)

So you started this coding bootcamp. Your career coaching them.

And what are you seeing when you start? Like, right when you first got into this role, what was, like, the first thing that you noticed about these people?

Ben Fox (2:04)

They were going through a very intense program where they were learning. Some of them were coming in with zero coding skills, all the way to building MVPs, and then getting six-figure jobs as software engineers. So there was a grit and determination that this group had that I found really compelling. And I was also blown away. This was pre-AI chaos where the market for newer folks, which is not really who I focused on anymore, but back then, you could have three months on your resume at a coding boot camp and some other career before it and then have a great role.

Joel (2:48)

Yeah, that's been dwindling quite a bit.

Ben Fox (2:50)

But... Quite a bit.

Joel (2:53)

So where is the transition point for your coaching these people moving into these new jobs? You don't coach them after the job. You coach them through the camp and then into the job.

Ben Fox (3:03)

Exactly.

Joel (3:03)

So how did you find out everyone was depressed and the you've got it made story isn't really what it was? How did that come about?

Ben Fox (3:11)

Yeah, that came about a few years later in 2022

I was hired at this startup here in New York City that was focused on people who were further in their career in all different areas of tech. And through the network that the company had, and people like me helping them figure out next steps, not always to the C sweep and more like to the VP, director, manager levels, principal levels. And I saw that a lot of these people were pretty miserable, doing work that didn't really fit them, working too much, not really having great boundaries. And that's when the idea first started for me of, oh, as you're moving up the ladder in this engineering chain, responsibilities compound, pressure compounds, and people sometimes lose sight of their boundaries and end up doing work that really doesn't fit them, and then they lose the spark for what they've been doing, sometimes for like 25 years.

Joel (4:26)

Wow. So what would you tell them when you ran across these individuals?

Ben Fox (4:30)

Slow down. Partially because people often think when they're in that situation, I'm in this bad fit job or toxic environment, I want to find something else. Meanwhile, their energy levels decimated, the amount of time they have in the week, non-existent. And for those folks, I have to ask them, how do you imagine that you're going to figure out this amazing next step from this place where you're kind of shot? It's, I say this to a lot of people. If you were in a toxic, romantic relationship and you're like, I'm going to find the love of my life before I break up with this person, we think that person was kind of crazy.