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Your sentiments are something I have a lot of personal experience with. I've had several "doesn't meet expectations" performance reviews in my career, as well as long periods (e.g. 18+ months) of unemployment which contributed to self-doubt, not to mention being rejected after interviewing with several companies.

First, I think it's important not to imbue you with a glow of false or undeserved confidence. I'm not going to sit here and say you're great, that you can do anything you set your mind to, etc. I have no idea what you're capable of.

That said, you are obviously very highly capable, having secured a job at an amazing company. Google is extremely selective in its hiring. You have a job that most people would envy and find impossible to secure. These are all strong indicators of your potential.

I find the most helpful thing to rebuilding confidence is to start with small successes. These small successes, once achieved, give concrete reasons for confidence which aren't merely bluster. Start with areas and tasks you're strong at, and build up from there. Cycles of doubt can fuel increasing insecurity; but the opposite is also true. Build for yourself some cycles of success.

My sincere hope is that you regain your footing and can feel once again confident in your strengths.

Changing both role and industry simultaneously is dangerous. Your premise is exactly right: you shouldn't change all the variables all at once. Even within the same company, I recommend people don't change role and team simultaneously. It's much better to change one before the other.

Changing fields is much more dramatic than changing teams in a company. I'm not sure if there's an exact right answer to this, but I'd recommend changing roles first:

1. DS in Health → PM in Health → PM in Entertainment

The reasoning is around risk reduction. When you change from DS → PM within Health (and ideally within the same company / team, where you already have social capital and coworkers more likely to be patient with you based on your past contributions), you can flip back to DS if the transition to PM proves too difficult. But more importantly, it sets you up to go PM Health → PM Entertainment, which then gives you two outs if an industry transition proves difficult. You could:

1. Go back into DS in your new industry (Entertainment)

2. Go back to PM in your old industry (Health)

Whereas if you made the industry/field change first, you only have one option, which is to go back to your previous job (both role and industry).

The real answer for you will be highly dependent on situation and on your own abilities. What I'm recommending here is a theoretical framework with which to think about such a large transition.

I dropped out of Stanford's PhD program, so I'm not a "Dr." 😊 Thanks for your question!

I'm not sure there's a secret sauce, at least for me, TBH. At the highest level, success has three attributes:

• Luck

• Talent

• Hard work

You can't control the first two, but you have to acknowledge they have in impact. Luck has played a huge role in my success. Talent has, as well. For instance, I learn things relatively quickly and tend to see things at higher levels of abstraction than many people. This makes it easier for me, compared with some people, to spot underlying causes and explanations for things.

That said, I also spend a lot more time working than most people. I'm not recommending that as a course of action; I'm merely stating that as a fact. For instance, why am I answering this question at all? Why did I build this AMA site so others can see previous responses I've sent to people? It's not because I think I'm going to get something out of it... but I do think it reflects my general initiative to try new things, to take everything another 10% higher than default.

When it comes to staying on top of things, I've often strived to join the strongest teams that'll accept me. This maximizes the chances I'll work with amazing people, which in turn is often the fastest way to learn.

A tough and highly relevant question.

First, the good news: when it comes to junior hiring, that's only fallen by ~19% since AI impacted the industry. 19% is from one perspective very high (e.g. the highest unemployment recorded in US history was the Great Depression, at 25%). But on the other, it means 4 out of every 5 junior people are getting jobs.

You can likely stand out within the top 80% of junior candidates. As you mentioned, things have gone way beyond code production as the main gauge of junior capabilities. I'd recommend spending a lot of time building with different AI approaches (models, harnesses, tools), and creating real projects (even side projects) which help hone your judgment about how best to use AI as a force multiplier. There is, in some senses, no way to speed up the type of learning you want other than to spend more hours doing highly-leveraged learning in those key areas (e.g. of better judgment around how to structure components or build the most impactful things).

Wishing you the best! It's a tough environment out there... but you only need to outrun 1 of every 5 people. You can do it!