A friend of mine is the CEO of his own small business. We’re not very close friends, but we know each other well enough to have visited each other’s houses for dinner and drinks a few times.

His business is advertising a role which interests me. I have suitable skills for this role but limited experience, so it’s likely to get better candidates than I – at least on paper. It is reporting to one of his subordinates, and I have no idea how much (if any) input my friend might have into the recruiting process.

I would like to apply for this job but I don’t want to cause problems for my friend, nor to have our friendship unduly influence the recruiting process. I have not yet spoken to my friend about it because doing so would certainly result in the latter outcome.

They work in quite a small office. There is a strong chance that, were I to manage to get to the interview stage anonymously, my friend would see me when I arrived. But I also know he’s out of the office a lot.

How should I proceed? I am happy to consider that “not proceeding” may be the best course of action here, especially given that I may well not get the job.

I’ve worked in Software Development teams my entire career and I’ve come to realize the spectrum of skill-sets is utterly staggering. Over the years I’ve managed to adapt my in-office behavior to handle utterly incompetent and lazy people.

The way I handle it is to simply cap my anger and frustration, but I find myself going home and venting my anger in the form of complaining to my family and friends, but this is not healthy to me nor my family/friends.

How do I handle personal stress caused by utterly incompetent and lazy co-workers?

Optional info below:

In my younger years, I naively believed incompetent/lazy people didn’t cut it in the software industry for long. I disappointingly found that preferential treatment, nepotism, and just plain self-interest on the part of managers seem to undermine this natural filtering of idiots from the software engineering industry. Thus, it seems I must learn to deal with them.

I have endless patience for people who are junior and ask numerous questions, but I don’t seem to know how to handle stress caused by the utterly incompetent and lazy people that don’t apply themselves.

I am trying to find/change my career trajectory. Its a good cozy job, but I want something that I get excited to work on in the morning. Career change is hard, for a lot of reasons. So I cant just try out a lot of different careers, and need to be more methodical in finding out the ideal fit.

have a general idea of the direction I want to go in. However, I think a lot of my decisions have been made under peer pressure or expectations of other people. I am looking for somebody who can provide me an objective assessment of my strengths and weaknesses, and to move towards a career which relies more on my strengths and innate (unconscious) drivers. There are millions of coaches online.. and it seems everybody these days wants to become a coach. So I am wondering how to find a reliable coach who will get you to where you want to get to?

What do you look for when searching for a career coach and how do you determine whether it’s beneficial?