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Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

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Re: Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

#71
1st get any job you can get at this time. Then look around for companies where you can have a career. This will likely weed out most small companies. Once you decide on the job you what to get then define a plan that outlines how to get the job you want. Part of that plan might mean getting any job you qualify for even if it's not what you want right now. Once you get your foot in the door then you can work towards getting promoted or transferred to the department where you want to work. Also, join any organization where you might get contacts that will help your career. A vast majority of jobs are found by who you know not what you know.

This might mean that you will have to move to a different city but you do what you need to do to survive.

Re: Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iraq is an ally and not currently sanctioned.

It's highly likely that payments to Middle East are actively tracked. Because "terrsts" /s. So people may be reluctant to enter into business dealings.

Wise is a thing. Also if OP has enough business, he can easily incorporate and get a US bank account.

Re: Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

#73
Malaysian here. Different environment but there's some similarities in that there was no jobs when I started off, and only recently were there unicorns etc, but local funding is still dry.

1) We'll always need tech for bureaucracy. Look for anything that is done on paper that can be digitalized. CRM, POS, LMS, inventory management. These stuff are red ocean and you don't need to convince people that yours is better. Just be better than Excel, simpler than SAP.

2) Anti-corruption is a fertile field in developing nations. That means forms. Payments and payments infra. Malaysia is entering an era where e-invoicing is mandatory for tax cuts. Things like remittance may be difficult too and it could mostly be a paperwork thing.

3) Common advice in HN is jobs good, entrepreneurship bad. But in your situation, the odds of having a business may be 15%, and the odds of getting a job may be 1%. Entrepreneurship is also a lot more difficult if your competitors are people like Walmart or Amazon so the math is entirely different.

Re: Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

#74

First is to stop the bleeding. Any work that puts food on the table is “honest” work. In the meantime, keep coding, think of something your local or regional society needs and build it. One lesson I had to learn the hard way, no one is coming to save you. Build your own future. Make your own path. Finding something that people would pay for is easy. Finding something that a lot of people will pay for is hard. Just fi…

> Any work that puts food on the table is “honest” work. Can you clarify how you mean that? There's an extreme interpretation that I'm guessing you don't mean.

He’s just saying you gotta do what you gotta do. I couldn’t find work after getting laid off from meta platform engineering so I started clandestinely mass producing pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine for distribution across dozens of citizens across the American southwest. In my spare time, while looking for help desk positions.

Re: Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

#75
post #73

Malaysian here. Different environment but there's some similarities in that there was no jobs when I started off, and only recently were there unicorns etc, but local funding is still dry. 1) We'll always need tech for bureaucracy. Look for anything that is done on paper that can be digitalized. CRM, POS, LMS, inventory management. These stuff are red ocean and you don't need to convince people that yours is better.…

Common advice in HN is jobs good, entrepreneurship bad

when you can't get a job then entrepreneurship is the only other option. uganda leads the statistics with the highest number of entrepreneurs world wide for a reason.

Re: Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

#76

[flagged]

There was a time I was thinking in similar vibes, but came to realization this is actually oversimplification.

1. if there are jobs offering high pay, and there are people who get them- these jobs are not overpaid, clearly some people want to pay high and there are other people who deliver (and of course there are other who fake it, but it's not a norm)

2. not all people are equal, and not all jobs are equal, and just because 'it feels unfair' does not mean it is unfair. Sure, there are different levels of programmers but I personally have seen people who deserve every penny of their pay, because they produce stuff 99.99% people won't be able to produce no matter how hard they want to be in that league

3. Education is investment people make because they see it opens some doors that are otherwise closed- looking at job descriptions in my area, most well paid jobs require some form of paper from applicants- it doesn't matter if it's good or bad, it's state of reality (and sure, there are other jobs where paper is not needed, my point is that with the paper more doors are opened)

4. in case of original poster, the problem might be different- partially because of the target audience and partially because of local reality. In early stage of developed countries nepothism is a huge problem, so I sympathetise with the poster as I know this first hand. I dare to say, having college degree puts him in much better situation than most of the population and the game is to be patient.

Re: Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

#78
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Catholicism specifically? Why not any of the myriad of other Christian denominations? Why not Islam? Why not Buddhism? Why not any other religion?

That’s a great question! Basically all of the religions make truth claims, and these truth claims are contradictory. For example christianity says that there is one God and that Jesus is the son of God, fully human and fully divine. Every other religion makes truth claims as well. So we can kind of look at this in a patronizing way and say the truth claims don’t matter, just the effect of believing in them matters, w…

> So I would say that christianity has the most logical, comprehensive and historically/experientially validated truth claims.

That's nonsense. The Bible is full of contradictions[0]. Also, you write "Jesus is the son of God" and next paragraph you write "Jesus, ie God himself". Is Jesus his own son? (Fwiw, I attended Catholic schools for 13 years, made many good friends, and still think that religion is nonsense.)

> As to why catholicism specifically its the church Jesus, ie God himself, founded. All the other christian denominations were founded by men hundreds or thousands of years later.

Are you saying Catholicism is better because it's older? The Jews would say Judaism is the right one. That Catholicism and all the other Christian denominations were founded much later, and Jesus was just another prophet.

[0]: https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/first/contra2_list.ht...

Re: Ask HN: How Do I Get over My Existential Crisis?

#79
Want a product idea? You know the paper bags that you get at the grocery store? Why don't they have coupons/advertising printed on them? Take your groceries home and then cut up the bag for coupons for the next time you shop. I don't think I've ever seen this, and I can't find anything similar in a quick google search. Maybe you could create a business out of that?
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