441–450 of 691 posts
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I'd be very surprised if most FAANG engineers aren't millionaires after 5-10 years. The caveat being that houses in the Bay Area cost a lot more than a million...
One of my buddies who works at Google basically lives in a hacker commune so he can pocket most of his earnings post tax. Not sure quite what he does with it.
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I call it "one thing at a time, all the time". Not because I want to take it slowly, but because I have a lot on my plate and my natural tendency is to "unflatten time", fast-forwarding in my head all the different plays and things to do. Some of these will only apply in a year, but here I am thinking about them and worrying about them now. Worse still, I sometime make decisions related to these future things and as…
Nicely put. Care to share your writing system?
I take great joy in the whiteboard writing itself (probably because I was always much better with keyboards than with pens, it's nice to make up some of that difference now).
Whiteboard real estate is always finite so it's not like you could amass too much junk, as you would digitally. You either need to reset your objectives or, well, go out and complete some of them.
I keep one side of the board filled with tasks, the other side I use as a scratchpad.
Obviously some of the notes I take on the whiteboard get translated into JIRA, emails or whatever, but that's only when other people are involved.
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> while big bets bring both big gains and big losses. it's actually an asymmetric. The losses a capped - you cannot lose more than you own, and you cannot lose more than the time you put in (which is, of course, something you're going to lose by living any way). Technically, you also lose the "risk free reward" in opportunity cost - e.g., a minimum wage job. The gains, however, are unlimited. For both yourself, and f…
You can in fact lose more than you own, in some cases, if a judge deems you liable for damages that you have caused (in their opinion).
only if you did something illegal. You cannot be sued for more than you own in a civil suit.
Funny piece. It can be so easy to waste time when we have the internet. I think the most dangerous distractions are the ones that feel productive but don’t actually work toward your goals. For example, browsing hacker news. Such an activity is useful every now and then, but at least for myself I often scroll around only to realize later that it was a massive waste of time I could’ve spent working on something I care…
I realized recently after many years puttering around online that I frequently couldn't name anything I had just read over the last four hours. I haven't taken full control of myself back yet, but that thought was a strong wake-up call to me.
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For last few years, I have been telling myself to take it slow and do what you are doing now. I got a easy but a boring job. I figured this way I will save all my mental energy for my projects after work. But this is slowly burning me out. The boredom of not doing any real work for 8 hours is soul killing. I do a lot of busy red tape work but it is not intelluctly stimulating. So now I will do 180 and quit my job in…
I've done this twice: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/a-tale-of-t... Once was backpacking for 11 months with only two bags. The second was 5 months in a car. I did learn a lot both times, but I never got fully independent and it may have set me back some. Still in retrospect, it was a great journey and I'm still glad I made the attempt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I call it "one thing at a time, all the time". Not because I want to take it slowly, but because I have a lot on my plate and my natural tendency is to "unflatten time", fast-forwarding in my head all the different plays and things to do. Some of these will only apply in a year, but here I am thinking about them and worrying about them now. Worse still, I sometime make decisions related to these future things and as…
Nicely put. Care to share your writing system?
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Noone posts about how their startup exploded and took 5 years of savings in their prime money earning years.
Are you suggesting that your twenties are prime money earning years? I know that for me my earnings have only gone up over time.
Yes, your first few jobs in the technology field increase pay greatly over your first few years. Your overall expenses only increase if you decide to get married and have children in this time, but with youth putting that off, it's more common to make a lot of money without massive life changes.
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Compounding outcomes. Someone who consistently gets just a little better every day is more likely to succeed than someone who works insanely hard for just a limited period of time. The years don't come without the days.
> just a little better every day is more likely to succeed than someone who works insanely hard for just a limited period of time but someone who works insanely hard for a long time is going to beat the person who gets just a little bit better each day. The point is, someone who works insanely hard gets to a certain required level quicker than someone who improves a tiny bit every day for a long time. Think cramming…
Agree that someone who "works insanely hard" will advance quicker. However, I disagree that's necessarily the best approach long-term.
When in university, I did something for each of my courses every day. Studied something new, reviewed past materials, solved an assignment. I did it every day. Continuous improvement.
I never had an all-nighter or really crammed for an exam. Yet I got the best marks. It's not because I was an Einstein - it's because I improved on each of the previous 90 days that got me to the required level faster than working insanely hard over a few days.
Continuously improve - do one thing every day. Two if you can. In 90 days, you'll be 90 ways closer to your goal than you were before.