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What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

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Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope, as with the original article author, that you find a way to rediscover your childhood passion in a form that works for you today. It's not hard to understand what happened to our generation as teenage geeky culture turned into a multi-billion global business in less than a decade. A ton of brilliant programmers got left behind and left out. Not just because there's only room for a few John Carmacks or Tim Swe…

Coincident with formulation and industrialisation came specialisation and a great deal of deskilling. I knew guys in the late 90s who built their own 3D engines, knew quaternion geometry, how to mix, reverberate and filter multi-channel audio in C++. Now you just grab and Unreal or Unity engine, plug in and go. In some tragic ways, the smarter those hackers were the quicker they found themselves on the margins, or ou…

I think a major reason for this stagnation in games and movies is that limitation breeds creativity. When you have a very restricted computer, your creative brain feels challenged and inspired, but when the world is at your fingertips, you have to work a lot harder to find inspiration.

Combine that with high budgets and big teams (high price of failure) and you have a recipe for stagnation.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#42

Just out of curiosity - does modafinil help with narcolepsy ? AFAIK it's the only thing it's approved for.

Why wouldn't the drug approved for treating narcolepsy help with narcolepsy? The answer is yes, it helps, but I'm super confused why you asked.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#43

Coincidentally, even I am thinking of making a switch from security to ML. I have just started my security career, but I already feel dissatisfied with not building stuff (and instead writing reports / doing analysis). I used to have an aversion to ML due to the hype, but when I dove a bit deeper in practice, I really liked it. Have now done several deeplearning.ai courses and building some stuff on my own. Looking i…

I also spend most of my time analysing businesses, documents, controls etc. Then finish it with writing a report, which usually just explains the gaps.

For me, I resonated with a post around a week ago which explained someone's perspective on wanting to join a trade to do hands on work where you actually built something.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#44
post #29

Wow what a surprise ending, I thought the CPAP was going to solve your low energy and malaise problem but it was Prozac? How did the CPAP affect your energy levels though? Did you try it that before jumping on an antidepressant? I wish you tried CPAP and see how you felt before letting a doctor feed you pills that may or may not have been needed do to a positive Narcolepsy diagnosis, which effects quality of sleep an…

Trying to diagnose somebody over the Internet is problematic even when the symptoms being described are already being successfully treated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19699146/ -- I'll summarize it for you: when OSA appears along with narcolepsy, CPAP doesn't solve the narcolepsy and often interferes with the diagnosis of narcolepsy.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#45

Coincidentally, even I am thinking of making a switch from security to ML. I have just started my security career, but I already feel dissatisfied with not building stuff (and instead writing reports / doing analysis). I used to have an aversion to ML due to the hype, but when I dove a bit deeper in practice, I really liked it. Have now done several deeplearning.ai courses and building some stuff on my own. Looking i…

The courses and the math is the "fun part". Job will involve a lot of data cleaning and pipeline building. Not that it is not interesting (I personally find the infra building more interesting than building and tweaking models) but just fyi. Pretty much every sexy job has the 5% which is sexy and the other 95% which is grunt work.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#46
post #44
post #29

Wow what a surprise ending, I thought the CPAP was going to solve your low energy and malaise problem but it was Prozac? How did the CPAP affect your energy levels though? Did you try it that before jumping on an antidepressant? I wish you tried CPAP and see how you felt before letting a doctor feed you pills that may or may not have been needed do to a positive Narcolepsy diagnosis, which effects quality of sleep an…

Trying to diagnose somebody over the Internet is problematic even when the symptoms being described are already being successfully treated. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19699146/ -- I'll summarize it for you: when OSA appears along with narcolepsy, CPAP doesn't solve the narcolepsy and often interferes with the diagnosis of narcolepsy.

Sorry I am not understanding the conclusion from your post, other than CPAP is ineffective for OSA. When did I or anyone else diagnose OP? The antidepressants are a completely different class of drugs that affect brain chemistry, so that was all I was commenting on. The OP didn’t go to a psychiatrist to get assessed for depression, yet their primary care provider put them on antidepressants as part of a positive diagnosis of Narcolepsy??

Wouldn’t they fare better with Modafinil for wakefulness if they have OSA and will still struggle staying awake during daylight hours?

I’m just trying to understand how Prozac came from the diagnosis of OSA and Narcolepsy without evaluation by a psychiatrist?

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My whole childhood in the 80s was writing video games at home. It's all I wanted to do. I was really fucking good at it. First job out of school - writing video games professionally. It sucked. Really sucked. This was back in the mid-90s when the profession was in a really bad place. I got out within 2 years and never went back :( I heard the industry was much better now, though? This is the game I worked on: https:/…

I've heard Robolox is a nice place to work and every other gaming company is a little better than it was in the past because they have to be.

That’s partially due to that fact that Roblox is a platform and is not a gaming company. It’s a different business model and culture that isn’t subject to the vagaries of the games industry.

(And yes, it’s a great place to work!)

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#48

A CPAP machine changed my life. I had undiagnosed sleep apnia for most of my adult life and just assumed being constantly tired was the way. Until 5 years ago, when I had a sleep study and started using a CPAP. I had avoided the problem it for so long because I didn't want to go sleep in some lab and how does someone sleep with a giant mask on their face every night. Just excuses despite multiple people telling me I…

I needed this encouragement, so thank you for taking the time to write it.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#49
post #42

Just out of curiosity - does modafinil help with narcolepsy ? AFAIK it's the only thing it's approved for.

Why wouldn't the drug approved for treating narcolepsy help with narcolepsy? The answer is yes, it helps, but I'm super confused why you asked.

Because it shouldn't be debilitating if it can be medicated ? So that's the part I'm curious about.

Re: What happened to my career after 2010? (2021)

#50
I'm glad you were able to overcome your sleep issues. As someone who has spent a year figuring out how to sleep with a CPAP, let me assure you, I wish I could have been fixed with a pill. CPAP is amazing once you get it dialed in, but it took me a long time to acclimate, and it's a process that starts over when the seasons change an I have to change my machine settings.
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