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Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#511

Post by repsilat »

Jtsummers wrote: post #379
justboxing wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> getting a softskills excel/MS word gov job for equal pay This is a great idea ( I sincerely mean it), and I too have been toying with this. Gov programming jobs are also very cushy. The knock on them ( / "cons" ) until recently was that they pay very less, almost 40% less, and that it's full of old people. But that has changed -- atleast in San Francisco and Bay Area where I live. Esp the City of San Francisco tech…

Federal pension is not that high, just so you know. It's 1%/year, unless you have 20+ years and retire at 62 (not collect, you are still working for the government at age 62 and retire with 20+ years of service). Then it's 1.1%/year. With 17 years you get 17% of your high three year average. You can't collect that pension until you're 62, unless you want to take a penalty. Now, if you're including the TSP (401k equiv…

> Then it's 1.1%/year.

Still, if you assume something like a 4% return (maybe comparable to the bonds behind them?), that 1.1%/year amounts to another 27.5% on top of your gross pay.

And that's not considering the likelihood that you'll be earning more at the end of your tenure than at the start. You're effectively earning that significant fraction of your final pay on top of whatever you see in your pay check.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#512

Post by nostrademons »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #499
nostrademons wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't go on my first date until a month before my 30th birthday. Met my eventual wife on OKCupid 18 months later, married her 2 years after that, and now have a 7 month old, ~7 years after it all started. I'll disagree with a lot of the advice given here. The pictures on online dating sites are what you make of them. I didn't even like my wife's pictures, I only messaged her because she was playing 4 truths and a…

> a.) all my female friends told me "Dude, you're skeevy just for even mentioning them" The whole point of Red Pill stuff is that there's a disconnect between what people want and what they say they want. Also I seriously doubt your female friends have ever actually read any of the material and only know what it is from second hand information. So really their opinion on it is worthless. Also first rule of fight club…

I worked at Google at the time, so I was already well acquainted with the idea that people want something other than what they say they want. Hell, my day job consisted of running experiments on billions of people and trying to manipulate the whole web ecosystem to give us data, so I had a pretty extensive applied-psychology background there.

I just felt that the specific strategies employed by most of the PUA community were a.) useless and b.) worse than useless for me. And I suspect it actually was because of selection bias: if you're out there picking up girls, it's because you are not in a steady, happy relationship. Anyone who is in a steady, happy relationship drops out of the dating pool entirely. I wanted a steady, happy relationship; ergo, folks who were out there sarging every night were not very good role models for me.

That's another lesson I took from professional life that carries over into your romantic life: know which game you want to be playing, and ignore advice from people who are playing a different game.

I've got my own model of human behavior and why people make the romantic choices they do. It works for me, and it might even seem vaguely familiar to trained psychologists, but it'd probably piss off a bunch of folks in this sub-thread. Like you said, first rule of fight club.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#513

Post by zo1 »

Sukotto wrote: post #349

Every day is a struggle. For several years I've struggled to learn enough Japanese for daily living. (Spouse is Japanese and we moved to Japan a few years ago with our 3 school-aged kids). Very little success on this. しょうがないね My wife is out of town anywhere between 3 days to 2 weeks each month for her job. While she is gone, we rely heavily on her parents (with whom I cannot communicate directly). They take care of l…

What were your motivations to move to Japan in the first place?

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#514

Post by DenisM »

01100011 wrote: post #435
DenisM wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask your sleep doc about modafinil, it will set you straight wrt excessive sleepiness. Check for anxiety too, that can mess up your sleep.

Got a supply of armodafinil but I weaned myself off when I got the CPAP. I did OK for a couple months but now I'm sluggish again. I have essential tremor, which is made worse by armodafinil so I'm trying not to rely on it. Good stuff though.

So, you have to pick your poison now, eh? Sorry to hear that.

Don't give up though, there might be a combination of drugs that will reduce the side effect. It might be a lot of work to find the right combo, but the stakes are high too.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#515

Post by snikeris »

Odenwaelder wrote: post #15

I struggle with the question whether to have children or not. I'm surrounded by new fathers who struggle with their children, whose wives have turned from attractive women into unattractive moms. I read witty comments all the time suggesting how much of a burden kids are. This struggle burns me out.

Don't feel bad about struggling with the question. It's only with the recent advent of birth control that it's become a decision we have to make. Children used to just happen.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#516

Post by Jtsummers »

repsilat wrote: post #511
Jtsummers wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal pension is not that high, just so you know. It's 1%/year, unless you have 20+ years and retire at 62 (not collect, you are still working for the government at age 62 and retire with 20+ years of service). Then it's 1.1%/year. With 17 years you get 17% of your high three year average. You can't collect that pension until you're 62, unless you want to take a penalty. Now, if you're including the TSP (401k equiv…

> Then it's 1.1%/year. Still, if you assume something like a 4% return (maybe comparable to the bonds behind them?), that 1.1%/year amounts to another 27.5% on top of your gross pay. And that's not considering the likelihood that you'll be earning more at the end of your tenure than at the start. You're effectively earning that significant fraction of your final pay on top of whatever you see in your pay check.

What that 1% or 1.1% per year represents is your pension, which is paid like a salary.

So if I work for 20 years and have an average of 100k for my high 3-year, I'm getting $20k/year for the rest of my life.

In the same circumstances but I retire at age 62 (leave work at age 62), I get $22k/year for the rest of my life.

The current President is also talking about eliminating the cost-of-living adjustmetns that have been typical (intended to keep with inflation) for retirees, and changing the 3-year average to a 5-year average.

The other number I gave (5%) is a matching contribution to the TSP (401k equivalent), that is cash given each year and will add up to something more substantial. Even assuming a modest 4%/year return over 20-30 years of contributing.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#517

Post by jklein11 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #254
sloaken wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I basically don't date. I find the entire thing extremely stressful and unbearable" I had the same problem. I am sure you have heard this before"you regret what you do not do, not what you did". So SUCK IT UP, and get out there. After a few dates, you will thank me. But I agree the short term sucks, but it will be worth it.

I assure you, there are many many things in life that you will regret doing if you have any sense of shame or a conscience.

Yes but there are very few things in life that you can't make better however it is very difficult to make up for lost time

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#518

Post by true_tuna »

mrfusion wrote: post #342
jmts wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found it somewhat useful to write all the things I want to do somewhere that I trust, and select a few of them to work on right now that I am either most interested in, or feel will give me the greatest benefit in the future. I give myself permission to shuffle those projects as necessary, by try to limit them to just a couple at a time so they don't become unmanageable. I have huge lists of ideas for projects…

Can I have some ideas? I’m actually having the opposite problem..

Here take some of mine: Start playing with machine learning. https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/ https://medium.com/deep-learning-turkey/google-colab-free-gp...

Make some fun IoT projects with a raspberry pi. https://pi-hole.net https://blog.adafruit.com/2018/07/13/how-to-make-a-raspberry...

Buy a cheap car with known (but not massive) problems and Learn how to fix them.

Read or watch Richard Fineman’s physics lectures. http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#519

Post by anarazel »

exikyut wrote: post #457
n0tme wrote: post #452

I am 35 and I am lonely and it's not getting any better + my job is getting boring (DBA), since I am pretty familiar with everything, and there's no chance for me to switch to programming, even though I know JS and many other languages, but my resume says: 10+ years DBA.

Does improving query optimizers or other internal stages sound interesting? If you've been a DBA for 10 years then you're going to know a few things about the way databases work internally, even if you specifically only have experience with say SQL Server or Oracle. You could very probably pivot around into database development/maintenance and the transition (including the job-hunt bit) may be less bumpy than you exp…

> Does improving query optimizers or other internal stages sound interesting? If you've been a DBA for 10 years then you're going to know a few things about the way databases work internally, even if you specifically only have experience with say SQL Server or Oracle.

> You could very probably pivot around into database development/maintenance and the transition (including the job-hunt bit) may be less bumpy than you expect.

Yes, that's totally doable in the PG world. Send a few small patches, proof that you can work with the community, and you'll likely start to get job offers. You won't get close 100% open source work immediately, of course, but there's several places that hire where you can have growth potential.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#520

Post by [deleted] »

Odenwaelder wrote: post #15

I struggle with the question whether to have children or not. I'm surrounded by new fathers who struggle with their children, whose wives have turned from attractive women into unattractive moms. I read witty comments all the time suggesting how much of a burden kids are. This struggle burns me out.

[deleted]
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