I would love to read the article because, based on the comments here, it seems interesting. However, regardless of what I do, I can't seem to have the math load for me. I have tried Firefox, Chrome and Edge with no luck.
I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
71–80 of 82 posts
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#72But the environment matters a lot less than the fact that when I get home from work—which is a two hour commute each way (sorry, I can’t afford to live in downtown San Francisco)—I just feel like being mentally incapacitated. This person spends 4 hours commuting each day. I would suffer from mental atrophy as well. If you work full-time, that's at least 8 additional hours per day down the drain, and that doesn't even…
Either the commute, or the long working day. The commute might be less soul crushing on a 6 hour work day.
In any case, I generally refuse jobs outside Amsterdam (where I live) unless it's Utrecht right next to the station. Otherwise the commute just gets too long. Sometimes a recruiter asks if there's really no way around that, and I tell them counting the commute as hours worked, meaning I'd be present at the office less, would work fine for me. I don't want to be forced to sacrifice private time for work.
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing. I stared in horror at the following: "Here in Silicon Valley, it’s even worse. I have an aesthetically nicer place, but I now don’t even have a desk or desktop machine. I type from a small laptop on my couch, being held up by a pillow. I have no room for a chalkboard or whiteboard, unless I wanted to cover up half of my mirrored closet." I am an east-coast developer and am totally spoiled with my…
I am a German developer with a German developer salary (between 60k€ and 70k€ to provide a ballpark estimate) and I live in the center of a large, well-known German city. The area is extremely nice except for parking and I live in a ~70sqm modernized apartment with my own home office and enough room for tech gadgets, a large couch, a large bed and a balcony... etc. In the evening, restaurants, bars, cinema and nice p…
Why are finance people drawn to New York?
Why are film people drawn to Los Angeles?
More is different.
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aristotle articulated all this stuff much better and in far fewer words 2300 years ago in his writings on work and leisure.
One of his (and plato's) conclusions was roughly that excellence is not really possible without slavery facilitating. Some needed to be freed from stress of toil by laborers. It's very sad this fellow's father couldn't fund his further development.
I wonder whether modern robotics would fulfil their definition of "slavery"... Or whether modern patronage on its own (university research, arts funding, etc) would suffice in their view.
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#75My advice would be: rigorously eliminate everything from your life which doesn't fit inside your top X critical priorities. Where X is as small as possible, and seek to cull it further by combining equivalents and trying to identify why some 'important' things might actually be utter wastes of time in the first place. The world generally uses a ratchet approach to conquer your attention. Use a ratchet to take it back…
that sounds like a depressing existence
I'd agree. I've seen people who try to min-max their life and "fulfilled" is not a word I'd use to describe them.
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing. I stared in horror at the following: "Here in Silicon Valley, it’s even worse. I have an aesthetically nicer place, but I now don’t even have a desk or desktop machine. I type from a small laptop on my couch, being held up by a pillow. I have no room for a chalkboard or whiteboard, unless I wanted to cover up half of my mirrored closet." I am an east-coast developer and am totally spoiled with my…
I am a German developer with a German developer salary (between 60k€ and 70k€ to provide a ballpark estimate) and I live in the center of a large, well-known German city. The area is extremely nice except for parking and I live in a ~70sqm modernized apartment with my own home office and enough room for tech gadgets, a large couch, a large bed and a balcony... etc. In the evening, restaurants, bars, cinema and nice p…
Salary at FAANG starts at 120.000USD (when you 'just' graduated from Stanford or Berkeley) and will go up to about 300.000 over time.
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#77Time management, mental and physical energy management, planning and organizing are very underrated skills in tech. No matter how clever you are if you don't have the above, you are going to hit the ceiling fast in a demanding environment.
The dreaded word! Processes and systems, better figure out systems and processes that work for you fast.
You must figure out what works for you, here's a few for me.
I use a trello board to manage home tasks and personal tasks. I schedule things I need to do in my calendar. I use checklist to keep track of things I need to do. I even schedule fun activities so I don't burn out. When I can tell I'm running low on sleep, I schedule sleep alarms to remind me to go to bed. To dive deep into something when you don't have the time is tough, but you can do so by scheduling smaller times and keep detailed notes which you can reference to remember what you have done and where you were.
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having spent a good deal with my of my career in the wilds of technical consulting, I can say with confidence that the product group and engineers at places like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon really are better than average. That's not to say they have a lock on all good engineers, because but they have very few bad ones. You are right though, getting into one of the bigs isn't impossible with a reasonable amount of w…
But with these "better than average" types, what is the culture like other than constant, non-stop work? People died to get us a 40 hour work week and here we have all these brilliant folks putting us right back in chains. They think they're getting rich, but it is all a lie. A few are getting rich, the rest are being tricked.
At Microsoft its pretty good, I can't speak well for others. Work-life flexibility is something we take pretty seriously in the groups I've worked in, and the workload is pretty manageable. It's a little >40h/week on average, but not dramatically so, and most people take their full vacation and holiday packages (3-5 weeks vacation, 12 holidays). There are bad weeks or a bad month, but its not the norm. I'd say almost everyone spends more time then that doing other technical things, but that's because we get joy out of it. Last time I tried to measure it, I'm typically doing about 5-10h/week on top of work reading technical books, researching something, or playing with some new technology on my own time.
There are also a number of true workaholics spending 60 hours + a week strictly working, but that's typically because they want to and not because the organization is running in permanent crunch mode.
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#79It’s always a little bit risky to write something personal that will inevitably come across as something other than humble. Especially when it’s also mixed with something that comes across very first-world-problemy. Mind you that showing that one can do a little bit of calculus isn’t a testament to being a genius or anything like that. The examples the story describes might as well be equivalent to something more obv…
I tried replying to your article. Since I now notice it's been six years, I wonder whether you did anything with this? I don't think professional mathematicians would say you shouldn't pursue it. The opposite, actually. If people like myself who never practiced it in their own time can get degrees in it, so could you. You don't need to be any kind of genius.
I also have similar questions. What did you end up doing about this feeling? I don't believe my own intelligence was (or is) on the same caliber as yours, but I do feel like it has atrophied somewhat since joining the working world, and that is in spite of doing a CS masters. Honestly I believe if I hadn't done the masters I would've gone crazy from the deterioration.
Re: I Wasn’t Prepared for Work (2013)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a German developer with a German developer salary (between 60k€ and 70k€ to provide a ballpark estimate) and I live in the center of a large, well-known German city. The area is extremely nice except for parking and I live in a ~70sqm modernized apartment with my own home office and enough room for tech gadgets, a large couch, a large bed and a balcony... etc. In the evening, restaurants, bars, cinema and nice p…
Salary at FAANG starts at 120.000USD (when you 'just' graduated from Stanford or Berkeley) and will go up to about 300.000 over time.
I understand that. I earn less but don't push half my salary to rent or breaking my bone.