almost_usual

I work/program on CalTrain but that’s pretty common. NYC subway or BART seems a bit more challenging.

It’s overall time much better spent than being stuck in a car.

It comes down to dopamine and if there was friction involved to get that dopamine.

No point in quitting, reduce workload.

If leadership needs to manage folks out make them do the work and collect a paycheck while it happens.

Anterior mid cingulate cortex (aMCC) has been shown to grow when individuals overcome challenges.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7381101/

The US is still cowboy country in many ways.

Nice work!

Actually a lot less than I expected.

That’s impressive, how much vert?

An 80 year old also completed Badwater ultra (135 mile run in Death Valley in the summer).

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/16/nx-s1-5467389/meet-the-oldest...

Ultra typically has much more vert, if you don’t strength train or train downhills your quads get destroyed. It gets to the point where you want uphills because the downhills are all pain.

It’s also not unusual for ultramarathoners to include speed work early in a training block (see Jason Koop).

I ran my first ultra in the past month (55k, 7000ft vert). A year ago I didn’t run at all but I’ve always done strength training.

The hardest part is finding time for training. For 100k it’s recommended to put in at least 60 miles per week during peak weeks to finish without injury or a lot of suffering.

As long as you’re training responsibly your body adapts and builds a ‘base’ over time.

This makes you much more resilient not less.

This is a drop in the bucket, the Bay Area isn’t going to become Hong Kong anytime soon.

If it makes me a better engineer and the feedback is valid sure. If they are attacking my personal beliefs or family that is a different matter.

I’m not saying it’s OK for everyone. If folks are unable to extract the same value that’s fine, find advice from someone else.

If it came from an engineer as respected as Linus, sure. Someone who was average at best with a big ego? No.

Context matters here.

Commute home starts at 4pm on the train, I work while on the train. Get home at 5pm, get dinner ready. Dinner cooked by 6-6:30pm usually done eating shortly after.

Wind down starts at 7pm, do some miscellaneous things like dishes etc, take a hot shower. In bed by 8pm.

I avoid driving as much as possible. I will always walk, run, ride a bike, or take public transit rather than drive.

Driving is tremendously expensive when it comes to time.

Nope. I get 8-7.5hrs every night. I’m asleep within 15 minutes, zero screen time.

I incorporate errands into my schedule. When I walk home from work from the train station I will stop by the local grocery store to pick up anything that is needed.

My employer is fine with me working from the train to and from work. I get there early and I leave early.

Weekends are arranged to buy other items in bulk.

My bed time routine is probably 15 minutes of reading a book before I fall asleep.

There are plenty of wealthy people who are unhealthy.

Wake up at 4:30am and go for a run. You’re already accomplishing more at that point in the day than most wealthy people who are comfortably laying in bed.

The hard thing is doing the thing. Just do, that’s it.

The mental toughness, discipline, and higher energy levels that come with exercise are more important to me than physical appearance or living longer, and at this point almost anything else in life.

Wake up at 4am, run hill repeats for miles and then go into work. I guarantee no incident or colleague will trigger a stress response. You will feel as cool as a cucumber and when an urgent issue does come up you will handle it with absolute mental clarity. That afternoon drowsiness will also not hit you at all, counterintuitive right?

By 9pm you will fall asleep no matter what happened that day.

This kind of work gives you an edge on everyone. You look at things and say, “shit this is easy compared to what I did this morning” and you will feel mentally fresh.

Economy is wrecked due to real estate and internal power struggles.

Arguably USD strength comes from geography.

Nice, how much do I need to cut to get 33s on it?

It takes a lot of practice and is a skill in itself. Most interviewers would fail a similar live coding exercise if they interviewed at another company without practice.

The goal is to keep yourself grounded and focus on the problem at hand. Practicing under these circumstances of course makes it easier.

Work for a public company and get paid in real equity or start your own company if you want to burn yourself out.

Anything less is a monumental waste of time and energy.

Looks like you’re a founder based on your profile so you’ve also figured this out.

Hard to pay for a health care system when the population is incentivized to live absolute unhealthy lives.

Encourage not sleeping, advertise and manufacture processed garbage, encourage drinking poison, and most of all encourage working long hours over getting any physical activity.

Yeah, good luck with that. It’s an every man for themselves environment, the government and American society is fine with throwing your body into the meat grinder for more profit.

Ironically we’d be much more productive if we incentivized a healthier lifestyle for the population.

This is why working for startups is not worth it.

Alcohol, nicotine / cigarettes, sugar packed junk food. The digital realm of addiction is a new face of the same pattern.

Cheap hits to increase pleasure centers in the brain that overall have a detrimental cost to humanity with entire industries to deal with the health consequences.

This is the mining of wealth from health reducing the overall productivity of humanity for the sake of near term profits. Optimizing short term gains for long term progress.

Alcohol destroys any diet. I’m amazed how much more energy I have and how much weight I’ve lost being sober.

Visceral fats leading to diabetes can be present without someone being visibly overweight.

Similarly people who appear overweight may have low volumes of visceral fat. Health is hard to determine without analysis and testing.