somethingsimple

I don't know if it's been translated to English, but the book on which those movies are based is a great read as well.

> If you can't stand for your values because of "social anxiety" then maybe you don't value your values that much?

I’m not going to downvote you, but if you don’t suffer from social anxiety, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. As someone who is affected by it, I can tell you it’s soul crushing when it prevents you from making a move out of a bad situation. It’s completely paralyzing.

I've been considering getting a budgie for a long time. Is it ok to keep a single one? How much attention to they need every day? I'm out all day for work, but I could give it attention for hours in the evening and early morning. Also, what is an appropriate cage size? I live in a small condo.

Sort of tangential, but what was work/life balance like at Google for you?

How hard it is to access it as an adult with a career? I'm an immigrant software engineer but I'd love to work in research (I think).

Is there a path other than a PhD at this point?

I don’t disagree. But when your deadline is often tomorrow, what can you do?

It’s not about perception. I have to stay late because the work itself is insane. Crazy deadlines, dependency on other people/teams, that sort of thing.

Before immigrating to the US, I actually looked into Sweden. It seems nearly impossible to immigrate there :/

Everything I hear about your country sounds amazing!

Seriously, I need names. I have daily daydreams about the “comfy, 9-5, well-paying corporate job”. Maybe it’s the Seattle area but I’ve never heard of one here. Every job ad no matter the company always has the subtle wording that indicates you’ll be working under a lot of pressure and forced to multitask like crazy and spend long hours in the office.

Having worked at Microsoft and being now at another big tech company, that hasn't been my experience at all. Those companies seem to be trying to mimic startup culture internally, so they promote the "entrepreneurial employee" idea and try to organize groups internally as small startups.

I wish I could do the 9-5 thing at those companies (given the great pay and benefits, adding a predictable and sane work schedule would be perfect).

You may last a couple years being the odd one out doing strictly 40h a week, but performance review is going to catch up with you at some point.

These days I bite the bullet and stay till 8 or 9pm at the office regularly.

Thanks for explaining :)

> You know how to tell when the economy is in the last 25% of an economic expansion? When everywhere you turn is another white collar professional under the age of 30 in the middle of an existential crisis.

Can you elaborate on that? I feel like you’re talking about something quite important but I can’t really grasp what it is.

Yeah, it's something akin to the Peter Principle. Except I'm not being promoted. I'm still in the same position, except I always get assigned to do stuff I have no clue about, while there are a thousand other areas in the project where I could be doing my best work. I don't understand it.

I’m always afraid of letting me consider I have it, because I always seem to be put in positions where I’m incompetent.

It’s been a pattern in my career so far, and I don’t know how to break it. I join a new team, learn fast, do good work, everyone loves me. Then management assumes that because I’m good at x, I’m also good at y. So they put me to work on y and I fail miserably. Someone else has to come in and help me/fix it, and now all my credibility is gone.

I try not to beat myself up about it. I consider it a management failure. My current instance of this is management assuming that because I’m a good cider, I’m also good at dealing with infrastructure/operations type stuff. Which is simply not true.

I simply don’t understand their thought process.

I can relate. I work in the US by the way.

I don't slack off, but I feel like there's a position as a Software Engineer past which I wouldn't want to be promoted. I see folks in the higher levels and the stuff they have to deal with has zero appeal to me. My salary and bonus at my current level are already more than enough to sustain my lifestyle and save plenty for retirement - I don't need more.

A lot of people are attracted to the idea of "getting more responsibility", and they like the prestige/visibility that comes with a fancy (e.g. "Principal" or "Staff") title. Me, I just want to put in my hours solving problems and go home do something else.

I wish everything was so simple.

At a past job a very technically strong coworker spent months on a problem and eventually threw the towel and handed it to me. It took me another couple months to find a reasonable solution to it.

Some problems are _really_ hard and no amount of help will get a dev to solve it faster.

Been advocating this for months at my company with no success. Our standup is of the worst kind: conference call.

Sorry for not answering your question, but how do you get a job like that?

I miss that stuff so much. Did it from my late teens (yep, professionally) to mid twenties, then moved to America and all my jobs here have been services related in .NET or Java.

> From a religious perspective, I think our purpose should be contributing something to the world as long as we live.

I agree in principle, but what motivates me to be financially independent is not having to deal with all the bullshit that comes along with work. Office politics, drama, having your priorities set by someone else, etc. I also find having to care about promotions and such extremely stressful.

During periods of high stress, I find myself dreaming of FI just to stay home reading books and going to the gym. But more realistically, I’d likely continue to work my current job, with some changes.

If I were to become financially independent overnight, I’d schedule a 1:1 with my manager and explain that either I’m now working 100% on my terms, or I quit. That would allow me to just contribute to the product we’re developing, without having to deal with the bullshit. I’d then be perfectly fine staying at my current position for the rest of my career (i.e. no promos).

Which implementation do you use?

Does anyone here on HN have experience running NetBSD as their desktop OS?

That is correct. I’ve recently had a chat with a friend who used to be a manager, and according to him managers are very well aware that people do that. You may end up getting flagged for it.

> awful yearly physicals

I’m too curious not to ask what those encompassed.

We have a kid and also favor urban living. If we lived in the suburbs we’d be miserable, which wouldn’t be great for our kid.

So we live in the city in a “small” (by modern American standards) condo and we’re super happy with it.

A friend of mine who lives there told me rents cannot be increased by more than the current inflation rate for years. It’s only every x years that landlords are allowed to adjust to market rates or something.

Can someone from Berlin confirm that this is accurate?

Wow, things have gotten really bad since I left the country. Mind if I ask in what state you live? I never had trouble finding a full time programming job in Rio Grande do Sul.

> This will be an unpopular opinion here, but I feel we've (collectively) failed. Between ORMs and the dynamic language du jour, we have become so far removed from how computers work that most software development is a waste of electricity.

I just wanted to say that I was kinda relieved reading that, because I often feel like I’m the only person who thinks that.

At Google an interviewer expected me to come up with topological sort on the spot. I could solve his problem conceptually (figured it was a graph, and that the solution relied on performing a topological sort on it), but no way could remember the algorithm in the 15-20 minutes we had left. It’s something I’ve had to use on the job and I always look it up.

If I interview with Google again, I’m gonna memorize all graph algorithms I can. All my interviewers asked me graph questions.

I was just illustrating a point. She’s not an enthusiast at all. Software is strictly her job and she’s doesn’t care about it outside of work.

It baffles me because my initial reaction to someone like that is to think they’re not good. But she’s really good. She’s able to pick things up on the job fast and is extremely focused on her work. I OTOH always need to use my personal time to learn things and have trouble focusing, despite being a tech enthusiast.

On HN, etc: I was just illustrating a point. She’s not an enthusiast at all. Software is strictly her job and she’s doesn’t care about it outside of work.