Know people.
This aspect cannot be overstated. I landed my biggest* jobs because of my professional network. Moreover, I landed those roles during some serious labor market carnage: Dotcom Bust, Great Recession, and the current knowledge career uncertainty.
*Highest salary, longest running, best environment, most career growth, or some combination thereof.
The fundamentals are always going to be the same:
*This is not as hard as it sounds. Consider Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is shit”) and how much people phone it in; it’s pretty easy to stand out in most fields.
More specifically, I suggest “durable” career fields such as the trades (plumber, electrician, lineperson, crane operator, cement truck operator, etc). I mentor and tutor some high school and college students. There’s a lot of career uncertainty for the the foreseeable future, and the trades are not going anywhere. I generally suggest “do what pays the most and chaps your ass the least;” this is just a guideline and the kind of thing you need to figure out what your inflection point is. Whatever the fuck you do, avoid debt like it’s the plague.
Unless you land a proper apprenticeship, expect some serious long days for a few years, e.g. working full time and schooling/studying full time. Maybe you’ll get away with a less arduous journey, but if you’re mentally prepared to go full-tilt then you’ll be pleasantly surprised if the journey is easier.
Empathy by way of anecdote: I was a DJ and nightclub manager. I was surprised when I hit 25 and was somehow still alive. I decided to take this life stuff seriously and saw that there was most likely no path towards serious financial security. I went back to college for audio engineering, working full time and going to school full time. I did audio engineering for about five years. While audio engineering was cool, I thought it would be even cooler to write the software tools for audio. So I poured myself into independent study, using my nights and weekends to learn programming. And once I was comfortable with programming, I went back to college again for software engineering, again full time school + work. The journey was hard, but I was a senior software engineer within 8 years, manager and principal roles another 4 years after that. However, I never got a job writing audio software; it’s been all medical and financial software. “How do you make the gods laugh? Make plans.” So have a vision, but be flexible and open to opportunities.
Honestly, if I could have another go at it, I would have chosen marine electrician. Travel, boats + ships, technical + creative field, and get to pick and choose jobs I want to do.
Woo warning ahead: there are qualitative aspects to the journey. Know what you want, rather than what you are avoiding. If you don’t know where you want to go, you are going to end up somewhere else. But something cool happens when you know what you want, know it in your bones, and commit to taking the steps. The universe delivers. Maybe not the exact thing you wanted, but some form of it.
I have a minor hand washing compulsion, but it’s not a germophobia thing. While I would prefer everyone wash their hands after using the bathroom, it doesn’t gross me out like some other things, like nose-picking.
Lots of excreta aerosolize or otherwise get everywhere. While hand washing is a low bar to improving hygiene, shit is literally everywhere. Want to see something scary (depending on your squeamishness)? Get a 350nm UV flashlight and check out your home. Hell, try it right after you do a deep clean.
I feel like this says more about neuroscience than it does about LLMs. :D
But seriously, my teams’ and individual experiences with LLMs have been mixed, at best. Even with advanced prompt training, the tools are just not there yet for our work.
The abandonment issues are a huge challenge. Empathy by way of anecdote: my abandonment issues as a child were so bad that I couldn’t tolerate the idea of limited edition breakfast cereals. “What if I really like this cereal and they stop making it?!”
It took me a lot of time, professional help, and mindfulness. Understanding my attachment style helped a lot. The super short, abstract spiel: attachment style is mostly set in stone; we can only work on our reactions. A positive inner voice is a huge step.
Everything as it is, I’ve started having issues with feelings of being disposable… I can’t expect people to stick around, like they’re waiting for a reason to abandon me.
That shit is going to happen. Stick with me here, because this is going to take a dark turn, but I found what works for me. You are disposable to most of the world. And you absolutely cannot expect people to stick around. To wish otherwise invites disaster. Graveyards are full of irreplaceable people.
You can, however, be such a positive addition to your physical circle (with enough self-awareness and boundaries to prevent getting exploited) such that your circle regard it as unthinkable to be without you. That positive inner voice you’re working on… great! But it’s not going to be one big thing that makes everything work better. It’s going to be lots of little (and a few big) changes that turn the ship around. Give the self-work a couple years. You may not even notice the changes, but they all add up.
In understanding your attachment style, you can more easily find people who are compatible. Spoiler alert: avoidant attachment tends to trigger people with abandonment issues; anxious-avoidant attachment styles tend to burn everything down around them.
Calm your reactivity, improve your communication and self-awareness, grow your mindfulness and acting with intention. Non-violent communication (NVC) is the kind of thing that pays dividends everywhere in life. As is mindfulness. Develop a consistent meditation routine.
In my experience, very few people are looking for the relationship exit. Those that are, you didn’t need them around.
Edit: forgot a word
This is also my understanding of “chav” from English and Scottish friends and relatives.
I’ll have some fever-dream solving a problem that has had me stumped
That’s happened to me enough to almost turn me to the woo side. :D “Answers Come In Dreams.”
I’ve had this run in both directions. Going through the repos a day later: “Holy hell, this solution is [utter shit || truly inspired || elegant AF || written by someone who should probably be fired]. Who wrote this? Me?! I don’t remember any of this.”
The compartmentalization/fugue state is real.
If I’m reading you correctly, this is what Decentralized ID (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier) aims to resolve, not just for social accounts. I wrote the initial DID implementation for my previous employer, but FIs, especially credit unions (our primary customers) were still a ways off from implementing it.
My familiarity with ATProto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Protocol) is extremely shallow, but as I understand it, ATProto can use DID. Hopefully someone else will come along and provide more info or correct my error.
This is me too. All the same t-shirts, pants, shoes (four pairs go to the cobbler for repair while one remains in use), socks, underwear. Getting dressed in the morning is zero-thought and always comfortable. My daily kit always fits on my person and I never have to fumble for anything. Pants repairs are consistent since they all wear out exactly the same way. The cobbler loves my repairs because it’s the same patterns for four left and four right shoes (just one pattern flipped).
Your list of ingredients there quite carefully left out the entire ladle full of cane sugar. By volume it’s about one third of the sauce by way of how every takeaway place I’ve ever seen prepares it.
0_0 Yowza… even if it’s “just” a #1 ladle, that’s a shit-ton of the white stuff. The place where I worked used ~1.5tbsp of white sugar per pound of chicken thigh. I… almost want to try one of these recipes you mentioned just so that I can get dessert and dinner in one container. :D
I’m in Europe where restaurants and food are generally better regulated.
Ah, gotcha! That right there is an enormous game-changer, and I’m agree with everything you say here. The US food chain is straight-up toxic. You may know this already: the US allows food treatments that are outright banned in most other countries. My travels in Europe were a revelation; I can eat things over there that invariably sicken me here, most notably bread and raw eggs. I would probably dine out more too if I lived in Europe. :D
Totally fair and thank you for the elaboration.
Trying to learn by own practical experience in this day and age seems like a bit late to the party, though.
I’ll counter this point with: I think we’re in a golden age of home cooking. YouTube alone is a gold mine for technique development and refinement. That won’t do anything for your lack of interest though.
So tired of hearing this dumb fuck argument. Ordering food =/= fastfood.
Well that’s good, because I’m not talking about fast food; I don’t eat fast food. Ever. My point was about knowing what you’re putting into your body, knowing how it was sourced and prepped. Dining out is at least three layers of abstraction from that knowledge. I’ve spent a lot of time working in restaurants, including high end ones. Apart from zero-compromise, prix-fixe, tasting menu establishments, recipes are always built to a price point. More restaurants than not use Sysco, First Street, or other nasty industrial sourcing. Most restaurants source their meats directly or indirectly from IBP/Tyson because they cornered the market on meat at scale*. And that’s before factoring in time-saving shortcuts, like not washing produce and using Sysco bases. For just one example on the sourcing risks, at high end restaurant where I worked the pantry cooks had to wear gloves to receive and sort the produce because the pesticides and container treatment gave them rashes.
*IBP used to be a reliable, quality source despite being CAFO meats, and what I used in my own charcuterie business. After the acquisition by Tyson, shit went downhill almost overnight. I closed up operations because sourcing at that scale was no longer possible for me.
The amount of people that seem to think their little bit of homecooking can compete with professional chef’s is laughable.
A chef is a cost engineer and inventory manager. But I get your point: Sturgeon’s Law absolutely applies to most people’s kitchen results.
How does it not? It’s just a boring activity.
I sincerely asked, and I assume you are similarly sincere in asking.
For me, it’s an absolutely quotidian task, every aspect of which I approach mindfully and joyfully. Using a good knife, decent pans, a halfway decent grill/range/oven… the joy of using good tools skillfully cannot be overstated. I mean… where else in our days do we get to play with knives around people and they love the results? :D Woodworking, I guess, but you can’t eat those results.
I love everything about cooking:
From a holistic, connected-to-the-land, tree-hugging hippie context, cooking takes the alchemy from Shit Wizards (AKA farmers) and transmutates those inputs into magical energy. Food nourishes the body; good cooking nourishes the soul. Gathering tribe around a meal that I made is even more fulfilling than the literal billions of people who, directly or indirectly, use the software I built.
From a biological context, knowing the provenance of my food is the culinary equivalent of using open source software. From an ethical living context, knowing that my food providers are using fair labor practices, compassionate animal welfare, and good land stewardship enables me to make food that I eat and share in good conscience. Also, garbage in, garbage out on every level. This is stuff you’re putting in your body. The body that carries around your brain, both of which ya kinda need to do other things you enjoy. Food is medicine, and so many ills I see, physical and otherwise, stem from poor food sourcing and prep.
From an efficiency, conservation, and creativity context:
In the grand scheme of human experience, there are few things that everyone can do that fire on all sensory cylinders while delivering the spiritual high of creativity manifested. Cooking is something everyone can do.
Why does cooking suck for you?
This might be true for the shittiest of Chinese-American recipes. Just like OP, I don’t know where you’re getting your sesame chicken, but I suggest you stop going there.
Now, regarding the bases being mostly sugar, if you’re talking chemically, your statement is true: starches are just chains of sugar. But if your GTC and SC only differ by crushed red, you’re getting robbed.
Source: worked pantry/prep in the most popular Chinese take-out-only joint in Albany NY while in college. GTC was by far the most popular dish, averaging ~700 orders per night, pre Internet.
Granted, Chinese-American recipes are chaos. In my experience though, the best GTC recipes use whole japones chiles which are toasted in oil to make them more fragrant and a much more attractive presentation. Rice wine vinegar, garlic, ginger, and oyster sauce are the other primary notes. The balance of these notes IMO are what define the signature of the best GTC for any given restaurant, and everyone is just bringing their own spin to that mix.
Some of the comments here and some of the “Best GTC/SC Recipe EVAARRR!” that I see on the interwebz… Holy hell, y’all. I want to come cook for you, because… DAMN. There’s some genuinely so-shitty-it’s-hilarious-yet-tragic C-A recipes out there.
I don’t know where you’re getting General Tso’s chicken, but may I suggest not going there anymore? :D
Holy hell, I feel this viscerally. I recently inherited an enterprise codebase with a new job and that pic is exactly how I imagine the consulting company reacted after hand-off. The code is actually quite clean and mostly makes sense, but it’s completely undocumented (including a lack of specs and XML comments for endpoints). By and large, it’s mostly SOLID, but there are abstractions on abstractions, handlers for handlers for handlers. Configuring to run locally or against the dev environment is a huge rigamarole that I’m trying to simplify before trying to bring on any more SWEs. The bright spot here is that I’ve been given a long runway to come up to speed.
Government will always be abused and turned against the people so its power should be limited
Fully agreed. This is the nature of power. It is a problem as old as humanity, and there have been loads of attempted solutions to that end. Probably the oldest known is the Insulting the Meat Ritual in hunter-gatherer tribes to prevent hunters from becoming egotistical. Given the rarity of remaining hunter-gatherers, we can guess how that worked out.
Decentralization (why we’re here in the Fediverse, right?), social ownership of the economy, revocation of corporate privileges… all excellent goals to which we can aspire. It’s a bit hackneyed but the truism applies: think globally, act locally. On social ownership of the economy, may I suggest looking into timebanks? Join your local timebank if it exists; start one if it doesn’t. A lot of what timebanks (can) accomplish represents most of these ideals. Disclosure: I’m a founding board member and the treasurer of my local timebank, so I have a lot of bias for timebanks as one potential arrow in the quiver of effecting social change.
Do you know any EMTs? I do, and it sounds like you might also. In the US at least, this seems the opposite direction of what OP is asking. Long hours, low pay when amortized over hours on call, high stress, but potentially great personal satisfaction. Also potential career track to other first responder/medical roles, which can be another plus, e.g. wilderness SAR, marine emergency SAR, trauma nurse*, etc.
If I have any of that wrong, I sincerely would enjoy additional context and discourse.
*A close friend from high school went the EMT->trauma nurse route. He has the temperament for it and absolutely rocks it. He is doing waaaaay better financially and spiritually than most of our social circle. His hours aren’t consistent per se, 3 days on, 3 days off plus any additional shifts he wants. He could have retired about 5 years ago, but loves the work too much.