I would put forth that Google isn't a search company anymore. They spend more resources filtering out all the junk on the web. Search is a secondary function for them. The end-user doesn't see the filtering; publishers and merchants trying to jockey for position do.
I took two breaks from tech. One was for grad school, which I dropped out of after 3 semesters. Like some others in the thread I found academia to be pretty bad. You're paid shit and treated like a peon. The work was actually interesting, but I knew I could just go back to private industry and make 5-10x as much doing the same type of work.
I took a break from "everything" at one point and became a nightlife photographer in a large urban area. It didn't pay much. It mostly involved drinking and doing drugs, on someone else's dime, until the early morning. It was a great time for the most part, and I met lots of interesting people. After about 6 months I got tired of it and went back to tech. Note: having a professional camera in a club is a great way to meet women.
I'm considering leaving tech again, or at least ending my engineering career. I no longer find it personally enjoyable to build systems. Building systems that other people want, instead of ones I'd want to build, has jaded me. I've worked at several companies, large and small, over the years. And I've found that as a tech shop matures, that exciting feeling of creating a product dulls. It dulls to the point of becoming anesthetic. The longer you stay, the worse it becomes. I wouldn't mind staying in the tech field. I just don't want to spend all day in front of a monitor anymore.
> The work was actually interesting, but I knew I could just go back to private industry and make 5-10x as much doing the same type of work.
Don't you have much more freedom in academia on what you want to pursue though since it doesn't have to make money or am I mistaken? I'm considering going into academia because I'd like to do research more on the theory side for which there don't seem to be (m)any industry positions.
Long answer: Yes, if you can find a PI/project that's solving the exact problem you want to solve.
The work doesn't have to make money, but it has to make papers. And if your publications aren't landing in high profile journals, your funding (and career) will dry up.
You'll have freedom to do the things that are fashionable in your field which you are qualified to research and are popular in your department. That's very different from "what you want to pursue" in many cases.
If those things match up with your desires, it will be great, otherwise you're going to be seriously miserable and feel penned in by the work that you're "allowed" (for on-campus political reasons) to do. In a lot of ways industry actually affords more opportunities, depending on the field.
I didn't find that to be true. As a grad student and also as a postdoc, you work on whatever your PI can get grants for, which means you work on whatever the big grant-funding agencies think is fashionable.
Also in academia there's less ability to pivot when a project isn't working out -- if the results will be "novel" (i.e. you can get a paper out of it), you're pretty much stuck continuing in a line of work until you publish it, even if you've already concluded it won't be useful in the real world.
In industry, as soon as I determine that a piece of work won't be useful, I can drop it and work on something more useful. Personally, I much prefer the criteria of "usefulness" as a reason to continue a project, rather than "novelty". Other people may differ on that preference.
Autonomy in academia depends entirely on the field, the funding situation, and the advisor. If you choose wisely, you can build a highly autonomous career. But it is hard for the inexperienced to figure out how to make the right choices.
have you ever tried technology sales? i can turn on the social charm like a light switch but it requires significant effort so i wasn't able to do it long term but it might be a good transition for you.
I was considering that. I don't have any sales background, but I can communicate what's good and bad about software/systems fairly easily. In my career I've also had to "sell" complex ideas to management, and I've had pretty good success in getting permission to execute those ideas. Interacting with people can tire me out though. Nevertheless, I can power through anything with the proper motivation.
I'm currently trying out management, but the management atmosphere at my company is pretty bleak. None of the managers seem genuinely interested in launching products. They just kind of kick cans down the road for a few years hoping to fail upward. Over the past two years I've seen effective managers leave the company while the mediocre ones stick around. I probably just need to explore companies whose work ethic suits me better. However, it's hard to know beforehand if the company/team you join is going to fit you.
The other option is starting/founding a company. To explore that I've been going to monthly alumni events to network. There's so much money being thrown around in the Bay Area, I might as well try to tug on the brass ring. And it's not entirely the money that's the attraction, but the opportunity to call the shots.
As someone with basically zero talent for salesmanship, from my outside perspective I'd describe the sales process (and thus the process of getting a sales job) as anticipating, identifying, or manufacturing a need in someone, and positioning yourself to fill that need. So I imagine the parent commenter could use that to decide if/how to transition to sales.
that's marketing + sales but yeah, a small organization 'sales person', or an above-median good one that works in a large organization will have to understand (or even do) both.
I became a photographer because I had some friends who were socialites and had VIP access to clubs. Their various club owner friends liked my photography, so I just started showing up with my camera all the time and I'd get in free and drink all night.
These are based off my current experience in transitioning to a management role. I'm still a dev, but my manager is "testing me out" for a management role.
- Keep current on technologies, what your team uses and wants to use, and also technologies that might be useful.
- Know your developers' strengths and weakness, both technical and interpersonal.
- Time management. (Can't stress this enough).
- Ask lots of thoughtful questions (informed by the first item in the list).
- Develop relationships with other managers, teams and executives. If you want to manager bigger things, those guys need to see you and know you can do it.
- Don't hold grudges. At the end of the day, go home and forget about any bullshit that occurred.
- Trust your developers.
- Don't be afraid to say no.
- Take risks. Accept responsibility when those risks turn into failures.
- Give genuine praise.
One sort of cultural thing to keep in mind. It may not apply to you though. After moving to the Bay Area several years ago I noticed that behavior with organizations often defaults to passive-aggressive, especially when there's disagreement. Avoid being passive-aggressive and correct others (in a professional manner) when they're being passive-aggressive. I used to deal with more aggressive people when I worked on the East Coast. You know where you stand at least. PA behavior allows bad sentiment to stew and kills progress of any sort. Being assertive most of the time will solve this.
A corollary of managing passive-aggressive team members is to not hide bad project news from upset management. A project in trouble is unlikely to get back on track on its own. Management wants to help but needs to be able to trust your status reports.
Likewise, your job is to ship the project and you need your dev team's trust to do that, so you should look for new solutions and risk mitigations when raising project problems to management, not pointing blame or throwing people under the bus.
I've taken sertraline, venlafaxine, bupropion and fluoxetine.
Fluoxetine is the only SSRI I experienced no withdrawal from. I was on a low dose (10-20mg) though, and it mostly worked (went from severe depression to mild/none). I have a standing prescription for this as a fallback, but haven't taken it in 3 years. I avoid taking it because of the sexual side effects. I like having orgasms.
Bupropion triggered a seizure after the first dose. Immediately discontinued.
Venlafaxine was mostly effective, but I went from depressed to robotic/apathetic. When I stopped taking it, I tapered off, but I had brain zaps and developed acute tinnitus for over a month, alternating in each ear. To this day, 15 years after treatment, I still experience moderate hearing loss in my ears several times a month for about 60-90 seconds at a time.
Sertraline was the worst. I got up to 150mg before the problems. It triggered a hypomanic episode that lasted for about a month. I didn't sleep at all for the first three days it manifested. The doctor stopped treatment immediately and put me on risperidone, which is a new level of awfulness. I just quit taking it after a month, and told my doctor I would never take any antipsychotic again.
I have a great doctor now. He's not even a psychiatrist, just a generalist, but he's treated many cases of depression over the past 20 years. He figured I didn't have unipolar depression, but bipolar, due to the hypomania. SSRIs are bad, and not recommended, as monotherapy for bipolar. So he put me on lamotrigine and I haven't had a depressive (or manic) episode for over two years. I've also experienced no noticeable side effects.
I've found the only thing that matters in the treatment of mental/behavioral disorders is your doctor's skill and knowledge. Don't be afraid to dump a mediocre doctor; it's your wellbeing on the line.
I had a very similar experience. Tried a couple of SSRIs prior to sertraline and had a manic episode shortly after starting it. I was up for about 3 days and drinking furiously. Felt like I was on coke. Immediately stopped once I realised what was happening but it was so gradual and I was manic so it had to be pointed out to me that I was flying.
My company's style is a culture of consensus. No one really "gives orders," because that's too aggressive, and someone might feel hurt. I find it fucking awful. If there's disagreement about something, usually another person is brought into the mix for "input," ad infinitum. This happens until the issue becomes a non-issue or a disagreement over a new issue occurs.
I might disagree with someone if they ordered me to do something I think is wrong, but I actually admire them for making a decision. There's nothing worse than making no progress because no one has the balls or authority to say "there's contention over this issue, but I think X is the best course."
Oh yeah. Ye old "disagree w/ them until they don't care". It's terrible. Usually the most stubborn peasant will get his way. A toxic culture is born/consolidated. It drains any excitement that you may have for the job. The whole process turn into a huge circlej*rl.
SF needs to worry about its own transit issues. MUNI stops at rush hour are poorly serviced. I can't get on most of the trains that pass through Civic Center, so I usually end up going inbound to Montgomery or Embarcadero so I can actually board.
These modifiers are always a touchy point with me. They aren't applied consistently and imply greater experience and ability, when they often signify time spent at a company or political acumen. Over my 15 years in engineering, I've seen several engineers without senior or lead titles who provide more value than those with the modifier.
I prefer "staff engineer" for engineers who are capable of producing useful, working systems with a team. "Lead" should not be a modifier to a title, just an indicator who makes final technical decisions on a team.
On my resume I only have "software engineer." If I have to negotiate a higher salary after an offer, I point to my accomplishments and not my title.
At my last job, my title was "Vice President" (against my preference). There were five of us. I was Vice President over nobody, and spent all my time doing the same things I do (programming computers) at my current job with the title "software architect". If titles didn't used to be meaningless, startup culture has rendered them so.
This is the subject I tackled in grad school. It was super interesting, because many people still believe that memorizing stuff is best if you cram for an extended period of time. Showing them that just a few minutes of review at properly spaced intervals leads to better memorization floored most of the participants.
My particular research was the quantify the effects of the variance in follow-up exposure times. I did this research 10 years ago before smartphones were available. The participants had to physically be in a classroom in front of a computer to get the treatment. So in our experiment's case, the effects of variance were non-negligible and needed to be investigated. If smartphones had been around then, we could have tested so many more hypotheses.
The existence of spaced repetition also shows how dysfunctional educational systems (both public and private) are at making evidence-based improvements. If a method with such a clear overwhelming advantage at the stated goal isn't incorporated by schools, what hope is there that they'll make improvements where the evidence is hazier?
One of the most cited papers in the area is Frank Dempster's paper about the failure of educational systems to adopt spaced repetition: http://andrewvs.blogs.com/usu/files/the_spacing_effect.pdf Although the paper was was written almost 30 years, little has changed.
It is taken up, just not everywhere and not necessarily at scale. I've personally seen it used eg at Finnish schools - but there the teacher chooses the tool, not the government, so i don't know how common it is.
With more and more devices in class you can expect directed spaced repetition to hit hard. But actually i don't know a single person who didn't at some point get the instruction/advice to use flashcards for foreign language vocabulary. That being said it's not used much in other subjects - because no serious educationalist thinks education is about hammering facts into the brain. It's much more about concepts and critical thinking, at least in any semi-modern classroom .
Cramming might actually be the most time-effective strategy for a short recall period (one off exam). But naturally not if the aim is long term recall.
It is. We were specifically dealing with ESL/second-language learning though. Long term retention is necessary for fluency. If you want to pass a driver's exam or material you don't really care about beyond passing a test, then cram. Although in most classes, you will probably want to retain knowledge beyond a month in order to do well on a final.
This is the reason why I don't fear government surveillance as much as corporate surveillance. The government simply can't process all the data they collect. And the value of obtaining information from the data can be highly variable.
Corporate data collection and analysis efforts are optimized for least cost/highest return. They really don't care about individuals as much as they do classes/tranches of people. However, the most concerning part is when corporations will pass on, willingly or unknowingly, their trade secrets to the government to improve the latter's techniques.
> The government simply can't process all the data they collect.
They don't need to. They can focus their attention on high value targets. You and I might be low value targets and safe from surveillance (for now), but that doesn't mean the surveillance of high value targets doesn't affect us. As a thought experiment, imagine a world where an unscrupulous president uses the NSA to snoop on the opposition...
Now imagine an unscrupulous NSA Director mining through years of accumulated data to retroactively snoop on US Presidential candidates' past behavior...
Heck, why stop at the top? I'm sure digging up dirt on current Senators and Congressional representatives would be useful too.
> The government simply can't process all the data they collect.
I'm not comfortable with this conclusion for two reasons:
1. If it's actually true now, it's a high-stakes gamble that this will remain true. Say someone sets up CCTV and starts recording everything – how many years can you say “no big deal, they can't watch everyone!” before computer-vision improvements means that they can, and can retroactively mine their archives as well? A new President changes policies so you're suddenly higher up the priority list than you thought and suddenly you're trying to explain why your cell-phone position data never showed your position at a church or did show you near a protest, family planning clinic, etc. If the data isn't collected in the first place, you don't have to worry about any of that.
2. Maybe the government isn't so great at building data-mining operations — the federal procurement and hiring process are definitely huge obstacles there — but they can also outsource it to someone like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies who might be more effective.
> [...] or did show you near a protest, family planning clinic, etc.
I agree that people relying on the argument from gov't ineptitude are making a gamble-- and one that history of technological development tells us is incredibly risky.
But doesn't the fundamental danger depend on those activities or locations being viewed by society as suspicious in the first place? Also, doesn't the contingent danger of wide-surveillance thrive mainly off of the asymmetry of access to its inferences? Isn't an activist who speaks publicly about their struggle with bipolar disorder and builds a strong support group inherently safer than one who only tells a wide-net surveillance database?
The problem is that in the cases where you'd most want to, you never know what could be a problem until it's too late. Say in 2016 you went to a gay friend's wedding. No problem if that end up in some vast anti-terrorism archive of social media images since it's perfectly normal but … what about a decade later when President Pence of the Republic of Gilead declares that homosexuality is a crime against God and suspected sympathisers should have rights like employment curtailed?
That's an intentionally unlikely example but it's not like there aren't plenty of historical examples of this – e.g. imagine how much more dangerous HUAC[1] would have been if they'd been able to mine every picture on Facebook using facial recognition software to build a list of everyone who'd ever been in the scene with a targeted person.
Only if computing power catches up to handle the rapidly increasing rate at which data is produced. But as computing power increases, that also affects the rate at which data is produced. So, I firmly believe most data will sit around unprocessed and eventually decay into uselessness.
Yeah, and what happens when someone does steal unanalyzed data? You don't even know the damage. And then you have to decide, do we analyze what was stolen to see the effect, and lose real time analysis, or keep going with the real time and just wonder about what's coming from the breach.
I can't find a closer image of the west Portland area, so I can't comment on the nature of those commutes.
I live in SF, and at work my team consists of ~16 people. Of those 16 people only 3 live in SF (city/county). The other 13 live in the East Bay or south of the city. Of those who live outside the city the majority doesn't get paid enough to live within city limits; the others get paid well but have families and couldn't reasonably afford a large enough home in the city.
People are very willing to convert time into savings (on housing). And sometimes they have no other choice.
I'd like to see a closeup of the Portland area too. I live in Portland and while there's been a tremendous growth in the community over the last 10-20 years, Oregon has the concept of "urban growth boundaries" to preserve farm land, especially small family farming.
So most of the population here is within around 20 mi of the center of Portland, unlike Phoenix AZ where it sprawls out 100 mi or more. I'm guessing there are people who travel from/to nearby regions (e.g., Newberg, McMinnville, the "wine country") for commerce, tourism, and probably some commuters.
Perhaps there are similar considerations in other regions like SF which certainly has "tentacles" that stretch a long way out there.
