Generally speaking, just do work on your work computer. There has been at least one judicial ruling that holds that anything you do on employee owned equipment or networks can be monitored. Save the HN and social media for your phone. Don’t ever connect your personal phone to your employer’s WiFi. If you need your office email on your phone, ask for a work phone or use an old phone.
Congratulations on your life awareness at age 25! Good luck!
If you have not already done this, in addition to maxing out your 401(k), start a Roth IRA and max it out every single year. I regret not doing this.
Compound interest is everything for most regular people to build net worth. Compound debt is the worst.
As the saying goes, there will be friends for a reason, friends for a season, and friends for a lifetime. Friendships will run their natural course. That being said, do your best to maintain friendships you want to try to keep as you get older.
Don't get stuck in the friend zone. Be bold and ask that person out umambigously.
As many dentists say, floss the teeth that you want to keep. I recommend flossing then Water Pik then brushing with a mechanical toothbrush like an Oral-B.
If you don't know, learn how to cook. There are so many resources out there. While not knowing how to cook might be cute or excusable by a potential partner in your 20s, by your 30s or 40s it is no longer funny and definitely a liability.
Don't sit all day. Even standing desks aren't enough. Do some light calisthenics every hour. Push-ups, wall-sits, squats, knee bends.
Make the time to see friends in-person. We are all hardwired to crave IRL social interaction, even the most introverted of us.
You might want to skim Sahil Bloom's book. While it might not the best at being actionable, it might make you think about the next 25 years in better context.
> While not knowing how to cook might be cute or excusable by a potential partner in your 20s, by your 30s or 40s it is no longer funny and definitely a liability.
And the generalization of this -- work 'a bit, regularly' towards the big things you want in your 30s during your 20s.
There isn't enough time in the day (or willpower) to overcome 10 years of missed regular practice.
In your 20s, because everyone is somewhat similar, people focus on current state (in a skill, socioeconomically, etc) rather than growth rate.
In your 30s+, you will start to see serious differences in your peers' outcomes as a consequence of that growth rate (and luck / clever risk mitigation). By then it will be too late to start growing.
So identify your goals and start making small amounts of progress towards them daily.
Think of it as the life version of compounding interest. ;)
> As the saying goes, there will be friends for a reason, friends for a season, and friends for a lifetime. Friendships will run their natural course. That being said, do your best to maintain friendships you want to try to keep as you get older.
I am at point right now where this statement definitely rings true. My generation as a whole is struggling with friendships.
Very common. In fact, I think the hardest part of learning to play a musical instrument is the tendency to want to play at normal speed before you are ready. The idea that you can play something fast accurately when you can’t even play it slowly accurately is the classic mental and psychological conundrum.
There is a saying: “You don’t rise your level when performing. You fall to your level of practice.”
The saying is confusing and I would suggest makes the opposite claim. It’s common in sports. You practice at an uncomfortable pace to normalize it, even making mistakes, because if you can’t practice at game speed you won’t be able to compete at game speed. In that context there’s room for both, and I’d say the same for music—you need slow, deliberate practice and also reps in “performance” mode, and it’s probably too reductive to say you should “only” be doing either at any point in time.
If you ever get a full background check done on you by a 3rd party service like First Advantage or Hire Right, please ask for a copy of the full background check if they provide that option. Like several here have said, minor discrepancies like date mismatches will be found and flagged. Having a copy of your corrected background check will be invaluable for future background check requests.
Not sure you will see this. Congrats on your journey into full time dev! I stumbled upon the podcast below a couple years ago, and I found it fascinating. It defines "Mission Critical" as teams that need to make decisions in a couple minutes that impact life-and-death situations. You might find it interesting given your background.
Mission Critical Team Institute (MCTI) Teamcast
Exploring the questions vexing the most elite teams in the world
Congrats on your trading venture! Not sure you will see this but one of my all-time favorite HN comments is by a trader named fiaz about trading and failing.
I'm going to first share a personal experience from my early trading days to illustrate where I'm coming from. I used to wake up at 4:30 am everyday in the Chicago suburbs to beat rush hour traffic and make it into downtown Chicago at 6:30 am. In order to wake up so early, I fell into a habit of sleeping at 9:00 pm and like a robot waking up at 4:30 am. This simple routine was indirectly helpful when things seemed darkest.
For the first six months, I lost money and was ridiculed constantly by other traders who were more successful than me (which was about 20 other guys CONSTANTLY using me as a punching/whipping bag). The only thing that kept me going was the fact that some of the very same traders that would be making wise cracks at me for losing money were some of the most successful people I knew at the time. For better or worse, if I needed a trader to model myself after, it was the same people that were telling me how bad a trader I was - and although I was not open to really hear what they were saying, they were right about my skills in every way (but their feedback was always packaged in some sort of insult)
...
Wow, thanks for sharing this!! I have experience a bit of the same, although I don't have a group of traders making fun of me, the challenge sometimes comes from having to believe in myself, and also from how family sees it, i.e. going from a high salary "secure" tech job to attempting to accomplish something by myself...
I also find curious the human part of wishing to be believed. The numbers in trading are completely ridiculous given that the ceiling is very high for a skilled trader, and thus most people bundle it together with Vegas the hundreds of thousands of dollars in a gambling game or horse race.
I keep forgetting my own complete unbelief until I experienced a trade with triple digit returns... that makes no sense but I did it (the trick is to not return that to the market and to know that those are exceptions and slow and steady wins the race!).
The irony is that many people here in HN (this is y combinator after all) attempting entrepreneurial pursuits with the hope of making a living and a big payout on acquisition and whatnot... in spite of knowing the statistics of how rare it is for that to happen.
At any rate, thanks a ton for sharing that, it is very encouraging! I've seen people do it, that post is one example, and I have the wild believe that I can do it too! I'm expecting nothing but blood, sweat, and tears, but it's worth it for me :-)
As of now, bird flu is extremely uncommon. Even getting the genetic test to confirm it is something that most labs are not setup to do. The current primary symptom of bird flu is conjunctivitis (red eye) with some of those infected exhibiting symptoms of severe conjunctivitis.
> We’re stuck with other people and all the games people play.
I assume you have at least heard about or may even have read “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre” by Keith Johnstone. If not, I think you would find it interesting.
I hate seeing Techmeme links because it always guarantees I'll need to click yet another link before getting to the original URL. It's like a useless middleman.
It made more sense before the blogosphere collapsed and you would see lots of unique takes from independent blogs instead of links to a few short posts on a handful of enormous social media sites plus maybe posts from the biggest still surviving sites.
