Ask HN: What kept you at your job through the great resignation?
1 points • 2 comments
@n4kana
From 6/15/2018, 10:21:26 PM till now, @n4kana has achieved 8 Karma Points with the contribution count of 12.
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I’m 38 and feeling your struggle minus the uber achievement. I do alright, but I still have a mortgage.
I will back up your ketamine hunch, but more generically as psychedelics. Consider a guided approach like Psychedelic Passage, for example. They won’t source for you, but I’m sure you can figure it out. I’m not sure if they’d be the correct folks to guide a ketamine trip but maybe!
It took a lot to convince my wife that I hadn’t lost my mind or desire to support my family. But she eventually understood that it was something I had to do for the good of everyone around me, especially me. Psychedelics aren’t a cure-all, but it’s a great medicine to retool old habits and deeply held beliefs. Your preparation and intention setting is the cornerstone of its efficacy.
One book hit home with me after my first trip: Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson. I highly recommend it even though I found the audiobook unlistenable before. It became a significant influence on my life afterward.
The heart of psychedelic power against depression is this: it lets emotion express itself. In therapy, if you haven’t cried with your therapist, then it’s a fucking waste of time. Antidepressants hollow out my emotions and limit their range - helping me to be a more effective automaton. Psychedelics release you from the consequences of crying or feeling idiotic joy. It’s a reacquaintance with a youthful mindset.
One last thought: I went into psychedelics hoping that I’d feel the train cars of my life click into place on the tracks. But what I’ve discovered is that there are no tracks, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It took a while to appreciate that. One saying goes: you get what you need, not what you want.
I sincerely hope that you find relief! Bring your whole self to the table, and I believe you’ll find that you’re enough.
Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!
I’m vulnerable to recency bias. The books that my recent life has pivoted on are Die Wise and Come of Age by Stephen Jenkinson. Both books are journeys that bedevil any effort to summarize. I highly recommend listening to the author read them as audiobooks - the words move too quickly on the page, and the author is kindling a modern spoken tradition. The early going to Die Wise was difficult, but my mind gave way to curiosity and they stole my heart and mind away from the rat race.
Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson is a masterpiece. I thought I had a pretty good relationship with death until I read this book. It starts out slow because that’s the thesis of the book: go slow and pay attention; be curious and feel emotions deeply without hurrying. He gently and convincingly shakes down concepts that seems beyond reproach like “hope”. Seriously he makes a killer argument against hope. Not that it’s all bad, but rather that it must earn it’s place at the table. Hope, he argues, is like a mortgage. You pay today with a goal of owning a piece of happiness in the future. (Eg Today’s bad because I’ve been told that I’m dying but I hope that I’ll get better with experimental therapy. 99% do not, so it’s better not to mortgage your future on a promise that’s unlikely.) I can’t do the book justice here, but I hope someone reads it because of this recommendation!
This may not be helpful in the context of Fortune 500 companies, but here it goes. I started at my current small company as a designer in 2011 with minimal formal training and a couple of years of self-taught experience. In the past ten years, I’ve been proposed to Sr. Designer, Consultant, and now Sr. Consultant. Moving from $10/hr to $95k/year in the process. The line of work is AV consulting and programming for commercial architecture.
Let me contrast this with my job experience immediately preceding this, circa 2007 to 2011. I worked as an IT Manager at a University Law School. I started as a student help desk and eventually managed the AV systems in the classrooms. I couldn’t get promoted because it was part of a sprawling organization with super rigid job roles. I’d get in trouble for going above and beyond my job role. I wanted better pay at one point, so I applied for the tiniest move-up at a different school on campus and made it through a bunch of interviews until I met with the CIO of that school. She figuratively spit on my resume and told me to get fucked. I swear that she had a chat with the CIO of the law school, and they plotted her performance with me.
My educational background is a BA in music, so I don’t have rock star credentials. Well…I have very modest rock music credentials, but hiring managers don’t give a shit.
So what happened with my current job? It’s a small company. 10-20 people for most of the time I was there. Everything that pissed off the university delights the small business. I was able to wear new hats and jump into little side projects and demonstrate the value of my intelligence and enthusiasm. Also, I can’t overstate this; I work for the best boss I can imagine. She assumes the best in everyone and has a mental growth trajectory for all that isn’t marred by fuck ups. She sees the mistakes as learning, as they should be.
I’m far enough along in my line of work where I can see that I’d need to change companies if I wanted a quick and easy promotion or a 20% raise. However, I can build/grow the position I’m in. My ambitions are more tied up in my family and personal wellness and growth lately.
“Better for data flow than control flow”
Here’s a fun use-case that barely made the post: commercial/install Audio DSP. I say barely because Max/MSP did make the list, but that’s not typically for install work (think stadium, convention center, airport, etc.)
The AV world is full of VPL examples. The audio DSP ones that come to mind are QSC’s Q-Sys Designer, Biamp’s Canvas, Symetrix’s Composer. There are many others, but they’re all built on the premise of an expensive hardware processor with free configuration software. Many of these processor/software pairings are configurators rather than VPLs. However, VPL is universal for more complex Audio DSP because audio schematics are very common, and essential processing algorithms are well defined with universally accepted names like “Compressor,” “Parametric EQ,” and “Mixer,” among many more.
Where it’s been getting interesting in the last 5-10 years is the growth of Audio DSP into more flexible control products. Q-Sys Designer is leading the push with nodes that allow Lua scripting, which now supports Blockly. There’s an awkward transition between the primary audio VPL and the Lua/Blockly VPL though. Lua/Blockly supports the event handling features within a predominantly data flow driven application. They also allow the Audio DSP environment to interface with APIs that aren’t supported by plug-ins or other canned modules in the software. Recently QSC has been selling Dell servers configured to run as central processors, highlighting the Linux backend as opposed to other proprietary real-time DSP OSes.
On some level, these VPLs have catered to keeping it simple for guys in vans with USB cables that need to service equipment on site. However, with more remote service possible, this has decoupled the van travel from the programming, allowing it to scale in complexity. It seems like the software could be licensed for use on just about any server if there was a financial incentive.
It all points to an interesting dynamic between visual and text programming as programming talent crystallizes as an off-site role. E.g., GUI buttons are instantiated through the node-based VPL then copied to a GUI canvas where they can be visually customized. This could easily be replaced by a web programming paradigm but will likely remain because the AV industry has a long legacy of guys in vans with USB cables.
I want to know if anyone ever uses this to create a fleet of classic microphone sounds from a working mic like the SM57. Sennheiser, Neumann, Telefunken, AKG. Hell, you could stack it with preamp filters like Neve. It would bring me great pleasure to see a studio chock full of SM57s masquerading as the best microphones money can buy.
I'm listening to Walter Isaacson's biography of Ben Franklin, and climate change reminds me of a more daunting version of the challenge faced by the Constitutional Convention of 1787. One Franklin quote, in particular, stands out in my mind: "Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best."
This voice of benevolent uncertainty is strangely silent in the conversation on climate change. Every talking head "knows" the answer and speaks prophetically to their followers who already agree. I believe it is this preaching to the choir (by both sides) the keeps progress on hold.
It's worth noting that Franklin was not typical among the delegates at the convention. He was a minority voice of humorous and pragmatic compromise that helped to cool tempers and foster agreement.
If we want to see action on climate change promptly, we need both sides to cede a bit of certainty and humor their opponents. A climate change skeptic can get on board with solar and EVs (see Ford prototype pulling a train). Likewise, a climate advocate can get on board with geoengineering as an essential tool that caters to who we are rather than who we should be.
Carbon awareness has backfired, becoming so widely conversational that both sides have advocates with strong opinions that don't know a thing. I'm too damn naive to figure out what the middle path is, but it's there, and I believe we'll find it. However, we may find it more suitable to kill off our ideological enemies in war, being fought openly or prosecuted through a justice system coopted by a radical majority.
Sadly, I see each side fantasizing about absolute power. Wouldn't it be great to cut down and bury the deniers in shallow graves? Wouldn't it be great to see those tree-huggers hang from their beloved trees?
I don't want this. It horrifies me.
No matter how you look at it, humanity will need to perform a daring escape. Why not solve our problems with the same ingenuity that got us here in the first place? It sure as hell won't be my ingenuity, but with the right public conversations, we may be able to cultivate it sooner than later.
I agree, and I'd like to pile on with a more specific proposal.
The child tax credit is $2000/child in 2019, which is laughable. I spend more than $12,000/child/yr for childcare alone for two kids (ages 8mos and 3yrs). These early years are terrifying to potential parents - it's gauntlet to reach public school age where property taxes disproportionately taxes the childless.
I think that there should be a deduction for 100% of tuition for children under age 5 (not to exceed $20,000/yr/child). I.e., in the 24% tax bracket, $24,000 in tuition for two children would reduce my tax burden by $6,000. Those in higher brackets would receive a greater refund. In lower brackets, AGI would become negative and not function as a credit.
In effect, the more you make, the more you get back. I think this is an elegant incentive to encourage well-earning people to make babies and continue working. There's no risk of gaming the deduction either: money will by definition go toward childcare tuition. (If there's a risk, it's that childcare will go up. I assume it would, but not 24%.)
We want tax-paying parents to put more future taxpayers into the system so that we don't become Japan. The parents benefitting from a policy like this are making a significant contribution to the economy. Consider their earnings, their patronage of the childcare facility, and the promise of a preschool-educated person to become a future taxpayer.
If all that sounds too convoluted, it could be more straightforward. Let's extend public education down to 3-month-olds. Or we can give parents five years paid leave from work to raise their children to public school age.
Every idea I can imagine is polarizing.
Noticed in the materials for the product: "Nearly Silent (<50dB)". Seems like bogus copy - for every broadband acoustic measure of dB I'm aware of 50 dB would be very non-silent.
I had my tonsils out at around age 8 due to chronic ear infections. I don't know how bad it was before the operation, but my respiratory health has been abysmal since the operation. I've recently begun to wonder if oral probiotics could be a missing part of the equation. Tonsils literally have "crypts" - the quality of your oral bacteria must play a huge role in how they function. http://www.blisk12.com/what-is-blis-k12/
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