The title is intentionally vague because I cover very different use cases (searching and language learning).
Recently, I talked to many people in meatspace about these, and they generally found my ideas useful. So I am sharing them here in the hope that the HN crowd will think the same.
Somewhat related: if somebody is interested in King's story in more depth, I can really recommend Jonathan Eig's book from 2023, titled "King: A Life". Amongst many other resources, he has used the (back then) recently released FBI files about King. He did a really stellar job of portraying MLK not just as a legend, but also as a human being.
At work, I use the Inbox Zero strategy combined with Gmail's keyboard shortcuts. It's really powerful, a total game changer. The nicest thing for me is that I can easily keep track of not just stuff that I have to react to, but email threads where I am the one waiting for a reply. You can read about it in many places, there are tons of tutorials (both written and video) out there. As far as I know, it's the way most Google employees are using Gmail too.
I don't really know what you mean by that. Yes, the salaries are tied to locations [1]. But I get compensated well above the average compared to doing the same job at other companies (including international ones) in my country (Austria).
If you can be a manager of one [1], then absolutely, yes. If not, then I can imagine it being really frustrating a lot of times.
Based on my past work experience, working at GitLab is more similar to being a freelancer in terms of freedom and flexibility - with all the benefits of being an employee (professional community, job security, etc.) too.
While the thing about unions is generally true in the European Union, universally it isn't. Take Hungary (where I am from) as an example. Trade unions there are practically non-existent. Most of them got destroyed by the state during the mismanaged adaptation of capitalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ones remaining are a shadow at best (in terms of power) of what's there in Austria or Germany.
The rest I wholeheartedly agree with! (Waving from Vienna, oida!) My comment here is purely just for additional context. :)
Not much. Work as an employee until you build out a network big enough to rely on to get contracting jobs. It's faster if you work in professional services or technical sales roles as an employee already.
Ex-Microsoft, current GitLab employee here. The way you describe using Microsoft's tools in your company is pretty much how things worked at Microsoft while I was there 3 years ago.
If you'd like to build a handbook similar to GitLab's, this page of our handbook can be a great starting point: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/handbook...
My path was: engineer -> consultant -> solutions architect. All at different companies. I think it's more about character/attitude, rathen than only experience.
Yes, I have multiple scans of a semi-herniated (not fully herniated, but thinned and a bit bulging) disc in the lower end of my spine, but it's far from being in the state of needing surgery. My solution was (with the help of the book) to identify and treat my trigger points. Regular swimming and bodyweight exercises also helped/helps me a lot, but they help more with reducing the number of painful episodes, not making the pain go away when I have it. I can do that only with massage.
Understood! As I noted in my comment, the book I recommend also stresses the importance of the fact that most chronic back pain is "all inside yor head" and tries to give some relief by making you understand and ruling out most of the possible non-psychological sources for such pains. I highlighted the self-massage thing only because next to understandting my condition, that was the single most important tool the book gave me to deal with the non-psychological components of my pain. But this might not have been totally clear from my comment above, I am sorry for that!
The title is intentionally vague because I cover very different use cases (searching and language learning).
Recently, I talked to many people in meatspace about these, and they generally found my ideas useful. So I am sharing them here in the hope that the HN crowd will think the same.