Not OP and I don't, but I know a few people who are very active on LI with their daily self-promotion posts only barely disguised as thoughtful remarks about the industry and this seems to be helping them to get into upper mgmt roles in companies most of us know here. It feels true even for people who weren't doing particularly great when I worked with them to put it politely.
I usually prefer to make a detailed plan for my trip, but I allow myself to break free from it anytime I find something more interesting to do. This way I'm more sure that I won't waste too much time or money staying in wrong places, choosing wrong means of transport and falling for some tourist traps or common scams.
It sounds weird indeed, but maybe some higher-ups decided this is a way to go in case people need to be isolated again or when it's necessary to hire some remote coworkers who shouldn't be left behind, etc.
I still don't quite get it given I have never worked high enough or in a big enough corp. What kind of mission a person earning $19k a day have to do at the destination to justify the cost? I imagine to earn this much their main responsibility is to lobby / influence someone important (at dinners, golfing and such). Otherwise, if there are no outsiders involved the whole thing could be just done online. If it's about lobbying though - does it have to be done immediately and 3-4 times a week?
Another example that comes to my mind is a highly skilled expert in repairing some important machinery, e.g. ship engines or factory lines.
> People never wanted to visit your website; they just wanted the information that your website held.
Well, no. It is a boomer talk, but in the 90s the web was so fragmented and unpolished that websites usually looked very different from each other. People were writing their own HTML (and CSS came later). "Home pages" were some form of an art. Not the highest one to be frank, but the ecosystem was quite interesting. People did visit those websites not only to get the information, but to enjoy those quirky forms.
Maybe he keeps more plates spinning ... in his side projects. Clearly, developers are expected to produce more results with LLMs and switch between contexts quickly. It shouldn't be surprising that everyone may be running their own thing(s) on the side now.
I played it years ago and sorry, it didn't rock my world even for 5 minutes. It's a very naive story with a jump-scare sort of ending that totally didn't work for me, because it was well expected. The story felt very underwhelming comparing to most books, movies or games even. IMHO a complete waste of time.
Cool, but unfortunately, it has the same same drawbacks as cash. If you get scammed, accidentally pay too much or lose your wallet you will never get it back. I sleep safer knowing that there is some protection in the banking system against losing money all of sudden.
> * take home assignments where they say "we recommend you to not spend more than x hours on this", but then, they expect a very sophisticated work and will reject you if you turn-in a "simple" implementation. Maybe they expect speed and quality?
I never finished a take-home assignment within the given time frame. Once I even spent a whole weekend working on a solution to something that was described as a 2h problem. I feel it's just a way for the companies to make it look like it's a small commitment and they are not wasting your time excessively. If you decide to spend 2 days instead of 2 hours then "it's on you" ... But if you don't you'll fail.
I'm in a similar age and career point and have similar feelings about my SE job atm. Can you share more about your transition to the researcher role? What field are you in, how did you get there, what problems did you encounter, etc.
I agree with you in general, but come on - learning is easier (unless you need to dive into highly specialized stuff), writing shorter chunks of code is faster, simple photo editing ("remove this and that from the background") doesn't need any skills now. Image generation isn't terribly too if you put some effort and don't stick with the same 3-4 drawing styles that all the cheapskate companies use.
A friend of mine owned a site once. At some point he couldn't figure out how to fix a frontend bug that appeared on IE only. In the end he was so pissed that instead of fixing the bug, he decided to stick a couple of additional Adsense banners <if IE>. His revenue went up drastically.
This reminds of a person I read about on HN years ago - a Russian guy who escaped from the USSR jumping off a cruise liner and swimming a couple of days to Philippines.
Semi-related opinion, but it really boggles me how people can be such a*holes to leave spam all over the internet and keep turning it into a cesspit. If a company does it in such an obvious way it has to be systematic, meaning that someone somewhere comes up with an idea, his manager gives an okay to proceed and then they chop it into tasks and other employees pick them up. There are multiple people involved. All of them know about what's happening and that it's unethical. And for what? I doubt most people running/working for the YC companies need money that badly. Are they going to buy a boat? A higher Tesla model? Invite their friends to Michelin-starred restaurants to show how successful they are?