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These opinions always pop up during these conversations. I agree spending a ton of money on a degree that isn't going to secure you a well-paying job is not a good idea if you do not want to be in debt for years and years.

However, trades are not a silver bullet and there are many down sides. The pay starts out low, and a lot of the time STAYS low. Trades are notorious for stress injuries. Electrician is ACTUALLY a kind-of dangerous job. You can fry yourself by being careless. As are a lot of the trades.

I would rather have my health, a valuable degree, and body fully working than not have student loan debt.

You can pay off debt and make it go away if you are smart. You cannot heal your shot joints.

SO MANY young people abuse their body thinking it's going to be young forever. It is not.

Ex Chicagoan here. Basically corruption and incompetence took the actual money away

The money did exist. Workers pay into the pensions as part of their compensation package.

Chicago borrowed against the actual pension accounts and corruption/incompetence drained them. Then they did scoop and throw methods for two decades to avoid having the pensions land on their heads.

There is a ton or corruption in Chicago. I have a friend who works for Idot. They have a lot of workers on the payroll who are making 6 figures. My friend has never seen these people who are supposed to be his co-workers show up for work, and when he asked he was told "Don't bring it up. Over your head. We can't fire them."

Haha that is a name I have not seen in a while! I was a student of his at DePaul. Great guy! Massimo is awesome!

I am by no means an expert programmer, but this is my strategy to stay relevant and employable. Obviously I'm not perfect and break my own rules, but this is what in my mind an optimal honkycat would get up to:

Read books, lots of them. Books about programming, math, computer science, game design, user interfaces, graphic design, productivity, investing, meditation, history, criminal justice, fantasy, science-fiction, and everything else.

Watch conferences. Go to your local tech meet-ups. Meet people. Ask questions.

Take classes that interest you in your city.

If I get too bored at a job I find a new job. You can't stop learning. What you are going to be good at is what you do for your day job.

Have a schedule. Work out frequently, keep my health in order. Wake up EARLY in the morning and work on side projects BEFORE WORK. If I wait until after work, I'm going to be too tired to actually get anything useful done. Turn off the computer/tv for a few hours before bed every night, and read books instead of surfing ( social media of choice ).

edit: Meh, in retrospect this comment was lazy and I don't feel like having it around for the rest of eternity.

I have a saying when my peers compare themselves to the Zuckerbergs and Gates and Musks of the world: How many hundreds of thousands of dollars did your parents spend on your education? Because you have to realize that is who you are competing with.

I went to a VERY RURAL high school. We had 3 math classes that everyone went through... none of them college level. My math class decided it was funny to rip up the floor tiles and smash them against the blackboard when the teacher's back was turned. Kids would just not do the homework and they would pass them so they didn't have to deal with them for another year.

No AP classes, no test prep to speak of. Top of the class were just the obedient kids who did the 7th-grade level homework assignments. We had a small band and it was tight-knit and fun.

I get really down on myself because I'm so far away from what I actually want to be. But did I actually have a chance? Yeah. But a small one. Much smaller than a lot of other people. And now the kind of jobs I can get are... fine I guess. Not great, just fine. I'm almost 30 and now I need to learn a ton of mathematics my peers have known for a decade.

I ended up going to whatever Chicago college would take me at an affordable rate ( DePaul ). College was hard. I worked 40 hours a week and went to night classes. I struggled through the "easy" classes and SCRAPED past on the hard classes.

Still, my early education wasn't SO BAD. At least I didn't have to worry about violence or a gang trying to draft me.

I have a crazy idea around this: End high school sooner.

Let the kids leave sophomore year, or even earlier. Let them go to trade schools.

For most of the country, school is just child jail. Why are we forcing students who WANT TO LEARN AND IMPROVE deal with students who do not want to be there, and are going to end up working at a tire plant anyway?

"But but but.. the education!" They are not getting an education anyway. The schools do not have enough resources to teach these kids. They do not want to be there. They are torturing everyone around them because they are bored.

I had to work full time and go to school at night to get my education. I used to begrudge people who had it "easy", but anymore I feel like the grit and self-confidence I got from struggling and succeeding has paid dividends down the road.

I still think I would be better off coming from a rich family. Grit is nice but you can't call grit and have them cover your rent.

Another thing I got good at was managing a budget and learning to make do with less. I don't know his upbringing or where he comes from, but there is $$ coming from somewhere. I guess you could save up a lot of money working at Google? But he previously established he spends $6k/mo on personal expenses. Doesn't seem like a "retire early" person. This is exactly why I don't compare myself to the Zuckerbergs and Musks of the world: How am I supposed to compete with this?

I feel for this person. I'm sorry he had to learn some of these lessons the hard way, but this just screams "wantrepreneur"

Outsourcing

I may be missing something but this just seems loony-tunes to me. What is the business he is trying to create? How is outsourcing all of your tasks "lean" at all?

Strategy / Products

Other people have pointed out: Find a product people are demanding and build it. Launch it as soon as possible. Iterate on it and delight your users. Don't make it an easy idea that someone can just copy.

A keto diet search engine doesn't even pass the smell test to me. My fitness app ( edit: The fitness app I use, not own ) Lifesum can do that. I'm sure all of the others can as well. Why would you create a product in a crowded market with huge established competitors?

Travis CI: -$1,419

To me, that is a lot of money.

You can run a Jenkins server for $10/mo on Digital Ocean and get 90% of the same features. It's not hard if you just need something pragmatic.

Heck, you can even automatically spin the instance down during off-hours and pay even less than that.

Coveralls

You can just generate HTML documents for this, you don't need to pay them to do it.

Ther personal expenses

I cannot imagine spending 6k/mo on personal expenses. WOW! I thought Portland, Oregon was expensive!

Buying a house

Also, why BUY a house? Now you have an asset you have to get rid of at some point. You now have loan payments to pay that will never go away unless you manage to sell the house.

Buying a house is often NOT an investment, especially in a tiny little town. The most expensive house is the one you can't sell.

I mean, I guess maybe the house was VERY CHEAP.

Google cloud support is PATHETIC.

We had a production Kubernetes outage caused by a bug in Google Cloud. We were paying for gold level support.

They deescalated and reescelated our ticket 3 times.

In the end they closed the ticket and sent me a link to "Architecting distributed application" docs. I think they were trying to be condescending. That idiot should have been canned.

Eventually I threw a big fit in the Google Cloud slack channel and thockin ended up looking at the issue and finding the bug.

I agree with this so much.

I am sick and tired of subsidizing drivers.

I am done with the irresponsible and unsustainable policy of ignoring costs associated with road maintenance in the United States.

I am done with building roads through lower-class neighborhoods and damaging their property values.

End welfare for drivers. Make the drivers pay their own way.

React, Flux, JSX, GraphQL, Jest.

It is a full tool-chain, language, architecture, API spec, and testing framework. They are all closely tied to each other.

Do we actually care about these users? Are they going to buy the products we advertise on our websites? Are they going to subscribe to our platform?

No. So why should we optimize for people who do not matter to our bottom like?

Vault looks great, but I always balk at the operational overhead. Also the cost is significant. I'm at a tiny org, though.

For smaller orgs and projects, Mozilla Sops is really great:

https://github.com/mozilla/sops

It encrypts your secrets at rest using Google KMS, Amazon KMS, and various other cloud provider key services. You can then put those secrets into your code repository, cloud file storage, etc. and give your build pipeline a service account with the ability to decrypt the secret files.

Scales like crap, but is quick and dirty when you need it.

I'm sorry - this advice, and most of your comment, is bad advice.

I am diagnosed bipolar and ADHD, but meh I don't really care that much about labels.

What helped me become stable and happy is going to a therapist. What helped me succeed in the workplace is reading books and applying what I learned.

Burying your head in books and overanalyzing your social interactions isn't going to solve your social anxiety. Go play soccer.

Not everyone is able to play soccer, or naturally athletic. And honestly it comes off as very "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, bro." So fine. You hate therapists and cured yourself. Congratulations. I'm just saying what works for me.

HOWEVER, I strongly agree with your assertion that "introverts" tend to be stuck in their ways. Branching out and trying new activities, joining clubs, and being physically fit are extremely important to a person's mental health. Having more interests other than video games, anime, and internet culture goes a LONG WAY in having better social interactions with people.

I've responded to this sort if inquiry before, so forgive the copy-pasta:

> You sound like you have anxiety problems. What have you done to address your anti-social tendencies? Are you going to a therapist? Do you expect a fairy to fly into your house and magic them away? What job do you think exists where you don't need these skills?

> Having a therapist does not mean you are crazy, and you don't NEED to be crazy to have one. It means you have having a neutral person who helps you track and set goals, track your moods, and help you process work relationships and events. Michael Jordan has a coach, brain workers have therapists. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18277170 )

One thing I want to make clear is that this is not going to go away without actual effort and planning on your part.

I would recommend going to a therapist and having them help you process your social interactions and set goals for improving yourself. Which, overall, is what a therapist does. Way more than the cliche "Now let's talk about your father..."

A lot of good information in here, as well. Read some books, it's good for you! It makes you smarter! People have taken time to write them for the last thousand years for a reason!

You can spare the time away from social media to read a book, I promise. And the sense of achievement you get from finishing a book feels great.

- "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is a must-read.

- "Getting to Yes" is another excellent book about workplace conflict resolution.

- There are a ton of books about emotional intelligence. Find one that sounds interesting to you and read it.

I'll also recommend "Deep Work" and "Smarter, Faster, Better" for more general workplace productivity management, but feel free to sleep on those if you feel like it.

Personally, I think I work pretty hard!

I don't think I slack off, I just recognize that I'm going to get more out of doing weight training than I will spending another hour on the same code-base I've been hacking on for the last 8 hours.

To be clear: I hate working out. HATE. IT. It is so boring!

Yes. This exactly. Or, if not ability, then experience and wisdom. Or relevant skills. Or connections. Or discipline. None of which you can manifest by sheer force of will.

I always tell my Jr. Engineers that if you have to work THAT HARD to accomplish your daily tasks then you need to go back to school or go for a more newbie-friendly position.

I recently joined a gym ( industrialstrengthgym.com/ ). It has an emphasis on having a welcoming atmosphere and community.

When they asked me during orientation what my goals were, I said "Show up three times a week. I need to grow up, it is time to work out."

And that really is how I feel about the matter.

If you listen to Tim Ferriss' interviews and read his interview books ( Tribe of Mentors, Tools of Titans ), you will notice a pattern: MANY of these highly effective people MAKE time to have intense work-out sessions.

All of the research and knowledge we currently have about human health and successful aging points to regular weight training and cardio training as the secret sauce for having a healthy mind and body as you age.

Going to the gym and working out isn't about having a hobby or enjoying it. It's about being an adult and taking care of yourself.

So grow up. Get to the gym.

Disclosure: I am a member of the gym I mentioned above but have no other affiliation with the gym.

I'm glad you are getting the help you need.

Michael Jordan has a coach. Programmers and other brain workers have therapists.

It's so obvious to me that having a neutral person who helps you track and set goals, track your moods, and help you process work relationships and events has a huge benefit.

But people ignore this! They are in this macho culture where you need to be self reliant and going to a therapist is weird and weak.

So instead of getting help, they place the burden on their friends and family and co-workers to tolerate and correct their shitty behavior.

Your friends or wife is not your therapist. They are not trained, are not impartial, and wouldn't you rather be having a good time then forcing them to listen to your constant whining?

I'm diagnosed bipolar and have gotten things under control with the help of a therapist WITHOUT medication. It's a powerful experience and a cheat-code to productivity.

It's because US cities are poorly planned, crumbling shit-holes with 4 lane highways criss crossing them. People are extremely hostile to bikers in most US cities, and there are literally no consequences to killing them much of the time.

American cities are so unpleasant to exist in on the ground level people prefer the safety of their smog machines at all times, even if you are going half a mile down the road for a carton of milk.

Everything is designed to funnel you out of the city into your extremely inefficient suburb so you can stop by taco-bell and wal-mart on your 50 minute commute home.

But hey, the answer is more roads right? Not incentivizing people to have less roads on the highway?

I went with the Zune / have avoided apple products for years because I find their advertising smarmy. So, I went with Zune and received ENDLESS RIDICULE.

BUT! Zune was great. I had the zune app with spotify-style music subscription before spotify was a thing.

The Zune software was really pretty and nice, and you could plug your zune into your computer and it would act as an external hard drive without fighting with it.

I am loving the empathy people are feeling for Terry Davis in this thread. His final video is heart breaking.

Terry was the proverbial homeless person: Schizophrenic and paranoid. Too sick to be helped or supported. It's easy to get frustrated with the homeless people you see day to day, but I think it's extremely important we acknowledge these people's humanity and keep them from becoming wallpaper.

Terry was schizophrenic and was homeless and in poverty due to his condition. Tragically, he is basically the proverbial homeless person you see on the street. Outside of UBI it is very hard to help these people.

The sad fact is that it's very hard to take care of and control people like Terry due to their illness. They have delusions and think you are out to get them.

If you look at the criteria for schizophrenia it becomes a bit more clear: https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-tests

Lol