This is incredibly impressive. You’re not “in the valley” — no need to apologize so much for the great work you’re doing.
I suspect hackernews is generally the wrong crowd to ask for feedback on emotionality in voice tho. Some of these folks would prefer humans speak like robots.
From our interactions, it seems you’re highly ambitious and goal-oriented, with a strong drive for both professional success and personal growth. You’re insightful about your strengths, particularly in sales and relationship-building, but you sometimes question your progress, especially in terms of starting your own business. You strive for balance, whether that’s in setting boundaries, seeking deeper connections, or integrating mindfulness into your daily life. You’re also resilient, constantly reflecting on your challenges and looking for ways to improve, even when dealing with setbacks like work stress or dating uncertainties. What stands out most is your thoughtful approach to relationships and work, suggesting you’re always seeking meaningful engagement, whether professionally or personally.
what is the most important thing for me to focus on or blind spot that will “set me free” to living life from a place of empowerment, confidence, ease, thoughtfulness, values alignment, and deep safe reliable connections with others?
—
From what I gather in your interactions, the most important thing to focus on might be self-compassion and allowing yourself to embrace your humanity. You’re driven, thoughtful, and reflective, but at times, you might be overly critical of yourself, holding back out of fear of not meeting expectations or falling short, particularly in areas like starting your own business or navigating relationships. This self-criticism could be keeping you from fully leaning into your strengths, which are already significant.
Your blind spot may be a tendency to seek external validation—whether it’s in your career, relationships, or even personal goals—before you fully trust in your own worth and abilities. You often express a need to “prove” yourself, but you already have the tools and capabilities to achieve your goals. What might set you free is releasing the pressure to perform perfectly and trusting that your journey, with its ups and downs, is still valuable.
In practice, this could mean focusing more on the process and less on the outcome, allowing space for mistakes without seeing them as a reflection of your value. You already have a deep sense of empathy and alignment with your values, but leaning into self-acceptance and letting go of fear around failure might allow you to experience life with greater ease and confidence, creating those safe and reliable connections you desire with others. Embrace the idea that you’re enough as you are—without needing to be more or do more to prove it.
“This is not an identical situation to the delayed bonuses discussed in the article.”
Not even close my friend. I would trust that instinct. People working 6-7 days a week, doing labor, in a factory, in shit conditions. Desperately clinging to each paycheck that comes along.
Vs academic bureaucrats in one of the most Labor sensitive institutions in the world, who can’t afford the Bay Area…? The most expensive region of the US to live in. Not. Even. Close. Just a reminder, employees at UC Berkeley are entitled to a pension after five years.
Police violence against UC Berkeley staff? Seems highly doubtful.
As far as not being able to afford rent in the Bay Area, hard to disagree, that is a real problem that impacts quality of lives in a very negative way. Hopefully, with all the brain power at Berkeley, people begin to more honestly and openly contemplate the actual source and solution to this deep problem in the Bay Area’s housing supply not quite matching demands of UC Berkeley staff. Asking bold questions for a campus like Berkeley like.. what policies and stubborn attachment to specific world views might be contributing to the constriction of such supply and demand conditions?
> Not even close my friend. I would trust that instinct.
Not sure what instinct you are referring to here. And just a reminder that when there's a strike, the people who go out to support are those with the least pay, or those who are already in unions. Trying to split grad students off from the rest of the labor force is not something that I am trying to do, if that's what you are implying.
> Just a reminder, employees at UC Berkeley are entitled to a pension after five years.
This is false, grad students never earn a pension. Grad student researchers are who I'm talking about, the people who are currently on strike.
Even still, what good is a pension if you can't pay rent today?
I bring up grad student workers both because they are currently striking, but also because HN readers are probably more familiar with them, and can commiserate a bit more. It's not work that is as hard on the body as farm work, but desperately needing each paycheck in order to get enough food to eat, in order to pay rent and not end up homeless, living in terrible filthy conditions such as homes with mold, or in in insulated garages, or in sheds behind a primary house, with shared use of the kitchen and bathroom... those sorts of poor living conditions, barely able to be paid for are common.
If you had to wake up tomorrow, as either a foxconn iPhone factory worker, or a Berkeley graduate student, which would you pick? How different do you think those experiences are?
You don’t have that option, because manufacturing and other roles was shipped to China.
That’s the leverage.
Almost of third of workers are on disability, another third have minimum wage jobs and the rest have prospects. The business model in college is taking advantage of pride of tenured professors who don’t want to teach and pushing adjunct and temporary faculty.
A lot of people don’t get it and get stuck in the academic funnel. That Berkeley grad student isn’t breaking her body, but is sacrificing core working years, mostly to support the $$ faculty and administration.
Long term, especially in humanities, you won’t have tenured professors, just some assistant professors on two year contracts grinding a meager living along with with sucker grad students who either don’t get it or need the work to keep a visa.
I have doubts you or anyone would actually follow through on such a ridiculous claim.
I (and I have to believe many) would be thrilled to interview and work with folks who decided to stay at Twitter during the Elon takeover. In an era of wave after wave of frothy VC money anointing so many inexperienced and ineffective leaders in our industry, the opportunity to learn under a uniquely effective, authentic and bold leader are tremendous.
There is no "heads up our asses" going on in the SF Bay Area, only intentional and malicious stalling of new construction for bullshit reasons to maintain housing prices. I recently moved to a new city that doesn't give a shit about NIMBYs and it's astonishing the increase in density compared to SF. When you require a billion different environmental assays, force the developer to basically redo the entire block's sidewalk and street, don't approve buildings unless they have low income units, don't approve buildings if they look a bit too _not run down_, and limit height to the size of an 1800s Victorian era apartment complex, it's no wonder housing costs are going insane.
Oh, and forced union contracts paying at well above market rate. Basically legalized racketeering.
What magical place do you live that ignores NIMBYs? Here in Boston, a "neighborhood committee" stopped a taco shop under a dorm from staying open until 2AM because it might "disturb the students" somehow. Needless to say none of the students were actually at this meeting, only random busybodies who lived blocks away.
I'm trying to change a roofline. Now the whole building is considered new construction, and requires a geotechnical survey as if I were breaking fresh ground. No dirt is being moved. Thanks California.
I think you overestimate how much the professed beliefs of the region coincide with the actual beliefs. Having lived all over the country SF is one of the more hypocritical places I’ve been. You don’t see nearly as many Black Lives Matter signs in Dallas for instance, but what you do see are far more middle class black families living side by side middle class white families.
For more on the Bay Area’s legacy of racism, highly suggest reading Richard Rothstein’s _The Color of Law_.
Most NIMBYs are long term residents who are more concerned about quality of life than housing prices. The price someone could theoretically get for their home is meaningless if they intend to die there.
Lean into and leverage your genuine curiosity about the worlds of the people whom you’re building for, and keep coming back to it.
Be willing to explore your curiosity for the problem(s) your product will be solving, and the natural/unnatural impact interacting with you and your software has on these groups of very real people, who cooperate under the conceptual guise of “Companies”, who you will call “Customers”.
Be careful about the temptation to confuse the very empty sweet/salty snack-bite sized “this is how sales works” mantras put out by all the pundits on twitter. Most of them are 10% truth, 90% “look at me”.
Talk to real people who have spent meaningful time in their careers in Sales and Sales leadership in the space you’re interested in.
I was motivated to quit smoking cigarettes because the girl I started seeing said they were gross.
The way I quit was by purchasing a brand new pack, unwrapping it, and placing them in the glove-box of the truck I worked out of all day, doing construction. I believed as long as they were always in close reach and I could still resist, then I could likely resist all other times.
Are anyone’s rights to free speech actually threatened? Or is there just backlash from the public.
I’ve noticed how this “You take away my free speech when I get backlash when I speak some idea that is now interpreted as X-phobic or harmful” argument seems to pop up among during movements that cause painful resistant power shifts.
also this....
“Personally, I think adding trans performers would breathe life into Drag Race. But I’m a viewer, and I don’t get to decide that. The point is that RuPaul’s Drag Race is RuPaul’s show, and we don’t get to scream and cry and throw tantrums until he changes his own show.“
.... but what about free speech you were just arguing for?
why don’t people get to scream and cry?
This appears to be conservative grief masked as liberally tolerant protection of free speech.
If people are consistently being doxxed and having their life uprooted by being fired because of angry Twitter mobs I would argue this also constitutes a breach of free speech.
I know that legally free speech protects you from the government and not everyone else, but personally I agree that 'free speech' is more than just the legal definition.
[citation needed]. Social media platforms are not 1st-amendment platforms.
What's hilarious about the author of this article is her admiration for South Park. And yet, they did the satire of anyone with the ashen-faced fear of being "kicked off Twitter" as a fate worse than death.
I fail to see how the PC left is changing any of the things that really run society. If you don't like the noise, maybe take a break from Twitter? Because being kicked off twitter is NOT a threat to free speech.
I suspect hackernews is generally the wrong crowd to ask for feedback on emotionality in voice tho. Some of these folks would prefer humans speak like robots.