Or they need to maintain their income to continue their lifestyle.

I am not particularly passionate about my job as a sysadmin. I don't hate it, but it would be nice to just spend all day skateboarding or playing Starcraft.

But, I have aging parents to take care of. Housing prices have skyrocketed around me. This is what I need to do to maintain a certain level of security, and indeed luxury, for myself and my close family.

And this isn't weird.

Go back 3-5 generations to when half of the population was employed in agriculture. Was everyone passionate about cows? Potatoes?

The reality is, I have a better shot at following my passion by trying to get into FAANG and working there for 10-20 years so that I can then pursue the things that I am personally passionate about.

Short of hosting your own email, I can't think of other email providers as secure as tutanota. They tick off a lot of boxes: open source, hosted in Germany, encrypted mailboxes, DKIM/DMARC support...

The only feature that might give people pause is that their search functionality isn't great. I have pretty low volume of emails to my personal inbox so it doesn't matter, but it might be frustrating to use as a work inbox.

This recent downtime issue is basically the only reliability problem I can even recall having experienced with Tutanota, so they seem to be getting more and more attention.

Seldom need search, but it is very basic and slow. I tend to work around that by using folders for e.g. senders, topics. Most (all?) collab functions are available within a single account between subusers (like an organization). Collaboration between independent Tutanota customers would be a nice addition.

Just playing with the thought of improving or implementing these _few_ features I've mentioned quickly turns into a pit of snakes. A cryptographic and engineering challenge.

So instead, I trust Tutanota to work on what's important, thoughtfully paced. Not too fast like my chaotic mind.

That's why I'm their customer.

I really liked video games. I remember some skills I learned as a very young child and teenager to do things like play Warcraft 3 online, install cracked versions of games, play on WoW private servers, host my own Minecraft server...

So then after being an aimless teenager I went to the equivalent of a community college to do "IT" at 20 years old. I learned things like windows/linux sysadmin, networking, printer management..

I never ended up finishing that degree though.

- What are you doing at your job? Is it everything you dreamed of and more?

I am basically an SRE. I was doing sysadmin for my company for about 2.5 years but put my foot down and decided that having work thrown over the fence to me by devs was not a good long term career plan.

Now I've been doing software development, but it's not user facing feature work. It's been a lot of improving application monitoring/debuggability/operability (distinct from usability).

It's not really my dream job, I've sort of figured out this company by now and I'd like to get a more difficult job.

- How did you break that first-job barrier?

I made personal friends with one of my teachers who basically coached me through how to get past the very difficult interview process in IT. Then I applied to internships on my university job board and got lucky eventually.

My boss later admitted to me that I wasn't hired because I had the best credentials, but mostly because I had a wide skill set and he had a gut feeling about my work ethic.

- What were you doing before this?

I worked at a moving company and played an obscene amount of Starcraft 2.

- Any tips for the rest of us?

Trying to get into IT is easier than trying to become a developer. You can start in help desk and work your way up, there are certifications for the specific technologies you will be working on (doing Cisco networking? get CCNA, doing cloud? Get the AWS solutions architect).

Once you get good at IT related skills, you'll actually pick up a lot of key software development skills without even realizing it. There is an embarrassing amount of time I have spent explaining things about git, SSH keys, layer 3 networking, HTTP, TLS... to very smart and qualified developers making triple my salary.

I did horrible end user support for my first little while. It's OK when you start out to be explaining to people how to connect to the VPN because they can't read a wiki page with screenshots, just make sure that you realize the job is a stepping stone for you to continue building skills. Once you get the job you cannot rest on your laurels.

To expand on the article. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people in my age group (18-24 years old) are desperately trying to find happiness in "experiences" but finding emptiness due to social media. Often for them, it is not achieving something amazing like a long bicycle trip, or summiting a mountain that brings them joy, but they are thinking about the resulting Instagram photos instead.

Communication tools like Snapchat are a little bit healthier. Most people use Snapchat not to show off, but rather to regularly share their lives with a small group of friends.

Certain social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok seem entirely designed to try to get their users to pursue building a following and attach their happiness to that. Some unfortunate people end up having all the joy of traveling and meeting new people robbed from them as a result. They know that "experiences" are better for happiness than possessions, but somehow the result is a bastardized version the actual experience.

Knowing all of this, I am not taking a holier-than-thou position. I myself have accounts on several social media platforms, but make a conscious effort to not get drawn into their dopamine manipulating designs.

I'm in the same age group and this is what I don't get. If you're enjoying your experience so much, why the hell are you trying so hard to create content for social media? Just sit back and relax.

I think the biggest thing for people our age (And probably a bit older as well) is that they lack purpose. Social media is so popular because it's instant gratification, and a great way to attempt to fill that void.

Because many also enjoy the experience of being admired or envied by others, perhaps even more than the original experience itself. The original experience might even be "the necessary evil"* to get the appearance. Anything that can turn into an exhilarating "high" given by the appreciation of your followers. Like any high you have to chase bigger and bigger experiences to get the satisfaction.

Those moments pay off whether they're pleasure or pain because they all translate into literally days (/s) of appreciation from your followers plus a story to throw at the dinner table once in a while for another light dose of the drug. I think it's not really about lacking a purpose. Just perhaps that the purpose doesn't give them the same or enough satisfaction. Like any other "drug", you don't need to lack purpose to take it. After all being admired can be a purpose in itself.

And this by no means applies only to social media. People buy expensive watches, or cars, or houses where the maintenance cost itself reminds them every time of the downsides but other people's admiration more than makes up for it.

* the popular Everest base camp hikes, marathons, and others. Things most people don't necessarily enjoy yet a disproportionate number of them advertise them on social media.

...

> I have many acquaintances who go to great lengths and expenses for an experience they don't particularly enjoy but which pays off on social media

That's my whole point. No wonder people are unhappy when they rely on external things for happiness and fulfillment. It's peak stupidity.

I don't believe what you're describing is sustainable long term.

I think Jim Carrey said it best: "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer."

I'm describing things that have been happening for millennia: people seeking the admiration of others even at great cost for themselves. Social media is the last manifestation, in line with modern times. It's still the same drug just obtained via different means.

I don't know how sustainable it is, if social media puts us above the sustainability threshold by making this practice more accessible to the masses. But as the article states people have put up with a lot of permanent downsides (e.g. a long uncomfortable daily commute) for the fleeting joy of the upside (e.g. having a bigger bedroom).

On the other hand social media allows people to get that satisfaction with a one time investment. One fancy trip = one big dose of admiration from thousands of people. Your grandparents had to take a mortgage to get this effect. Entire industries were created purely to satisfy such needs, anything containing "luxury" is a good point to start. Of course there are many other implications here but while we can agree it's probably not good that so many rely on this for their daily life happiness, it's hard to quantify how bad.

Anecdotally the worst outcome I've seen from social media induced disillusionment was couples falling apart because the more immature one lived "inside" social media and real life didn't provide any of the same highs. The disappointment took a sledgehammer to what was probably a shaky foundation but still.

From the article: "The problem is, we consistently make decisions that suggest we are not so good at distinguishing between ephemeral and lasting pleasures. We keep getting it wrong".

I believe social media massively exacerbates this phenomenon rather than making it sustainable.

> Of course there are many other implications here but while we can agree it's probably not good that so many rely on this for their daily life happiness, it's hard to quantify how bad

It's a slippery slope to me. If you don't eliminate the need for external validation it snowballs, just like an addiction.

Note that I'm not saying external validation is inherently bad, but relying on it is. We all like getting praise and compliments, but relying on them to prop ourselves up is a recipe for disaster.

Focusing on the “rich” part here.

Money can help a lot. I’ve been in positions in life with and without excess money. I wasn’t happy in either situation, but the lack of extra money is far worse.

I know many people feel pride in working for money, but I find that lacking as much as going for experiences for social media clout. I enjoy working, but having to work for 40 years on assigned work in order to have a home, healthy food, et al, is not the answer.

Of course marketers play on these insecurities in rather insidious ways. They will make you believe you can't be a good father without owning a new SUV, that buying a house in the country is going to make you sexually attractive to the opposite sex and on and on.

What I find most troubling is that a lot of people in my age group know the detrimental effect social media has on them. They’ll knowingly waste a couple of hours everyday. And, anybody who tries to pull away from it is ridiculed for “trying to appear superior” or mocked for apparently subscribing to “back to nature” ideology. This makes it even harder to leave; it delayed my own escape by at least 1 year.

What makes it downright frightening to me is that we as a collective have several enormously difficult problems that we must solve. Information floods the brain and drowns out thoughts that should be had daily like “the past 5 years have been the hottest ever recorded.” Politics is another area that scares me. People my age are upset with the government. Yet, most could not write more than 5 tweets about why. They’ll claim the opposition has been lead astray by questionable news sources on social media sites while simultaneously participating in exactly that trap themselves.

Quick and cheap ideas became a source of easy gratification. Generations raised in such an environment are probably not prepared to face the challenge of a world sliding - admittedly slowly - towards disaster.

I create content because it preserves memories and/or more than pays for the experience, enabling more trips. I travel, take photos and videos, and then sell media afterwards. Just like other people watch TV or movies, I enjoy editing photos or putting little movies together from footage I've shot while having a glass of wine.

Last year, on a particularly large trip, I took a lot of video to document it: https://shubbo.com/us/ - now I wish I'd taken more. I love looking back over it and reminiscing, as does my family.

Sometimes I feel like you can create content or consume it. I enjoy both.

I also completely understand someone who enjoys something like photography or filmmaking taking the time to document their experiences.

However, I doubt most people who post on social media fall into either of the above categories.

I'm a bit socially inept, so if I'm at a gathering and know (from Instagram) someone outside my immediate circle that I'm talking to has recently holidayed with their kids or got a pet or whatever, it's a big help prompting conversation.

For me, appearances and experiences are part and parcel. Let's say I like going on adventures and that I like people to think of me as adventurous. And so being adventurous to demonstrate that I'm adventurous is self-serving. Gets me off the couch in those moments I need a little push.

When I travel, I take lots of pictures and write travelogues about the culture of the place, and about the unusual things that might surprise me or my friends on social media. I also often try to engage with people in the local language (I usually start cramming with spaced-rep apps 2 weeks before the trip), so it's a linguistic journey as well -- I write about conversations too (that said, Basque was very difficult and nobody cared that I tried to speak it. No luck engaging in Catalan either, most folks just switched to English. But Korean was helpful in Korea, as was Portuguese in northern Portugal).

The pictures I take are not of umbrella drinks or beaches, but of local people doing their thing. I take pictures of subways and the little details that reveal the systems-thinking behind the subway system (which differs all over the world). I take pictures of pieces of technology that are localized to the domestic culture and reveal the way people interact with physical objects (Japan had so many gems). I almost always go on a walking tour so I also get to document the history that I learn along the way -- seeing physical spaces are great, but with a walking tour you also get the time dimension through storytelling.

My social media posts are an invitation to my friends to see a world that they've not seen. I often travel alone, so writing about my experiences and explorations helps me feel like I'm sharing those experiences with my peeps back home. It also helps me feel less lonely -- yes, one makes friends on walking tours but those are fleeting and you never ever see them again. The most gratifying interactions on social media aren't the likes but the comments that start with "what's that?".

Telling stories on social media also helps hone your storytelling skills. I once took a course in flash fiction (i.e. really short fiction) writing which was nice and all, but the real test of flash writing is in telling stories on social media where you have to get and keep people's attention with words and pictures within the constraints of a single post.

It really depends how you do social media. Done right, it can be extremely gratifying and can elevate the experience of travel.

(there's nothing wrong with the performative aspects of social media if you know what you're doing. Take Anthony Bourdain -- sure, he was making a TV show (trying to get the TV equivalent likes as it were) but he also portrayed cultures with an artistic sensitivity that none of the other chefs had. Gordon Ramsey for instance goes to a country to show the locals how he can cook better than them...)

It's just people who know me and who are amused by my posts.

One example that I found interesting in India is that people want to travel to religious places out of a sense of duty for their peers. I think to some extent social media works the same. You feel the need to share your life with your peer group because they do for you.

Do you have any good purposes? I already have several good ones applicable only to me, but what would a generally applicable one look like?

That's it for now, nice and simple. I think the community part is pretty generally applicable.

A just-over-minimum wage job isn't really having a positive impact on the community and even if it did, you aren't treated like it does.

It's basically an MMORPG, but you're playing as an invented version of yourself.

In theory, there are people for whom it is completely organic. Their life is charmed and they have a natural eye for photography. So with a few lazy snaps for grins, they create a compelling feed. They aren't trying hard!

That's what everyone else is trying to ape. The effortless cool.

My solution was to basically completely stop posting publicly. I still take lots of photos on trips, because I enjoy photography too, and want to save the photos, but I am doing it for myself. There's no pressure of other people liking it since apart from my close family, no one will get to see them [1]. And as a result, my photographs have organically skewed towards capturing more faces and natural expressions, and not just landmarks.

[1] From a tooling perspective, Google Photos private albums are awesome for my use case.

I find myself posting less and less on social media and enjoying my own work in that context more and more. It has also led to an improvement in my own work just from the amount of time I spend looking at photo books and thinking about how they're built, sequencing, ties between disparate photographs, etc.

If you aren't printing your work now I highly recommend getting a good printer and making some large displays of your favorites for your home. Next time you have people over they'll be asking for prints.

Yeah, not surprised. Talked to a neuroeconomic PHD friend once, and he said social media FB definitely putting in a lot money in R&D to make their product as additive as possible.

I don't think the same fate is in store for Zuck. I believe history will judge him harshly. Mostly because he's damaging children more than anyone else.

I don't. I hate working from home.

When my apartment is all I have to run away from life, adjusting it to be a working space just totally wrecks my personal psyche. Sure a laptop can be turned off but knowing the desk I use for general is now my work desk ruins the whole environment for me.

At least from the Office I could come home and know it was personal. Everything work related is in the office and everything home is personal.

This reflects my experience. When you have an audience, you have a certain pressure to perform. You subconsciously start framing everything in terms of potential likes. Having fun isn't enough, you have to prove it. Checking in can easily become more important than being there.

I don't post much anymore. My profiles are all private. I do not turn moments into content. I just try to enjoy being there. It certainly improved my experience.

At least these days people that way inclined can get all the fun of showing off their photos without actually holding anyone hostage on a sofa.

Wow, using xrdp was a complete gong show to manage. The most common bugs were in the assignment of displays on user logon, as well as a crappy, often buggy, login screen (though GUI logins for linux are fascinatingly weird pretty much universally.)

That being said, even in evaluating alternatives there wasn't anything much better. Linux remote desktop managers are just not that great yet.

As much as I hate Windows, I have to tip my hat to Microsoft's and say that their RDP implementation stands more than head and shoulders above any alternative remote desktop implementations I've tried.

Developers these days are getting much better at doing things over the command line. The trend of using GUIs for everything recently appears to be ebbing into a "right tool for the right job" mindset. Which is a very promising trend I've noticed. Hopefully remote workflows are entirely done through emulating terminals over SSH in a few years time :)

Unlike RDP, xpra defaults to passing over individual windows — it acts as windows manager for it's own Xorg process on server. This can completely side-step the hassle of wrapping and interacting with existing desktop environment, it's login screens etc. Xpra uses unmodified Xorg server from your distribution with xf86-video-dummy driver to achieve this. Mirroring existing Xorg session is also supported (but slower).

(Not kidding)

Do you remember what issues were there with NX? I found out pretty much to "just work" and with a really good performance too.

I used to be better than average at Starcraft 2. Probably peaked around top ~1.5% in the world wide rankings.

My thoughts on this is that the vast, VAST majority of people who play a competitive game like Starcraft 2 will not get any benefit from it. Following this advice blindly would be a disaster for 99% of people.

As a former high ranking master league player, I would mostly dedicate my time to memorizing and mindlessly practicing build orders. All responses I made in the game to my opponent were born from literally thousands of hours of practice and memorizing how certain interactions in the games went. 1 Marauder beats 1 Stalker. 2 Marauders beats 3 Stalkers. 2 Marauders loses to 4 Stalkers. For every single game interaction possible. I doubt an actual full formed thought ever crossed my mind during gameplay.

That's great for just zoning out and crushing noobs, but as a top 1.5% player I was absolutely TERRIBLE when compared to even low ranking professional players.

Why? Because they spent time watching replays to understand their opponents and to meticulously analyze their mistakes and think about solutions.

I didn't do any of that. I just memorized popular strategies and got good enough at pressing certain keys in certain orders that I was considered a "master". But I didn't master anything really. What does that say about the 98% of players who were lower ranked than me? What does that say about the larger player pool of Starcraft 2 which don't even compete, but rather play single player or arcade?

I want to make a critical correction to the quote that prompted me to reply.

> Practicing video games that require intense focus for prolonged durations to perform well like Starcraft 2, CSGO, DOTA 2 helped me build mental endurance.

The point I want to drive home is that concentrated, deliberate practice is the key to building mental fortitude.

r1ch hwaiting!

I probably did about 80 leetcode puzzles, let's just assume that is 1 hour per puzzle. So 80 hours of leetcode puzzles.

In addition, 10 hours were spent reviewing my networking trivia (focused on layer 2/3/4 and HTTP).

The PE recruiter at the company also provided a study guide packet. I elected to sink about 10-20 hours into studying the Linux troubleshooting and finding some common questions off of Glassdoor to understand the type of things they will be asking.

Finally I tried to review some system design stuff (but as a juniour in this industry didn't really know how) Just followed some study guides from the system-design-primer on Github. Probably 5 hours dedicated to this.

Let's just round it to about 100 hours of prep in about a month and a half. While juggling a full time job as a devops engineer.

Afterwards I was rejected :)

Ultimately I wasn't surprised I was rejected. I was under the impression that I needed to pass all 7 of the interviews in order to get an offer (2 phone screens, 5 on site.) I know for sure I failed the system design interview question HARD. Like irredeemably hard. Regardless of my performances in my other interviews, I know I definitely did a good job in my network and OS interviews but it doesn't matter.

I do wish that companies would provide a feedback system. I would love to know where they thought I was weak so that I can improve upon that later. But there is nothing beyond "we decided to pursue other candidates."

Here's the crazy thing, though. It isn't even a question in my mind that I should try again if another FAANG recruiter reaches out to me. I will sink another 200 hours if necessary to pass their interviews because of what it represents to achieve getting hired at such a firm. There's prestige, salary, and quality of life that just can't be matched by any other tech companies.

Not sure about prestige and quality of life. Salary, yes!. I happily quit my Microsoft for a slightly lower pay and way better quality of life.

Right now AAMFGN are hiring tons of engineers. So their quality really varies and different teams have different bars. You can't say they worked at Google so they must be good. We are humans and we have our biases. Like it or not, hiring is biased (mostly towards white/asian males from prestigious universities). To counteract, there's also diversity hires (with various degrees of definition what it exactly is).

For some people, money is much higher priority, for others it's not. Just be sure what you really want from life. Remember, it's not a race.

To asses the quality of life you have to take into account : payment, time spent on the job and for the job, the amount of work, the prices in the area you live and work, the stress level, the interactions in the company and probably more.

I've done these calculations and for myself, job hunting for FAANG isn't worth. I would however not refuse to work for FAANG if that would match my personal goals, however working for FAANG would not be a goal in itself.

Grinding algorithms to work for a FAANG doesn’t interest me. I’m actively disinterested.

Even though I started as a hobby developer in the 80s doing assembly and spent the first decade of my career writing assembly, now I’m much more interested in solving business and process problems than I am in the computer science side of software development.

So, next move will probably be more in the Solutions Architect/Professional Services/Enterprise Architect/Consulting route for a few years. I’ll have to do a little “grinding architecture”, and I may end up at one of the major cloud providers but that isn’t a goal in and of itself.

I like to calculate dollars per hour worked when comparing roles, and I use a fairly generous overtime multiplier (ie, 35 hours a week base, then time and a half for the next 10 hours, then double time the next 15 then you can take your job and shove it)

All too often the big, hard, prestigious companies turn out to pay the same hourly rate as the second-tier places if not slightly less. But the same quality of life at 45 hours a week costs a lot more than at 35 hours a week. So you have to look at the prestige benefits and hope they pay off.

So, there are billions of people who would love to out-compete me and take my job. I need to make sure I'm always ahead of the curve so that the legions of CS grads being pumped out of universities don't replace me.

That's just not true.