dfraser992

I'd upvote you if I could... I think maybe one has to be old enough (I'm GenX) to see how this 'wokeness' is in part a cover story for some sort of authoritarianism coming from the left. i.e. the "Soviet Union" is not merely history to me, unlike millennials.

Is all this in reaction to - or in conjunction with - the growing authoritarianism coming from the right? I don't know. I am in all in favor of examining how America has failed Blacks, Native Americans, the working class left in the dust by uber-capitalism (aka Ronald Reagan and all that BS) etc, but what is going on now is becoming problematic aka a mindless ideology.

If you pair this with [0], then it seems the Elites [motivated by power, social dominance, etc] have figured out how to leverage entirely valid ways of looking at the world, but not the only ways created by the Gentry into mechanisms / an ideology with which to control society and those in lower social classes. Sounds much like China's Cultural Revolution... Having the Elites of a society be in thrall to any sort of ideology is a bad idea and so having all these students of elite super-upper class schools on the way to the Ivy League being turned into mindless robots will end up badly.

Of course, America is the Greatest Country in History (tm) and so having some sort of American fascism hit at the same time as some sort of Cultural Revolution is to be expected </s>. The 2020s are going be a mess.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20210225030540/https://www.indie...

Not cool, Hacker News is not a jobs board, but I guess you did not know that. Hopefully there will not be a flood of posts like this.

There is a topic that occurs every first of the month titled "Looking for work?" (or similar). Your ad will get far more interest posted on that thread.

From the conclusion: "Our findings from this large, prospective study of British adults show that meat consumption is associated with higher risks of several common conditions but a lower risk of IDA. The higher risks are at least partly accounted for by higher BMI, and some of the associations remaining after adjusting for BMI or waist circumference may still be due to other aspects of adiposity."

Being diabetic and overweight thanks to the pandemic, this study initially concerned me; I am planning to do some IF and keto to get this weight down. But reading through the study, all I can say is 'correlation is not causation'. The word carbohydrate is not even used once, and I really doubt overweight people eat no carbs. Learning how to bake was a big factor in my weight gain over the past year... no more scones for the rest of my life, it seems. My general sense given everything I have read is that the real importance of excess weight has not been fully recognized by medical science and instead everything else is blamed first.

This caveat about BMI being a significant factor and eliminating it resulting in a reduction of risk was buried in the middle in the The Guardian article. Journalists are ... <sigh>

For some reason, Myers-Briggs has gotten all of the publicity (all those high priced management consultants, I guess). I have found the Enneagram [0] to be just as useful (all the controversy about accuracy aside). It is a different flavor of a personality test and the spiritual growth connotations of it makes 'real' scientists discount it. But I think it provides useful info when you ignore all the surface level superficial writing about it and only read the books by Don Riso.

At the very least it is as interesting or even more than Myers-Briggs. I have found it useful for creating characters as part of the script writing process because it makes one think about internal psychological processes.

The main problem I think with Myers-Briggs, or even all of these things including the OCEAN model, is the general public not understanding their limitations and thus using them inappropriately as definitive or concrete sources of fixed information - like in interviews, HR assessments, etc. Myers-Briggs has been Agile-d(tm).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enneagram_of_Personality

I don't know how much this will help...it is a bit free form (need some coffee). After 30 years as a dev/QA/tech lead, I went back to school to get a MSc in data science/ML/AI. I was sick of development work and needed to do something different (the last job was with a crummy startup etc). I thought I'd teach myself ML stuff, but realized a piece of paper as an official credential would probably be necessary to impress HR departments.

And going back to school (aka a vacation) sounded great - I would get exposed to all the basics in a compressed format vs. wasting time fumbling about teaching myself. Sort of like why I went to film school 20 years ago... which is another story again similar to yours.

One track of the MSc program was for people doing a conversion course, so I got out of a few classes thanks to all my previous experience (you might be able to do that). In the process of doing original research for my thesis, I realized at this point in my life I liked doing ML research - I'd been sliding into "research" over the past few years of jobs, so it all made sense. And academia is a different environment than industry, so something new to deal with. So I've been hanging around the uni doing research type work, TA jobs, etc. for the past few years.

So what might you learn about yourself by going back to school - versus getting even more stuck in the rut/groove you are in? I was 30 years old only a decade ago (I am actually 50...) Time has a way of speeding up the older you get. Do you want to be doing the same thing a decade from now? Or be in management?

My advice is, based on what you said, and whatever unconscious biases I might have, is to go back to school. You are certainly young enough to take a detour for a few years (like I did with film school) and having a CS degree along with your data analyst experience will make you pretty valuable. It sounds like you really like programming, so I wouldn't try to suppress that (like I did with writing screenplays - IT is much more time/cost-effective and profitable unfortunately and it is so very similar to writing actually).

Weigh the personal costs against the probable long term benefits of learning something you really like and which is more valuable career wise than sticking to data analysis - are they really that costly? Fundamentally, programming is a craft. There are plonkers who do it only for the money, but they are not ... I get the impression you want to be a craftsman, so you should be willing to suffer for your art :) It is the only thing that will keep you motivated when you are on a solo death march.

And if you really do need credentials to get a dev job in the public sector, then you need the degree. Perhaps it is as simple as that.

Here is a repo of options for freelance technical writing:

https://github.com/malgamves/CommunityWriterPrograms

In the process of doing this type of work, you surely will learn new things and probably will help you figure out exactly what you might want to focus on / become an expert at / etc. You'll come to understand systems from a user's perspective which always good for developers.

"Slate Star Codex was a window into the psyche of many tech leaders building our collective future. Then it disappeared"

I did not read TFA because I know I'd just be ticked off - the hoopla and sloppy reporting around GME trying to fit it all into a simplistic narrative really was quite annoying and has caused me to revise my understanding of modern day journalism.

My opinion is that "the journalist" in a lot of cases wrote things up in a simplistic way so that they could understand it for themselves - or they just slapped something together in an ad hoc fashion following all the other lemmings - or the intent was to spew more propaganda about whatever they think is important.

All this has convinced me the "Right" do have a bit of a good point about the MSM being sloppy, unfair, and trying to control the public's interpretation of reality (not that the "Right" are correct about much of anything...) But whatever happened to trying to really comprehend all the different angles to a story? Or understanding the worldview of the subject? That takes a lot of work aka empathy and the economics of the MSM nowadays precludes that, I guess. Louis Theroux and Adam Curtis are the antithesis of this sort of journalist.

Geez... the implied connotation of this lede makes it quite obvious the angle taken on this topic was predetermined just like Scott feared. It all fits in with the general fad going on now about how Big Tech is so evil now and out to enslave everyone. I've been in this industry for 30 years and yes there are problems, but just like with any other technology or shift in society. A mutant version of capitalism is the real problem now but you'll never see the MSM writing articles about that.

I'm not even a Rationalist or part of that community; I read SSC occasionally when a topic came up that I am interested in. In general, I think they are a bit short sighted and blinkered in a lot of respect - though the angle taken is useful. To really grok something, you have to look at all of the angles and to believe only 'this angle' is the real Truth is stupid. The idea that SSC was the coffeehouse for "many tech leaders" is really .... I want to say ludicrous but that is perhaps too strong of a word. Not all engineers are autistic robots.

Counterpoint: Zuckerberg has a degree in psychology so he can't automatically be lumped in the Rationalist community; he certainly knew from the beginning he was building a digital Skinner box and how people would behave given the right stimuli.

I have some amount of sympathy for 'conservatives' now after reading through the lazy and careless reporting about GME. Lots of articles simplifying what is going on, trying to shove it into a 'common sense' or 'conventional wisdom' type of narrative, and just getting the simplest of facts wrong. And the outright propaganda masquerading as 'reporting' - i have seen some things that really ought to have been labeled as opinion pieces in very big block letters.

Most "Conservatives" may not be actual conservatives these days, but I get the frustration they have with the MSM that they have been complaining about when even the simplest or basic overview of their position is corrupted thanks to lazy biased journalists...

They may be wrong and entirely led by their emotions most of the time (and a lot are now becoming very delusional), but it is gaslighting to deliberately misinterpret someone's emotions or to not and try to understand where they are coming from.

How did Trump persuade a mob to attack Congress and interrupt the official certification process? He only said stuff like 'fight like hell' and 'the election was stolen', but no direct orders... Manipulate people's emotions here and there, a bit at a time, and let things snowball as they will..

But what Trump did for the past 4 years ever since he said 2016 was rigged, it is basically a pump and dump. In 2016, there were social media posts about how the 2020 election was going to have to be suspended because of all the illegal immigrants who voted in 2016. yes, seriously.

It is a distributed form of propaganda that leverages the power of social media and an understanding of how mobs form. None of this is really new, but things are such now that manias like the Tulipmania can be easily kicked off without any centralized planning by a small group of conspirators or as organized like what the Nazis did.

I haven't read anything of DFV's old posts - I thought the general thesis was a valid one, maybe GME will turn itself around... but if he did periodically promote how well he was doing to a group of people primed for this like WSB is, then yeah he is guilty of something. Or maybe everything got out of hand, but he is still posting about his 23 million dollar gain...

"not a financial advisor" is, practically speaking, much like SWIM (Someone Whom I Met) back in the early days of the Net when talking about drugs was 'likely' to get the police involved if you used your real name etc etc. The majority of the posts I had read on Reddit are way too emotionally persuasive and propagandistic that 'not a financial advisor' is really just meaningless. If I was a judge and had a case involved that sort of language while the information was obviously not balanced or neutral, I'd consider it line noise.

"Corporate publications are more trustworthy..."? My brief exposure to that arena would lead me to disagree strongly (but I am an engineer and not in marketing). Everything in my experience has to be vetted by multiple layers of the organization or at least people versed in the art of saying something while actually saying nothing. "Corporate publications" is a very broad term, of course, so it depends - financial type things, yes, that has to be pretty 'solid' though there is still room to elide and be disingenuous. Whitepapers are essentially just marketing material; being an engineer and thinking like one is really detrimental, thus I just couldn't do that sort of stuff... And some subset of shareholders will always try to interpret <whatever> is any number of ways, so that is another reason to spin things as needed while not seeming to spin things.

Wikipedia has a pretty robust set of internal controls and correction policies IMO. It may not be authoritative, but it tends to be a good starting point, unless the topic is obscure etc. My brief exposure to higher education would be that yeah you don't want to let students treat Wikipedia as a primary/only source (the lazy ones have that attitude), but I wouldn't go so far as 'not reliable'.

The fundamental issue is ho do you teach people/children to synthesize different sets of information and decide what is useful and what isn't - i.e. to think for themselves? Part of that effort is also teaching them to be self aware enough to understand how their emotions or emotional issues might color their interpretation of the information, never mind evaluating the source of information first...

A lot of parents think it is a really bad idea, teaching children to think for themselves and to be self-aware...

I had to deal with this sort of thing once while I was living in London. A letter was sent around, I guess up and down the street of flats (I don't know how far) which explained they were planning to have a blowout party for some significant reason and that things were likely to get very loud. There was contact info in case someone want to discuss the matter beforehand.

The party went off and it most certainly was very very loud. The place was one or two buildings down from me and I could hear it till ... rather late. The meaningful thing, how ever, was they _had_ sent out a letter beforehand ... which was pretty courteous in my view. I guess no one complained (or the English are just so very polite...) and the party did not get shut down.

The parent comment did not state anything like this... so I think his response was quite reasonable. A one off thing that gets out of hand...ok, you can let that slide in the interests of getting along. But to do it again without any sort of heads-up or something of the sort is definitely a motivator for setting some boundaries. Perhaps people complained and the party thrower got defensive and so did it again out of spite. I infer from the language used they're in America, so 'freedom!' and all that crap....

So the reason your comment is getting downvoted is quite understandable; I suggest you try to really place yourself in the actual 'shoes' of the parent poster and try to think of what they might have left unstated. The passive aggressive nature of the response is certainly something to point out, but then again, America is awash in guns. And if I am right about America, then areas in America are quite varied (I am American) and so social/cultural norms are different as well as urban/suburban/rural settings from place to place. There are lots of variables here to consider that have been left out, it seems.

Hi, I forget what the exact cause was, but awhile back, I noticed that for The Guardian in Bing, the description blurb started out with "The Guardian, a far left wingnut rag..." - I told them about it and they had this recurring problem fixed. It was some sort of cache poisoning somewhere that is out of your control. So if you are sure you have not been hacked...

Google Webmaster Tools might have some help pages - do you have an account for managing your domain? IIRC, there might be a field somewhere where you can set this description. I know you can manually set this in some fashion... You have to prove you own the domain etc first. And check or get a Bing Webmaster type account as well.

You can tell HN is full of engineers - all discussing the difference between weighing and measuring, the utility of using DL for this.... but no discussion of the end product. Well, I made this the other day. I measured, so probably didn't do that right and my oven is crummy, so the temperature was probably off and I think I left it in a little too long (or I'm at the wrong altitude?)

So the outside was a bit more crispy that I'd expect, but it wasn't burnt. The inside was definitely cakie - not fluffy enough to be called cake, but not solid or hard enough to be a proper cookie (the outside was cookie-like). Quite edible, but it turns out you can actually use too many chocolate chips....

Thanks - I thought it was a clear explanation of the basic forces/processes driving things, at least the financial aspects. Now I can see how to fit in the information (accurate? I don't know) that someone else on HN said - that owners of large blocks of stock are driving the price downwards at times by selling to each other. If this is true, then the simple thesis of the Infinity Squeeze is wrong and explains why short sellers keep piling in. Somebody is going to lose money somewhere...

But I have no idea, I am not in finance and don't take anything I say as fact.

Sociologically, there are a whole lot of different things driving it and I look forward to the book examining all those aspects.

I have been paying attention to r/wallstreetbets for the past few weeks - I don't have the source handy (it was on WallStreetBets), but there are reputable big name funds / companies who are long on GME. Other big name companies are short, of course, and the WSB community has picked a side in this battle.

So the idea that WallStreetBets is a significant player in all this is nonsense and actually might be propaganda flak coming from the "responsible" people in the media, etc - journalists in the financial sector love rumors and such things and it is a nice cover story as "fog" to hide the fact Wall Street is so manipulated by the big players.

I am old enough to remember when the WoSD really kicked off (i.e. crack cocaine) and that has been shown to be a bunch of bollocks aka propaganda.

You are right in that reducing the causes of the WoSD to easily understood simplistic theories is too reductionistic (just like "cannabis is being suppressed because it cures cancer!!!"), but the side benefits of boosted prison and policing budgets (and civil forfeiture) are too beneficial to those in power - and thus prevent the money from being spent to actually solve the underlying problems driving drug abuse (as opposed to drug -use-). So it is sort of malevolent. Look up Richard Miller's "Drug Warriors and Their Prey".

And "moral panics" like those Anslinger leveraged to exert control on non-whites etc (and journalists who drove the fad of 'huffing' into overdrive back in the 50s) are another important factor. Again, I am old enough to remember the BS around MDMA and GHB (GHB is actually really useful, if you're responsible with it) and how all of that was founded on actions that have been shown to be less than integral by people with little integrity.

I did not read TFA, but I can guess its contents. Now that psychedelics and etc are being medicalized, journalists (who largely like to think of themselves of those who shape society) are writing lemming-like articles about the wonders and benefits of psychedelics. You know what? Those wonders and benefits were apparent / present 30 years ago. Why has it taken so long to break the silence? It's fricking science! But it was deemed 'dangerous' so ...

Because societies ... are easily lead around by the nose by those in positions of power or influence (aka presidents and journalists) who have their own agendas. Everything over the past 4 years has made it clear how so many people are so easily influenced (aka social media and presidential Twitter accounts) by "common sense". And at this point, it is just "common sense" to have a WoSD. I am certainly not arguing that heroin should be mindlessly legalized, but the problem absolutely needs to be dealt with in a different way and the existing processes are self-reinforcing because they do serve certain interests of the social systems or processes in place and those in positions of power (and who benefit from them).

I am vaguely remember now research into why corporations behave as they do despite the people in charge understanding the larger detrimental effects of the actions they undertake for the benefit of or at the behest of the corporation. I think it's analogous, but I haven't thought this through.

So the idea that "the general public" actually understands at a deep or even good level the issues, ramifications, or even the larger social forces at work is naive. You're on HN, so I assume you are smarter than the average person, but seriously, the average person has an IQ less than 120. The older I get, the more I realize how so many people are driven primarily by their emotions and unresolved psychological issues.

I guess I am ranting because my sister just asked how she can deprogram my brother-in-law from believing all the QAnon bullshite. QAnon, the drug war, the 9/11 lunatics, the Nazi Blood Libel, these are all facets of something having to do with flaws in human psychology and societies.

I will certainly be taking a good look at this! My pandemic project was building a system that processes raw text documents into different sets of features (BOW, sentiment, etc) and I ended up developing a generic library for easily processing a database table into the appropriate sort of numpy array. So it has started to veer into AI flavored automl... hopefully I could contribute something to your project, but it seems like you've got quite a lot there already.

> "more effectively identify fake Amazon reviews while Amazon (with presumably better data) fails so miserably." ...

Doing so is Fakespot's raison d'etre, but an unimportant side gig for Amazon. I did my MSc thesis on classifying fake reviews (https://douglas-fraser.com/FakeReviews/index.html). It focused on purely text based features, but I am familiar with all of the literature and research at this point.

Non-text based features are more useful (classification based just on text is hard because believable fake reviews are easy to write) but the amount of non-text / behavioral data Amazon gets or would need to process would be a Facebook level of engineering effort - and is it really that cost-effective? (versus letting buyers do the work - humans can't tell if a review is fake from the text very well, but other things like an excessive number of 5* reviews is easy for a human to see)

The removal of these 20,000 reviews (the FT article) is based on a straightforward obvious heuristic and so is cost-effective. But trying to track all the IPs from China leaving reviews? hmmm. But they should have got the distance and banned all the companies associated with the fake reviews; that would definitely send a signal.

Amazon has tried things like Vine etc to deal with the problem; Yelp and TripAdvisor have their own methodologies. But bad actors always seem to find a way around it. Automating the monitoring of communities where spammer groups congregate is possible but that is another major engineering effort - you just can't have humans doing it due to the scale (and Bezos doesn't like paying essential warehouse workers a decent wage either... so why bother with something like this?)

I know this is anecdata and I have no proof, but when I was in SF 20 or so years ago, I knew a videographer. One of his contracts was doing video work for the Libertarian party, filming meetings, etc. He told me, in some meeting of the upper brass, that he overheard several laughing about the rank and file - apparently the real purpose of the Libertarian party is to serve as an outlet for the Republican weirdos, cranks, troublemakers - and those who might actually make a positive difference in tempering the right wing conservative lunatics.

Now that the GOP is the TrumpForever (for a 1000 years) party, maybe the Libertarian party is going to get flooded with refugees and hopefully grow the hell up. Libertarian thought is useful, but does bump up against reality a lot, so it needs to be tempered. As an ideology (like all ideologies) it is pathetic and the ideologues as well.

As for the article, I think it made its point very well. The book sounds atrocious, but what else would you expect from stenographers for those in power?

I did my MSc these in ML on classifying fake reviews, using the text for features. So I know something of the field and how non-text features (like the age of an account and the rating etc) can be used. The details of Yelp's algorithm are not well understood by researchers, but it certainly emphasizes account specific information because that is the core 'philosophy' of Yelp versus something like Amazon.

I'm not surprised Yelp wasn't interested in helping, you have a common complaint that they would naturally ignore in the interests of not helping actual fraudsters and people trying to get an edge up on the competition. And Yelp doesn't much care especially if you're not making them money re: all the businesses that have sued Yelp.

The first idea that comes to mind is to not be reliant on Yelp and tend to other sources of reviews like real-life Word Of Mouth marketing, e.g. ask your customers to help recommend your business to others they know. People will find that sort of review far more reliable than something on a website left by anonymous strangers. And what other communication mediums (like Facebook or Instagram) might your customer base use?

The other is if they are providing all 4 and 5 star reviews, then the algorithm will find it awfully suspicious all these reviews from first timers are so positive. That is a classic sign of someone trying to game the system. Tell them to leave 3.5 and slowly get the understanding of "Yelp" incrementally higher over time? Or get your customers to leave more reviews for more businesses and so their accounts are regarded are more reliable - only then do they review your business.

I realize these ideas are not instantaneous solutions and require asking your customers for help, but ... given what I know of review sites and the utter lack of any real effort on the part of Yelp/Amazon/TripAdvisor/etc to really deal with the problem of fake reviews and/or the problem of false positives like you're having, I really don't see any magical technical solution. You can't really influence Yelp very well, so what are the other parts of the equation that you can influence?

Exactly. If the "authorities" had any integrity, they'd be following the "process" and that would give them at least a fig leaf of legitimacy. Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but looking at these growing comments, I think there is a brigade going on to influence the discussion.

And that's the video were the whole incident seems suspicious - see my comment. An undercover op would logically have equipment for stirring up trouble / doing damage if part of his remit was to be a "fifth columnist". Yeah, that is how much I trust American authorities in general, especially the right wing nutjobs taking over now.

Reddit was all over that video the other day. The general consensus was that it looked more like an extraction of an undercover operative (dressed all in black! with only the eyes visible!). That seems plausible to me because of how cooperative the guy in black is, the efficiency of the whole thing, the fact that none of the other people in the area/video seemed to know who the guy was (they had to ask him his name, etc).

And the general theory that America is some sort of police state. Undercover operators during a protest (of any sort) is an entirely logical supposition. No, it is not a blatant one; I am not being dramatic. However, the current social turmoil is revealing the oft-ignored dark side of the police to "white America" and I think that is a good thing.

I live in the UK now and the atmosphere in general here is different, I've interacted with police a few times, and no issues - but I am white. If you're in London and black... it is different. Yes, there have been stories of undercover police doing all sorts of shite with respect to environmental protesters aka "terrorists"... and lists of undesirables aka leftists...

But even then, it is still nothing like America. This is just my experience and gut feeling - the Robert Peel theory of policing still lives on here - in the States, the theory of policing is more like police are the occupying force. Cutting the budgets of police departments will help go a long way towards controlling the problem - here, the police have a limited budget (and manpower) and so have to be smart in not wasting money and dealing with avoidable hassles.

Off topic: I was trying to see the comments for this link - there are 258 of them apparently - but all I can see, in multiple browsers, is 1 comment from "flak48". No other HN topics are behaving like this.

About 15 years ago, I was in a bookstore in Palo Alto and, while browsing, picked up a book on depression and antidepressants. What it was about, or at least a chapter, was linking antidepressants and the areas of the brain they were known to affect to the function of those areas and how they might be implicated in or be a factor in depression.

I looked up what I knew of my depressive symptoms and yep, regular SSRIs were hypothesized not to work and instead Wellbutrin was probably the better option. It made sense to me, but I am not an expert in these things. But ... the next psychiatrist I spoke to wanted to put me on the immediately physically addictive Effexor, so I told him to stuff it. Psychedelics eventually did the trick, and I should have done a lot more of them...

So I am mystified why this basic idea of tying what we know of areas of the brain and what antidepressants affect what part seems to have not made any impact in the treatment of depression. Brainwaves processed by AI... ok... super cool PR but I can see a bunch of potential problems knowing what I know about "AI". Something a bit more grounded or fundamental as in "this area of the brain might be underactive, so let's try this medication" is perhaps more useful or reliable.

Unfortunately, I forgot the name of that book. Anyone have any idea how to track down it down?

I am rebuilding the "framework" I wrote for doing my MSc dissertation on the classification of fake reviews. Now that I have the time, the code is far better organized and the higher level structure pretty clean in that I can copy a module, customize it a bit and now a different feature set can be generated. Churning out different ensembles should be fairly easy as well. And of course I'm throwing dask, mlflow and dvc into the mix...

I don't really need to do this (ought to be looking for a job...) <and I'd rather write code than pay to use someone else's SaaS>

but now that I have quite a number of different review datasets to play with, a framework that lets me spin up 10+ processes across the 5 machines I have at my disposal will make short work of most the sets. I will need the uni's HPC cluster to deal with the Amazon dataset, though. Using dask will surely help with that.

Then it's writing yet another paper... Not being allowed to go outside is rather motivating.

Zuckerberg's major in college was psychology, not CS. A Skinner Box [1] is Psych 101 - I am certain Mark knew exactly what he was building. And how is the like button nothing but building on the theory of social psychology?

Facebook, IMO (I minored in psych) is entirely built on a solid understanding of human psychology and how to control it. Add in ads and profit!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

My deepest sympathies - that is quite a lot to go through in just one year. I have had my own battles with mental health issues, but never so concentrated (just protracted). Like others, I really think you need to find a therapist first. As for the modality, what immediately comes to mind is integrative [1]. CBT or Jungian would not be good options though, for various reasons.

A reputable therapist ought to offer a free first session (or half) to see how you two get along and it gives them a sense of what you're struggling with. It may take a few tries to find someone you click with (or a competent one), but stay at it. The exact modality does not matter so much as the quality of the relationship between client and therapist; Bowlby's attachment theory explains this in more detail (e.g. secure attachment == good parenting).

I went through burnout a few years ago (quit the badly run by sociopaths startup), went thru a good period (i.e. taking time off), got desperate for work (bad idea, but couldn't focus on what I'd planned to (aka get out of IT))), got a job, things were ok - and then went downhill again (the dead cat bounce) due to various environmental factors and also not really addressing some internal issues. So don't do what I did.

As for the job, you can always get another one (you're young enough). Again, don't do what I did - I had a ton of responsibility in the startup job and so put up with a lot of crap because a) I thought I was indispensable, b) all the tech was my baby, etc. At the end of the day, I finally realized too late I owned zero equity and the founders were deliberately exploiting me. Your company sounds much better, but still, too much identification with "the job" is endemic in IT and tends to lead to burnout.

And the PTSD worries me for some reason... just my intuition. So don't procrastinate (like I did...) Good luck.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/therapy-types/integrative...

[edit] I see you have a psychiatrist - good, but you should do talk based therapy also IMO - it may be my biases, but psychiatrists are only appropriate for biological based issues. It is the difference in the training. A stereotype perhaps, but when debugging software, do you immediately reach for the soldering iron and start replacing chips?

I wonder if the writers of HBO's Succession have read this series of web page? I have only glanced at a few pages TBH, but this immediately came to mind.