269 karma · joined December 2, 2014
Then a friend of mine heard I had done a good job and asked whether I wanted to join him on other things, then I was set.
If your clients are happy they will offer more jobs, recommend you, opportunities will arrive.
I haven't had the need to look for a client ever since
I used to be fairly shy, especially with the other sex, of course. But in my personal life with family and friends I was fairly normal, it was just shyness and a lack of confidence while surrounded by others.
I cured myself through ego, a bit of arrogance and blunt thoughts about women, discovering what I value and I what I don't in the process.
1. I spent several days looking at people (high school) and tried to look at them objectively (without paying much attention to how popular they were)
2. I realized most people were fairly mediocre (in the sense, they were not accomplishing much, not really smart), I had absolutely no reasons to be ashamed or unconfident in the face of people that were not faring any better than I did.
3. As for women, I just humanized them (sounds very obvious but well, I was young). After all, they also go to toilet, they have their own dreams shattered, grand ambitions, false hope, small moment of joy. And no matter how pretty they are, from time to time, when the night comes, they are alone in bed, questioning their existence, life choices, remembering their mistakes and crying out of sadness and lost ones.
After this moment, I started to see others and women as more or less similar to myself. I had a good idea of what I valued (intelligence, provocative thoughts), and I what I did not really value (popularity contest, amassing lots of things, the latest gadgets, new clothes, etc).
As soon as I established myself, I did not try to compete, stopped seeing women as magical creatures, did not care about being "popular" and started making friends with people, who shared common values.
And you can literally vampirize everyone else, abusive a contributive welfare system without really contributing much.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg, many citizens don't want to live with others from specific countries at a massive scale.
The world would blend too much and become vastly uninteresting.
1. People should not be interchangeable. Polish hold different values than Cuban. They have their own languages, cultures, values, traits, physical appearances. Keeping borders is also making the world richer. I will be saddened for the rest of my life because I will never experience a massive culture shock like navigators experiences a few centuries ago. Now, I can pretty much have raclette anywhere, Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, coke, Netflix, Hollywood is pretty much everywhere, and it's sad.
2. If we let go of the borders, we will give up on a vast amount of literature. Fiodor Dostoievski's masterpiece would have never existed if 40% of his population were French, Italians, Nigerian, Polish, Germans.
3. People would just abuse the system, using highly capitalist, low tax countries during their youth and move to socialist countries as they as getting older (of course that does not work, you need borders for this) and it's utterly unfair to let people from outside abuse a contributive system.
And Russian propaganda is probably already taken care of because the rare moments I decide to search for information about the conflict, the only little propaganda I stumble upon is coming from Ukraine (over exaggerated body count, Snake Island, etc). Nothing new under the sun, fog of war is obviously expected and natural.
But this kind of censorship is clearly impeding my capacity to grow my worldview. And I don't trust the West more than the Russians (Irak's weapons of mass destruction anyone?)
I own a fairly big media in France and we have been covering the conflict, we made two videos on war communication tactiques and it's pretty bad from both side. Ukraine is using propaganda to drag Europe into this mess, Russian is using propaganda as usual.
It also reminds me the Covid, 1 year ago, any search about the "Wuhan leak theory" was deemed to be a "conspiracy theory", you had a hard time finding interesting resources about people digging into the idea with a scientific mindset and a desire to really figure out where that might come from. People who believed it was possible, were laugh at.
And now, it's considered plausible, nobody has a definitive answer to it, but it's a real possibility. For this reason, I don't believe in censorship from people who keeps calling the shots but who are as clueless as the rest the population.
Last but not least, like any individual I do have biases of course. But I am very wary of people who also have biases but who might have hidden motives and skin in the game.
Using the "liberal idea" of page ranking which is in my opinion a very abstract way of dealing with information (similar to the invisible hand almost) appears to me as a superior and more trustable way.
That's why, I am also leaving DDG.
The only difference between the US and Russia is the the US is a lot more subtle when it comes to generating propaganda.
If people lost trust on Western medias, it's not because of Russians, it's because we are constantly producing propaganda as well. It's just different.
It will likely take a few days where you will need to answer questions, handle edge cases before your virtual assistant is up to the speed.
And that’s about it. Anytime you want your notes to be transcribed, you just send it through email or whatever
Who is going to impose what is to be valued by society? You basically just want to deprive countries from having any kind of political freedom, choices, their own personal destiny, success and failures. What a sad world to live in.
I think the opposite.
I am not allowed to go anywhere I want. There are plenty of countries refusing me entry, or access to land/property or force me to abide by strict business rule (like having a national owning > 51% of any company I might create there) this is fine. It's not my country.
Plus, your "equality" is going to create other form of inequality. Any socialist countries relies on past contributions to finance most things like healthcare or unemployment income.
In my country, immigrants are allowed to get unemployment income, without contribution anything beforehand. This just creates inequality to the ones who contributed.
You seem just obsessed with equality for the sake of it. People have history, bonding among nations take time, suffering, dedication.
You can't merely replace a Thai with a Columbian. They don't believe in the same things, they don't have the same values, they don't believe in the same God or divine figure, they don't speak the same language, they don't eat the same food, they don't use their money in the same way. It must take personal effort for someone to immigrate into another country.
People don't just come to a new country and just abandon their past. They bring their values, ideals, beliefs, problems and solutions. As the number of foreign people coming, cosmopolitanism increase.
Then you quickly reach a point where you can eat a raclette anywhere, soccer is the most famous sports, Hollywood is the main entity broadcasting entertainment. There is no point in traveling, because every place more or less lost their spirit.
And I am not talking about the fact that, if countries completely drop their requirements based on nationality, they will keep their "usefulness" requirements (who is able to take a job we are looking for)
What's going to happen? Well educated people are going to move easily. Further depriving countries of the very ones they need to develop their countries.
It will be a one way street. I don't imagine hundreds of thousands of Americans moving to eastern Africa anytime soon.
I decide who I want to welcome in my home. I believe Thailand, Russia, Brazil, Germany are completely free to do the same and fix their own rules.
I am quite nomad, spending several months in random cities around the world, so socializing is important as I can’t rely on just building a circle of friends.
- I volunteer in things related to kids education
- I eat outside my home twice a day, I often put up a piece of paper saying I am willing to entertain a conversation
Quite often, people will just come and sit at the table and we will chat. Often we exchanged contacts and meet later
But then I don’t count the many hours reading documentation, practicing and exploring at home and most of the time it’s geared toward « what I can do to improve X at work »
Also my mind is rarely off, there is always part of my brain focused on some challenges we are facing at work.
I don’t know how others do it, but I can’t produce code 7h a day just sitting on my chair
I would pretty much use it on the opposite spectrum, if a company has too much diversity compared to the normal demographics, that’s a red flag for me. The company is implementing non meritocratic/scientific process to hire their employees, I am not interested to join.
Regardless of your values, having more information is rarely a bad idea.
It's still a solid resource, you should not treat it as your Bible of course. There is not a single resource that will teach you how to write clean code or clean architecture.
You need to read about design patterns, and then you will abuse them, so you need to step down, reflect and see them for what they are.
You need to learn to name things well. Most functions can be short and expressive. The code can speak for itself (most of the time)
You need to spot reusability, to know when you are being too clever, you need to go down the rabbit hole until you see for yourself, that this is obviously not the right way to do it.
This takes times, and there is no exact recipe. It's similar to chess, sure you can learn many openings and closing, but 90% of the game is sensing the board, seeing patterns as a whole.
In this journey, Uncle Bob is a pretty good teacher, he will show you code you could have produced by yourself, code that I could have produced myself. And show you why it's flawed, why it would be hard to extend, modify. Why it will be hard to read several months from now.
And he will teach some good principles you can use to write better code.
1. Reduce friction as much as possible. I am currently living in a condo with swimming pool / gym. To start exercice I just need to take the elevator. I pair it with an audio books or podcast, I am able to get consistent exercice with it.
2. I spend few weeks doing wide explorative phase. For example, I was addicted to soda and junk food. I tried dozens of water brands until I could find a decent replacement (San Pellegrino sparkling water and fruit infusion for me) and when it comes to vegetables I settled down for chicken, eggplant. I also go to a healthy place for breakfast where I get real oatmeal with fruits.
I also replaced coffee with matcha.
I then exploit it. I eat the same thing everyday switching only when I am with family/friends. I discovered that I don't really need new things. (That's what I do when I am on my productive phase of course, when I am back to having more relaxing time, I enjoy reading, trying new healthy things, walking/biking more, etc).
This way, when I am working long hours, everything else is put in autopilot and I don't want to think about it. I want my default choice to be decent.
I am currently traveling the world and doing programming as a freelancer at the same time. My daily salary is 3 times the monthly salary of where I am currently living.
I have no idea how gouvernements are going to regulate this in the future but it’s insane.
5x8 by 4x10 (indeed I don’t imagine myself being able to produce code for 10 hours)
Well France is on 35h workweek anyway.
But we are advocating for a 4x7 = 28 workweek (likely with a paycut of course)
I feel this would be a net positive for a company.
Or it could be 5*5 = 25 workweek for that matter. Because when the task is complicated and creative, I don’t think I can work 7 hours most of the time
But it’s not for me. I am working all day in the computer, as I get older, when I am off the computer, I am craving more and more nature, simplicity, minimalism, calmness. Taking a notebook out of my backpack, sitting in front of a river and writing down random thoughts.
I am not looking for more pixels.
But for the youth, I think it’s going to be strong.
Did I hate my father? Absolutely not, but that’s what happened. Sometimes it’s not too logical, trust what’s inside your mind, you don’t need to break down to mourn.
Mr Money Mustache - https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ (unusual approach to minimalism and FIRE)
But I think I might go back to having no phone next year. I would not define myself as "the guy who has no phone", and I definitely allow myself to change my mind, it's not for tracking or privacy reasons, mostly that sometimes I feel the need to be a lot more creative and explorative than social. Remove a phone from your life can definitely make you see the world differently.
But I was not really impressed. Recently someone offered me a position in FAANG company, I refused despite the high salary.
In my humble opinion, your country is too diverse that it’s starting to hurt, you are being polarized over trivial stuff and social interactions are too shallow (I prefer opposite countries where it’s harder to engage with people but where discussions get a lot deeper)
Also the American dream is not really appealing to me, I have lived in 5 countries (for at least a year), the US is the one I enjoyed the least