I was on track to go to a prestigious university in high school when my fundamentalist christian parents kicked me out of the house at the age of 16. I ended up jumping around to live with different friends then eventually my grandparents. I had no money and thought I had no future. The stress was killing me, my grades and SAT score suffered. I ended up at a small state school in rural Georgia because of this. Today I work at one of the FANG companies but it was a long and challenging struggle to get here. A single test in high school shouldn’t define your long term success. It didn’t in my case but there are many folks who are living through difficulty at that age.
Although I'm glad it worked out for you, this sounds like a very niche case that would fail every single measure of exampination. Neither is working at a FANG company a signal of intelligence.
> Neither is working at a FANG company a signal of intelligence
You really believe that? I find it extremely hard to believe that the distribution of intelligence for engineering roles at a FAANG company is the same as that of the general population.
It seems far more likely that the distribution is shifted 10-15 points to the right.
I know anecdotes are not the singular of data, but I knew plenty of people whose young lives mirrored the OPs. My family had two couch-surfing classmates (at different times).
Neglectful parents don’t have to also kick one out of the house in order to be neglectful.
There are levels to this. I’m same as OP in terms of “looked like they could’ve gone to MIT” but was born in the wrong family. Ended up going to University of Washington after doing some community college - so it’s not like I went to the worst school in the world. But it was a long journey to get there and I do work at a target company now. Again, a very long journey… That could’ve been changed by just an interview or something else entirely.
I have the Sony A1 and Nikon Z7. Started to get into wildlife photography when the pandemic started and the Z7 autofocus failed me. I would take 30 photos of a bird in flight and 1 would be in focus. So I purchased the A1 which can track a bird's eye in flight perfectly. I'm sure the Z9 is a great camera but its too late and too large for my taste.
Working from home / remote has had significant effects on collaboration and execution especially for more junior employees. Only a handful of more senior engineers have been more productive from my experience. Additionally, company politics are real and if you work remote, you may miss out on opportunities for growth.
One challenge I've seen in practice is that psychological safety is often used as an excuse for why someone is under performing instead of holding them accountable and helping them.
> psychological safety is often used as an excuse for why someone is under performing instead of holding them accountable and helping them
Not in my experience. If management is competent they can help to improve trust between teams and team-members, and create a safe environment for technical discussions.
I always recommend to avoid working for "paranoid" management that sees as "excuses" all complains. Lazy management blames downward their own lacking and creates stress, distrust and problems to the employees that do the work.
Modern frontend development hasn’t failed, the industry has. Frontend development is looked down on as “not real programming” or “simplistic” but it takes years to master and requires skills of both an engineer and designer. Leetcode and bootcamps will not prepare you for architecting a high performance, scalable, accessible, SEO optimized, visually appealing, usable experience.
Exhausting but satisfying. Design and engineering have overlapping process and goals. Performance, problem solving, structure, creativity, experimentation... Unfortunately I've seen many who want to be both but are a master of none.
Agreed, and I've seen way more instances of developers who have no idea what they're doing, not interested in learning, and actually leaving a wake of destruction.
