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But that's not Stockholm Syndrome. It's more sunk-cost fallacy and inertia.

Oh, that is interesting. I can see it.

My perspective is different than what has been posted, so here it goes.

I knew I could outwork everyone and brute force being a better programmer by a function of continuous improvement through hours of work. (btw I was wrong, there is always someone out there that will outwork you...and they will be smarter than you, but hey it made sense to me).

I didn't realize I made it until

a) People would recognize me in meetings because of my code

b) New programmers started to ask me for advice

...now I'm in the Sr Devs, Tech Leads, and Lead Architects ask me for advice level. Honestly, I still have the same attitude, if I work effectively, I can keep getting better. Notice that I remove the "work harder" part.

Shhh....

Conspiracy theorists just move to a new conspiracy, they never go back and evaluate how they got swindled the first time.

I was about to say the same thing. We currently use a podman container, deploy it in Kubernetes, build container images with it for CI, push them and scale down the podman container.

I now have two new goals.

1. Rewatch TNG

2. Emulate Picard

The implication of CEOs has always been that good leaders increase profits. Bad leaders reduce them.

I was telling my wife that internet of today is how p0rn sites looked in the late 90s. Popups, ads everywhere, miss-direction, can't go back, click this link to go here which might or might not take you there, links that look like site links but are actually ads.

It's making everything suck.

If it's a small meeting I will say, "Give me a moment, I'm thinking". Even then it's faster thinking than I would like.

If I'm forced to answer something, the more significant it is the more of a caveat I will make. Something along the lines of "Right now, I think X would be fine, I'm worried that Y might cause problems. I will look at the code and let you know".

Then I always make sure to reply in an email to say for our conversation on X, I looked at Y, I found this, and also realized that Z will be affected. I'm basically buying time, the key, at least from my perspective is always going back and answering properly.

OK, that is true in a way, I do think it depends on when you are thinking about retirement age, your future plans post-retirement, your family situation and how the market is doing in general.

I have 4 kids, in Silicon Valley I would need $1.2M to buy a 4-bedroom house (2018 average). Where I live, I own two 5-bedroom houses for a total of $240K. So now I have secondary income and my taxes are much lower than the $1.2M house taxes. This thing kind of cascades let's say you put $200K down for your $1.2M house, so $1M loan also means your 4% interest will be a lot more money than my 4% interest rate. Your school taxes, and property taxes would be much more $ as well.

All that money has to come from somewhere. Does it mean your 401K % contribution is lower? Does it mean that if you do retire with twice as much money in retirement you will be spending all the profits paying your taxes? Maybe, maybe not.

I think that's kind of impossible to predict clearly what's more beneficial. For me I rather have my houses fully paid by the time I retire, I'm trending to have paid both of them off in about 8-10 years. I'm putting 13% to 401K, 6% in IRA and living a comfortable life. Would I have 4 kids if I living in NYC or the Valley? Definitely not.

I'm not trying to argue that my way is the best way. Just that it's just "a way", an alternative for someone that is tired of working in FAANG and wants something else.

There is a weird hack about compensation. Move to a place with a much lower cost of living. I'm not talking about suddenly moving to Thailand, you can stay within the US, there are lot of smaller cities that needs tech but their cost of living is much lower.

Basically the math works like this, if your cost of living is 200% US average (San Fran, LA, NYC are there or higher) and you move to a 96% US average your salary might drop 50% but you are still making the same amount of money essentially. In reality it might drop 30% so you will be getting a raise.

Then you can do things like own a house for $100k or less.

Sure.

The main gist is adult or unknown content is not OK. Video game, creative (draw, paint etc), educational videos are fine.

Of course, I have had to refine these rules as things came up.

No TikTok videos on Youtube (the inappropriate to OK videos ratio is way to hit)

No funny prank videos (because most of them are people being mean to others)

No scarry videos unless it's kid Halloween videos and all the kids are OK with watching it (remember they share one screen and take turns on deciding)

Funny animal videos are fine.

Music videos are fine if we have watched it already with them, if they are not sure add "lyrics" to the end of the song and watch the lyric version or ask us (they just opt for lyrics to avoid having to ask/waiting)

If someone uses naughty words once it can be ignored, if they do it a lot especially if the 6-year-old is watching it's an auto change and the youtuber to be avoided (We allow our kids to curse in their rooms if they wish, but not at each other, in public, school or people that might have a problem with it, like their grandparents)

No videos from random channels about boyfriend/girlfriend drama, unknown origin animations about love stories (ratio of inappropriate language, innuendo, sexism, misogyny, abuse is too high). Again, they can ask if they are not sure.

I think that's pretty much it. Every few days, mainly when I watch a youtube video (probably every 2-3 days) I will look at the history. If I find something borderline I will watch the video briefly, if there is a problem, I will explain what it was, if it turns out it was an OK video I will move on.

If I find problematic youtubers I will block them, this is rare, but it has happened. I also see what the Youtube algo suggests, if I see a suggestion that seems iffy, I will mark it as not interested so my kids won't be drawn to it. As time has progressed their feed has gotten cleaner, and they understand what they can and cannot watch better.

Oh, and another thing I have Youtube Premium to avoid ads, because for some reason Google allows some really weird advertisements for children at times. I basically replaced my Spotify subscription for this, and started listening to Google music.

For me there is things you do that give you long term satisfaction and things you do that give you short term satisfaction.

I think both have a purpose and a place. However it's inherently obvious that things that are only short term satisfaction and the most dangerous, because you keep repeating the cycle.

For example liking memes is a short burst, a second later they are no longer relevant. For others it's shopping. You get a mini-high, but a few moments later that's gone. A lot of people seem to just keep pressing the button, get a droplet of happiness and press the button more time. That becomes a vicious cycle.

Essentially if your actions today are identical to tomorrow and nothing has changed, you are stuck in a loop. I'm not trying to argue that everyone needs to be hyper-productive all the time. What I'm talking about is if all your hobbies are consumption, you might be stuck.

D&D, which I play is different because you are doing it in a social setting. It's more like socializing with an excuse and a purpose, you get to exercise your creativity, imagination, you are actively using your mind. Passing things like watching youtube all day or drinking don't do that.

See my reply to the original question.