irremediable

Micromanagement, depending on what it means, can be a valuable tool in fixing a broken system. e.g. you take over a team where everything's broken and shipping late. It can genuinely be very helpful for you to dive into the details of everybody's tasks and figure out where things are breaking down. You get a detailed look at the bottlenecks that senior people face (but may be reluctant to share for political/personal reasons); and you get a detailed look at the knowledge/skills gaps that hinder juniors.

It's not sustainable though. The idea is to dive in, figure out what to fix, then fix it into a system you can stop micromanaging. Otherwise you just won't have enough time to do the other important stuff.

The KBoges channel is generally very good. I'd take a lot of care in building up to daily training, though; you only get one body, and if you injure it you may never be the same. He does emphasise this in his videos, but in his shoes I'd be reluctant to even suggest daily training to people, because some significant minority of them will always go too hard at it and wreck themselves.

My preferred style of "everyday training" is strength training every few days, cardio most non-strength days, and walking a minimum number of steps every day (cardio counting towards it).

Push + pull + lower is generally enough to get fit and healthy, yes. It could be a good idea to split it more like push / pull / lower front / lower back, because things like squats tend to work the quads way more than the hamstrings or glutes.

I don't have access to the full text either, but I'd be really surprised if it's five days of total fasting. I'd expect that it's low calorie days with some special restrictions (or even meals) they've set out.

5 fasting days doesn't mean 5 days of total fasting.

> 2. Hop to a different FAANG, one level higher => Does this actually happen on a regular basis? How might one approach this?

That's the way to do it at the lower levels, yeah.

You apply, ideally via a referral, and at the early stages the recruiter will establish roughly how senior you currently are. They'll be keen to know your current comp, too. It's common advice not to reveal this, and I'd follow it, but that's less crucial when you're at a standardised BigCo because they'll already know what bracket you're in, as long as you're in the same geographic area.

Then you go through the rigmarole of interviewing, and if they want you, they need to offer you higher comp, usually via a higher level (or higher spine on an existing level for the companies that do it that way).

> the reality of working in a competitive, high-stakes engineering environment, where your boss WILL call you while you're on vacation, where you WILL go 8-12 months without finding a qualified candidate, where you WILL feel pressure to deliver products by deadlines.

This sounds like an unproductive environment?

Like... a boss shouldn't need to call reports on their vacation, that's why engineers build systems and automate things. Being unable to fill a position in 8-12 months suggests the hiring process is broken.

I'm all for the importance of hard work, but I'd suggest an org like this is working hard but not smart.

They did lose weight, though...

> That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for every overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising.

FWIW most weight change is due to diet. If you're overweight, exercise is probably a much lower priority than finding a way to sustainably eat less.

I'm not just sounding off here; I lost 20+ kg by tracking what I ate and eating less.

Your response is great. Thanks for sharing information about the literature and way more context.

> Otherwise, what you're actually saying is, "I'm skeptical of results that pop magazines and press releases have only surfaced to my attention once" - which is a shoddy mechanism for curating your knowledge.

At the risk of nitpicking, this seems like a good principle to follow? Like, assuming skeptical means "I won't instantly buy into this being as great as the pop magazine claims" rather than "I will strongly presuppose that this is untrue because it was in a pop magazine".

People have written books about habit formation, e.g. Tiny Habits. The principles are fairly convincing.

Choose one of [walking more, eating healthy, strength training, sleeping early, etc].

Anchor: use an existing habit as the trigger for your new habit. For example, if you tend to eat lunch at the same time every day, and have free time after it, your anchor could be "as soon as I finish lunch". Maybe set a phone reminder if you're not good at remembering.

Behaviour: do a tiny, accessible version of the desired behaviour. e.g. if you want to walk more, this might be "I'll leave my house". You're going to ramp this up over time, so starting small is fine.

Celebration: do something simple to provide positive feedback for engaging in the habit. Even just something like "I will smile and let myself feel good for five seconds".

Do that for a few days, scale up the behaviour slowly, and eventually you'll have built the habit. Then add on a new habit.

It depends on what you want to achieve, and who you are.

Do a PhD if you love research, and have a good safety net e.g. middle class family who'd support you in an emergency or savings to cover several years' living costs. Have an exit plan - are you planning to go on the postdoc treadmill afterwards?

Go for the BigCo if you're unsure what to do. You'll build your CV, make good money, and learn whether it suits you well.

IMO only go for the start-up if you've got a specific opportunity in mind that you're in love with. Almost all start-ups fail, and sadly it's harder to spin those failures into something positive on a CV.

I, Claudius is a classic that I only discovered recently.

Is anyone here a DeLillo fan? Seems like a natural place for me to ask for recommendations.

If I loved White Noise but didn't get much from Underworld, which DeLillo book would be best to read next?

AFAIK the US got computers earlier than most places, even other First World countries. Large disposable incomes and a large, relatively homogeneous market. My family were middle class (teachers) in the UK, and moderately early adopters; we still only got our first PC in the mid-90s.