> This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech"
Another ironic thing is the number of people who lectured anyone disagreeing with twitter's content moderation decisions that twitter is a commercial enterprise that can do whatever it pleases (usually this means yielding to activist pressure) and who are now acting indignant when Musk acts like he owns the place (which he does).
Is that fair? The criticism about these deleted posts seems to be pointing out the contradiction between the claim of widening the speech available and the way that it is being limited here, not that Twitter has no right to do it.
I don't know! Probably not. It is all a political struggle and Musk for sure pursues his own goals in it. But if all this results in a twitter that is more interesting, open and less prudish than before, I think it is worth it. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
Yeah, have you ever noticed that most people only complain about free speech when the voices they agree with our silenced, and never complain when voices they don't agree with our silenced?
First, you need to take a big break, a couple of months at least. The less computing-related activities the better. The summer hasn't ended yet, do some outdoorsy stuff with other people. Depending on your situation of course, it may not be possible. Then just radically cut back on work and try to spend more time with your loved ones.
Second, you need to get your love for technology back. It is still there, but it manifests as hate. My theory of burnout is that it arises when the amount of effort you put in is disproportionally large compared to perceived payoffs. The brain just does a ROI calculation and refuses to put more effort in. To combat that, you need some easy successes. Try doing some small fun project and bring it to completion (for some definition of completion that makes you excited). This should bring back your confidence and excitement.
Third, you need to think strategically about your career. The truth is, for run-off-the-mill web development returns on experience taper off after a few years, so you are at disadvantage compared to younger folks that haven't lost their enthusiasm yet and are prepared to work long hours for less pay. So to make yourself desirable in the eyes of employers, you have to offer them something those people don't have. One option is to go into management (no need to scoff at it, it is hard, offers plenty of opportunity for growth and is exactly the area where older folks can shine). Another is to specialize and become an "expert in X" - maybe in some subject area or in distributed systems or machine learning. Think about what most suits you.
I'll agree with all this, particularly the first paragraph.
I've burned out a couple of times and the fix has been to stop for a while and do other things. After a few months I catch myself coming up with ideas for projects, writing code, etc - that's when it's time to go back to paid work. Obviously that's more disruptive to perm employees than to me as a contractor, but I hear rumours that such things as sabbaticals and sick leave exist.
Becoming an "expert in X" seems to be easier than it might initially appear, it's sometimes the path of least resistance to fall into a specific niche that may or may not exist a few years later - but while it does you are in demand. (I don't unreservedly recommend it!)
> Second, you need to get your love for technology back. It is still there, but it manifests as hate. My theory of burnout is that it arises when the amount of effort you put in is disproportionally large compared to perceived payoffs. The brain just does a ROI calculation and refuses to put more effort in. To combat that, you need some easy successes.
Just wanted to thank you for this summary. I think you're right, though it certainly doesn't feel like that. I am in a very similar situation as OP, but webdev is only a small part of what I (can) do. I literally hate all of technology right now. At least, it feels like that. Also seems to be age-related. I am 40 and I lost "my spark" about 3-4 years ago. Luckily, still able to work, but the fun is gone and I personally don't believe that I will ever get it back at this point.
Edit: May be relevant to OP: I found a small team with an employer who himself went through burnout and now approaches things a bit differently. Not sure if it helps, but I thought it might be nice to know that those exist.
> One option is to go into management (no need to scoff at it, it is hard, offers plenty of opportunity for growth and is exactly the area where older folks can shine
Many many people say this but I think mid/low level managers are also usually young and I don't see the huge value of being old if the tech keeps changing. If anything it might be a bit easier to stay in shape technology wise if you're a developer, not a manager.
This might be less of a problem if you go to high level management (director, CTO etc) but that career path is not trivial at all.
This brings back memories... Some time ago I was an intern in a team working on a UGC map editor. We were using this soft-delete pattern and for some task I needed to deploy a database migration that fiddled with the "deleted" status field. It was quite late and after the migration finished I almost went home but for some reason decided to check community forums. There users were having a time of their life taking screenshots of deleted objects that suddenly became visible (many of them quite amusing, including swear words written in 500km letters). Dunno how this escaped testing, but horror of what I have done brought clarity of mind and I quickly found an error and devised another migration that fixed the data. That worked and I was able to finally go home.
So yeah, be careful with the soft-delete pattern :)
One problem is that companies like to talk about these stock grants as if they are as good as regular salary (and employees seem to play along, using terms like "total comp" and ascribing some definite dollar value to it). But they really aren't. So it is a bit of a deceptive marketing.
Always try to use your "total comp" to anchor your salary at a new job. It works when the new employer isn't public and doesn't offer liquid RSUs etc.
Going from X "total comp" to X salary is an improvement in itself. Not even to mention how that total comp is often bumped by once-yearly vests/bonuses - spreading it as salary means you get it asap and can walk more easily.
I did it earlier this year..and the public company I left tanked next quarterly earnings report. Luckily I converted that to guaranteed salary (which is now gonna hopefully anchor me for the next gig lol)
There is not much use for dollars in Russia right now other than hoarding them (you can buy goods, but many imports are sanctioned). And after initial panic subsided, trust in the banking system looks quite high so people are less keen on hoarding cash.
Also, if you are an oligarch who plans to load your private plane with suitcases of dollars and fly to the Cayman islands, you are probably sanctioned, so that is out of question too.
No problem flying to Dubai to Istanbul and using their banking system. Actually most of Russian and Belarussian elite are happily using it. You can meet all kinds of adult kids of Lukashenko, Yanukovich there or an odd Russian silovik.
You are a bit late to the party. Many Russian assets have already been seized, among them the Gazprom subsidiary in Germany.
We are in a weird spot where Russia is very much interested in economic relationships continuing more or less as is (exemplified by the conciliatory rhetoric from the Russian government, essentially they are saying "no hard feelings, return any time" to the departing companies) so will mostly respect property rights. OTOH the West sees financial and economic relationships as their main weapon in this war so most funky moves related to property rights will be initiated by the Western governments (e.g. many "sanctions" essentially are extrajudiciary property seizures).
> Many Russian assets have already been seized, among them the Gazprom subsidiary in Germany
Most Russian assets have been frozen, not seized. The German subsidiary made news for being an exception in that Germany took control of the subsidiary. But it’s still Gazprom’s property.
>> Are all of those mega yachts getting boarded not considered seized?
> That is my understanding. The property still belongs to the owners
IIRC, there are efforts being made to outright seize stuff like the yachts, sell them, and give the proceeds to Ukraine. I'm not completely up on the details, though. I think some criteria might be if the property is de-facto owned by the Russian state, or was acquired due to corrupt association with it.
Moscow seems similar to San Francisco/New York in this regard - you move there if you want to be where the action is and put up with minor inconveniences. Climate-wise the Bay Area of course wins hands down, but I'm constantly hearing people living in the Bay Area complain about ridiculous rents, homeless, feces on the streets and muggings and in these areas Moscow fares quite a bit better. Grass is always greener.
Every statement that paints Russia in a positive light must be propaganda, right? This becomes tiring really fast.
> Moscow average salary: 1100 USD 2021 Bucharest average salary: 1,614.91 USD 2021
It makes precisely zero sense comparing absolute numbers without factoring in cost of living. And we are talking about experienced software professionals. OP's uncle is probably making at least 4x more than that. Imagine making 4x average salary in your region.
> Every statement that paints Russia in a positive light must be propaganda, right? This becomes tiring really fast.
A hyper violent fascist dictatorship (going on two decades now), with no human rights, where just proclaiming the war in Ukraine to be a war can get you 15 years in prison - yeah, there are a lot of very good reasons why Russia can't be painted in a positive light at present.
This is the same fascist dictatorship that just instructed its soldiers to intentionally genocide, rape and torture civilians by the tens of thousands in neighboring Ukraine.
We're talking about one of the most evil regimes of the last several hundred years. And it all derives directly from the culture of the country, just as the Soviet era did before it.
>"We're talking about one of the most evil regimes of the last several hundred years."
On that time scale Russia is no special at all. Atrocities committed by the West will make normal human want to loose sanity. For your own education and as a little sample just check what Belgium did in Congo. England had raped half of the world. The rest of the world was just as bad. Just less powerful. So please cut the bullshit.
Current Russian regime and their leaders deserve to be dealt with for sure. Personally I would dump Putin into meat grinder (not really because I am not a rabid dog he is but these are my feelings).
But to claim that Russia did this because of the rotten nature of Russian people in general - this is not true and is pure racism.
I imagine there are people making 4x average salary in Bucharest as well, not just Moscow.
It makes precisely zero sense factoring in a lower cost of living, as likely Bucharest also has a low cost of living. Actually, the numbers I found factoring the cost of living Moscow v Bucharest were much much higher for Bucharest, to the point where I thought they were ridiculous, and wasn't sure about their accuracy, hence I chose those which put Moscow in a more favorable light.
> Every statement that paints Russia in a positive light must be propaganda, right? This becomes tiring really fast.
Yeah well, the statement paints a fake positive light about russia. I am sure even that country has many positives but I focused on specifically OP's statement, because it was simply a lie.
You know what else becomes really tiring? What russia did and does to its neighbours since its inception. Focus on solving that, as people are more than eager to move on past territorial expansion wars and live in the current century.
While I agree to you that everyone who can leave Russia - should do it for now, your arguments about personal economy are wrong. The thing with Russia is enormous inequality, which is not seen in average metrics. Moscow has enormously cheap taxi and delivery services because of abundance of immigration workforce and lack of social security. Imagine US allowing free immigration and work for all immigrants. All low skill professions will be immediately taken by wave of immigrants from LATAM and Asia, which will significantly increase quality of life for US middle and lower-middle class with all the spare cash from cheap householding, transportation and other services. Uber and Doordash will become dirt cheap. Amazon may transform into something even more dystopian.
It will also force Americans who are doing those jobs right now to live on welfare, effectively bankrupt welfare system. They are voters, so due to democratic processes this will never happen, but this is not the case in Russia.
Compared to what? Compared to other Russian cities it is certainly expensive. Compared to e.g. San Francisco it is very cheap.
> it prices even software developer leads out.
Doesn't match my experience at all. It doesn't require extraordinary thrift for someone with a software developer lead salary to start a family and pay off a mortgage for a decent apartment.
Given the context provided for the statement, “Moscow is too expensive: it prices even software developer leads out”, local wages, since (as described) it is too expensive for even relatively high-wage workers.
Another ironic thing is the number of people who lectured anyone disagreeing with twitter's content moderation decisions that twitter is a commercial enterprise that can do whatever it pleases (usually this means yielding to activist pressure) and who are now acting indignant when Musk acts like he owns the place (which he does).