Yeah, you can play whatever game you want in life. However, playing the money game is dangerous, and can easily create attachment and greed. I'm not necessarily preaching about his choice of game -- more about his lack of perspective, really.
I see what you mean as well. But, I don't think this kind of thing should impact your well being. The guy said in other posts that he can't get into those better companies and is considering suicide. It sounds so odd to me that I don't know if he's serious.
Sorry, but is this a serious post? Honest question.
> My total comp for the first year is only $145k out of undergrad with a base of $106k. My friends at places like Google, FB and Cruise are making more like $180k-$230k by comparison.
Heaven forbid someone is making more money than they know what to do with than you are.
> Im honestly terrified that the value on the resume will decline over time and i will never be able to get into a more prestigious company.
Is this a real concern? Surely you can be hired on technical merit. Google hires new grads! And people who only worked at "top-tier" companies still have to pass an interview everywhere.
> The idea of being relegated to a 2nd or third tier company has been eating at me, and comments on places like CSCQ, Blind and this AskHN nearly drove me to suicide before.
That's sick. Not to be insensitive for you, but our priorities in this industry are whack. Surely you can find a meaningful job outside of a megacorp that's bleeding the world dry. Or do you just care about money and status?
Is central control necessary? I know it's a tough pill to swallow, but I encourage you to think about it some more. And don't think in terms of subsystems but rather real entities.
> Otherwise though, I found that his personas largely reflected his current emotional state. One persona would almost always be "out" when he was upset with a friend, or struggling with some stress. Another was more childlike and playful. He described them as always there, and even though he appeared to allow one of them to be "in charge" as he put it, he said the voices were always in the back of his mind, directing his thoughts.
That doesn't sound like a disorder. The abnormal thing about your friend is that he is more aware than the average person.
The illusion of a single, unified self is just that. When you talk to people in your dreams, who are you talking to? Their responses are quite intelligent, if you listen. When you say embarrassing things under anesthesia with no memory of it, who said those things? When you get irrationally angry, who the hell is it that comes out? Same with the alcoholic who swears one day he'll quit and forgets about it the next day -- different people.
Moreover, there are huge areas of your brain that work quietly and subconsciously (from your perspective). Not only are they conscious, they're smarter than you. They prove it through intuition and gut feeling, if you listen.
> while his condition lent itself to occasional mood swings, he made a point of _respecting_ his voices, allowed them to become a part of him, and I feel had largely learned to cope.
I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I found your tone somewhat condescending. It's not his alternate selves that he needs to "cope" with, but society's notion that something is wrong with him. This might sound too new-age for people, but the more aware you are, the more you realize just how sick everyone else is. We literally have conscious beings imprisoned within us.
> He had figured himself out for better or worse
Probably figured himself out better than the rest of us ever will.
> There are other things like adrenal hyperplasia which are really common and results in developing secondary sexual characteristics of both genders.
"Really common" is people bullshitting. Most of this stuff is in their heads. I don't know about adrenal hyperplasia but certainly you don't need to be a liberal to have it? So why do only liberals want preferential treatment?
Sorry, all this crap is just identity politics... it's not based in reality at all.
> To suggest that people can't or shouldn't advocate for acceptance of their conceptual identity is pretty misguided.
I'm sorry, but made-up genders simply do not find their way into my model of the world. I never encounter such people in real life (hopefully they've all been siphoned off to Portland by now) and I simply do not have the time or the energy to so much as blink at such whacko ideas, much less accommodate the crazies by building special bathrooms just for them and their delusions. So sorry, but I will never "accept" this into any personal framework and will treat people like normal people with real genders, not made-up ones.
> Simply not having XX nor XY chromosomes happens about in one in every 1666 people. Surely you have met at least two thousand people in your life.
That's a disease, not a gender. What makes people with such a disease think they are special? Moreover, why should I care about this particular disease when there are much worse?
Honestly, everyone has quirks, not everyone makes them the core of their identity.
Edit: apparently someone here is offended by my comments and instantly downvoting them. Pretty sad, and doesn't help your cause. If censorship is the best strategy you can think of, then maybe your cause is total fucking bullshit.
I understand now, though I would argue that nothing you call "objective" is actually so. These goals you listed are just the formulation of a game, which a lot of Westerners choose to play (though not all global citizens, which already makes your opinions non-objective). We can choose to play any games we want on this planet, and it baffles me that people choose to invest time (the only thing you ever truly invest) into one of the worst games.
It's no wonder that whenever I go back to America or see Americans in my travels I am struck by how utterly shallow and unhappy they seem to be. And the stereotype of the American Smile is already disappearing from people's memories.
Let's be honest here, "non-binary genders" is a weird concept to begin with. It's alien, and doesn't apply to humans. Why is this whacko stuff getting shoved down our throats, and what does it have to do with programming? Do programmers think they are aliens or above human biology?
Seriously though, I agree with the other comment about having Codes of Conduct. Don't programmers know what constitutes acceptable behavior? (Apart from stuff like not showering).
> I deleted the comment in case there is some sort of HN 404 taboo I'm not aware of.
Never do this. If someone doesn't like your comment, then you are just letting them win by removing it. That's exactly what they want: for the comment not to exist. Don't give them the satisfaction; people who engage in censorship practices don't deserve it.
I enjoyed your comment despite it being light gray. I never considered Google to be particularly rich in "opinions". Some buy into the culture more than others, but the workers are mostly left-wing. I also think a better term than opinion here is "radical ideology", which is more accurate and less vague. But yes, I found the comparison to communism to be quite apt,though it applies to much of SV. People are afraid of saying something they shouldn't. Even though the consequences may not be as severe as in the USSR, you can still lose your career for something like saying you agree with Trump on anything.
> I'm not into new age / whatever stuff but I like to think of it as night time meditation as while it's still not as good as sleep it's still a great deal better than full blown insomnia!
There's a reason advanced mediators have vastly reduced sleep requirements (four hours a night or even less).
> they belong in the same category as French or Japanese
Huh? French food I can understand, though I don't have much of a taste for it, but Japanese food is terrible -- I was there for two weeks. A lot of foreigners are deeply disappointed when they travel to Japan, especially by sushi (though I found a couple of good sushi places). However, by far the best food in Japan is found in Chinese-style restaurants. Chinese food completely eclipses Japanese.
Eastern European food is fantastic. It completely spoiled me and my gf -- we couldn't stand the much-loved Spanish tapas when we went there. And Poles make as good or better pizza than Italians.
And then we went to Asia and found ourselves in a whole different ballgame.
> you can get an _amazing_ meal for cheap in Greenpoint
I completely sympathize -- Polish food is rewelacyjne when you're used to shitty American food.
> I also remember a time when human decency wasn't shrouded in the pejorative "political correctness".
Not sure what you're getting at with this rhetoric (no wonder you're a fan of vague, politically-correct statements -- I have no idea what the second part of your comment means). People don't like political correctness because it's a manipulation tool of policy makers, used to misdirect and to prevent unwanted discussion -- like with e.g. the illegal immigration problem, which no one dared bring up before You-Know-Who. Political correctness is also a cowardly and intellectually dishonest mode of discourse.