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.
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.
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.