“bullshit jobs” by David Graeber

I read a book a while back about the real life of the author of little house on the prairie (it’s called “prairie fires”) - her books really sugarcoat how hard life was - even people who knew how to live off the land had a really hard time

They are so perfect 🥲

I agree - I loved art in high school and really wanted to be an illustrator. But I graduated in 08 (recession) and I didn’t have the confidence to try to make it as a freelancer or whatever.

I ended up choosing a really boring path in office work because I just wanted to make sure I was inside at a computer while I was working. At first it was so depressing - I had built my identity around my artwork. But I eventually found a new field that I loved and transitioned into that thanks to skills and resources from my boring office experience - I’m really happy with it all today and don’t regret anything.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve found happiness/success by disconnecting my identity from my occupation and focusing on the work environment I want instead of the content of the work.

“Well there’s your problem”, about engineering disasters - it’s also a YouTube channel but there are podcast feeds and it works as audio (that’s how I listen). Also “Know your enemy” is a leftist look at the right.

Here are some from a text file I keep around for these purposes:

• What has your team been working on recently? What new changes have you shipped in the last six months?
• What is the biggest difficulty your team is facing right now?
• How long has the team existed and how long have you been managing it?
• Is the team all remote? Are you?
• How long does it take for code to be deployed after being committed?
• How often do team members move teams?
• What kinds of (soft or hard) skills do you need most on the team right now?
• Do you have a defined onboarding process?
• How long does it take for people to get up to speed as new hires? How much would a new hire be doing in six months?
• Does the team maintain deployment infrastructure? Production infrastructure? Is there an on-call rotation?
• What does your planning cycle look like? Scrum? Kanban? Meetings?
• What’s one thing you would change or improve on the team if you could snap your fingers?
• What would you like to be doing less and more of on your team?
• How does the product representative interact with the eng team?
• Do you have a career ladder, with levels, and expectations at each of the level defined?
• What is your performance review cycle like? 1:1s?