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.
It does read to me like this means 5 days of total fasting. If the 5 fasting days were spread out, then what did the participating subjects eat on non-fasting days before the "everyday food items" were reintroduced?
I don't have access to the paper and couldn't find a preprint so I cannot check beyond what is in the UPI article.
If they are doing intermittent fasting, then why do they have to "reintroduce" foods during the 10 day feeding window, when they've been eating food every day?
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.
> 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.
Yeah...that's not a "high stakes engineering environment", that's a poorly structure engineering environment.
8-12 years is enough time to train an 'unqualified' candidate, or get them the requisite licensing/certificates/etc, assuredly.
On call while on vacation? You're understaffed then; even in the face of catastrophe you should have an on call rotation. If even then you still end up having to contact one person, you have too much knowledge siloed.
It was without a doubt dysfunctional, and I have since left the position, but that role was incredibly rewarding financially and taught me many things about myself, and what I desire out of life. So while I was totally burnt out by the end, the juice was certainly worth the squeeze - and I would probably do it again instead of a quiet job where my supervisor could just lower expectations, though I recognize that's not true for everybody.
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".
I think it's a poor mechanism because "appeared once in a pop magazine" isn't a good signal for knowledge curation regardless of whether you assign it a positive or negative weight; especially when the original comment implied (to my reading) "the topic has only surfaced once, therefore the existing knowledgebase is only one study."
The existence of a single study in pop literature is a very poor predictor of whether the study was accurate or not, and a very poor predictor of whether there are other studies on the topic. So I think it a mistake to substitute "it has come to my attention once" for "it has only been studied once."
It is however a very good indicator that the pop portrayal is inaccurate though!
At least this is 'med life style news', arguably not really 'pop', by the time this hits, I don't know, 'ifl science' or whatever, Techcrunch for general science/medicine, I wouldn't count on 'with unstable' in the headline, or perhaps even the body.
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.
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.