I've been writing for fun a few years ago, then one of my articles got really popular because it ranked high on search engines and it still receives a fair amount of traffic.
Since then, even though I wrote more articles, I discarded them because of this new "pressure": nothing really feels as good as the articles that I already published. I have not published anything in 4.5 years, but I keep promising myself that I'd start again some day.
Any feedback or criticism on the current articles is welcome.
1. The economy will continue to stay somewhat flat. There will not be any major recession, but also no miraculous overnight recovery. Inflation will drop slightly, but it will remain higher than targets. Interest rates will hover around the current values. Home prices will continue to drop, but folks waiting for a "market correction" to get their first property will still not buy.
2. Crypto market will continue to stay flat. Maybe some more exchanges go under, but even if they do, new exchanges will spawn replace them. There will be more "breaking news", but all of it is a re-make of a piece of news that already happened in a different form during 2010-2022.
3. Many startups will either close business or get acquired at bargain prices by competitors. Some will make sense ("can't believe anyone invested in that") while others will be complete surprises and somewhat disrupt the day-to-day life.
4. Most Bay Area companies and startups will focus their hiring to either some of the newer tech hubs across the US or abroad (particularly Europe) and completely halt hiring in the Bay Area. All of these companies will be fully-remote or somewhat-remote. Because the average tenure is 2-4 years, and because families take longer to uproot, it will take until 2025-2027 to actually see the Bay Area population start decreasing. Companies that will still hire in the Bay Area will be remote-unfriendly.
5. Machine Learning achievements will continue to show up at a similar pace as throughout 2022. More and more companies will pop up to repackage these technologies into well-marketed consumer-facing services - logo generators, fiverr replacements, blogspam filters, search engines, language translators, coding mentors, etc.
6. "Impersonal social media" - TikTok, YouTube, Twitter - where you do not personally know the content creator - will continue to grow in popularity, leaving behind an even bigger need of "personal social media" - where you keep in touch with people that you actually know. Maybe some company, either existing or new, will fill in that gap. Maybe not.
Assuming that financial growth is your main motivation, here are few more examples:
- Change industries - move into finance, look for small proprietary trading shops. Depending on your skill level, this may (or may not) yield better total compensation levels
- Lower your taxes (may not be possible if you are from the US, but I did not make any assumptions). You can do so by changing countries, changing legal entities
- Lower your cost of living through remote work and geoarbitrage. 350k in NYC may buy you the same life as 200k in West Chicago. Bonus points if you can remote from Asia or South America. Morphing into this arrangement from an on-premises job is easier than looking for remote work right away
- Diversify active income streams - 2 part time jobs might give a better yield than 1 full time. Make sure there is no conflict of interests
All of these will eventually plateau, together with your development skills. At that point, the only way to grow is to diversify into skills that scale better (go into management, go into consulting, start companies, teach courses).
I assume continuously changing lanes on a 4+ lane road, such that you don't rear bump fellow drivers. This must be done if you're driving at 130 mph, while the rest go at 70. At those relative speed differences, the rest of the cars look stationary. (note the sarcasm)
I'm not sure what lane surfing is. But aside from the 130mph remark - changing lane to maintain speed is how you're supposed to drive on a motorway/freeway. So long as you're within the speed limit, of course. Braking is a freeway anti-pattern.
In the UK passing on the right (well left for us of course) is illegal and called undertaking. I know it's not illegal here but it still winds me up!
I think it's actually really quite dangerous to have cars passing you on both sides when you're already going 5 over to "fit in". It'd be much better if like in Europe people pulled out to overtake and back in when done and that lane surfers had a little a patience now and again. A few seconds really does not matter. Especially when you overtake them 5 mins later as they're texting anyway!!
If you are being passed on the right in the US then you are doing it wrong. Slower traffic keep right except to pass. By your definition, you're in the wrong lane.
Lane surfing happens in the US because people here don't understand how to drive on freeways. It is non-existent in Germany because drivers there know how to drive.
I used to live in Seattle, a perfect example of a city that has enough freeway but still has traffic jams because people drive cluelessly. Not just my opinion, but the opinion of traffic enforcement in Washington.
And people on their phones while driving just make the situation worse.
I believe this is true in most of Europe - stay to the right except when passing, which you do on the left.
On the other hand, some cities (such as LA) have off-ramps on both the left and right sides, not to mention many multi-lane freeway interchanges located on both sides... combined with Google Maps telling you at the last minute that you need to be in the left 3 lanes, followed by immediately being in the right-most lane in order to get on the right freeway. Almost every visit to LA requires 1 or 2 retries on a few of these freeways. When I'm not constrained for time, I often opt for much slower side streets to avoid the utter insanity of some interchanges.
Agree that the US test is laughably easy to pass compared to the UK, though.
It wouldn't be possible to undertake if folks had proper lane discipline in the first place, although the UK also has it's fair share of Middle Lane Morons
I've heard speak of 'the orbit game' - legally pass the MLM on the left, then pull across into the right lane, slow down so they pass you, then pull into the right lane and pass them again, see how many times you can 'orbit' them
I was in a car where the driver was stopped for prolonged driving in the passing lane in a US midwestern or plains state. This was maybe 25 years ago, but this has been a violation in at least one state at some point.
1. Yes under 20. I started when I was 17, partially spending the time in my Compsi vocational class doing client work I had found on odesk(now upwork).
2. First couple jobs I probably worked below minimum wage. Lots of foreign competition on odesk that is hard to compete with no reputation. By the end I was making 35/hr in an area where you can mortgage a house for $350/mo (why did I move to the bay area again?? :))
3. Yes they get easier to get. Part of my pitch was I get things done right which people liked.
Edit - another fun fact about odesk. My first office job in the bay area was literally across the sidewalk from them. I spent three years getting work through there, moved 3000 miles, and ended up across the street from their office. Neat right?
I had that happening. For me it was an allergic reaction which slightly blocked my sinuses and reduced the air intake. The allergy was previously undetected because I do/did not use the same cosmetic products that my partner uses. A antihistamine nasal spray may help, but check with an ENT.
I've been writing for fun a few years ago, then one of my articles got really popular because it ranked high on search engines and it still receives a fair amount of traffic.
Since then, even though I wrote more articles, I discarded them because of this new "pressure": nothing really feels as good as the articles that I already published. I have not published anything in 4.5 years, but I keep promising myself that I'd start again some day.
Any feedback or criticism on the current articles is welcome.