I live in a dense European city and all I ever do is order groceries online. I can order larger amounts in one go, so, batch order once every two weeks or so.
Instead of having to fight with a machine to give back my empty cans/plastic bottles, I can just give the delivery person a crate and get my money back.
Doesn't capture all my groceries, I love biking or walking to a smaller shop on occasion, or if I have a specific craving, but 90% of my groceries is delivery.
As someone who is a chronic procrastinator, and has diagnosed ADHD, I relate to this. While yes, scrapping tasks and limiting concurrent in-progress todo's helps with peace of mind and feelings of guilt, I am _significantly_ more productive the more I get on my plate. As long as A I have a clear set of small tasks for each project, I can actually make more progress.
That said: there's definitely a price to pay for this. I'm very bad at managing energy levels, or making sure I do all of that in a sustainable way, so, it's super productive, until I'm not. At all. Usually quite suddenly. The risk for burnout is quite high.
I'm starting to accept that I'll never find the right balance, rather, I'm just getting better at recognising the symptoms that I'm headed towards burnout, and just accept that it's alternating periods of very high, intense productivity, and periods of basically nothing.
Putting one thing on my to-do list is the most surefire way of me not doing the thing.
Sadly, I understand why: they have a tonne of systems, that all, at least somewhat, work, that people know how to use, with established contacts and support contracts. IT departments trained and certified on how to run and deploy MS software. And that's before we start talking about lobbying.
edit: added a link to a good resource about the topic.
We should have started moving over yesterday, but it's a long and difficult process, I just hope we start moving forward on this.
While I don't disagree with the general statement, I do want to add the nuance that this isn't true for small amounts of cash money. Recently, the government even recommended people to keep more cash on hand in case of emergency / large scale disruptions to the financial system.
Even with large amounts of money, it's not like they're knocking on doors, looking under yer bed.
What is small and what is large is a matter of opinion.
If they are out to get you and can't find anything incriminating, cash will do. The press will happily report on this too : 'There was a police raid so and so, nothing was found but they found a (large) amount of cash'.
Furthermore, our government is planning legislation to make cash transactions > € 3000 illegal.
The media will sensationalize anything. Another favorite is claiming someone had "hundreds of rounds of ammunition" when even someone who just shoots recreationally, let alone competitively, would burn through that in an afternoon. It's like accusing a golfer of going through hundreds of balls at the driving range . . . yeah, that's the point of going.
> What is small and what is large is a matter of opinion.
There's certainly there's some vagueness in the middle, for me a few hundred isn't large, but a grand is, and I don't know that everyone would agree, but I think most everyone would agree that $5 is small and $10,000 is large.
$10,000 doesn't seem particularly large. Just a few years ago, I bought an old truck for $12,000 in one hundred dollar bills.
If you're worried about large drug transactions, a kilogram of cocaine would cost around $20,000-40,000 in the USA, and significantly more in Europe (actual wholesale price for bulk purchase, not inflated police figures that price it at $150/gram).
Personally I think one month of apartment rent should not be considered a suspiciously large amount of cash, and it should be fine to buy a car from a friend using actual cash. I really don't see the downside of leaving those things legal without a threat of civil asset forfeiture.
$12,000 is an out of the ordinary large amount of money - that's why you can note it as a special instance. It's certainly not something you keep on yourself every day, right? I'm not arguing that people should be limited in what money they carry, I'm saying there is a normal range of cash, it's not as nebulous as argued.
That person might note it as a special instance, but 'normal' varies wildly from person to person, and 4.5% of America is unbanked entirely. Setting any limit on the amount of money someone is allowed to carry essentially criminalizes poverty.
I might not carry that much every day, or ever, but somebody somewhere in the country (probably dozens or hundreds) will have a legal reason to do so on any given day. IMO this is similar to the laws that allow prosecutors to charge (and win!) drug offenders for "distribution" for just having a large amount of a drug. There's a presumption that if you have a brick of weed, you're a drug dealer. Well, maybe, but shouldn't that have to be proven in court?
The effect of 25% inflation over the last five years is that what used to be definitely acceptable ($8000) is now an amount to be reported and questioned ($10000).
I really enjoyed it when ConcernedApe added a journal to stardew valley: per villager it keeps track of which gifts they enjoyed. Practically it's not all that different than looking that information up on a wiki, but the fact that it is in game and integrated made the experience way more pleasant. You still have to try out a ton of items, but at least you don't have to remember which ones worked for who.
It's the same thing with open world quest markers. Nowadays, a lot of open world games give the player the option to remove quest markers outright. It's great to have that choice. But compared to, for example Morrowind, it often turns out to be an exercise in frustration, because the quests and the world haven't been designed with that in mind ("Go south from Vivec and turn left at the third tree", followed by an internal dialogue about if you should count a stump as a tree and a four hour detour is one of my best memories).
There's also this middle ground: in Ghost of Tsushima you can summon the wind as a compass to guide you to your next quest marker. Mechanically it's the exact same thing as an arrow, or line to guide you. But the fact that it's so well integrated, and thematically fitting into the game, makes my brain experience it totally differently. Not needing it would be even better, but the way they implemented it is at least pleasant.
I wish more games had a journal to keep track of things :). Why do I need notepad open, or a wiki open when playing satisfactory? If I make the effort to calculate the exact amount of iron ore I need to perfectly match my iron rod production, it'd be great if I could keep track of that in game.
Tangentially related: I've been struggling with the decision to go for the technical track or the management track in my current org. I'm lucky to work in a company that has a technical ladder (though one can certainly argue that everything above staff isn't really realistically achievable). Certainly has my preference.
But being in Western Europe, most companies don't have this, and with the current state of the industry, with somewhat regular lay-offs, if I have to change jobs and want to stay an IC, I'll basically have reached the plateau of where I can get career-wise. The only way to get past that barrier is becoming an EM.
I hate to even have the thought, because, purely on principle, it's the worst reason to become an EM. But career-planning wise, I'd be crazy not to.
Anyway, your post is another argument in the column to stay on the technical track a bit more, we'll see what life brings :).
As a Staff and higher engineer you may be paid on the level of EM or Director. So switching the career track as an engineer beyond senior in most cases will not lead to salary increase.
Second argument is the assumption that switching to management opens the doors to much higher salary ceiling. In theory, yes, but realistically there is a strong competition for high level positions, few of us reach those places, and there is a big chance that one will simply stuck at a Director level position till retirement. Think if you enjoy management so much that you are ready to replace ability and joy of building things with more meetings, budget discussions, and politics.
Particularly in Europe with our taxes the benefits of slightly higher income may not have a sensible impact on your life.
Belgium and The Netherlands have it too, though it's optional. Most mortgages have a 30 year runtime with a 10 year fixed rate. The longer your fixed rate, the higher the rate becomes.
For the Netherlands: While it differs per bank, legally you're allowed to pay up to 10% of your mortgage extra per year (some banks offer higher rates, I can do 20% for example) without extra costs. When the rate changes (due to going from fixed to variable, or variable with a large change in a year) you're allowed to pay back as much as you want, without extra costs.
If you want to pay back more/faster, the bank calculates a fee ("loss of income due to lost interest payments") that you have to pay, which is still cheaper than just doing your regular payments.
The above statement also applies if you want to refinance if, for example, your home went up in value. They can and will drop your rate but you have to pay a fine. That being said, in the past, when rate drops were really large, you could go to a different bank, have them take over your mortgage pay the fine for you just so they can get you to come to them (though I'm assuming they're no longer so keen on that).
Yeah, I'm not going back either. Worked remotely for a few years. Got impacted by lay-offs and joined a hybrid company. Would still have been able to work 4 days from home, and 1 from the office. Went to the office 4 times, and spent 90% of my time either alone at my desk, or in an office room in a meeting that should have been an e-mail. Sure, in person collabs might (!) be easier for ideation and greenfield work, but in all honestly, don't get to do that all to often anymore.
Needless to say, I'm back at a fully remote place now. I'm fine if they offer hybrid, not everyone has the room/situation to work from home. I can imagine that for some, having a desk at an office is a net benefit, but don't make me come over and waste my time because you have control issues.
Instead of having to fight with a machine to give back my empty cans/plastic bottles, I can just give the delivery person a crate and get my money back.
Doesn't capture all my groceries, I love biking or walking to a smaller shop on occasion, or if I have a specific craving, but 90% of my groceries is delivery.