Career

A lot of developers seem to be afraid of generative AI and LLMs because it may replace their jobs. But as an older developer who sometimes has a hard time keeping up with new frameworks and technologies, LLMs have been life-saving. Not only is my productivity high, but I am also able to keep up with new languages and codebases and be productive almost immediately. I used to think about moving to management because it seemed I could not keep up with tech, but now I have new confidence that I can keep doing my hobby as a profession for another few years. ...

Follow up to my last post, the people I admire the most are usually startup founders or business people. And then creators of open source software. This weekend, I also met my engineer turned entrepreneur friend and saw Jobs movie. It seems I know what I should do. I want a business that gives a lot of freedom, especially freedom to be with my kids. If I can involve kids in the business, it would be even better. Would love low stress business but it is not a requirement. ...

Just the other day, I happened to skim a blog post, “My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span.” It struck a chord, and I realized that I’m in the same boat. It’s been ages since I’ve properly read a book. Even when I have audiobooks on, I’m doing something else and hardly ever genuinely enjoy them. I’ve got this habit too, of kicking off loads of projects and then ditching them once it’s time to roll up my sleeves and do the detailed work. Setting up a new project is a rush, but finishing something? That’s a snooze fest. ...

I love these kind of posts. Here are some interesting ideas for side-gig: Books. There are quite a few books there, books for babies, books about iOS dev etc. Mining Cryptocurrency. This comment got a lot of attention. Apps. Too many but was glad to see Mac apps generating decent income. Music. Decent income from YouTube content ID payments according to this comment. DIY biologist. Seems fun. A lot of SaaS or content sites. Flipping items from thrift stores on eBay.

For years, I was working towards my own startup. I always had various side-projects and learned a lot from these side-projects. But at the same time, all these projects were failures. I never paid much attention to real estate investing. I had some friends who bought rental properties or got into flipping houses. It seemed so much more work and riskier. I can create a new startup for just a few dollars and a few weeks of my time, so why pay attention to real estate. ...