HACKER Q&A
📣 hnthrow10282910

Options for critical thinking and learning outside work?


What options in today’s world exist to support critical thinking? I’m at FAANG basically trying to stay afloat as an expat in a foreign country and hate my job. Mostly forced to do AI LLM stuff. Security and quality out the window since management stopped caring about that.

I miss deep thinking and training my brain. Should I pursue a masters in math or something? I have a masters in general CS, but this was 10 years ago.

  👤 austin-cheney Accepted Answer ✓
Here are the things I have done to enhance my own critical thinking:

1. I joined the military and became an officer. You are given business problems to solve in short time with many limitations and adverse conditions. Have fun with that.

2. I write my own software as low as the given language allows. Yes, this is reinventing a wheel, but I tend to get a much more portable solution that typically executes faster with low overhead for maintenance.

3. Become self-sufficient and then invention automation to make that self-sufficiency more automated. The way I think about this is that its not about making money, but instead reducing your expenses to almost 0 and simultaneously taking your time back.