Why did I decide to take my first mini-retirement after 15 years in Tech earning a mid six-figure salary?
> "The best approach I’ve found for figuring out HOW I WANT TO LIVE is @tferriss's idea of “mini‑retirements,” introduced in The 4-Hour Workweek.
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He got the idea after realizing that he disliked typical vacations where you pack as much as possible into one or two weeks.
After getting burned out on a short trip, he asked himself the question:
-> “Why not take the usual 20–30‑year retirement and redistribute it throughout life instead of saving it all for the end?”
With this mindset, he designed his own mini‑retirements, trips of “one to six months” where he would test out living in different ways.
He described these as an “anti‑vacation” and “though it can be relaxing, the mini‑retirement is not an escape from your life but a reexamination of it—the creation of a blank slate.”
While designing these breaks into his life he asked himself three questions:
1. How do your decisions change if retirement isn’t an option?
2. What if you could use a mini‑retirement to sample your future plans now?
3. Is it really necessary to commit fully to work to live like a millionaire?
For me, I’ve found that this makes life more fun.
As I’ve lived in different places around the world and focused on different kinds of work, I’ve created mini‑experiments that help me learn more about how I want to live my life.
I try to think about time in blocks of one to three months and within each block, I pick one or two things I want to prioritize and test. It might be living in a different type of place, working on new projects, traveling, or learning something new.
"My goal is to test my beliefs to get a better understanding of what really makes my life better."
Powerful!
The spirit of the mini‑retirement is not about escaping work.
It is about testing different circumstances to see if you want to double down on them or change directions.
For me, testing out different ways of structuring my life now is a win‑win proposition.
I’m lowering the odds that I’ll be unhappy in the future all while crafting a life I’m more and more excited to keep living. < "
Read this outstanding and inspiring passage today on @p_millerd's book "The Pathless Path".
Thought more people would get value out of this if I shared here.
Paul explained better than I ever could the rational part of an "irrational" decision. A "leap of faith" that I took.
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A Framework to understand & assess the scope of Impact & Influence of Engineering Leaders in Big Techs:
1. Platform 2. Product 3. Process 4. People
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The 4 Ps are the Engine of Career Growth in both the Management and Technical Track.
I consider it to be a strategic abstraction of how to think about your career and how to positively impact the project, team, department, product or company you are currently working with.
The 1st P -> Platform - It is the Codebase, the Infrastructure, the CI/CD Pipeline, the Engineering Practices, the Architectural Patterns, the Databases, your Technical Skills with a particular Paradigm, Language, Framework, Tool or Library.
I especially loved knowing what Louie looks for when interviewing engineers.
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Louie mentions two kind of unpopular & almost forgotten ideas these days, but that I fully agree, and that, in my opinion, are crucial for ICs & Managers: work ethics & extracurricular activities.
- Tell me about your work ethic
- What have you done outside work?
This reminded me of another kind of unpopular career idea that I read in one of @simpleprogrammr's book :
After my article about Behavioral Interviews last week, many folks asked me for examples.
Today, have left that world, I'll be vulnerable and share the essay that landed me three $650k+ job offers at BigTechs last year.
Question: What is the most innovative thing you have done?
> My Answer (from Jan 2021).
During my first year as an Engineering Manager on the Mobile Engineering Team at American Express, my team and I struggled to deliver two important features on the Amex Mobile App, doing only two “Big Bang” releases throughout the year.
After realizing that our dev. approach wasn’t working well, I switched to a lean development approach that has since helped us slice dozens of large business initiatives into small incremental releases, increase our team productivity by 12% and reduce our cycle time by half.
The 5 Engineering Leadership Levels of Ownership in Code Review/PR Comments (How do you lead by example on PR reviews?)
🚼 Level 1 - Complain Generally. “This is a piece of s***"
continue...🧵🧵🧵
🚶Level 2- Complain Specifically / Pin Point the issue, but leave it as it is. “This method is not as functional as it could be. It is not testable:"
🏃Level 3- Propose a Solution Forward. “This method is not as functional as it could be. It is not testable, you can use this tool to do this. Here is an example: xxxx:"
Try to do it right after 15 minutes of meditation first thing in the morning.
Why does it work?
After 15 minutes of meditation trying to not follow your thoughts, it is almost impossible not to have things to journal about.
For the first time in my life I have been able to journal for 10 days in roll.
For years I have been reading 1 chapter of a book as the first thing in my morning routine.
A mistake I made many times was try to journal as the first thing in the day when I had nothing in mind, didn't work. I often had nothing to write about or felt it was dumb to write only what I was grateful for for instance.