Ada 2030
Just before the new year kicks in.
Lydia 2027
Yoyo 2027
Celeste 2027
Look, all my friends have made plans for 2027. These are aggressive. Because of my experiences seeing people physically build big things, and with myself, I am a lot more conservative with timelines. So 2030. 5 years time, like those 5 year plans central national committees make.
I think I am further than these people from the frontier (of technical ability or cultural capital/social capital), yet I don’t intend to hurry getting there more than I need to. We’re here in the (digital) takeoff, yet I’d like to take it slow. Taking getting credentials unnecessarily fast, lasering in on them (in the wrong way), has already hade my life more difficult and less rewarding than it strictly needed to be. We were always in post-scarcity anyway.
- Get into computers
I realize two things over time. 1. Everything is computers. 2. Every one of my friends can do computers. And it really works out for them.
I am applying to UCL and KCL for Computer Science, I know you don’t need a degree to be good at computers; in fact doing a CS degree is mostly orthogonal to actually being able to do computer. HOWEVER, it is a good way for me to buy time - with which I can get better at computer, on my own terms, and end up with a passible credential to show in the end.
- Pass as a woman??
“You already pass enough to have 60-70% of all the social benefits of passing” - not enough! I know we won’t get to six sigma levels, but 90% or bust!
- Lovely adorable wife
I have heard that attracting a (long-term) partner is a T-shaped enterprise. As in, when you make a bar chart of different skills and good qualities of a person, it’s necessary to be good enough at all of them, and a lot better than most people on one or two. This makes sense to me. Some of the things I have in mind, where not all of them are strictly necessary, but different subsets of them probably are to different potential partners:
- dressing + grooming + accessorizing
- voice training
- exercise
- cooking, DIY work
- housework
- electronics: PCBs, radios; or low-level computer stuff
- music
- home bio/chemlabbing (lab technician work)
- woodworking / metalworking
- driving
- writing
- high level computer system management (kubernetes or GPU cluster management)
After this, I shall work on micromarriage generating activities (conferences, social gatherings, writing and reaching out to people from the internet).
- Employment I enjoy
Model for this was also T-shaped skills.
- project management
- teamwork
- to fill!!! there is a specific document i have somewhere which my old personal tutor sent us.
- industry-specific skills such as assays, computer simulations, bioinformatic packages, coding for data analysis etc. etc.
Concurrently work on microemployment generating activities (conferences, job applications (targeted, research-based), writing and reaching out to people from the internet).
However, that was until I got sent this - which tells you, keep on doing contract work. Write your CV for idiots, apply across your city. Contract work is lucrative/hour, and you will not be treated as disposable. Do contract work until you land the job you’re excited about through routes which do not include the standard application.
- With potential for advancement
Pick the right industry for a career. It’s always better if you’re in a growing, rather than dying, industry.
- Software, biomanufacturing (the kind with growth potential), managing data centers, trading, robotics?
Pick the right company in the industry. You always pick habits up from your company — there are good companies which you learn from, and there are bad companies which poison you over time.
- various AI labs (many of which pay well) (many of which are not “sexy”)
- Vow, any other cultivated meat lab. However, they will be priced these days as food processers, which means not high, which means not very high potential for advancement??
- companies that trade (many of which pay well) (many of which are not “sexy”)
- I am probably not going to get in a trading firm on my first job in tech
Pick the right role in the company. Very ideally: not sexy, is a niche, pays well
- devops, SRE, something else? unclear. pending more investigation.
- Giving me financial security
If everything goes right, financial security should fall out of the part where I do or make something people want, sustainably.
- In a city I enjoy being in
Over time, aim to get good enough to be relocated to San Francisco, Sydney, San Diego or other sunny place beginning with S.
Someone tells me you CAN do projects on a tourism visa (3 months) in the US if you’re really in demand, by very small, niche orgs in particular.
- able to pursue hobbies i enjoy (that ive been wanting to pursue for a while)
Like interior decoration, crafts, cooking, keeping a pet? Normal human stress-relieving activities.
- needs a semblance of work-life balance
- which involves picking the right industry, company and role
- and be willing to negotiate for time off. Which, with financial security and niche security, should be possible.
- contribute to something that will stay after myself
At the first time of writing down this heading, I couldn’t rigorously define what this meant. Helping people? Contributing to an ideal?
Now it’s more clear: participate in a tradition of knowledge. Learn important, relevant things that have come before me. Process them through acting in the world and refining the knowledge. Record it in a medium and through to people. This way, my experiences - the information gained in my senses, the best patterns of thinking I can produce - can still contribute to something after I am gone. Thereby is the project.
As I can see right now, this comes down to:
being able to read and write in and out of my job
- Depending if I want to see my knowledge being used in my working career: probably without good reason don’t work in a top secret environment or for a national government etc.
- be able to write about what I do in my job + experiences gained
- keep on writing and publishing, so that I can write quickly + well.
- meet new people, and learn from them and test on them to iterate on my ability to communicate to and from them. Work on my rhetoric and pragmatics.
- this sets me up to take mentors later in my career and life. And maybe kids, but who knows. If I want kids, I want them at 27.5, in the middle of the next 5-year plan.
- Live
self-explanatory if you’re with me so far.
Really thoughtful! I like the conservative-timeline approach. Sounds like you have your priorities in order. Inspiring!