Making friends at work over the past 10 years. I know HN loves (in general, anyway) the transactional nature of work done as remotely as possible, but the more human side of work has benefited me in spades moreso than any technical work. Whether this is deserved or not is up to you, but in the end, for the most part, we aren't doing much more than tying various libraries together. Who you know if much more important than what you know.
YMMV, but I've noticed an uptick in recruiter messages, probably get 2-3 a week since the new year. But I have no idea about the market as a whole, and I'm sure it's still terrible for new grads.
I think the negative spin of the title is indicative of what you ultimately need to do: try not to be above corporate beaurocracy and red tape, or do your own thing where you control what the process is like.
I currently work on a ~10+ year old project that has maybe half of this list, and if you _don't_ start this way, the toothpaste is near impossible to put back in the tube, and you're in for a world of hurt. If the early engineers don't work this way and the system makes its' way into production, then functional software + income is very difficult to override in the name of cleaning up messes.
As a fellow divorcee (minus 3 cats I miss dearly as well), it took me a while to realize that what I was feeling _was_ grief, and still is. I am now happily remarried to a woman who is certainly better for me, but even though it was ~5 years ago, I still feel pain and sadness from my divorce. It will never fully go away, it just becomes a scar that you're reminded of from time to time.
Chrome at home, Edge at work. I should probably think more about it, but I really don't. I use 1Password for everything and the only feature I lean on in any browser is bookmarks.
Writing code is by far the easiest part of the job; working out what to write is probably 95% of what you end up doing. Tying libraries together isn't interesting from a code-level perspective anyway, so try to enjoy the process of getting there.
The easy interview process has always bothered me. It hasn't entirely burned me yet, but I always feel uneasy if I don't feel challenged during an interview. Maybe it's some weird form of Stockholm Syndrome or something compared to the usual complete disrespect of resumes in our field.
The main culprits are explicitly blocked on our VPN. When I WFH I use it on my personal machine for bash/regex/whatever stuff I don't keep in my brain for very long, never anything interesting.
Working on finishing his CS degree and going into a PhD program after picking himself up out of addiction. He's astoundingly brilliant but has always struggled with...just about everything else that doesn't involve a computer. But definitely the most talented mind I've ever been around.
