>It's brilliant, I'd never want to work for a corporate company! We have regular parties, play table tennis daily, beers on Friday. It just makes work so much more enjoyable.
When you leave or a bunch of your friends who used to go to happy hour together leave "for better opportunities," you'll realize that most people who are your work drinking buddies didn't really know you or felt or thought deeply about your personal experiences. (It's not that they're bad people, it's just what happens when people are put in an artificial social environment where people slap high-fives after work rec dogeball and shout out witty one-liners).
Also when you realize after 5 or 6 years of working, and the startup mantra of "changing the world," your other friends whom you laughed at before, toiling away in their fields have started coming on their own. You have only pushed bits for marketing, spam, online shopping, on-demand on-gig economy for people like yourself to get a stick of gum delivered in an hour. You can try to justify how you are promoted from junior all the way to lead to technical product manager, or how you led your team to switch from Rails to Node, SQL to Cassandra, Java to Scala. But you'll begin to see the thin-veneer of how little management cares about tech and how most of it is a pep-rally, a race to the bottom for those at the top of the Ponzi scheme to enrich themselves.
You look at other people in other fields or in other area's of tech. At work cafeteria IKEA lunch table (after a lengthy morning standup where there was yet another pissing match about React vs. Angular), People shoot the breeze about AlphaGo or that Tay twitter bot, and someone else shoot another witty one-liner comeback, everyone laughs, one person groans - in between the silence after the reactions settle in, it dawns slowly on your mind that we've all become spectators in the real information technology revolution.
That what you are toiling away when you go back to your desk after this lunch conversation is just another Twitter stream, another HN comment, Instagram heart, albeit decorated in syntax highlighting to the "AWS/Google Cloud/Azure Twitterverse."
That is just the same as the well-dressed girl or guy sitting in the next row over in the open-office environment, whom you never talk to but to make yourself feel better, secretly put down in your mind because what they do "is so much BS, social media customer engagement"; but they are the same, and you're all the same...
You call your friends up from college and hear their stories at the precarious precipice of 28-30. How many hours they stayed up at the hospital during a rotation, and a critical debate they had with their attending whether to admit a patient; or how many e-mails they had to sent to get their 15 minute film considered at 50 different film festivals; or staying on after getting finally their PhD, to work for free to do the technology transfer to industry the physics research they worked on in their group; and always, the one-liner remark, "tech has it so much better, you guys make so much money!"
Of course, the response begets a begrudging smile or another sequitur to equalize the conversation; but come work Monday, the habit to don on the noise canceling headphones, the cursory checks on social media to keep abreast fantasy football leagues/stock portfolio's, the internal monologue of the recalculation how much your employee stock options are going to be worth/vest, have all become instinctive rituals to not let the existential dread set in.
My wife and I prep, but as a former member of the military with a great deal of "field experience", I agree with your assessment of most preppers.
We own revolvers, no ARs, no Glocks. No need for that. Even the FBI shows than in drastic situations like home invasions, the average number of shots fired is 3. The zombies are not coming. We are not going to end up in a Walking Dead situation. I know enough preppers and have listened to enough to know a lot of what they write is coded and has meaning. Zombies are not real, even though they use this term in their writings. They are referring to inner-city people or city dwellers (or even the unprepared) who may attack during a protracted emergency like a hurricane that removes power for weeks and people start looting to survive.
I based my preps on water purification, medical (wife has doctor after her name), and calories. As a guy who has carried a 65# ruck for hours on end for days, I can assure you, you don't need as much as you think. While the military does have a supply chain for soldiers in the field, there have been times when that wasn't a reality for a week or more and you had to make do with what was in your ruck.
The military sends troops into harm's way with 180 rounds of ammunition for rifles, and 45 rounds of ammunition for handguns. That's it.
I focused on water purification, caloric intake, regulating body temperature, medical, and have two solar chargers. Have two of everything (two is one, one is none). I'm not worried about a protracted battle with anyone. Smart preppers will avoid any fight because it's just plain dumb as hell to get into it with anyone when there is no medical help around. To the people that have amassed thousands of rounds of ammunition, I laugh. Why? Military experience. I often ask these people when they brag about their "warehouse full of preps", "How many gunfights do you reasonably expect to survive?" What if someone launched flaming arrows into your home in a protracted situation? How will you carry your stash? Do you have children? Any babies? If so, your job is to protect your family by fleeing. Not trying to pretend you're a warrior. Discretion is ALWAYS the better part of valor.
Good preps:
- Light tent for your family. Waterproof. In warm regions, two light tarps.
- Water purification tablets for a year. Takes up no space. Also water purification straws, pref. the 25,000 gallon variety. Again, light and no space.
- Revolver with 200 rounds of quality ammunition. One for each adult.
- High-quality light rucksack with waterproof cover.
- Two folding solar panels.
- Two full medical kits.
- Steel canteens and canteen cups for cooking and water purification.
- 1000' of 550 paracord.
- Two fixed blade knives and two folding knives.
- Light thermal technical clothing.
- Hand warmers and space blankets.
- Lighters and matches along with ferro rod for fire.
- Compass x2 (learn how to use it. Most people fail land navigation, even basics, because they think using a compass is easy. Get grid maps for your area and learn the difference between grid, true, and magnetic north (declination). Learn the declination for your area and program your compass with the correct settings. At even a mile, the wrong declination will send you off by hundreds of yards.
- Safety goggles, shemaghs, and expanding toilet paper wipes (light, 250 take up the space of a can of soda)
- Pack according to your weight, height, and abilities. Children should carry their own clothes and water and nothing more. Adults should limit it to 35#.
- Firearms should always be out of sight.
When you leave or a bunch of your friends who used to go to happy hour together leave "for better opportunities," you'll realize that most people who are your work drinking buddies didn't really know you or felt or thought deeply about your personal experiences. (It's not that they're bad people, it's just what happens when people are put in an artificial social environment where people slap high-fives after work rec dogeball and shout out witty one-liners).
Also when you realize after 5 or 6 years of working, and the startup mantra of "changing the world," your other friends whom you laughed at before, toiling away in their fields have started coming on their own. You have only pushed bits for marketing, spam, online shopping, on-demand on-gig economy for people like yourself to get a stick of gum delivered in an hour. You can try to justify how you are promoted from junior all the way to lead to technical product manager, or how you led your team to switch from Rails to Node, SQL to Cassandra, Java to Scala. But you'll begin to see the thin-veneer of how little management cares about tech and how most of it is a pep-rally, a race to the bottom for those at the top of the Ponzi scheme to enrich themselves.
You look at other people in other fields or in other area's of tech. At work cafeteria IKEA lunch table (after a lengthy morning standup where there was yet another pissing match about React vs. Angular), People shoot the breeze about AlphaGo or that Tay twitter bot, and someone else shoot another witty one-liner comeback, everyone laughs, one person groans - in between the silence after the reactions settle in, it dawns slowly on your mind that we've all become spectators in the real information technology revolution.
That what you are toiling away when you go back to your desk after this lunch conversation is just another Twitter stream, another HN comment, Instagram heart, albeit decorated in syntax highlighting to the "AWS/Google Cloud/Azure Twitterverse."
That is just the same as the well-dressed girl or guy sitting in the next row over in the open-office environment, whom you never talk to but to make yourself feel better, secretly put down in your mind because what they do "is so much BS, social media customer engagement"; but they are the same, and you're all the same...
You call your friends up from college and hear their stories at the precarious precipice of 28-30. How many hours they stayed up at the hospital during a rotation, and a critical debate they had with their attending whether to admit a patient; or how many e-mails they had to sent to get their 15 minute film considered at 50 different film festivals; or staying on after getting finally their PhD, to work for free to do the technology transfer to industry the physics research they worked on in their group; and always, the one-liner remark, "tech has it so much better, you guys make so much money!"
Of course, the response begets a begrudging smile or another sequitur to equalize the conversation; but come work Monday, the habit to don on the noise canceling headphones, the cursory checks on social media to keep abreast fantasy football leagues/stock portfolio's, the internal monologue of the recalculation how much your employee stock options are going to be worth/vest, have all become instinctive rituals to not let the existential dread set in.