Following is what I am thinking today over a few Guinness pints:
Keep in mind what’s important to you: When you interact with people on a daily basis (for e.g., at work or while browsing online communities), they will indirectly influence you. The key is to regularly remind yourself on your own priorities. For me, one of the highest ones is to spend sufficient time with Vihaan. (I guess there is no upper limit on how much time is enough.) The other probably is to find a better job. More on this next. I should probably give up on the D2L book for now. I’ve been thinking about restarting that book for a few weeks now. And while I haven’t been able to, the thought keeps nagging me all the time. Maybe it is just too hard to learn something as complex as Deep Learning in parallel with a demanding job and first-time parenthood. (When I wrote that down, it seems abundantly obvious.) The other probable issue why I am unable to maintain my flow is that everything I do, i.e. office work and this book, is related to technology. That’s monotonous. While Deep Learning seems an interesting branch, the technologies and problems I deal with at work are as complex and interesting. I am sure these look magical to a vast number of people in the world. I’ve been thinking for awhile to stop picking up long-term learning projects. When I picked up that D2L book, I told myself that this will be my last such project. However, why wait? Because of all these reasons, I am thinking of setting aside the book until I have more time on my hands. For e.g., my next parental leave, notice period at Amazon or long travel. It is high time I change companies. At the minimum, I’d have spent eight years at Amazon by the time I leave. That’s a lot of time with one company. I don’t foresee sufficient career growth in my current org in Amazon and I may be able to get higher compensation elsewhere. So, what’s keeping me here? One reason I’ve given myself to not leave the company is that there a lot of smart folks in AWS. However, the truth is I don’t get to work with such folks on a personal level - the best I get is to listen to their discussions in ops meetings or tech talks - and smart folks will be present in other companies too. I can think of the following next steps:
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