i'm finally unemployed from my first job after 1.59 years! (i left for college).
i worked as a host for a restaurant at
$7.25/h (minimum wage here in South Carolina).
despite not being [software] engineering related, i nurtured an engineering mindset from it, and solved crucial engineering problems during times of boredom for my personal projects.
some stuff i can think of right now that are useful:
- form a model of a system by the flow of inputs to outputs.
- quantify measurable qualities of a system to analyze and optimize.
- identify the constraints of a system.
- prioritize consistency.
- don't make excuses. endure difficulty.
- predict/digest the consequences. not just the immediate consequences, but what propagates also.
- failures should be painful, until tried again but successfully/better.
- do simple things very well, one at a time.
- acknowledge your flaws, and work with them while improving.
- compress information, and decompress via reasoning. minimize the number of bits, and use code to extract complex information.
- use specialized hardware. e.g. your eyes can instantly identify shapes and colors within a large FoV, use that as an advantage.
- maximize the usage of hardware. e.g. use both hands simultaneously for conjoining tasks.
- plan preemptively a lot.
- develop and learn new techniques.
some of my best ideas rose from there, and some of my most difficult problems were solved there too.
- parts of my branchless and tableless tokenizer.
- circuit-less circuitry in Core Keeper.
- useless but novel contraptions in Core Keeper.
- notation for circuitry and circuit-less circuitry for Core Keeper.
- many many world-building stuff.
- bit manipulation madness.
- some hand-written programs.
- early progression of crucial principles i follow now.
TBH, i didn't talk to my coworkers much. i just complied to their requests without expressing my thoughts. i'm also just very awkward LOL.
the restaurant wasn't even that rigorous either. and i was _very_ clumsy too. before the job, i rarely went outside LOL.