At what age did you start letting your kids run errands or walk to school by themselves?
Mine walked to school (< 10 minute walk) at about second grade. Running errands at about fourth.
Readit Newsalaithea commented on Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity nature.com/articles/s4158... · Posted by u/Anon84
An issue for kids nowadays is being outside unattended is basically illegal (for instance IL / Chicago, minimum age unattended is 14). Therefore they might get more activity in the country on a bigger acreage alongside an unwalkable road, than they would in the city in a walkable area, unlike an adult.
As soon as you get near people, if there is a enough, a Karen will rat the kid out as soon as they touch public property and maybe before it. They are only safe from CPS tyrants when they are out of sight.
Your concerns are extremely valid, but it is not _that_ bad in many places in America. I relocated my family specifically so that my kids could have a walkable community to live in, and since then (about five years), we've had no issues with them getting to schools, parks, the library, friends' houses, and downtown shops on their own.
That said, we live in the inner district of a small city that was settled in the mid 19th century, so it has a street grid, alleys, uninterrupted sidewalks, etc.... everything that makes a place as safe as possible in this day and age for kids to get around without getting hit by a car. (One exception being dedicated biking infrastructure, which would be awesome.)
alaithea commented on ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes bmj.com/content/390/bmj-2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
> I also had to privately learn how to pace myself, setting realistic, appropriate and prioritized daily goals (nevermind the arm's-long TODO list). Checking myself against those, aiming for better goal-setting each day. Being able to close the laptop when it's done. I never really had a sense of "done" before, I had a lifetime of feeling always-behind. There's this peace, though, that comes with realizing that you _can_ prioritize effectively, do the things, then rest. That peace can become its own reward, which is bananas to me, because my unmedicated brain would never have felt that.
This is pretty much what I am working on, and I too have had followed the “burn out after getting diagnosed and medicated” arc.
Being able to set realistic, appropriate, and prioritized daily goals, and aiming for better goal-setting each day. Sounds like a good thing to aim for.,
I still don’t have a sense of “done”, and struggle to achieve that, even though I know I managed to move the needle a bit.
How long did it take you to get to this point? And how do you deal/ identify/ know you are “done”?
> How long did it take you to get to this point? And how do you deal/ identify/ know you are “done”?
It took me around three to four years after starting medication to get to this point.
The "done" part comes out of setting and meeting realistic and prioritized goals. If I've done that part right, then I can feel OK about stepping away. How to set those goals is the harder part.
Tasks with time-constraints have to be identified and dealt with, such as "prep for meeting with product team." Identifying them means looking ahead on the calendar (not always easy for ADHD'ers!), and getting out of ADHD magical thinking about "just needing a few minutes before" to prep sufficiently. That might mean scheduling a half hour block for prep on the calendar. As a bonus, being aware of what's coming up next is always a good thing.
Open-ended tasks and independent work are harder to clarify and prioritize, but I got the greatest reward when I started attempting to describe what I was doing at my team's daily standup meetings. I might be spending weeks on writing some document, which can feel endlessly the same, but I force myself to not have the update everyday be "worked on the document," but rather:
> I researched topic X and spoke to people A, B and C to try and answer this question I had, and learned this thing
or
> finished drafting section X, editing section Y and started on section Z
Then it becomes much easier to keep track of the longer journey through writing that document. In addition, writing the description for other people helps make that easier.
Breaking the description down also helps you notice when you're stuck, because your daily descriptions start to sound the same. If you notice that sameness, but then ask yourself "if I say _____ today, what will I be able to say that's different tomorrow" then automatically you'll start to get more specific, have better updates, pace yourself better, and as a bonus you have an idea of what you'll do the next day.
Using the above tactics, I started to use standups to pace myself and feel better about my work (more "done"), whereas I used to become full of anxiety and guilt for not feeling like I could report "progress" day over day. It was all a mindset shift.
alaithea commented on ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes bmj.com/content/390/bmj-2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my early 30s and prescribed Concerta to help manage it
For a few years being medicated for ADHD was a godsend. I was finally able to be more productive and focus on work, my career took off in a huge way, I've literally tripled my income since I started medication
Now I'm incredibly burned out, I've been having pretty severe memory problems, I'm on medical leave from my job to try and course correct a bit here. I don't think this is purely caused by the medication, I think it is stress related as well, but my doctor's only course of action right now is to reduce and re-evaluate my meds
On one hand, being medicated was incredible for me. It felt like it finally let me overcome my demons and be the person I wanted to be and always knew I was capable of being
On the other hand, if it led to my current situation it's probably one of the worst choices I could have ever made. I hate having massive holes in my memory like this, and being burned out this way is extremely difficult to bear
So... If you can balance things better than I could, it's still probably worth being medicated. I don't regret it I just wish it hadn't burned me out like this
I feel this. It's so very hard to manage one's medicated-ADHD productivity in a way that feels useful but doesn't burn like a white-hot flame.
My boss has been supportive and really helped me see the ways in which I was causing myself burnout, encouraging me (as a senior tech IC) to write things down, do more knowledge and skill transfer, and delegate more. That helped me a lot.
What I used to think of as "autonomy," which I valued so highly, following the shiny problems that made my brain happy, was more lone wolf behavior than I like to admit, and not serving me very well career-wise, as it was hard to document or sell what I was doing.
I also had to privately learn how to pace myself, setting realistic, appropriate and prioritized daily goals (nevermind the arm's-long TODO list). Checking myself against those, aiming for better goal-setting each day. Being able to close the laptop when it's done. I never really had a sense of "done" before, I had a lifetime of feeling always-behind. There's this peace, though, that comes with realizing that you _can_ prioritize effectively, do the things, then rest. That peace can become its own reward, which is bananas to me, because my unmedicated brain would never have felt that.
Speaking of which, I might never have had the head-space to work on things like this if I hadn't gotten medicated five years ago. My career has improved and stabilized. For the first time in my life I've stayed at a job for more than three years. Been promoted. Been able to see a future that doesn't just involve running from a job when things get too hard and starting again.
The side effects can be a beast, though. I wonder to myself how many more years I'll be able to manage them.
I wish you the best in finding your way back to a place that works for you.
alaithea commented on How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower steveblank.com/2025/05/13... · Posted by u/enescakir
Why on earth would this submission be flagged? Mods, if you're watching, please unflag this post.
alaithea commented on Microservices are a tax your startup probably can't afford nexo.sh/posts/microservic... · Posted by u/nexo-v1
Even worse, I've seen large systems where everything was built as nanoservices.
There was a point in time (circa 2019-2020) when the madness got so severe that every new feature ended up as a microservice backed by a DB with a single table (plus a couple tables for API keys, migration tracking, etc.)
I love it when all my CRUD has to be abstracted over HTTP. /s
alaithea commented on Microservices are a tax your startup probably can't afford nexo.sh/posts/microservic... · Posted by u/nexo-v1
Pretty sure I saw someone say this in the past, but microservices might as well have been a psyop pushed out by larger, successful startups onto smaller, earlier-stage companies and projects. I say "might as well" because I don't think there's any evidence for it, but the number of companies and projects that have glommed onto the microservices idea, only to find their development velocity grind to a halt, has to be in the hundreds at least (thousands?). Whether the consequences were intended or not, microservices have been a gift on the competitive landscape for the startups that pushed microservices in the first place.
alaithea commented on Microservices are a tax your startup probably can't afford nexo.sh/posts/microservic... · Posted by u/nexo-v1
Some resume driven developers will choose microservices for startups as a way to LARP a future megacorp job. Startup may fail, but they at least got some distributed system experience. It takes extremely savvy technical leadership to prevent this.
And when it's your technical leadership leveraging buzzword-driven development to rise to the top, you're screwed.
alaithea commented on Ask HN: Where do seasoned devs look for short-term work? · Posted by u/shinypenguin
A lot of people are probably going to reply with "Use your network!" which has always struck me as kind of vaguely incomplete and unhelpful advice. It's like telling an investor "Buy low and sell high." and leaving it at that. OK, thank you, Captain Obvious, that's wonderful, but how?
Maybe it's different in the independent contracting world, but I've found my "network" only semi-helpful in gaining employment. They can give good ideas about companies to try, they can help you refine your resume, and do interview coaching, and if you're lucky they work at the same company you want to apply for so can submit your resume with the "recommend" box ticked, but that's all they seem to be able to do. I've never once had someone in my network who had his hands directly on the "hire this man!" lever at the company.
This is going to go pretty OT from the original post.
The handful of times in my ~20 year career that I've gotten a shortened interview process because of connections, the organization has turned out to be a dumpster fire. Admittedly, I ignored red flags that I wouldn't have if I wasn't feeling special for having an "in," so part of that is on me. But lowering hiring standards to preference one person means they'll lower the standards for others, too, and that has consequences. As much as I'd love there to be shortcuts in life, I'm not sure they really exist.
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