For me WFH has helped me have a community. The office was never a real community, and the fact that we all worked together got in the way of being actual friends. Instead with the added time from WFH I was able to prioritize my social life and go to more events and meet people I actually have stuff in common with. Additionally my in-office job forced me to live in a dead suburb, WFH allowed me to move to a city with a lot more social opportunities.

Of course probably not everyone prioritized that. The office might be good for some people, but for people like me who don’t necessarily socialize at the office very easily WFH is much better for community.

Has anyone else made a successful pivot from software engineering to another field?

No, but I’ve done the complete opposite.

I’ve sent out 400+ applications

First rule of doing anything: if you hear grinding, you’re doing something wrong and need to rethink your approach.

I’ve found it to be much easier to get my foot in the door with the help of a recruiter. There’s a ton of them on linkedin, all you really need to do is start looking for jobs and they’ll appear in your messages. Interact with them, even if it’s just to say you’re not interested - I think somehow this helps you show up in whatever algo linkedin uses. I’ve only very rarely gotten anywhere with applications. Recruiters help because they usually already have a relationship with the hiring manager.

Emphasis on usually, because you need to only work with recruiters that actually have that relationship. First clue is that they are physically located near the employer, and if they’re actually an internal recruiter, all the better.

Second thing I’m guessing you’re doing wrong is your resume. Remember that anyone filtering out through resumes is probably not a technical person and is just looking for keywords. So make sure every technology you’ve worked with is mentioned by its official name on your resume.

E.g.:

worked for 1.5 years at a major financial firm building data pipelines, working with financial datasets, and using technologies like Python, SQL, and AWS

Then make sure your resume includes “Python”, “SQL”, and “AWS”, as well as the specific SQL you’re using and the names of the specific AWS services, and whatever other cool keywords you can throw in about the financial systems you were working on. Even basic things like Git should be mentioned, because you never know when a HR person might have that on a list of qualifications.

I can say I’ve been looking at switching jobs within tech and I’ve been getting plenty of interest from recruiters. Now I do have a lot more experience, but I don’t think that’s the only factor as I’m also looking at more high-level jobs. The difference in approach is probably the key.

Let’s count the problems:

1. Up front cost
2. Maintenance cost
3. Varied problems like different types of stairs, tripping hazards, etc.
4. People attacking or stealing robots and their packages.
5. Safety issues with 100+ pound metal robots falling on pets and children

Any others?

Let alone neurones in my brains experiencing quantum effects.

But that’s zeroing in on the idea that quantum mechanics directly affects neurons, which affect free will. Which is only one way one could conceivably argue free will exists. But I’m saying I don’t need to come up with a specific way, because I observe free will more directly than anything else. So there’s basically infinite ways it could happen, including for example:

• Some undiscovered conscious force behind quantum mechanics that has yet to be discovered that is able to affect the brain via microtubules
• Some undiscovered conscious force that exists entirely outside of known physics and is able to affect some part of the brain via a totally novel mechanism not related to quantum mechanics
• The whole world being a simulation which for unknown reasons is set up to hide our own free will from us
• Everyone having the wrong perspective about causality in general, such as the external world being governed and dictated by the self rather than the other way around, much the same way dreams can be controlled by the free will of lucid dreamers. Or being wrong about some other fundamental reality of the universe in such a way that consciousness would make more sense.

Yes.

I observe free will directly. Watch: I will choose of my own free will to type a tilde at the end of this sentence instead of a period~ Behold free will.

Everything that says we don’t have free will depends on indirect observations that blatantly make faulty assumptions. Do our senses accurately tell us about the state of the universe, and ourselves within it? Are our interpretations of this infallible?

Most egregious is the assumption that classical mechanics governs the mind, when we know that at a deep level, classical mechanics governs nothing. Quantum mechanics is the best guess we have at the moment about how objects work at a fundamental level. Many will say neurons are too big for the quantum level. But everything is at the quantum level. We just don’t typically observe the effects because most things are too big to see quantum effects from the outside. But we don’t only look at the brain from the outside.

Nor can we say that the brain is the seat of consciousness. Who can say what the nature of reality is? Does space even exist at a fundamental level? What does it mean for consciousness to be in a particular place? What’s to say it can only affect and be affected by certain things in certain locations? Especially when we can’t pinpoint what those things are?

So yeah I believe in free will. It’s direct observation vs. blatantly faulty reasoning.