> Whatever you decide, remember that everyone has their unique strengths and challenges.
Right, this is something I've tried to focus more on lately. Improving on my strengths to make myself more valuable, which I hope will pay off in the future. I used to focus on trying to mask my weaknesses, but that takes a lot of effort for little benefit and doesn't seem sustainable.
I appreciate all the ideas. It helps a lot, I wouldn't have considered tech writing at all for example. Consulting has worked well in the past, but because of my lesser-than-average social skills it's not easy to find clients.
I live in a good country with a decent social support system. Technically I could live on disability, but would rather do some work.
I've been in the industry a bit less than a decade. I consider myself decent on the technical side, but interacting with people is extremely draining. For example, if I know I have a meeting the next day, I often can barely sleep through the night. During the meeting, I need to expend a massive amount of effort to collaborate. This obviously affects my work life, but more importantly my...
"We are spending 50$ per month just for one test in our code. We could cut it down to 10$ if we wanted."
"How many hours would it take to reduce the spend? If it's more than a couple of hours for a senior engineer, then it's not worth it."
We kept spending money on this inefficient test and it was the right choice.