career

Whether a side hustle is worth your time isn't about how busy it keeps you. It's about whether finishing it once means you have to start over next time — the difference between a one-off script and a service that keeps running.

If you only finish your own slice, you never see how the game is actually played.

Being accommodating is not a morality question. It is a ledger: good temper that buys nothing back is money quietly leaving your account.

To judge whether a side project or freelance job is solid, do not look at how busy it keeps you. Look at whether you can explain how you plan to do it, why it should be you, and what stops others copying it once it works.

Flash developers vanished five years ago, not because the technology was bad, but because the platforms turned together. This time it is AI's turn.

Ten years as a tech manager, and going through the ledger shows most of my experience is tied to one company's walls — it zeroes out when the badge goes back. What you take with you is the part you can deliver to a stranger without first proving where you worked. AI amplifies this question rather than letting you avoid it.

An electronics factory in Ningbo fines workers 3,000 yuan for leaving between July and October. Lawyers say it is likely illegal. The reason it can be written down at all is not that it holds up, but that whoever wrote it calculated you probably won't walk.