#perksofengineering

I introduce you to the most succesful businessman of the XXI century. If it’s not today, it will be in the future. Elon Musk is no doubt one of the most inspiring figures in engineering and inventions. His first business dates back to 1995, with his brother Kimbal: Zip2, a directory where business could make their presence on the Internet through a map. After that, he raised such important projects like PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Hyperloop, SolarCity and more.

As well known are his controversies. Elon is, summing up, the embodiment of the idealized perfect studyblr. Educated, high-achiever, conscious of the environmental problems and ambitious. Musk loads his week to control and manage his businesses. This is extracted from Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and The Quest for a Fantastic Future, from Ashlee Vance:

There would be a bit of hiking over the weekend. Then the relaxation would end. Musk would fly with the boys back to Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon. Then, he would take off on his own that evening for New York. Sleep. Hit the morning talk shows on Monday. Meetings. E-mail. Sleep. Fly back to Los Angeles Tuesday morning. Work at SpaceX. Fly to San Jose Tuesday afternoon to visit the Tesla Motors factory. Fly to Washington, D.C., that night and see President Obama. Fly back to Los Angeles Wednesday night. Spend a couple of days working at SpaceX. Then go to a weekend conference held by Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, in Yellowstone.

Working with Musk is about passion. Passion and pressure. Nobody is obliged to work for twelve hours or more, but you’re expected to do so. You’re working within the top innovative enterprises, along with the most talented and devoted employees. In the same biography we can read this episode:

One employee missed an event to witness the birth of his child. Musk fired off an e-mail saying, “That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We’re changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don’t.”

Well, such ground-breaking companies are not going to be solvent just by, let’s say, existing. The secret? Musk’s charisma inspires a cult following that reminds that of Apple and its founder, Steve Jobs. Many comparisons have been made around this two great minds. And is this charisma and work ethics what makes their ideas go round, even when his micromanaging style results in employee burnout.

Elon gives a huge importance to efficiency and applies it to every aspect of his life. An example of his weekly routine includes having lunch in five minutes or less and working up to 100 hours a week, divided between Tesla and SpaceX mostly. A Tesla employee confesses, “If you believe a task should take a year, then Elon wants it done in a week”. He barely has six hours of sleep, and doesn’t waste time in phonecalls or e-mails. A curiosity is that Musk banned all kind of acronyms on e-mails that weren’t clear for newcomers. For you who aren’t familiar with professional life, it is quite common to short or aglutinate some expressions so you can type faster, creating this way an especifical jargon for each business.

But Elon Musk has its mind on the future. He is concerned of CO2 emissions, the development of artificial intelligence and the establishment of a human colony on the Moon and Mars. He has boosted the research of more efficient batteries, so the electric car could be, finally, a true competitor of the classical combustion engine vehicles. He has built a cheaper and reusable rocket, making the space race a reality again. SolarCity will ease the introduction of renewable energies for household consumption.

Surely I’m not the first one stating this, thinking about how many of us had been inactive for months, maybe years. I observed how the dashboard went from bubbling, never ending photosets of pens-cups of coffe-fancy notes, to the same repetitive masterposts reblogged ad nauseam.

The famous bloggers from then are still famous now, probably even more. They keep the community updated with new resources centered around planning and organisation, which I confess I’ve used many times. So this is not a drag. They are, no doubt, the content creators. But does it mean that the community is growing or getting more creative? Being helpful? From my point of view, no way.

The studyblr phenomenom was really a thing back in 2014.  Lots of individuals, esentially women, shared their progress as they prepared for their A levels, GCSEs and applications. Inspiring, hard-working individuals who were motivated to discuss their experiences in school and uni, willingly to show how studying can be fun and, yes, aesthetic. Because all about social media is about aesthetic and followers, especially Tumblr and Instagram. The difference from this to other fandoms was the support from this community. It was seemingly non-toxic.

I myself reblogged many times aesthetically pleasing photos, as many of us. Beautiful ultrabooks with Momentum backgrounds, warm lightning through the window. A mess of strategically placed notes, handwritten and colourful, messing on the table. Next the succulent there was a delicious latte and a set of Zebra pastel markers ready to be used. At first I was in awe, trying to emulate these inspiring lifestyles that screamed academic success. Hermione Granger and Rory Gilmore were the epitome of the perfect student and the role model of every stuyblr to be. Nonetheless, already then people was suspicious that the perfect and inspiring studyblr world was not that perfect.

A few posts started to circulate concerning the increasing obsession towards artistic notes and studyspo. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, studyspo refers to the meaningless beautiful photos I detailed before. Both were inspiring and pretty, but didn’t add any valuable information and overloaded dahsboards. There existed the notion that to be a succesful user you should hoard a variety of expensive stationery items, along with neat handwritten notes. Bullet journals where more like an artist notebook, far from the minimalist and simple view that its creator wanted. Definitely, a materialistic feeling surrounded the studyblr posts and it was troubling part of the community.

The problem got bigger, indeed. Masterposts borned as an effective way to collect different instructional posts regarding the same topic, such as languages, mathematics, basic health advice and so on. However, they started to spread like studyspo and clogged again the dahsboards with the same posts, on and on. Masterposts had a good reputation in the community and were easy to create, so users used it to grow their audience. The result? What we have now.

The community was cracking. The tags once useful were flooded with porn and unrelated topics, as the popularity of the studyblr phenomenom drew the attention of press and mass media. The appblr and high school students had grown up and lacked time to renovate the content flow, as they moved to university. Although the community was raising their voice against perfectionism, the portrait of the high-achieving, sleep deprived student was still the trend. Tumblr decreased in popularity and Instagram seemed a better option to gain a solid fanbase, because, you know, who doesn’t have an insta?

We can say, as 2017 is ending, that studyblr is no longer what it used to be. It has plateaud and it’s trapped into old clichés. Is that what we should expect from the possibly most educated community of Tumblr? The stagnation? The lack of creativity? The classism?

Being back here, after all this time, it’s like staring down the ruins of an ancient civilization. A nostalgic mist floats around. But, be that as it may, some of my favourites are still active. Is that a light of hope? If it is, it may be flickering, almost extingishing. It is our turn to change what we don’t like, what it is outdated.

Name: Sasha Star sign: Cancer Gender: Female Orientation: straight, mostly but I couldn’t write out half the population you know Favorite Color: lilac Time Right now: 11 PM Average Hours of Sleep: 7-8 hrs, 6hrs when I’m busy, 10+ during the summer hols Lucky number: 23 Last thing I googled: Gradcracker - its a STEM student job site Number of blankets I sleep under: one, sometimes two. I actually have two duvets in my student room and I slept under both of them once and it was so cosy but far too hot, and far too hard to get out of bed. Favorite Fictional Character: I don’t really know I wouldn’t say I had one... Favorite Band/Artist: Swim Deep, maybe I’m not sure but I just consistently enjoy listening to them Dream Job: CEO of an upstream oil company

💜📚

I wanted to ask if its true that you cant learn to love to code.

Of course no! You can learn to love to code. But loving it doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. But it’s not impossible. You have to practice, read lots of examples, ask for help and learn the syntaxis of your language.

The point of programming is that you need both practice and theory. Theory is really important. How can you code if you don’t know how classes, loops, conditions, variables, constants, and so on, work? How can you code if you don’t understand the problem? Practice is the way for excellence, so your brain gets used to the syntax, the structure, detection of error and you can focus on the algorithms (the set of rules that precisely defines a sequence of operations).

So yes, you can learn to love to code. You just have to work for it.

I prefer learning something new at first in person.

That’s cool! Everyone has its own way for learning. Presencial classes are super cool because your pace is set by a teacher, you can personally ask them questions or share your views with the rest of the class. And you can enjoy self-learning too! Just try till you found the one that fits you.

How do i know if i truly love it?

Oh darling, this is like life. Sometimes you are up, and then down. You’ll often hate it because there’s a window with bugs and error messages and you don’t understand why. You’ll stand for hours in front of the screen (or the wall) thinking how to solve a problem. You’ll be sleeping and, in the middle of the night, open your eyes and laptop and start typing the solution. It’s hard, but it’s worth it. It’s an amazing feeling that you can create something that was in your mind. For example, you can create and app, a simple program for calculus, a web, even artificial intelligence! There are plenty of possibilities. Everbody doesn’t like the same, but for knowing what you really like, you must try.