Hi there and welcome back to another weekly nomz. I hope you've had a great week. This entry marks the 7th consecutive week that I've been writing and it's been a wonderful journey so far. The only difficulty is finding good articles to share and write about. That being said, let's get started.

The first article is titled The 3 Ways To Balance Money and Meaning. The option that seems to resonate the most with me would be the "deferred life plan". I find that most people would fall within this plan as well as not many of us have a side hobby/personal interest that we can go really deep into and be on the same level as our careers. For me, my hobbies include photography and music, both of which are simple pleasures in life that I enjoy and probably wouldn't be able to develop very deeply. Hence, I find that working hard now and saving up for an early retirement for me to pursue my hobbies is the best option. That being said, everyone's life and circumstances are different. Perhaps, I might even transition into a bivocational plan in my early 30s as I develop more skills and hobbies to work on seriously on the side outside of work too. Do give the article a read! It's a pretty good one, I promise.

Next up is a helpful article – I just started my first engineering job – by Jordan Cutler giving some tips for junior software engineers starting out in their careers. The advice I found new and inspiring was the part on seeking out opportunities to shadow or participate in pair programming with a fellow team mate. By doing so, you can quickly learn how to navigate the codebase, discover nuances that are not documented and only available "through experience", and learn some of the best practices directly from your team mates. While this is fantastic advice, I do wonder how feasibile it is to execute this. Finding someone who is willing to pair program with you is one thing. Finding someone who is currently working on a task that is relevant to your learning and growth is another. In my current team at ByteDance, my team mates are all working on different components of a huge project with different businesss goals at the same time. The knowledge that I gain might not be directly relevant to my assigned task. That being said, I still think it is a fantastic idea and I will definitely try to adopt this practice when I start working at my next company.

Lastly, I wanted to share a podcast episode from The Investors Podcast. The guest, Guy Spier, amongst many other insightful thoughts, shares good life advice on learning to actively give more than you can take. I enjoy this reminder as I find that everyone, no matter what profession or field you are in, will always have opportunities to give and help the people around them. Give without expecting anything in return, and you will find that you will receive more than you ever expected.

That is all from me this week! The weeks are getting busier as I'm getting closer to my presentation deadline for my Final Year Project, so hopefully the quality of nomz that I share won't be negatively affected. Hope to see you again next week!