Career & Self

Venture Capital is the alchemy of finance that grabs dreams and slide decks, locking hope into a cage of capital. It feeds on the success myths swirling in investors’ minds, draining sweat from startups before departing with promises of celebratory parties. Ultimately, it expropriates the future in the form of equity, transforming losses into the entrepreneur’s burden and profits into investors’ toasting wine.

Version control is a magical contraption that forcibly chronicles the dark tome of source code from past to future, ensuring developers eternally revisit their mistakes. Through the ritual of commits, it exposes the chasm between ideals and reality in logs and orchestrates blood-soaked conflicts with each merge. It offers the reassurance of returning to any point in time while plunging users into a labyrinthine mesh of branches. Developers, shame-faced at their typos and orphaned code, compulsively press the commit button day after day.

A video conference is a ritual of conducting business while peeking into someone's personal life through a screen. The messy room behind them is the real camera trap, and microphone noise is the slaying weapon for everyone's concentration. Worship of the universal mute button arises from the desire to never have one's face on screen, and every spoken word reminds us of the communication barrier called time lag. Before you know it, you return next week at the same time wearing the same mask, trapped in an infinite loop of remote meetings.

A ceremonial assembly where those meant to convene in one place instead log in from their disparate habitats, sharing irritating echoes and infinite silences. Semiconductor faces replace conference rooms as the boss’s monologue is repeatedly "partitioned" by poor connectivity. Participants enjoy the sanctuary of the mute button and digital backgrounds, and are granted at least one moment to mentally drift away. It induces exhaustion rivaling in-person debates, yet grants the miracle of zero commute—this is the new era of professional sociability.

A vision is like a sorcery that makes the present invisible simply by talking about the distant future. The more glamorously it is adorned in slide decks, the further its chances of realization quietly drift away. There is always an exaggerated goal at the end of the presentation, complete with a scapegoat excuse when it inevitably fails. The more one speaks of ideals, the more people feel safe to postpone action. The power to paint dreams is, after all, the perfect tool for avoiding reality.

A vision board is the self-help fad decoration that uses magazine cutouts and stickers to stage indulgent self-satisfaction without any real effort. Displayed on a desk corner, it often serves as a coaster for spilled coffee and collects dust rather than inspiring action. Believed to boost motivation each morning, it actually provides little more than an excuse for another coffee break and scrolling through your phone. Visualizing the gap between dreams and reality is supposed to bring comfort, but ironically acts more like a mirror exposing unfulfilled plans. Eventually it retreats to the back of the closet, only to resurface covered in dust as a prop for future excuses.

Visualization is the magical ritual of transforming invisible concepts and numbers into charts and graphs, making everyone feel they understand. In reality, it only accelerates the hollowing of content, judged by slide count and color schemes. In presentations, flashy visuals are praised while the true issue is quietly discarded. Its true purpose is to provide a sense of accomplishment, as only participants’ self-satisfaction is reliably visualized. Ultimately, it becomes an ironic mirror highlighting that nothing has been solved.

Volunteering is the act of abandoning wages and depositing goodwill as a form of moral currency. Wearing the mask of free service, it is also a mental financial product seeking returns in self-affirmation. Participants bundle hardship and praise together, sweating with hopes of ethical dividends. Behind the noble tales staged for social contribution lies a quiet race for status. Somewhere today, someone is dressing up their resume through unpaid labor.

Waste elimination is the sacred quest to identify every perceived inefficiency and ruthlessly expunge it, often taking essential creativity and human breathing room along with it. Under the guise of lean management, it invites rulers of process to sharpen their scissors on employee morale and spontaneous innovation. What begins as a noble effort to streamline operations frequently ends as a bureaucratic bonfire where even the marshmallows of goodwill are incinerated. Celebrated in PowerPoint ceremonies and KPI fetishism, it leaves behind a sterile utopia devoid of surprise—and sometimes devoid of actual results. Those who seize short-lived applause soon find themselves swimming in a sea of long-term cynicism.

Waterfall is an archaic development method that elevates up-front planning to sacred ritual. The moment a detailed plan is set, the project’s future seems predestined. Implementation and testing are left to downstream workers toiling under rigid schedules. Change requests become heresy, and a single line added to the spec is treated like a blasphemous act. The long road to delivery inflicts more drama and suffering than any epic tale.

A web course is a magic box promising instant transformation into a professional in exchange for time and money. Assignments submitted are entrusted to prefabricated answers and automated grading, rarely to be seen by human eyes. Participants are thrust into a marathon without a pacemaker, left clutching a candy called achievement. Instructors smile through the screen as replies to questions return days later as a loving lash. In the end, only the euphemism "it's up to you" remains, ushering you into an endless desert of self-improvement.

A webinar is a ritualistic recitation of slides in a virtual cathedral, where presenters preach their PowerPoint scriptures. Participants offer silent prayers in the chat void while the speaker indulges in self-satisfied proselytizing. Audio lags are treated as sacred trials, and recordings become requiems never replayed in the digital afterlife. At the end of the endless slide purgatory, everyone is left clutching only the illusion of self-improvement.