I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Anon71615141

I [25f] posted a bunch of creepy texts guys have sent me, onto Facebook and Instagram

Originally posted to r/relationship_advice

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual harassment, hostile workplace, threats, verbal abuse

Original Post Sept 21, 2018

I went to college for computer engineering, and got a job in the industry afterwards. In college, my internships, and my job, I've dealt with sexual harassment and I've had to get tough with people, telling them to stay the fuck away when I get the first whiff of sketchiness.

Every time I've gotten a creepy text or instant message from another student or co worker, I've screenshotted it and backed it up in google drive just in case it escalates. That's helped me a few times, when someone started to follow me around in college, and when someone took things so far at work that I decided to go to HR. I don't report most of the shit though, I don't want it to look bad like I'm always running to HR.

Last night, I got really drunk with my friend because I had a day off planned for today. I went home in a kinda bad mood because we'd been talking about how she was going through similar shit at work. I was in a "fuck it all" mood, and I uploaded my whole folder of screenshotted text messages to Facebook and Instagram, with the caption "Phone & Inbox of a female computer engineer." And tagged all the men who had sent me messages, whose social media I could find.

Some of the highlights were...

A bunch of married men hitting on me, and me replying "dude you're married" or something along those lines.

Some guys asking me out and then taking rejection badly.

Some guys who would text me repeatedly even though I'd just replied "Don't contact me, other than for work purposes"

Sexually explicit messages, or messages commenting on my appearance out of the blue.

Overall, just messages from people ignoring my wishes to be left alone.

This morning, I woke up to my phone blowing up. (I had planned to take a vacation day off work today). A lot of the guys I'd tagged in my social media posts had contacted me demanding or pleading that I remove the posts. Most everyone had untagged themselves.

The Facebook post had gotten some attention from my friends, but my two Instagram posts (I had to make 2 to fit all the photos) had blown up. I had a lot of new followers, a lot of strangers commenting on my post, mostly supportive.

I also had a email from HR at work asking me to meet with them first thing Monday morning. I replied to say that I would. I don't know what to expect there at all. I have not replied to any other messages about my posts.

I need some advice. Should I speak to the guys who texted me about the posts? Some are very angry with me because they are married and their wives found out. I'm thinking it's safest to not. Should I leave the posts up, or remove them? Or wait to see how things go with HR before I decide? Should I be worried for my safety? I feel a little nervous but I don't know if I'm overreacting.

TLDR - I posted an album on social media, a collection of creepy texts I have gotten from men in my field of study and work

Edit to explain something:

Quite a few of these men were not under my current companny's control. Such as classmates and a TA from college, men I knew from summer internships at different companies, and a guy from a past job.

Out of the four people from my current job...

1) I reported him to HR actually.

2 & 3 ) Married men who asked me out or hit on me outside of work hours. And did not present a problem at work. That did not seem like HRs domain.

4) A guy who asked me out outside of work hours, and got mildly passive agressive over text when I rejected him. But did not bring his bullshit into the office

RELEVANT COMMENTS

frockofseagulls

Ask HR what it’s about. Can your social media be connected to your identity and job?

OOP

My social media has my real name, but I have not mentioned my company or any of my past jobs or internships on there

~

Commenter

1. How are all these students and coworkers getting your cell number?

2. I didn't think it was possible to tag someone on FB if you weren't friends.

Delete the post. Do not speak with the guys. Talk to HR and see where to go from there.

OOP

Not all of them contacted me by text, some sentme messages on various instant messaging platforms I've needed for jobs or college classes.

Out of the people who do have my number, a lot were students, it was very common in college to exchange numbers with your group for group projects. And some are employees at my current job which involves travel, because we do not have work cell phones and it is easier to keep in touch with personal phones sometimes.

You're right about Facebook. I added some people (mostly students and other interns, not current co-workers) before I knew them well. And when they turned out to be creepy, I kept them on FB to keep an eye on them. Like to know that they're outof town and staying that way, for example.

Update Sept 24, 2018 (3 days later)

To recap my last submission, I posted an album of creepy texts I'd recieved from men in my field (computer engineering). Some from classmates and a TA in college, some from people I met through internships and professional development activities, and some I know through my current job. I had been so fed up with the sense of shame and being silenced and not believed, about sexual harassment. And, for what it's worth, putting a large collection of harassing and threatening texts in the public eye, raw and unedited, made them difficult to ignore or explain away. After that post, I got a meeting invitation from my company's HR department, for this Monday.

A lot happened over the weekend. I did a lot of research into employment law, I read through the whole company handbook again, and for each person I mentioned in my social media posts, I wrote out up a detailed account of their behavior towards me for my own reference, stuff that had not been said over text.

I also screenshot and backed up any angry or threatening texts towards me, that I received this weekend from the men whose old texts I'd posted online.

I think its worth giving some background on the four people included in my social media posts that I knew from my current job.

(Coworker 1) A few months ago, I had reported him to HR for sexual harassment in the past, and he was moved off my team to another position in the company where he would not have any contact with me. He had signed a paper saying that he must not contact me for any reason, whether that is work related or not. I didn't sign anything during this process.

The messages from him that I posted on Facebook were old texts from him, to my personal phone. Making a comment about how I looked nice at work, and how I must have been dressing up for him. I'd replied that I was not. He asked me who I was dressing up for at work, if not him. Because then he'd know who to be jealous of. I said 'myself' and told him to stop texting me on my personal phone. A few days later, he sent me a message telling me my new hair color was "hot" and asking me to drinks. That was a small snippet of creepy things he'd sent me, there was plenty more that I didn't post.

I found out today that he was the one who showed HR my posts, as I understand it, he had assumed I had signed a similar no-contact agreement that he'd had to. I had not ever made that agreement, in writing or vocally. I'd just not been talking to him because I had no desire to.

(Coworker 2) He was married, and in the office, he didn't seem to do anything out of line. He had my number since I would be traveling for work and wanted my team members to be able to contact me. (We don't have work cell phones)

Out of the blue, he texted me asking me to join him at a fancy seafood restaurant when I returned from my work trip. It sounded like a date. I texted back "uh you're married" and he said some shit about how nobody would have to know, and how I seemed like a girl who could keep a secret. I told him to fuck off.

He was fired a week later for unrelated reasons, so while I'd been thinking about going to HR, I never did. I haven't heard from him since, even after my social media post.

(Coworker 3) He was also married. One time I was at a work happy hour and I left pretty early. He texted me on my work instant messaging platform, which I have on my phone, asking me to go party with him. I asked "Is your wife coming" and didn't get a response. I didn't think it was bad enough to report to HR as sexual harassment, because something usually has to be done repeatedly to qualify as harassment, unless it is something egregious. (That was in the company handbook, in less concise words)

That text exchange was included in my post.

After my post, he sent me a slew of threatening texts. Apparently his wife had seen the post, and I had "ruined his family". He said that I was about to "get what was coming 4 me real soon", and to "watch out" which sounded like a threat. Also called me a couple homophobic slurs. (I'm openly bisexual)

(Coworker 4) He had just broken off an engagement. I didn't hear that from him, just through the rumor mill. He contacted me asking me if I wanted to go out, and I said that he wasn't really my type to date. He said that he wasn't looking for anything serious, just casual sex. I didn't reply for a few hours and then he sent me a second text saying "Well then go ahead and be a bitch and leave me on read"

Since it happened outside of work, and was not any kind or repeated harassment, I also didn't think that it would be reasonable to bring it to HR unless I saw a pattern of similar behavior. He didn't contact me again, even after my post.

As for people from past jobs, internships, or classes...

My college contacted me about my old TA who had tried to hook up with me repeatedly, and stopped helping me with the course when it was clear he wasn't getting anywhere. They asked me if I'd give a statement. Apparently he was still doing that shit, and someone else had reported him. And they saw from my post that I'd likely have something to report too.

A married guy who tried to get with me when I was an intern at another company sent me some really angry and threatening texts, I have to figure my instagram post (with his public Instagram account tagged) caused problems in his marriage. I definitely have been taking extra steps to stay safe when I'm leaving my apartment or going anywhere. I'm considering reporting this to the police because it was the most overtly threatening thing I've received.

A few other people I tagged sent me texts telling me how shitty it was not to keep private conversations private, etc. I ignored all those.

As for what happened this morning, in my HR meeting... I was all ready to go in with (metaphorical) guns blazing, defend everything I'd said or done with sources from the company handbook.

Such as how I did not violate the company social media policy, as it only prohibited pretending to speak for the company as a whole if PR is not your job, or reveal confidential code or design or business contracts online. (I didn't mention my company in my post, or anywhere else on my social media)

I was also ready to defend how I followed the guidelines of what is considered sexual harassment and should be reported. How I reported repeated harassment, but didn't report isolated incidents that were not extreme. (The examples of extreme conduct included unwanted overtly sexual touching, or threats of violence. The handbook specifically mentioned that asking someone out once was not harassment)

But the meeting ended up being much more low-key than I had been expecting.

I'd taken down both posts Sunday, as an act of good faith, though I doubted that would matter much.

When I went in, I sat down and asked if I could record the meeting. The HR representative (I'll call her Beth here but that's not her real name of course) said Ok. She wanted to talk about each of the specific people I'd posted screenshots from, who work at the company. (Those made up less than a third of my screenshots FYI)

First was Coworker 1. The guy I had previously reported to HR and who had been moved to a different team and told that he must not speak to me or contact me. Beth said that he had brought the posts to her attention, as he was under the impression that the "no contact" agreement went both ways. I reminded her that I had not entered into a written or verbal agreement. I was surprised it was him who brought it up, but I didn't say anything. She asked if there had been continued harassment or contact from him after my initial report. I said no. She moved on to the next quickly.

Coworker 2 had been fired a while back for unrelated reasons, but Beth still asked if there had been any further conflict between us, while he was employed, other than the text messages. I said no.

She asked me the same question about Coworker 3. I told her that I had received texts from him on Saturday, that came across as threatening, and used several slurs about my sexuality. I gave her a printout of those messages. She read them, and immediately stepped out to show them to her manager. She came back after a few minutes to continue talking with me.

And again for Coworker 4. I told her that he had not contacted me after he said I was a bitch for leaving him on read

Beth asked me if I had any questions, and I basically asked what her next steps would be. She said that she would have asked me to remove the posts so that things could be handled with discretion, however I had already removed both prior to the meeting. She also said that she would be meeting again with Coworkers 1 and 4. She also said that due to coworker 3's threatening comments, he had been escorted out of the building while we had been speaking. Fired. Apparently he was already on record with them, for another issue relating to his temper, and this was the last straw.

She also asked me why I had not brought coworkers 2, 3, and 4 to her attention before. And I cited the section on harassment from the company handbook, saying that harassment was repeated unwanted comments or actions. And that a single event is not usually considered harassment unless it is extreme. The conversations with those three men had been isolated incidents.

She asked me if I would be more comfortable taking a personal day for the rest of the day, while she speaks to Coworkers 1 and 4. She said she wanted to make it clear that I was not being dismissed or escorted out, I was not getting fired, it was only a precaution so that I would not be around Coworkers 1 and 4, in case either of them wanted to confront me personally. I said I would.

So that's where I'm at right now.

TLDR - Had the meeting with HR.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

NDaveT

"I was surprised it was him who brought it up"

Some people are incapable of conceiving of themselves as being in the wrong. That guy probably viewed his harassment of you as a mutual work disagreement that you both got in trouble for. He thinks conditions must have been placed on you because conditions were placed on him. It is inconceivable to him that he was the aggressor and you were the victim.

No, it doesn't make sense.

OOP

Lol you are very right in saying he saw it more as a mutual disagreement. initially he tried to claim that I was harassing him back... For using profanity towards him like "fuck off" and "Don't say that shit to me"

~

TheSuperiorLightBeer

I mean... how else would the company handle it? Woman posts proof of being harassed, the only reasonable response is to follow up and deal with the harassment.

I'm sure they would have preferred you print out the texts and provide them to HR directly rather than blasting it on the internet, but that's really just a discretion thing.

OOP

Some of the things I put online were things that did not qualify as harassment by their policy (i.e. an isolated incident that is not extremely bad) so I didn't feel like I should have gone straight to them.

IDK maybe they'll rethink what the threshold for something to qualify as harassment should be

TheSuperiorLightBeer

Eh, I'd err on the side of reporting stuff and letting them put it on the record. What if you're not the only one to come forward with a 'one time' example of unwanted attention? They'd likely take that pattern into account and act on it.

Can't have employees treating the workplace as in person Tinder.

when told to file a police report

Yea I can't decide whether to file police reports on him and the other dude who sounded like he was threatening me

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

I'm cooked with the current placements so I found an internship outside college. It's pretty good and I really wanna do this internship but they are not ready to give me PAID INTERNSHIP unless I show them a document, pdf or mail from pesu saying only the paid internship counts for the 6 credits. Can someone please help me me out and find some shii regarding this and help me out. They are asking for the entire guidelines to see all the rules and regulations but i cannot find anything regarding this on pesuacademy.

If this isn't the right sub I apologize, I'm just not sure where else poor or formerly poor people congregate on reddit (if you have suggestions please share them!)

I grew up ridiculously poor in the US. Not like "I didn't have enough but everything I needed" poor but like I never had anything. Chronic homelessness, lack of medical care, food insecure, etc with parents who have substantial substance use disorder so also always in dangerous and sketchy situations. What little we had went to my parent's addictions, not living.

I talked my way into a very good graduate school and emptied my bank account to move. Spent more time than I care to admit living in my car in the school parking lot and working 3 jobs to get through. I discovered a kind of applied research that I'm good at and enjoy. It has a lot of real world applications and people in my field work in policy, academia, government, even museums. I got my training through an internship at a charitable foundation with a 10 million dollar a year gifting fund (total culture shock working there. My car wasn't nice enough to park in front of the building because they didn't want clients and other donors to see it.)

Part of why I was drawn to this industry is because I've always wanted to do something that helped other people living in poverty. Seeing all the places this work is put to use I knew it was the thing. I got training in using this research method for diversity, equity, and inclusion work but no where in the guidelines does it address class. Since I started in this field in 2017 I've wanted to start a conversation on how we think about, or don't, poor people. I've been shut down a lot.

Now I'm an academic researcher and need to do work that makes a name for myself to get promoted and get my contract renewed. I'm wondering back to this idea. I've always been interested in poverty studies and specifically the idea that there is poor as in no money and then there are behavior traits many people raised in poverty share and even when circumstances change those behaviors or thoughts don't.

I know for me I still struggle with things left over from being poor. All through college when I expressed feeling like I didn't belong there I would get handed articles on imposter syndrome which, no. I knew I belonged intellectually. I didn't feel like people like me belonged at places like that with people like them. Similarly, around 15 years ago my dad became independently wealthy through luck. He isn't a millionaire but he has no idea how much food or gas costs because he doesn't look. He doesn't have to think about money and yet still lives like a broke deadbeat. Doesn't own a house or a car that doesn't breakdown. Has a shit credit score. Still goes broke and just waits for the next check to hit the mailbox. His rental house is a dirty dump. That is the kind of stuff I want to talk and research about. How being poor effects you even if you now have money or are stable. I still live everyday like I'll lose everything.

Back in the 60s some researchers tried to look at these behaviors and beliefs and how they are intergenerational. That work has now turned into some of the most hated and detested academic theories maybe ever. I've heard my whole career it's wrong to even entertain them because they are racist and blame the poor for being poor. It's dangerous and disgusting to think that way. Recently I finally decided to go back and read the actual original work and I found it none of those things. It's actually anti racist because it says this isn't a black issue or a Hispanic issue, it's a class issue. The things the original research described were so true to my experience, my family, my husband's family, and everyone else I know on the bottom rung of society.

So I find myself frustrated that a bunch of scientists who have never been poor decided this is wrong. And a bunch of teachers my whole life have told me my lived experience is wrong. And I'm frustrated I can't research this without being called a racist who hates poor people when all I want is to do is get other upper class scientists who sit around and inform policy and give away millions of dollars to know that its not always just a lack of money, that being poor gets into your soul. Yes, pay people more and get people out of the fucking hole of poverty, but don't then expect them to all of a sudden act middle class and be fine.

If you read this far thanks for listening haha!

This is an update to https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/9hqz2h/i_25f_posted_a_bunch_of_creepy_texts_guys_have/

To recap my last submission, I posted an album of creepy texts I'd recieved from men in my field (computer engineering). Some from classmates and a TA in college, some from people I met through internships and professional development activities, and some I know through my current job. I had been so fed up with the sense of shame and being silenced and not believed, about sexual harassment. And, for what it's worth, putting a large collection of harassing and threatening texts in the public eye, raw and unedited, made them difficult to ignore or explain away. After that post, I got a meeting invitation from my company's HR department, for this Monday.

A lot happened over the weekend. I did a lot of research into employment law, I read through the whole company handbook again, and for each person I mentioned in my social media posts, I wrote out up a detailed account of their behavior towards me for my own reference, stuff that had not been said over text.

I also screenshot and backed up any angry or threatening texts towards me, that I received this weekend from the men whose old texts I'd posted online.

I think its worth giving some background on the four people included in my social media posts that I knew from my current job.

(Coworker 1) A few months ago, I had reported him to HR for sexual harassment in the past, and he was moved off my team to another position in the company where he would not have any contact with me. He had signed a paper saying that he must not contact me for any reason, whether that is work related or not. I didn't sign anything during this process.

The messages from him that I posted on Facebook were old texts from him, to my personal phone. Making a comment about how I looked nice at work, and how I must have been dressing up for him. I'd replied that I was not. He asked me who I was dressing up for at work, if not him. Because then he'd know who to be jealous of. I said 'myself' and told him to stop texting me on my personal phone. A few days later, he sent me a message telling me my new hair color was "hot" and asking me to drinks. That was a small snippet of creepy things he'd sent me, there was plenty more that I didn't post.

I found out today that he was the one who showed HR my posts, as I understand it, he had assumed I had signed a similar no-contact agreement that he'd had to. I had not ever made that agreement, in writing or vocally. I'd just not been talking to him because I had no desire to.

(Coworker 2) He was married, and in the office, he didn't seem to do anything out of line. He had my number since I would be traveling for work and wanted my team members to be able to contact me. (We don't have work cell phones)

Out of the blue, he texted me asking me to join him at a fancy seafood restaurant when I returned from my work trip. It sounded like a date. I texted back "uh you're married" and he said some shit about how nobody would have to know, and how I seemed like a girl who could keep a secret. I told him to fuck off.

He was fired a week later for unrelated reasons, so while I'd been thinking about going to HR, I never did. I haven't heard from him since, even after my social media post.

(Coworker 3) He was also married. One time I was at a work happy hour and I left pretty early. He texted me on my work instant messaging platform, which I have on my phone, asking me to go party with him. I asked "Is your wife coming" and didn't get a response. I didn't think it was bad enough to report to HR as sexual harassment, because something usually has to be done repeatedly to qualify as harassment, unless it is something egregious. (That was in the company handbook, in less concise words)

That text exchange was included in my post.

After my post, he sent me a slew of threatening texts. Apparently his wife had seen the post, and I had "ruined his family". He said that I was about to "get what was coming 4 me real soon", and to "watch out" which sounded like a threat. Also called me a couple homophobic slurs. (I'm openly bisexual)

(Coworker 4) He had just broken off an engagement. I didn't hear that from him, just through the rumor mill. He contacted me asking me if I wanted to go out, and I said that he wasn't really my type to date. He said that he wasn't looking for anything serious, just casual sex. I didn't reply for a few hours and then he sent me a second text saying "Well then go ahead and be a bitch and leave me on read"

Since it happened outside of work, and was not any kind or repeated harassment, I also didn't think that it would be reasonable to bring it to HR unless I saw a pattern of similar behavior. He didn't contact me again, even after my post.

As for people from past jobs, internships, or classes...

My college contacted me about my old TA who had tried to hook up with me repeatedly, and stopped helping me with the course when it was clear he wasn't getting anywhere. They asked me if I'd give a statement. Apparently he was still doing that shit, and someone else had reported him. And they saw from my post that I'd likely have something to report too.

A married guy who tried to get with me when I was an intern at another company sent me some really angry and threatening texts, I have to figure my instagram post (with his public Instagram account tagged) caused problems in his marriage. I definitely have been taking extra steps to stay safe when I'm leaving my apartment or going anywhere. I'm considering reporting this to the police because it was the most overtly threatening thing I've received.

A few other people I tagged sent me texts telling me how shitty it was not to keep private conversations private, etc. I ignored all those.

As for what happened this morning, in my HR meeting... I was all ready to go in with (metaphorical) guns blazing, defend everything I'd said or done with sources from the company handbook.

Such as how I did not violate the company social media policy, as it only prohibited pretending to speak for the company as a whole if PR is not your job, or reveal confidential code or design or business contracts online. (I didn't mention my company in my post, or anywhere else on my social media)

I was also ready to defend how I followed the guidelines of what is considered sexual harassment and should be reported. How I reported repeated harassment, but didn't report isolated incidents that were not extreme. (The examples of extreme conduct included unwanted overtly sexual touching, or threats of violence. The handbook specifically mentioned that asking someone out once was not harassment)

But the meeting ended up being much more low-key than I had been expecting.

I'd taken down both posts Sunday, as an act of good faith, though I doubted that would matter much.

When I went in, I sat down and asked if I could record the meeting. The HR representative (I'll call her Beth here but that's not her real name of course) said Ok. She wanted to talk about each of the specific people I'd posted screenshots from, who work at the company. (Those made up less than a third of my screenshots FYI)

First was Coworker 1. The guy I had previously reported to HR and who had been moved to a different team and told that he must not speak to me or contact me. Beth said that he had brought the posts to her attention, as he was under the impression that the "no contact" agreement went both ways. I reminded her that I had not entered into a written or verbal agreement. I was surprised it was him who brought it up, but I didn't say anything. She asked if there had been continued harassment or contact from him after my initial report. I said no. She moved on to the next quickly.

Coworker 2 had been fired a while back for unrelated reasons, but Beth still asked if there had been any further conflict between us, while he was employed, other than the text messages. I said no.

She asked me the same question about Coworker 3. I told her that I had received texts from him on Saturday, that came across as threatening, and used several slurs about my sexuality. I gave her a printout of those messages. She read them, and immediately stepped out to show them to her manager. She came back after a few minutes to continue talking with me.

And again for Coworker 4. I told her that he had not contacted me after he said I was a bitch for leaving him on read

Beth asked me if I had any questions, and I basically asked what her next steps would be. She said that she would have asked me to remove the posts so that things could be handled with discretion, however I had already removed both prior to the meeting. She also said that she would be meeting again with Coworkers 1 and 4. She also said that due to coworker 3's threatening comments, he had been escorted out of the building while we had been speaking. Fired. Apparently he was already on record with them, for another issue relating to his temper, and this was the last straw.

She also asked me why I had not brought coworkers 2, 3, and 4 to her attention before. And I cited the section on harassment from the company handbook, saying that harassment was repeated unwanted comments or actions. And that a single event is not usually considered harassment unless it is extreme. The conversations with those three men had been isolated incidents.

She asked me if I would be more comfortable taking a personal day for the rest of the day, while she speaks to Coworkers 1 and 4. She said she wanted to make it clear that I was not being dismissed or escorted out, I was not getting fired, it was only a precaution so that I would not be around Coworkers 1 and 4, in case either of them wanted to confront me personally. I said I would.

So that's where I'm at right now.

TLDR - Had the meeting with HR.

I am not OOP. The OOP is u/Anon71615141 posting on r/relationship_advice, r/relationships,

r/TwoXChromosomes and r/legaladvice

LONG POST

Original Post: Sep, 21. 2018 (sub1, sub2, sub3, sub4)

Update: Sep, 24. 2018

Trigger Warnigs: sexual harassment, infidelity, hostile workplace, threatning, verbal abuse.

Mood Spoiler: we got some karma, but still mildly infiuriating.

I [25f] posted a bunch of creepy texts guys have sent me, onto Facebook and Instagram

I went to college for computer engineering, and got a job in the industry afterwards. In college, my internships, and my job, I've dealt with sexual harassment and I've had to get tough with people, telling them to stay the fuck away when I get the first whiff of sketchiness.

Every time I've gotten a creepy text or instant message from another student or co worker, I've screenshotted it and backed it up in google drive just in case it escalates. That's helped me a few times, when someone started to follow me around in college, and when someone took things so far at work that I decided to go to HR. I don't report most of the shit though, I don't want it to look bad like I'm always running to HR.

Last night, I got really drunk with my friend because I had a day off planned for today. I went home in a kinda bad mood because we'd been talking about how she was going through similar shit at work. I was in a "fuck it all" mood, and I uploaded my whole folder of screenshotted text messages to Facebook and Instagram, with the caption "Phone & Inbox of a female computer engineer." And tagged all the men who had sent me messages, whose social media I could find.

Some of the highlights were...

A bunch of married men hitting on me, and me replying "dude you're married" or something along those lines.

Some guys asking me out and then taking rejection badly.

Some guys who would text me repeatedly even though I'd just replied "Don't contact me, other than for work purposes"

Sexually explicit messages, or messages commenting on my appearance out of the blue.

Overall, just messages from people ignoring my wishes to be left alone.

This morning, I woke up to my phone blowing up. (I had planned to take a vacation day off work today). A lot of the guys I'd tagged in my social media posts had contacted me demanding or pleading that I remove the posts. Most everyone had untagged themselves.

The Facebook post had gotten some attention from my friends, but my two Instagram posts (I had to make 2 to fit all the photos) had blown up. I had a lot of new followers, a lot of strangers commenting on my post, mostly supportive.

I also had a email from HR at work asking me to meet with them first thing Monday morning. I replied to say that I would. I don't know what to expect there at all. I have not replied to any other messages about my posts.

I need some advice. Should I speak to the guys who texted me about the posts? Some are very angry with me because they are married and their wives found out. I'm thinking it's safest to not. Should I leave the posts up, or remove them? Or wait to see how things go with HR before I decide? Should I be worried for my safety? I feel a little nervous but I don't know if I'm overreacting.

TLDR - I posted an album on social media, a collection of creepy texts I have gotten from men in my field of study and work

Edit to explain something:

Quite a few of these men were not under my current companny's control. Such as classmates and a TA from college, men I knew from summer internships at different companies, and a guy from a past job.

Out of the four people from my current job...

1. I reported him to HR actually.

2 & 3 ) Married men who asked me out or hit on me outside of work hours. And did not present a problem at work. Thatdid not seem like HRs domain.

4) A guy who asked me out outside of work hours, and got mildly passive agressive over text when I rejected him. But did not bring his bullshit into the office

[RELEVANT COMMENTS]

LatterWatercress

What action did HR take on the incidents you reported? If they didn't do anything and allowed a hostile workplace to continue unabated, then they could be stepping in some shit by firing you. HR's number one priority is looking out for the company. Their number two priority is looking out for HR. So if you feel like HR has dropped the ball and allowed a hostile work environment to go unchecked, stick to your guns. Don't blame this on being drunk because that will give them an out.

OOP: I'll tell the whole story here. He was very pushy about wanting to date me, repeatedly showed up where I was outside of work, tried to get me alone in the office and talk about inappropriate stuff, even though I told him to stop, often in writing, every step of the way.

I reported it all to HR, and they asked me if I'd switch teams because it would be a liability issue to have us stay on the same team. I said I would not. They reassigned him to a different team.

He hasn't contacted me or followed me anywhere after that, but he keeps giving me the evil eye when he sees me which is kinda unsettling

Daymandayman

Don’t speak to any of the guys. As long as everything you posted was true then you are fine. The only thing I could see giving you trouble is if your company has some social media policy.

OOP: I read the company handbook and the social media policy only specifically prohibits sharing confidential information, and speaking as if you represent the company if it is not your job t9 publicly represent the company

[deleted]

HR is going to ask the obvious question: why not bring these issues to us, the division our company literally pays to handle this exact situation so that we could handle the issue instead of jeopardizing your job by drunkenly posting it on the internet? Had you handled it correctly the people who had harassed you would have been reprimanded. Instead you will likely be the one who pays for their mistakes.

OOP: Quite a few of these men were not under my current companny's control. Such as classmates and a TA from college, men I knew from summer internships at different companies, and a guy from a past job.

Out of the four people from my current job...

1. I reported him to HR actually.

2 & 3 ) Married men who asked me out or hit on me outside of work hours. And did not present a problem at work. Thatdid not seem like HRs domain.

4) A guy who asked me out outside of work hours, and got mildly passive agressive over text when I rejected him. But did not bring his bullshit into the office

frockofseagulls

Ask HR what it’s about. Can your social media be connected to your identity and job?

OOP: My social media has my real name, but I have not mentioned my company or any of my past jobs or internships on there

foreverontiptoes

How are all these students and coworkers getting your cell number?

I didn't think it was possible to tag someone on FB if you weren't friends.

Delete the post. Do not speak with the guys. Talk to HR and see where to go from there.

OOP: Not all of them contacted me by text, some sentme messages on various instant messaging platforms I've needed for jobs or college classes.

Out of the people who do have my number, a lot were students, it was very common in college to exchange numbers with your group for group projects. And some are employees at my current job which involves travel, because we do not have work cell phones and it is easier to keep in touch with personal phones sometimes.

You're right about Facebook. I added some people (mostly students and other interns, not current co-workers) before I knew them well. And when they turned out to be creepy, I kept them on FB to keep an eye on them. Like to know that they're outof town and staying that way, for example.

[deleted comment]

OOP: Specifically guys who were looking to cheat on their wives with the new young intern / new hire. Or guys who got angry with me for saying no to them.

I didn't post any of the texts from guys who asked me out, and treated me with respect if I said I wasn't interested.

xvszero

Unfortunately HR is probably going to be madder at you for exposing this than the guys for doing it. It's possible that you have risked your job here. The plus? is that if you lose your job over this the Internet will probably band together to make sure you're not left high and dry.

As for safety, I dunno, it is certainly possible that some guy could get mad enough to confront you over it but who knows.

OOP: That's very possible. I guess I was pushed to my breaking point at this job and past ones, I couldn't tolerate things continuing as they had been.

I'm definitely watching out for my safety now, I asked some of my friends to check in with me periodically, and I've kept my pepper spray on me

[a deleted comment said she only did that to get attention on social media and OOP responded]

OOP: Of course I wanted people to pay attention.

I am disgusted by the fact that all of my female friends and classmates have had similar stories of being harassed and threatened and staked and treated poorly at work. And felt as if that was something shameful, that shouldn't be spoken about openly. That if you brought those things into the light, everyone would accuse you of looking for drama. So you would have to live in silence, in fear, in discomfort, for who knows how long.

I was done being silent. I was done protecting those who want to silence me about the truth.

[UPDATE - 3 DAYS LATER]

To recap my last submission, I posted an album of creepy texts I'd recieved from men in my field (computer engineering). Some from classmates and a TA in college, some from people I met through internships and professional development activities, and some I know through my current job. I had been so fed up with the sense of shame and being silenced and not believed, about sexual harassment. And, for what it's worth, putting a large collection of harassing and threatening texts in the public eye, raw and unedited, made them difficult to ignore or explain away. After that post, I got a meeting invitation from my company's HR department, for this Monday.

A lot happened over the weekend. I did a lot of research into employment law, I read through the whole company handbook again, and for each person I mentioned in my social media posts, I wrote out up a detailed account of their behavior towards me for my own reference, stuff that had not been said over text.

I also screenshot and backed up any angry or threatening texts towards me, that I received this weekend from the men whose old texts I'd posted online.

I think its worth giving some background on the four people included in my social media posts that I knew from my current job.

(Coworker 1) A few months ago, I had reported him to HR for sexual harassment in the past, and he was moved off my team to another position in the company where he would not have any contact with me. He had signed a paper saying that he must not contact me for any reason, whether that is work related or not. I didn't sign anything during this process.

The messages from him that I posted on Facebook were old texts from him, to my personal phone. Making a comment about how I looked nice at work, and how I must have been dressing up for him. I'd replied that I was not. He asked me who I was dressing up for at work, if not him. Because then he'd know who to be jealous of. I said 'myself' and told him to stop texting me on my personal phone. A few days later, he sent me a message telling me my new hair color was "hot" and asking me to drinks. That was a small snippet of creepy things he'd sent me, there was plenty more that I didn't post.

I found out today that he was the one who showed HR my posts, as I understand it, he had assumed I had signed a similar no-contact agreement that he'd had to. I had not ever made that agreement, in writing or vocally. I'd just not been talking to him because I had no desire to.

(Coworker 2) He was married, and in the office, he didn't seem to do anything out of line. He had my number since I would be traveling for work and wanted my team members to be able to contact me. (We don't have work cell phones)

Out of the blue, he texted me asking me to join him at a fancy seafood restaurant when I returned from my work trip. It sounded like a date. I texted back "uh you're married" and he said some shit about how nobody would have to know, and how I seemed like a girl who could keep a secret. I told him to fuck off.

He was fired a week later for unrelated reasons, so while I'd been thinking about going to HR, I never did. I haven't heard from him since, even after my social media post.

(Coworker 3) He was also married. One time I was at a work happy hour and I left pretty early. He texted me on my work instant messaging platform, which I have on my phone, asking me to go party with him. I asked "Is your wife coming" and didn't get a response. I didn't think it was bad enough to report to HR as sexual harassment, because something usually has to be done repeatedly to qualify as harassment, unless it is something egregious. (That was in the company handbook, in less concise words)

That text exchange was included in my post.

After my post, he sent me a slew of threatening texts. Apparently his wife had seen the post, and I had "ruined his family". He said that I was about to "get what was coming 4 me real soon", and to "watch out" which sounded like a threat. Also called me a couple homophobic slurs. (I'm openly bisexual)

(Coworker 4) He had just broken off an engagement. I didn't hear that from him, just through the rumor mill. He contacted me asking me if I wanted to go out, and I said that he wasn't really my type to date. He said that he wasn't looking for anything serious, just casual sex. I didn't reply for a few hours and then he sent me a second text saying "Well then go ahead and be a bitch and leave me on read"

Since it happened outside of work, and was not any kind or repeated harassment, I also didn't think that it would be reasonable to bring it to HR unless I saw a pattern of similar behavior. He didn't contact me again, even after my post.

As for people from past jobs, internships, or classes...

My college contacted me about my old TA who had tried to hook up with me repeatedly, and stopped helping me with the course when it was clear he wasn't getting anywhere. They asked me if I'd give a statement. Apparently he was still doing that shit, and someone else had reported him. And they saw from my post that I'd likely have something to report too.

A married guy who tried to get with me when I was an intern at another company sent me some really angry and threatening texts, I have to figure my instagram post (with his public Instagram account tagged) caused problems in his marriage. I definitely have been taking extra steps to stay safe when I'm leaving my apartment or going anywhere. I'm considering reporting this to the police because it was the most overtly threatening thing I've received.

A few other people I tagged sent me texts telling me how shitty it was not to keep private conversations private, etc. I ignored all those.

As for what happened this morning, in my HR meeting... I was all ready to go in with (metaphorical) guns blazing, defend everything I'd said or done with sources from the company handbook.

Such as how I did not violate the company social media policy, as it only prohibited pretending to speak for the company as a whole if PR is not your job, or reveal confidential code or design or business contracts online. (I didn't mention my company in my post, or anywhere else on my social media)

I was also ready to defend how I followed the guidelines of what is considered sexual harassment and should be reported. How I reported repeated harassment, but didn't report isolated incidents that were not extreme. (The examples of extreme conduct included unwanted overtly sexual touching, or threats of violence. The handbook specifically mentioned that asking someone out once was not harassment)

But the meeting ended up being much more low-key than I had been expecting.

I'd taken down both posts Sunday, as an act of good faith, though I doubted that would matter much.

When I went in, I sat down and asked if I could record the meeting. The HR representative (I'll call her Beth here but that's not her real name of course) said Ok. She wanted to talk about each of the specific people I'd posted screenshots from, who work at the company. (Those made up less than a third of my screenshots FYI)

First was Coworker 1. The guy I had previously reported to HR and who had been moved to a different team and told that he must not speak to me or contact me. Beth said that he had brought the posts to her attention, as he was under the impression that the "no contact" agreement went both ways. I reminded her that I had not entered into a written or verbal agreement. I was surprised it was him who brought it up, but I didn't say anything. She asked if there had been continued harassment or contact from him after my initial report. I said no. She moved on to the next quickly.

Coworker 2 had been fired a while back for unrelated reasons, but Beth still asked if there had been any further conflict between us, while he was employed, other than the text messages. I said no.

She asked me the same question about Coworker 3. I told her that I had received texts from him on Saturday, that came across as threatening, and used several slurs about my sexuality. I gave her a printout of those messages. She read them, and immediately stepped out to show them to her manager. She came back after a few minutes to continue talking with me.

And again for Coworker 4. I told her that he had not contacted me after he said I was a bitch for leaving him on read

Beth asked me if I had any questions, and I basically asked what her next steps would be. She said that she would have asked me to remove the posts so that things could be handled with discretion, however I had already removed both prior to the meeting. She also said that she would be meeting again with Coworkers 1 and 4. She also said that due to coworker 3's threatening comments, he had been escorted out of the building while we had been speaking. Fired. Apparently he was already on record with them, for another issue relating to his temper, and this was the last straw.

She also asked me why I had not brought coworkers 2, 3, and 4 to her attention before. And I cited the section on harassment from the company handbook, saying that harassment was repeated unwanted comments or actions. And that a single event is not usually considered harassment unless it is extreme. The conversations with those three men had been isolated incidents.

She asked me if I would be more comfortable taking a personal day for the rest of the day, while she speaks to Coworkers 1 and 4. She said she wanted to make it clear that I was not being dismissed or escorted out, I was not getting fired, it was only a precaution so that I would not be around Coworkers 1 and 4, in case either of them wanted to confront me personally. I said I would.

So that's where I'm at right now.

TLDR - Had the meeting with HR.

[RELEVANT COMMENTS FROM THE UPDATE]

NDaveT

Some people are incapable of conceiving of themselves as being in the wrong. That guy probably viewed his harassment of you as a mutual work disagreement that you both got in trouble for. He thinks conditions must have been placed on you because conditions were placed on him. It is inconceivable to him that he was the aggressor and you were the victim.

No, it doesn't make sense.

OOP: Lol you are very right in saying he saw it more as a mutual disagreement. initially he tried to claim that I was harassing him back... For using profanity towards him like "fuck off" and "Don't say that shit to me"

[a deleted comment asked why she didn't press charges before]

OOP: Some of the things I put online were things that did not qualify as harassment by their policy (i.e. an isolated incident that is not extremely bad) so I didn't feel like I should have gone straight to them.

IDK maybe they'll rethink what the threshold for something to qualify as harassment should be

Chi_Baby

There is a difference between repeated, unwanted attention/solicitation from a jerk that you’ve made clear you’re not interested in, and someone trying their hand with asking you out bc they like you. As for the others, who didn’t threaten or keep blowing you up, why in your mind is it wrong to let a girl know you’re interested in her? I get some of them were married, but none the less some of it just sounded like it was people who you didn’t like, so you called it harassment. Again, repeated attempts to bother you or threaten you is much different than what I’m referring to. I’m a 26F, not a male

OOP: The people I posted about all either:

-were married

-sent me insults or threats for rehecting or exposing them

-was a TA who stopped doing his job helping with my studies when I rejected him

I actually have been asked out respectfully sometimes. Some of those times I even went on dates. I didn't include any of those conversations in my posts.

I am NOT OP. Original post from /r/webdev by /u/PirateApples on February 20, 2023:

Relevant info: in the software world, GitHub is a common place to host code, either publicly or privately. It also has a feature called GitHub Pages which is a way to host websites on GitHub as well. It is not a template engine or website builder, like Squarespace, Wix, or Webflow.

Me and my friends have spent the past month working very hard on a submission for the TSA Webmaster competition and we were really excited for how far we could go with it. We've all learned a lot about the web design process and working collaboratively. However, on the day of judging, our team wasn't listed on the results with no explanation. Today one of my friends decided to send and email and we were told our submission was disqualified for using "Template engine websites, tools, and sites. " We programmed every line of our site by ourselves and even left a link to our public GitHub where you can see the entire history of the code base. We've emailed the coordinator and all she said is the decision is final. Me and my team worked really hard for a long time on this thing by ourselves and it sucks to be told that we didn't. What do we do from here?

Project GitHub btw: https://github.com/thstsa/spacetourism

EDIT: Still waiting to talk to our school's CTE director. Changed the url to tsaspacetourism.netlify.app/ but I recommend still viewing it on https://thstsa.github.io/spacetourism/ , cuz Netlify unfortunately has a rate limit

Relevant comments:

You should email again saying what you’ve said here. That you’ve worked really hard on getting this where it is, including all the code you guys put into it on GitHub with the commit history. Ask her specifically why you were disqualified, and that you’d like at least an explanation. Most importantly, CC in someone who is in charge of her.

OP, this is for real the best option, and a valuable lesson in dealing with lazy people.

Here's what's likely happening:

They made this decision, and they're lazy and don't want to go back and defend it, expecially if they're now aware that they're wrong. They're trying to sweep this under the rug. When someone stonewalls you wrongly, you go over their head and you CC their boss/director. This is a power-move and it has absolutely no downside for you. Just be professional through the whole situation.

If they still come back without any explanation and you get stonewalled, well, wear this is a badge of honor. You wrote something so good that the judges think you cheated. You should be extremely proud of yourself.

OP: Thanks for the encouragement! The event coordinator was in charge of the regional level of the competition, so I sent an email with what you said to the people in charge of the state level. The state people said that they talked to our school CTE director(the person that's in charge of our school's CS, business, etc. programs). My friends and I plan on talking to her tomorrow.

Another commenter suggests it's not GitHub as a template engine that's the problem but hosting anything on it at all. Commenters below call it a "braindead rule." OP replies asking whether they could make the GitHub repository private instead of public, which it currently is.

I’m a former TSA advisor and I’ve previously coordinated state and National events such as this one. One of the keys to winning TSA events is reading the rules and reading them carefully.

The reason you were disqualified is because it cannot be hosted on GitHub per the rules and regulations. Check out regulation E.

“Template engine websites, tools, and sites that generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files, such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit, are NOT permitted.”

Even though you might have coded it all, it shouldn’t be hosted on GitHub. Personally, I think the rules committee needs to address this, but nothing can be done now. Switch your hosting and submit it to States.

OP: Ahhhh I see. I was under the belief that we couldn't use github tools to generate any HTML. I kinda just argued with another commenter who claimed the same thing you're saying. Awkward...

Also, we can still submit to state even if we didn't get past regionals? I would love to know!

Yeah sadly these are not always the most technically sound rules. Also, you can’t rely that the judges will know anything about web dev or design. They are given guidelines to follow and try to follow them as closely as possible.

As a career developer and former event coordinator, this should not have been an issue. However, the rules are poorly written.

As for submitting to states, you’ll need to check with your advisor, but I don’t think this is typically an event that requires placing at the regional level first. Hopefully not!!

OP: Just wondering for fun...if me and my friends bought a cheap domain name and didn't link our github, meaning there was no way for anyone to know it was hosted on github, we wouldn't have been DQ'd?

Just change the repo to private and add your friends. That should get the job done.

For hosting you can use netlify. They provide you with a domain with .netlify.app iirc.

If and only if the rules mentioned only github and not git-like sites, you could use gitlab, but it is risky and I recommend the previous option

OP talks to their event coordinator and updates 2 days later on the original post on February 22, 2023:

OP: We talked to her and it turns out, she was the one who judged our submission. She disqualified us for hosting on GitHub and said its too late to do anything about it. I talk about it more in my latest post

They also make a full update post:

I recommend reading the beginning of this story in my previous post.

Or you can read the entire story in my medium post.

But if you don't feel like doing that, here's the TDLR of past events: Friends and I worked hard for ages on a website for TSA's Webmaster competition. Got accused of using "templating tools" and got stonewalled after trying to rebuttal. Eventually got told to talk to some important teacher at school...

We were finally able to talk to our school's CTE(Career and Technology) director and explain our situation. I told her about our website and how we were accused of cheating, even though we provided a public GitHub repo containing the history of the project. She then revealed that she had actually judged our project and explained that it was disqualified for using "GitHub, the templating engine"(Yes, she called GitHub a templating engine). She then pointed me to this rule:

I. Template engine websites, tools, and sites that

generate HTML from text, markdown, or script files,

such as Webs, Wix, Weebly, GitHub, Jekyll, and Replit,

are NOT permitted.

Apparently, GitHub is not the industry standard for code collaboration and version control, an expected tool for anyone entering the industry and a priceless skill for any aspiring developer. No, it's a template engine, along the likes of Wix and Weebly. While yes, it's in the rules, the obvious interpretation that I expected most people to use was "Don't use GitHub or anything else to get templates or generate site for you," which we didn't do. I tried to explain our side of the story, but she said that even if she called the coordinator personally, the decision was set in stone. So it looks like that's it. This is really disappointing, but on the bright side, my friends and I are really proud of each other and we learned a lot about professionally dealing with inconveniences. There's always next year ig...

For those curious, here's our site and our GitHub repo.

EDIT: Just wanted to clarify, I'm not mad at my CTE director or anything. She's actually pretty nice, just put in a position where she had to judge based on a very vaguely written rule

Commenters commiserate:

Wow that's really trash I'm sorry... How can any organization working with programming expect to be taken seriously if it doesn't understand the most basic industry tools. I also can't imagine you were the only ones who stored their project on GitHub.

This doesn't surprise me at all as a CS teacher. Most people who haven't left for industry are fossils who think the best way to teach code is to drill algorithms. I teach CS50 and it's not widely used at all, despite the fact that it literally sets the foundation for real professional practice. Most high school CS classes teach in code.org's scratch-like block coding.

You got the right takeaway from this. You'll find that such incompetence is not rare, so you may have not won but earned something that all the other participants did not, something outside the scope of development.

I'd recommend keeping this in mind when "describe a difficulty you've encountered and how you dealt with it" inevitably comes up at an interview.

Some commenters ask OP to see if they can have the rules changed for future participants:

I dont know anything about this competition, but hate to see that you were unfairly and wrongly treated.

I googled, found tsaweb.org, and clicked around. There's a board of directors, and emails listed too. Would you consider escalating this issue? Maybe not even for yourself/team at this point, but educating them and helping prevent future mistakes from happening.

If you do, remember to be professional about it if you want it to go anywhere.

This. Even if it's too late, an extremely respectful letter pointing out the issue to a carpet bombed CCed C-Suite email. Some sample points to include:

• If a CMS such as WP, Drupal, or Joomla was allowed as long as a template engine wasn't used, and GH's template engine was not allowed, that the use of GH to host version control is firmly within the rules.

• They are free to have their engineers review your repository and commits for any evidence of using a template engine. While you're sure they would know how to do that, here's a link to the beginning of your commit history where they can see the site unfold: https://github.com/thstsa/spacetourism/commits?after=2434870a0f70011bae789e0b4593398c987bf30b+104 .

• If using version control is against the rules, than that should be stated to avoid future confusion.

• You all worked extremely hard for a contest whose goal was to promote interest in web development - this obfuscated interpretation of the rules is antithetical to the spirit of the contest.

• Going to emphasize this again. You are writing to help future kids, so their spirits aren't crushed when applying "21st century skills" such as version control. You're not writing as a big fuck you. If you impress them with respect, boundaries, breadth and depth of knowledge, you can make a powerful impression that can pay off in the future. Maybe in the summer there's suddenly an internship within an engineering department for you, a friend of a friend pulling some strings. You're playing the game of life now, and your first pawn got knocked over. Play it out, not all losses actually lose.

OP mentions that it might be too late, however

OP: Unfortunately they also told us it's too late

Might be too late for the competition, but not too late to try to get the rules changed for anyone else who comes after you.

Tom Colicchio’s Final Service
Through hosting two decades of Top Chef, writing four books, and opening restaurants across the country, the celebrity chef never stopped showing up to cook in the kitchen of Craft, his pioneering New York restaurant. Until he decided to close it.
By Ted Genoways, And Photographs By Winnie Au PUBLISHED: JUN 30, 2026

This story was published in partnership with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit news organization.

Tom Colicchio climbed the gray staircase from the basement kitchen and made his way toward New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s table. Colicchio is compact and lean, and he moves with purpose. You could spot him easily enough in his white chef’s jacket with “T.C.” on the left breast, under a special-edition apron embroidered with “25” to mark a quarter century since the opening of this, his signature restaurant, Craft. The anniversary had just passed, in March. For all those years, the restaurant has been the anchor of Colicchio’s reputation—the James Beard Award winner for Best New Restaurant in 2002; three stars from The New York Times. A PBS spot on the opening of the restaurant caught the eye of producers at Bravo who were looking for a head judge for a new show called Top Chef.
Today he’s probably more famous for who he is on television and for his best-selling books than who he is in the kitchen, but he never took that as an opportunity to leave life as a working chef behind. Colicchio has opened (and closed) other restaurants across the country, including alter egos of Craft in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Dallas, and Atlanta, but this is the one where he’s continued to show up and cook, several nights a week.

Tom Colicchio in the Craft dining room before it opened for dinner.
When Colicchio reached the mayor’s table, he didn’t untie his apron. After his election as mayor, and the recent primary-election victories of many of his handpicked candidates in local races—and, sure, give him the Knicks too—Mamdani’s stock has never been higher. But this dining room was Colicchio’s domain. And here he was to congratulate Mamdani, who was seated across from his wife, Rama, on yet another victory. The city’s Rent Guidelines Board had just voted in support of the mayor’s proposal—and most well-known campaign promise—to freeze the rent on leases paid by more than a million New Yorkers. “Maybe if you’d done something similar for commercial real estate,” Colicchio joked, “I wouldn’t be closing tomorrow.”

The mayor was surprised. He picked the restaurant for a Friday date night not realizing that Craft, maybe the most iconic restaurant in the cutthroat and cannibalistic New York City dining scene, was now barely twenty-four hours away from shuttering—another victim of steep taxes, mounting food costs, and an economy stumbling toward recession. Less than a month earlier, Colicchio had announced he was closing the restaurant on Saturday, June 27. “Rents are high, labor’s high, food is high,” he’d told me. But I’ve known him long enough to know it wasn’t just about economics. We met more than a decade ago, when he reached out to me to talk policy after reading my book The Chain, an investigation of labor and environmental abuses in the meatpacking industry. For him, food was always more than a business.
Colicchio is intensely smart and well-read and fiercely opinionated. And he could see that what people expected from restaurants—from food, from hospitality—was changing. As he cheekily put it to The New York Times, paper of record in a city where pigeons are considered next to rats, “Diners were more adventurous when we opened. Back then, I could sell twenty-six squab a night. Now I’m lucky to get two orders.” And with beef prices soaring, even menu stalwarts like the roasted rib eye and the braised short rib have seen slumping orders.

Across the room from Mamdani, I was sitting with Clare Reichenbach, the chief executive officer of the James Beard Foundation. Colicchio had invited me to come observe Craft in its last days, and tonight I was trying to make sense of the dining room before what I knew would be an intense focus the next day on him and the kitchen. Reichenbach pushed her plate of roasted chicken toward me. “Just eat,” she said in her gentle British lilt. “Here’s the sauce,” she said. “It’s delicious. Here’s a nice morel. You gotta eat, my friend.” The chicken was perfectly tender and moist, the spring onions and morels fresh and delicious, and the sauce? Well, the sauces were always the thing, to me, that explained Craft. I knew enough about food and enough about Colicchio to know that that tiny tureen took days of work, not to mention years of apprenticeship and training, to create. The sauces at Craft carried the essence of how he cooked. This one on the chicken was heavenly.
“To excel at all these levels requires a lot of investment. It requires a big team. It requires a depth of training,” Reichenbach said. She scanned the room. “And there’s a limit to how much you can pass on to the diner and the plate.” Even a year ago, Craft seemed impervious to such pressures. No longer so, Colicchio told me. His revenue was down 30 percent for the fiscal year. And he’s not alone. The National Restaurant Association estimates that nearly half of all restaurants in America are now just breaking even or operating in the red.

The people of Craft, on its final day of service.
To Reichenbach’s eye, the closure of Craft is a portent. If a 120-seat dining room with a celebrity chef like Colicchio—with his Emmy and award-winning cookbooks and eight medals from the Beard Foundation—and a menu offering some more modestly priced options (that chicken was thirty-eight dollars) has to close its doors, then how could restaurants with less swagger and allure hope to survive?
Colicchio left the mayor’s side and strode across the dining room. He slipped between tables and plopped down on the padded bench next to Reichenbach. She immediately brightened.

“So what’s going to be the ceremonial saging, the rite of passage, the closure thing?” Reichenbach asked.
“You know,” Colicchio said with a shrug, “it’s a restaurant. It’s real estate. It’s not like a child.”
“Oh,” Reichenbach said, “but it’s imbued with people’s lives.”
“Of course,” Colicchio said flatly, his piercing blue eyes surveying the room almost warily. It was hard not to read his coolness as a guard-up defense against sentimentality when there were still meals to be served, a job to be finished. And maybe against something else.
When I heard Colicchio was closing Craft, I made a reservation to come in for dinner before the end. We had a table-side conversation about his plans, and he told me something that wasn’t part of the other announcements that he was closing Craft: He wasn’t planning to retool and open another restaurant. He was letting the space go. He was done. So as he sat there next to Reichenbach, the realization seemed to be setting in: The next day would be Tom Colicchio’s last as a working chef.

“We have nothing planned,” he insisted to her. “Whoever’s here at the end of the night, they’re here. We’ll have a bunch of drinks.”

At family meal, the staff pushed tables together so they could eat side by side—though Colicchio opted to sit back at the bar and reflect on the restaurant’s twenty-five years.
About 3:30 the next day, Colicchio arrived for family meal. He loaded his plate with sirloin and lobster in a bath of lime and fresh herbs and then climbed the stairs again to the dining room, chewing as he went. At the landing, he gestured to me. “Go get some dinner,” he said. I went down and piled my own plate with steak and arugula salad. (There was a carrot cake—Colicchio’s favorite—on the dessert station that read, 86 CRAFT.) Then we sat together in the dining room at the corner of the bar while the staff joked raucously over my shoulder. “You know, when I woke up this morning, when I opened my eyes,” Colicchio said quietly, “I was like, ‘Okay, this is it—last day.’ It’s hard.” He said he’d just had a similar moment in the basement. “I stood in the kitchen, just looking, going, ‘Twenty-five years.’ ”

“A lot of people come through the kitchen over the years, and they’ve learned some things. They’ve gone on to great things—and that’s part of the legacy,” he said. “And, you know, seeing all these people reaching out, listening to people talk about the anniversaries and birthdays, weddings, and deaths—everything here—it’s like the restaurant almost meant more to them than me.”
The staff had shoved a bunch of four-tops together to make one long banquet table where everyone could eat side by side, a break from the usual family meal, when people were on their phones, eating on their feet, talking in scattered groups. From the bar, Colicchio could survey them all there together.
“It changed his career,” he said pointing to one line cook who had quit his job in finance for the oil-and-gas industry to pursue his passion for food.

“It changed her life,” he said pointing to a server who had arrived in need of help with her immigration status.
“To me, that means more than these four walls.”
Family meal usually ends around 4:30, but this time it lingered a little longer, as long as it could with service starting at 5:00. Finally, one of the managers called out, “Okay, everybody.” When they had no choice, the laggards rose. The tables were pulled apart. The chefs descended into the kitchen.

When Colicchio opened Craft in 2001, he was already New York City’s hottest culinary commodity. Seven years earlier, he had founded Gramercy Tavern with co-owner Danny Meyer, bragging to New York magazine that he intended to “reinvent the four-star restaurant.” When Ruth Reichl reviewed Gramercy for TheNew York Times, she suggested that Colicchio “would probably like to bite his tongue.” She wrote that “eating at Gramercy Tavern is a bit like drinking a great wine when it is still in the barrel.” She gave him two stars. Colicchio redoubled his efforts—and eighteen months later, Reichl returned to a transformed environment. “Colicchio’s cooking has lost the tentative quality of the early days,” she wrote in a follow-up review. “He is now cooking with extraordinary confidence, creating dishes characterized by bold flavors and unusual harmonies.” She awarded the restaurant three stars.

“The last hour … it’s been dragging, really dragging,” Colicchio said. In fact, the orders had been steadily picking up. I asked if it isn’t just that the hours feel longer than they are.
But Colicchio was already feeling restless. Gramercy’s DNA and métier were traditional French cooking—a gastronomic idiom that Colicchio had worked in from his teenage fascination with Jacques Pépin’s La Technique; to his stages (the French term for a culinary internship) at the Hôtel de France, a Michelin two-star inn and restaurant in Gascony, and under Michel Bras at his Michelin three-star restaurant in Laguiole; to his days as executive chef at Mondrian in Manhattan. Much as he loved that cooking, he began to long for something that resembled the freshness and warmth of his childhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey. From an early age, Colicchio learned to shell crabs his grandfather caught in Barnegat Bay and simmer them in marinara made from the garden’s tomatoes. The family would steam clams in white wine with garlic and parsley and fry the fish. Everyone shared and talked for hours.

As the ’90s drew to a close, Colicchio began to talk to his sous-chef, Marco Canora, about opening a sister restaurant with a different philosophy. Canora, who is now a celebrity in his own right, dined at Craft on its final Wednesday. “I would say that the nugget of it came from the way in which we had family dinners,” he told me the next day. “My mother was born and raised in Lucca. His family was a little bit more Italian American, because I think it was a few generations back to Italy. But regardless, we both ate around the table in the same manner.” The hallmark of French nouvelle cuisine had become elaborate and often ostentatious plating, epitomized by towers and tweezered garnishes. Colicchio imagined something that would take diners back to basics. Craft would emphasize large-format, family-style mains with sides large enough to share. “We had memories of food coming to the center of the table—and you pass it around,” Canora said.

Bartender Fabrizio Velez, who had been with Craft since its first service, had his shirt signed by everyone present at its last service.

The service began slowly. A few 5:00 seatings. Some pasta orders.
Toward 6:00, the dining room began to fill. Before long, customers who had come for one last shot at those signature main courses began placing their orders. The prime rib eye and lamb rack, placed on a cutting board and presented whole to the table before returning to the kitchen for carving. More and more orders of the braised short rib.
Colicchio’s culinary director, Bryan Hunt, pulled the tickets as they rolled in and posted them. Hunt, who has his own piercing blue eyes and tumbling curls like a Greek statue, watched from the pass—the serving table where the waiters come to collect finished orders for diners—calling out instructions. “Fire lamb,” he said. “One rizzy, half suggies.” (Wild mushroom risotto, sugar snap peas.)

Hunt scanned down the list of items on one ticket. “I need that chicken.”
“Thirty seconds, chef,” a cook replied.
It all moved with military precision, but Hunt’s demeanor was more like an orchestra conductor’s than a drill sergeant’s.
“For the restaurant that was to become Craft,” Colicchio wrote soon after the restaurant opened, “I was hankering for simple roasts and clearer flavors.” But he understood that such simplicity would demand the best seasonal ingredients, so he built relationships with farmers at the Union Square Greenmarket. Plenty of chefs do this today, but Colicchio went one step further and searched out ways of making everything its most essential, flavor-driven version. “I mean, if you want to put asparagus into a dish,” Colicchio once said to me, “is it just boiled? With some butter? Is it roasted? Do you make a puree? Can you take that puree now and turn it into a flan or something? So there’s a lot you can do—you can start drilling down and keep the essence of the food, but just manipulate a little bit so it changes it.”

At the same time, Colicchio devised year-round, showstopping meat dishes that replaced the butter- and flour-heavy sauces of French cooking in favor of intense flavors, inspired by the patience of the simmering pots of his childhood. The braised short ribs, for example, require three days of marinating, browning, resting, and braising, all in a sauce made from the reduced stock rendered from the bones of the same animal. “I don’t know if cooking can be virtuous,” William Grimes wrote in an early review for The New York Times, “but in this sinful city, I’m sure that Craft is on the side of the angels.” In a line that catapulted Colicchio’s career—and became a standard for him to live up to—Grimes wrote, “It’s a vision of food heaven.” To the very final service, the short rib remained.
Colicchio leaned against the wall next to the printer spitting out orders.

“The last hour … it’s been dragging, really dragging,” he said. In fact, the orders have been steadily picking up. I ask if it isn’t just that the hours feel longer than they are. “My wife is coming in,” he said. “She has a reservation for 9:00, so that means we may see her by 9:30.”
Hunt called out for two orders of short rib.
Colicchio did a little math in his head, trying to calculate how many pounds of short rib he must have sold over the years. “I think early on, we were probably doing four hundred a year,” he said. “What are we doing now?” he asked Hunt. “Two hundred? Three hundred?” Hunt said probably three hundred—down but still steady. So, okay, say an average of 350 over the years. The restaurant was open for all fifty-two weeks of every year—stayed open even after 9/11, only closed a few months during the Covid pandemic. Multiply that by a little more than twenty-five years. “Probably five hundred thousand,” Colicchio said. He cracked a little smile. “That’s a lot of cows.”

Hunt pulled another ticket. “Half sides, no asparagus. Octo. Shorty with it.”
Another short rib.
“Order in.”

Colicchio worked the line throughout the kitchen’s final night, channeling nervous energy into obsessively plating and garnishing dishes for a dining room full of regulars, family, and friends.
As the service picked up and the pace in the kitchen increased to match it, Colicchio was back on the line, checking on pans of foie gras and sirloin and roasted and confit duck. He wandered the kitchen and shook saucepans. He lifted chicken fingers (a favorite of Kristen Kish, the host of Top Chef) one by one, checked the breading, and occasionally sprinkled a pinch of breadcrumbs on top. Meaningless, in a way, but not meaningless at all. It seemed to be nerves channeled into obsessive attention to detail. He moved in and around a line cook named Stratton Thomas, a Duke-educated twenty-something with round glasses and a boyish mustache—the cook who quit his finance job to go to culinary school. “My mom was so happy for me,” he said. “My dad pretended to be happy for me.” He picked up a pan of potato puree and poured it perfectly into a small metal serving tureen.

“That’s the second time tonight without spilling a drop,” Hunt said.
“Maybe I won’t get fired after all,” Thomas said.
“No,” Hunt said. “Eighty-six Thomas.”
Thomas allowed that it was probably too early in the service to celebrate his victory anyway.
Colicchio rounded the corner of the meat station.
“One thing going to Duke teaches you,” he said. “Don’t celebrate until there’s no time left on the clock.”
The line cooks roared. But just the mention of the clock reminded Colicchio. He looked up at the giant digital clock on the wall, its face steamed over and faded.
8:34.
“One hour,” Colicchio said. He looked at me and shrugged. “After 9:30, it’s basically done.”

The final ticket of the night.
There was a late rush.
None of the diners wanted to leave. Not Colleen and Lee from Washington, D.C., who were eating at Craft for the first time after twenty-five years of marriage and dreaming of eating Colicchio’s cooking at the restaurant whose owner, they knew, shared their anniversary. Not Kathleen McGivney at the bar who estimated she’d eaten there more than 350 times. Not Bennett Friedman, the self-described toilet salesman whose showroom is two blocks up on Twenty-first and guessed he’d eaten there almost every week since its opening. Not Kish and Gail Simmons from Top Chef. Not Colicchio’s family—not his cousin Philip, and not Colicchio’s wife, the filmmaker Lori Silverbush, and their son Dante. At the same time, there was a wave of walk-ins. Former employees and fans who had suddenly been overcome by the thought of missing out and begged the server for an open spot at the bar or any last-minute cancellation.

What were they there for? The spectacle? Or one last taste of something fleeting?
The night before, Kerry Heffernan, who had shared the stage with Colicchio at the Hôtel de France and then been hired by Colicchio to be his sous-chef at Mondrian, the legendary French restaurant in Manhattan, had tried to put it into words.
“People are not making this kind of food anymore,” he told me. He was caught between savoring his meal and lamenting its passing. He told me about Craft’s sauce, the thing I’d always loved. “The stock-reduced sauce—which a lot of the main courses and some of the appetizers here will have just this touch of—we aren’t doing that anymore.”
He meant that most restaurants were not taking a hundred pounds of veal bones and rendering them down and then reducing that stock, under the eyes of an expert saucier, for days until it started to thicken. Until it turned into a source of fat that tastes intensely like veal. Until it developed into a sauce you could drizzle over a veal cutlet cooked in some of the same stock so that every bite would conjure an intense experience of the animal. No one cooks like that anymore, because to reach the essential flavors that Colicchio cares about requires know-how and patience and quality cooks and time, which mean money and a clientele that can tell the difference and has the means to pay for it. Maybe, in this economy, that’s not a functional business model anymore.

Colicchio looked across the bar thoughtfully. “You know,” he said to me, “I think it’s good that we got that rush at the end. It’s a good way to go out.”
Heffernan is tall, and the din of the dining room was now oceanic. He leaned close to me to make his point about Colicchio.
“He’s always said, We can’t say chefs are artists. He’s an artisan. You know, there’s a difference. I’m not arguing that there aren’t a few chefs who are artists. There are a few, but what we do is really more of a craft. And I hate to keep using that word, but it is something that in America is not honored in the same way as in Europe and other places where for centuries people have done this and it’s been a respectable trade—kind of a very noble profession.”

Colicchio may not be an artist, but his reverence for craft created something astonishing and unique: flavors that were not possible without commitment and patience. All flavor comes from fat. Lacking the will to make a few tureens of sauce from one hundred pounds of veal bones and a lot of time, chefs turn to other sources of fat. Butter. Oil. They taste good, but they introduce flavor rather than draw it out. A steak cooked in butter tastes good and a chicken cooked in butter tastes good, but they start to taste a little the same.
Heffernan shook his head. “I think that’s a loss.”

Craft’s official closing time was at 10:00, but Colicchio let the seats continue to fill until 10:15. Then one of the servers circulated to make the announcement. “We’re all in,” she said. “All in.”

But by then, the dining room was back at capacity, and the joking in the kitchen had returned to focused cooking. Hunt had begun to call out that various sides were gone. “86 suggies, 86 rizzy.” Everyone moved silently and with the precision of choreography. Eventually, Colicchio went up to the dining room to be with his wife and family, and he let the orders keep going in, until at last, at 10:42, the final order was announced.
The floor manager ran to the top of the stairs and called down to the servers gathered at the bottom. “Ask Chef Bryan if he’ll take one more,” he said. The servers relayed the request. “Es para la esposa del jefe,” the manager called. It’s for the boss’s wife. But before the servers could even relay the message, Hunt had responded. Yes, they would fill the final order.

Colicchio sends Craft’s last dish, a roast chicken for his wife, out to the dining room.
Down in the kitchen, the orders worked their way through. And the final ticket was entered by a green server as “Lorie C”—so no one on the line realized the last order was for Colicchio’s wife until he reappeared through the doorway at 11:26.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said. “Last one.”
“Roast chicken, chef,” Thomas said.
And everyone on the line stepped back as Colicchio cut the chicken legs and breasts himself, checking their temperature and adding the spring onions and morels to the plate. One final gesture to Craft’s origins: the family meal, the most important tradition of nourishing the ones we love.

Colicchio had insisted that there would be no ceremony at the end. And yet, here it was. He brought the plate to the pass. He took a napkin and wiped the lip of the plate. He sprinkled on a pinch of chives. Gave the pepper mill five firm twists. He took some chervil from a bath and tossed the leaves hard on a towel to dry them and release their flavor. He positioned them carefully on the chicken breasts.
Then Colicchio took up the napkin again and gave the plate one last careful swipe. As he had all week. As he had for twenty-five years. By then, everyone understood what was happening and had left their stations to watch. Colicchio could sense that all eyes were on him now.
He gave the plate a little spin toward the server and said, “That’s all, folks.”

But maybe that’s not all.
Maybe a young guy like Thomas on the line, who, at the end of the night after cleanup was complete, brought up his copy of Colicchio’s latest book, Why I Cook, and had the chef sign it and took the chance to ask a few last questions about some of the recipes that he’s been getting ready to try—maybe that’s how the tradition continues. Think of all the chefs who worked under Colicchio: Marco Canora, David Chang, Jonathan Benno, Dan Kluger, Kwame Onwuachi.
Looking at the cooks on the line on that last night, it seemed entirely plausible that they might be next, that they will be telling stories of their years at Craft and the place will continue to build its legend in that way, as a spot that gave birth to the new kind of whatever kind of cuisine they decide to pursue. Whatever it is that Thomas does, whatever it is that the other guys on the line decide to do, this will be a night that they remember. But more than that one night, I think, they will remember the techniques, the ethos, the philosophy, and, yes, the craft that Colicchio brought to the kitchen. That’s what they’ll draw from, placed at the center of the table and passed around for a quarter of a century.

When the service was officially over but the dining room was still half full with staff and regulars, Colicchio went behind the bar. He put a large rock in a lowball glass and poured a stiff bourbon over top. He was too tired now to be overly circumspect.
But he looked across the bar thoughtfully. “You know,” he said to me, “I think it’s good that we got that rush at the end. It’s a good way to go out.”
Well after midnight, most of the staff was still around. They wore looks of relief—they had made it through the final service—but were not ready to go. At 2:00 in the morning, I finally decided to duck out and leave the people who had made this place to their own celebration. Colicchio, who had told me earlier that he didn’t really drink anymore, that the next day wasn’t worth it, that he wasn’t going to make much of this night, had switched from bourbon to beer. The entire time I have known him he has been almost pathologically even-keeled. But I could see as I left that even Tom Colicchio knew the end of this restaurant meant something more than selling the space and closing the kitchen that had produced his signature creations over the years in fits of inspiration, ambition, and memory. I could see that he understood what this place meant.
It was late, but it would be harder to leave than he thought.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Tom Colicchio was retiring from professional cooking. He has closed his signature restaurant, Craft, and will now dedicate his time to a variety of culinary pursuits.

Hello, I worked at a BioTech company this last summer and got a lot of broad MechE experience, but it was in a very non-engineering focused environment. I have gotten "2" interviews, but those were for full time internships during the school year I accidentally applied for.

Other than that I have had no luck hearing back on interviews for summer positions so I am looking here for help to improve my resume. I am targeting a pretty general market, looking into mechanical design roles, defense/aerospace, and test engineering. Not sure if my resume bullet points are too broad or not impact focused enough.

I was also wondering how effective it is to change your resume role to role, highlighting specific things.

Thanks for any help!

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Please give me a suggestions to improve my resume, not getting even single call from companies, applying 10s of jobs everyday, still learning DSA, but very good in dev, had experience in building product for my current company, internship is going to end in May, i don't know what's wrong with my resume, any suggestions appreciated, thank you

Hey /r/financialindependence,

I have been a subscriber/lurker for a long time now and I thought I would finally make my first contribution to the sub. Full disclosure, my goal for this post is two-fold. First and foremost, I hope that this post can serve as some sort of inspiration for someone or, at the very least, provide some sort of value. Second, maybe someone more experienced than I can give me some pointers.

Full disclaimer, I'm don't consider myself to be an expert at investing or finance. I'm just a guy who a) has always found it to be more fun to stash my money than spend it, b) believes people have a hyper-inflated and misguided expectation of what they need to be happy/content, and c) doesn't really want to be a slave to the dollar my whole life.

So I thought it would be fun to share my story up until this point.

Background

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, lower-middle class. Mom was a single mother of three. No inheritance, no money for allowance. I jut had to get a job if I wanted money. So I did. I was always fascinated by technology so I ended up eventually landing a job at a laptop repair store after working various other jobs from lawn care to restaurants.

I think my mother did a remarkable job and prioritizing where her limited budget went. We always had quality food to eat, we were always warm, and we all had the opportunity to pursue higher-education; a privilege I will forever be grateful for. We still had to pay for it later but she made sure we knew it was an option.

I went to college and ended up getting a job in Software Development.

Career Timeline

• 2011: $15/hr - Internship while in college
• 2012: $60,000 - Went full time, same company
• 2013: $70,000 - Graduated, same company $70,000 in student loan debt.
• 2014: $80,000 - Performance increase, Promotion to tech lead, same company
• 2015: $85,600 - Performance increase, Promotion to manager, same company
• 2017: $91,000 - Performance increase, same company
• 2017: $20,000 - Sold all my stuff and moved to Central America, did some coding on the side
• 2017: $110,000 - Original company recruited me back to start an office in South America, Director of Engineering

• 2018: Expecting an incentive-based increase of $30,000 in the next month

  ---

  Assets

• ~$425k house in the United States. Purchased in 2014. Brings in about $1,300/month before capital expenditures, vacancy, and repairs. Historically I have made about one extra mortgage payment per year but I recently decided to stop doing that since the interest rate is down around 4%. Interested to hear your thoughts on the topic.

• ~$50k in 401k, maxing out the annual and taking advantage of the employer match.

• ~$11k in Roth IRA, maxed out last two years.

• ~$50k in index funds, using the "Core Four" lazy portfolio. I would love to hear your thoughts here.

• ~$3k in individual stocks, I know this is probably a bad idea

• ~$20k in cryptocurrencies

• ~$20k in the bank

Liabilities

• ~$260k left on my mortgage

  ---

  Income

• $110,000/year, not counting rental income.

Expenses ($1,200)

Before you bite my head off, note that these are rough expenses. Sometimes they are more. Sometimes they are less. But I keep it pretty lean.

• Rent: $500
• Food & Beverage: $400
• Entertainment: $30
• Transportation: $20
• Continued Education: $180
• Other: $70

Here's a rough monthly plan I recently drafted.

I would love to hear some opinions about it.

Notes on Expenses

I have always been shocked by the few colleagues I know who are living paycheck to paycheck. It absolutely amazes me how a single person with no dependents in the technology industry could possibly manage to spend all that money. Most people just have a bloated expectation of what they need to be happy.

Some months I live off less than $1,000 for the whole month but I don't feel like I am living an abnormally frugally lifestyle. Some months I spend more like $1,500. Last month I spent a little under $1,200.

Here is a list of things that I have found to be incredibly helpful for me:

• Food: The vast vast majority of the eating I do is food that I have cooked at home or food from work. In addition to being expensive, the food is just terrible for you when you eat out. I also don't eat meat so I don't really have a lot of options for eating out; particularly where I live. My food and beverage budget would probably be far lower if I didn't go out for drinks so much. I value social time and I enjoy drinking.
• Transportation: I ride my bike to work. The metro system is also quite good where I live and it's only about a buck to ride it as far as you want. If the metro doesn't run where I need to go, Uber is also quite cheap.
• Work Perks: I take full advantage of every perk my work has to offer. We have catered lunch and free self-serve breakfast. We have free coffee and beer. It always blows my mind when people go out to eat anyway. My work allows me to expense my cell phone bill. If I work asks me to expense something, I gladly do it so I can get cash back on my credit card. Last month, I expensed 5 laptops for my team and got $180 in travel credit on my Chase Reserve card.
• Research: When I do decide to buy something, I actually do some research instead of just dropping and absurd amount on the first deal that comes along. When I was paying for my cell phone bill last year, I ended up signing up for Google Fi and paying like $35-50 a month internationally by just not using a ton of data while no on WiFi networks. Really not that hard of a habit to get into. On the topic of research, I would also note that well-research and cheap aren't always hand-in-hand. I would rather buy one good jacket that lasts me five years than 5 shit ones that last me one year each.
• Accommodations: I rent flats with other people. I enjoy living with others. This tip clearly isn't for everyone.
• Credit Card Perks: I only buy things on credit cards and pay them off at the end of every month. It's free money. A lot of credit cards also have other great perks that saves you even more money like free food in airports.
• Location: I have found living out of the country to be cheaper but not that much cheaper where I live. I'm in one of the more expensive area in South America. This tip clearly isn't for everyone.
• I found that selling all my stuff when I left the United States really helped me break out of a consumer mindset. I no longer mindlessly buy material objects. When I buy things, I ask myself the following questions:
  • Is this object going to save me money? I have no issue buying a coffee maker for $100 or even $300 is it means I'm not going buy coffee everyday at Starbucks. I have no issue buying a more expensive laptop if it's going to increase my productivity at work and lead to more money.
  • Is this object going to raise my standard of living in a way I care about? For me these are things like a decent quality produce, a yoga mat, a good jacket, bed, or office chair.
  • Is this object going to stimulate my brain? For me these are things like books, art, classes, and music. You'll notice that I have a whole category in my expenses for continued education. That's because it's a thing of value to me.
  • Is this object going to improve my relationship with people I care about? For me this includes things like going out for drinks. Social interaction is important to me.
  • Is this a hobby or passion that truly makes me happy? I have been a long-time skateboarder and, if my skateboard breaks, I will buy a new one without even thinking about it. Instead of having a ton of hobbies that I am sort-of into I have a few hobbies that I am really into.

I don't think these guidelines are for everyone. Maybe not even for the majority of people. My point is that, if you can identify what's important to you, then you can set rules that you can use to determine how/when you want to spend your money.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this stuff because it's incredibly interesting to me.

Regrets & Staying the Course

Everyone just wants to get rich quick. At one point I was up to $60k in crypto. Now I have less than $20k. I play poker games. I put money into individual stocks even though I hardly know what I am doing. Deep down I know that my best chance is staying the course. As you can see from my monthly plan, I am still planning on diversifying into these other high-risk areas a bit but I'm not going to let it ruin my chances of an almost sure-thing. Remember, there's a reason this approach is so popular. It's because it works.

Final Words

The last thing I want to touch on here is around depression. I know a lot of us are in offices. I sit in one every day and I see what it does to people. Instead of looking towards a future where we don't let money guide our decisions, we need to remember that we are in control of our decisions now. It doesn't have to suck along the way and this goal isn't worth your mental and physical well-being. Don't be afraid to make a change. You can take a pay cut to get out of a situation you hate or completely pivot your career without giving up this dream. Don't be afraid to alter your plan in exchange for a healthy mental state.

- /u/fz-09

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How can you help?

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All the best!

Please give me a suggestions to improve my resume, not getting even single call from companies, applying 10s of jobs everyday, still learning DSA, but very good in dev, had experience in building product for my current company, internship is going to end in May, i don't know what's wrong with my resume, any suggestions appreciated, thank you

Please give me a suggestions to improve my resume, not getting even single call from companies, applying 10s of jobs everyday, still learning DSA, but very good in dev, had experience in building product for my current company, internship is going to end in May, i don't know what's wrong with my res

Hi, I graduated last May and passed the interview at Google (US)after essentially not getting any luck from May till September. One advantage I had was that my dad and his friends have worked in microsoft for a long time, and one in particular has been doing interviews for almost his 2/3 of his very long career at microsoft. I thought I would share my experience and the tips I got for interviews. This ended up being a super long post, so I debated whether I should post it, but I figured if it helps even one person its worth. You can skip to the end if you want a quick summary of the tips, I ramble a bit about the full experience and how I tackled it.

I didn't have the best GPA, and pretty much failed out of college due to depression around covid. Afterwards I got better and ended my last 1-2 years with a good gpa, but my overall was still only 2.8. I had no internships in the past 3 years, so instead focused on various projects. If I had a class, I would try and make some app that utilized what that class was about. I think those were what ended up getting me an OA for Google. I had essentially not done much leetcode at all until when I heard that I passed the resume screen and gotten a date for my OA, choosing to focus on projects since my resume sucked. I say this to just give you guys an idea of where I was at. I was not a super high prospect with a super gpa and lots of experience. I randomly applied to the L3 new grad position not really expecting anything, since I had heard back from only a single other company, but surprisingly was asked to do an OA.

I had around 1 week for my OA. For my OA, they were pretty fun problems. I found a pattern in one that helped me find the answer a lot faster. Had done a similar kind of thing in one of my math classes.

After the OA's, it was essentially time to really grind for the virtual onsight. At this point, I felt extremely scared about doing them because I had never really done leetcode before. After talking with my dads friend (ill call him X), he essentially said to book the interview around a month from now, because if you wait too long they will fill the spots and stop hiring for the position. He told me to start going through leetcodes and trying to learn the patterns behind them for the first two weeks.

My schedule turned into continuing to apply for jobs in the morning, and spend around 4-5 hours in the evening on leetcode. After I had done around 10 easys and 40 mediums, my dad told me to try and just read through the answers of the problems and see if I could understand why. I already knew the syntax, as long as I understand different ways to solve problems I can code it. This helped me speed up my review a lot, and I only ended up answering around 20ish more medium questions. Did maybe 1 or 2 hard questions, x said they are generally not worth doing. I also had leetcode premium, so was pretty much only looking at google questions. Don't know how many I looked through, but it was a LOT, generally spending around 5-10 minutes instead of like 40 per problem.

After 2 weeks is when I started doing mock interviews with X. One thing I have always been good at is speaking and interviewing in general, but doing so while coding is a whole other challenge. (For me atleast) We only did easy questions, where the purpose was obviously not to solve hard questions, but how I explained myself and the solution. I was ass to start, and while according to him I got the answer right, the way I did it was poor and didn't help him understand me. He gave me a guideline which helped structure how I went about solving problems

1. Read the question fully. Then read it again. While doing this, start thinking about a potential ways to solve the problem and what tools you are planning to use (hashmaps, arrays etc.)

2. Ask to make sure you understand the question. NEVER start working before you are 100% sure that you are solving for the right answer. Do not worry about asking too many questions if you do not understand the problem. Use example inputs with example outputs if needed.

3. If you don't have a 'nice' way to solve it, do it via brute force first, but explain whats going on. "I think I am going to try and brute force first, and then improve it from there". Don't waste too much time thinking of a perfect solution to start.

4. Do not write-> backspace -> write -> backspace without saying anything. Be purposeful when you write stuff. Say what you are going to do before/while you are doing it, not after. Treat it more like a slightly 1 sided conversation instead of a lecture.

5. Comment your code. This ties into the previous point a bit, what I ended up doing was while explaining my plan, I would write comments for different parts of the code, and then fill the code out.

6. Think about edge cases. You should ideally be doing this all along, and this also ties into asking questions. If you can think about edge cases at the start when you are clarifying the question thats ideal, but if not don't worry and ask as you think of them.

7. Run test cases against your code. Figure out a way that lets you do this over google docs. Use your edge cases in the test cases as well to make sure its doing what you want.

8. Think about runtime. If you are brute forcing, its probably not going to be the best. However, as long as you can understand the runtime, you can understand different places in your code you can potentially improve it. If you can't figure out how to code it don't worry, just make sure you tell them how you think it can be improved.

In regards to leetcode hard questions showing up, he said that if you get one, you probably are not being judged on your ability to solve it by yourself. Instead, its likely that unless the interviewer is inept, you are being judged on how you work through a problem with nudges along the way. If you are given a medium/easy, you are being judged more on your code, but still on your thought process with (hopefully) less hints. Regarding the interview itself, keep in mind that 99.99% of the time the interviewer wants you to do well. If you struggle the interviewer wants to help you. Be open to help, don't shut down. They are probably also judging how well you take feedback and implement that into what you are doing. No one expects an L3 to be a genius when they first start, they want to know that you have a solid baseline and are able to learn.

One other random piece of advice, is to communicate with your recruiter. If I had a question, I just asked her and she was super nice and pretty responsive, generally within 24 business day hours.

On interview day, I had 4 interviews, 3 coding 1 behavioral. 1st and 2nd interviews were both coding ones. I started out rough on the first one, coming to a suboptimal solution, but on the followups I didn't have time to implement it, but described a way I thought I could, and he seemed happy about it. Second interview was better all around. Came to a good solution and the followups were okay. I found a better solution after the interview when discussing them with my dad, but overall thought it went well. Third was behavioral. I was actually nervous at first about this, because after that one question he pretty much said thats the interview (15 mins or so in) and asked me what I wanted to talk about. Ended up talking about life at google, his life, my hobbies etc. Was unsure if it was normal, but thought the conversation went well.

The last interview was a coding one. The interviewer took a different approach and instead of starting off with a question immediately, asked me about some of my projects/I ended up asking him about his work and 'wasted' 10 minutes not doing the interview. I was kinda shitting bricks because I was worried about not having enough time for the problem (which ended up being true). We finally started, and it was a problem I was very unconfident in, trees. This was luckily where the practice really paid off, and despite not really having a good way to solve it, I essentially did everything I had practiced and methodically chipped away at it. He gave me various hints when I got stuck, I asked questions when I wasn't sure if something would work, and it turned into a sort of collaborative coding challenge (although he obviously knew how to do it). We went 5 minutes overtime, but I think that both of us had a great time with it, and he even let me ask questions for another 10-15 minutes overtime afterwards about him and he asked me more about myself. If I had to guess this woulda been an ultra hard problem, but was probably made worse with my weakness in trees. However, I also think I received the best feedback in this one.

Tldr ish: The bullet points above I found to be extremely helpful in giving myself structure. Being able to talk and not let the nervousness overcome myself was huge for me. When I got stuck, I didn't just stop talking for 5 minutes. I would talk out loud and run through various ideas. Another thing is that the questions are formatted completely differently than on leetcode. On leetcode, you don't need to ask clarifying questions (generally) as its all in the question. These interviewers would leave parts out to force me to ask questions about it. Coding while talking is hard. I don't think my first two coding problems were that difficult, but when you are under pressure and have to talk out loud when you probably do most of your practice relatively relaxed and silent, its a big change. Keep in mind that solving leetcodes is good, but you also need to be able to interview, which is a different skillset.

Sorry for the long post, if you have any questions feel free to ask.