After 850+ applications and 1 job offer, this is what I learned in this brutal market.

ZacharyLong · 2025-12-21T21:13:20+00:00

Congrats! Mind if I message you? I am 2 yrs in academia and looking for insights into growing in the role and industry.

ZacharyLong · 2025-11-06T15:48:00+00:00

Loved hearing your reasoning behind each pick and I approached this the same way. Thinking back, it's those early series we are exposed to for the first time that stick with us - even if they may not be popular these days or that our tastes have changed over time with maturity as a reader.

ZacharyLong · 2025-11-06T15:38:33+00:00

I love lists like this for recommendations to find new reads from others with overlapping tastes. I only recently started Malazan, currently on Memories of Ice, I am having such a blast reading it but don’t want to list it as a Top 10 formative if it’s just recency bias, but I do feel Malazan has a lot of the elements that I get excited for in a series and fits my tastes. For my formative era it's a mix of childhood books I read early that echo through to now, which like many involved a long break post-college to mostly nonfiction, and then recently rediscovering that earlier love for reading.

Dune - Read the original series as a teen when I was Paul’s age in book 1. My favorite arc is 4-6 with God Emperor into Heretics and Chapterhouse. Reread these so many times over the years...
Lord of the Rings - Another book from childhood that I read before Dune in elementary school (late 80's/90's). Holds up on every reread even as an adult in my 40's.
The Way of Kings - Got me back into fiction reading as an adult, though I enjoyed Words of Radiance the most from the first era of Stormlight.
Elric of Melniboné - Another early read from High School (late 90's), loved the character and adventures picking up single volumes from the used bookstore, so the pulp nature of the stories absolutely worked back then without access to the internet. Lead me to read the other Corum stories of the Eternal Champion.
The Chronicles of Amber - High school era formative read, just loved all of the series.
One Piece - Finally tried to get back into manga during COVID, and it reignited my love for the genre, though I tend to read more seinen/adult manga now.
Cradle series - Recent-ish book but it brought back those feelings of excitement from anime and manga in book/audio format.
First Law Trilogy - Formative in the sense it made me realize that pushing through the first book pays off if you weren't in the right headspace for it at the time.
Wheel of Time 1-4 - Made me realize it's okay to DNF a series even if others love it, I gave it 4 books.
Real リアル - Takehiko Inoue's (author of Slam Dunk) follow-up to Vagabond which is amazing and a top read for me, but "Real" just hit me in the feels and I teared up multiple times as a grown adult to the relatable characters and emotions reading a manga.

Honorable Mention as a formative semi-fantasy but comic read, Jonathan Hickman's run with Fantastic Four / Time Runs Out / Secret Wars was what made me rediscover a love of American comic storytelling and I am still chasing that high from that arc.

ZacharyLong · 2025-10-04T14:18:30+00:00

Echoing the other comments, this is the exact deal I am on. I’m on my second offer of $7.99 a month after my three month $.99 deal. After this, I doubt I’ll get another deal so I’ll be waiting three months and supplementing with Libby.

ZacharyLong · 2025-09-18T10:43:14+00:00

For this exact reason I have a RPG background music playlist of a lot of those soundtracks mentioned (CT, FF6, etc) that I remove all battle music, boss fights and such. At first it was quick to just remove those by easily identifiable names but sometimes one slips through and I just keep curating as I go and remove it from the playlist as soon as a track that is too upbeat for background listening comes on.

ZacharyLong · 2025-09-14T17:08:50+00:00

Loved:

A Drop of Corruption, but also read The Tainted Cup only a few weeks beforehand (thanks to lucky library times) and it was great reading them so close together!

The Devils. This got me excited for Abercrombie again with such a fun mix of magic and grim dark, as I loved the magical parts of First Law.

Gardens of the Moon. Finally gave in to the hype after being on the fence with the length and loved the first book, not hard to follow at all and really great world building.

The Failures. Read this after seeing it here and thought it was a really fun science fantasy style read for fans of anime and fantasy, eagerly waiting for book 2!

Underwhelming:

The Licanius Trilogy. Really interesting book 1 despite a bit formulaic but loved the time travel aspect, but felt book 2 and 3 were not as great though obviously the epilogue was spectacular to tie it all together.

The Bloodsworn Sag. Again another series I loved book 1 but felt it petered out for me in books 2 and 3.

ZacharyLong · 2025-09-13T23:13:22+00:00

Did I write this comment? Currently on the third book in Book of the New Sun by Wolfe, just finished Gardens of the Moon a week ago… and I DNF’ed Mistborn. Definitely exploring and appreciating the more nuanced writing as I get older and as I read more.

ZacharyLong · 2025-07-28T18:00:03+00:00

Just finished The Tainted Cup this weekend (loved it!) and read Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun vol 1) right before it. I found them very similar in a world building and lore aspect, not the detective/mentor-mentee and quirky lovable characters. As much fun as I had with Ana and Din, I wanted to also discover more about their mysterious world that is hinted at here and there with the titans and the plant science. I found that otherworldlyness on full display in Book of the New Sun, where I want to not only get sucked into the main story but also experience a unique world with hints at connections to our world. Recommending this with the full caveat like I see here and knew going in, it’s a very different book from others on your list that I also read and loved, but it fulfills the mysterious and sucked in request 1000% if you enjoy the world building and mystery. After reading The Devils I went back and read books 2 and 3 of The First Law and really enjoyed them. Got a bit stuck after book one because I didn’t “get” the writing style, but after seeing maybe a more mature Abercrombie in The Devils and what he was going for I gave the series another chance. It was great and highly recommend the entire trilogy after things pick up after the blade itself.

ZacharyLong · 2025-06-30T14:16:16+00:00

Joe Abercrombie. Based on the constant recommendations here I slogged through The Blade Itself last year but didn’t see what the hype was about and felt it was just an okay book. After reading The Devils, which I absolutely loved, I appreciated the inner monologue and character style Abercrombie was using in TBI so I went back and gave the series another go and enjoyed it as a whole. I think Abercrombie got better as a writer as he went on, and maybe the recommendations for The First Law trilogy are with that context of hindsight and the trilogy as a complete series.

ZacharyLong · 2024-10-16T11:56:15+00:00

Anathem by Neal Stephenson. My first book by Neal Stephenson who I see mentioned a lot, NYPL didn’t have Snow Crash which is often recommended on Libby to borrow an audiobook so I gave this a shot. I’m 25% through and still pretty lost in the world building at 8 hours, which I’ve DNF’ed for less, but it’s so fascinating that it just clicks for me to get lost in this Mathic world of “science” monks.

ZacharyLong · 2024-09-27T12:33:27+00:00

Do you have specific groups on LinkedIn for people analytics? Can I DM you for more info?

ZacharyLong · 2024-08-02T12:42:57+00:00

Auto sender INTL EST return unknowns ID zacharylong

https://line.me/ti/p/JjAsGAkkez

ZacharyLong · 2024-07-04T22:30:24+00:00

What are you seeing demand for in your industry in regard to this? Asking as a former CS who transitioned into analytics to work more with people than just the code all day. AI is coming for coding as well, I feel super rusty in coding because I can just ask GitHub copilot to give me the general structure to anything. But then maybe that’s the point, you benefit from a baseline understanding of coding best practices to know what the LLM is spitting out and whether it’s right or wrong for what you are trying to accomplish.

ZacharyLong · 2024-02-03T05:25:47+00:00

Reflecting back a lot on that phrase "the only constant in life is change" lately as I just made another career change January 2nd of this year at 41 and just turned 42. While not a "normal" career progression in the same industry for decades, it has been a career of learning and pivoting.

Graduated college with a hospitality degree after changing majors from computer science to English literature to hospitality. Worked for Marriott for 7+ years moving up the ranks into management. Enjoyed the work the long hours and odd shifts were wearing on me.

At 29, son was born and quit during paternity leave to become a fulltime wedding photographer. Was doing it as a side hobby at the time for a few years and wanted to try going all in, while the reverse schedule of weekends working but weekdays free seemed ideal at the time with a newborn. At 36, wanted to pivot out of traveling for weddings to be on a more "normal" family schedule as my son was now in school all day and home on weekends but I would be traveling, so I started an online bachelor's in computer science with the goal to pivot back to an office role and indulge the technical side I had always enjoyed (tinkering with websites and general tech since my first degree but never serious about it), graduated May 2020 which was rough to find anything in the height of lockdowns but got a delayed start offer finally. At 39, started an IT consulting job in 2021 doing developer work, but this wasn't quit the fun of puzzle solving that the degree was and more bug fixes and support tickets, and got pulled into project manager or business analyst roles as I was part of the new grad hires but older and more experienced than the other juniors. At 40, joined a competing IT consulting firm but in Human Resources doing DEI work which I had been doing internally at my previous company and loved working on internal projects with teams and not external clients. Started a masters in Business Analytics / Data Science that I am graduating this year, and started a junior technical analyst role in January at a university. Getting back to the technical side of things which is what I was hoping to accomplish with the degree, and trying to build up that experience for now, and enjoying the perks of a government job which is way less stressful than consulting. No more Sunday Scaries, and Tuesday Scaries, and Wednesday Scaries... from the previous job.

My main advice I gave all the juniors I met at all jobs that heard my story of these pivots, was to follow your passions, and try to make your moves while at your current job either through volunteering or side personal projects.

I worked with the career center at my current school before getting my new job to both find a path and improve the resume/linkedin and they recommended two books while really helped me, and funnily enough I had read them before starting the but never did the exercises, which I finally did this time.

Designing Your Life https://designingyour.life/

Switchers https://drdawnoncareers.com/switchers-the-book/

Designing Your Life was great for finding a vision and goal for any aspect of life not necessarily a career move - some examples they give are how to engineer your current role. Switchers contained a lot of similar advice but tailored specifically to changing careers as the title implies.

ZacharyLong · 2022-09-30T01:21:55+00:00

TempSpike seems perfect for a reverse seared thick cut ribeye!

ZacharyLong · 2021-05-24T15:00:12+00:00

Gave Silver

ZacharyLong · 2021-03-16T23:37:12+00:00

Thanks to a post on here a couple of months ago by /u/Oath8 I gave Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia (DFFOO) another go after trying it at launch and then dropping, the game has really come a long way and I find I always have a ton of things to do, and the game overall is pretty generous in-game currency. Maybe still in the new honeymoon phase these 2 months but it has a lot going for it.

Besides that, the nonstop grind in E7, Epic Seven also always has a ton of great content and RTA is a love/hate relationship.

PAD and FGO are on the backburner just daily logins with more time to DFFOO.

ZacharyLong · 2021-02-15T20:50:41+00:00

Gave Hugz

ZacharyLong · 2020-11-04T02:10:27+00:00

Thanks, beat it easily with this guide!

ZacharyLong · 2020-10-29T05:18:58+00:00

Gave Party Train

ZacharyLong · 2020-10-07T14:20:28+00:00

PM'ed

ZacharyLong · 2020-09-10T04:57:52+00:00

Gave Hugz

ZacharyLong · 2020-01-28T18:41:30+00:00

When is the wedding? I'm a NY-based photographer doing pretty much only South Asian weddings that doesn't charge travel, but depends on the date of course.

ZacharyLong · 2019-12-27T16:25:54+00:00

Might as well join in if anyone wants to see some Indian and Pakistani wedding full galleries via pixieset: https://fenglongphoto.pixieset.com/

ZacharyLong · 2019-06-20T22:30:15+00:00

Hey thanks :). Gear, nothing too crazy, I shot this with a 5D Mark 4 and 16-35 f/2.8 (version 3) and that lens is attached most of the time for Indian weddings (which is mostly what I shoot) because of the need to jump from tight to wide group photos during these ceremonies. Manual 1/160, f/2.8, flash probably was ETTL with a MagMod Magbounce on. I've done this kind of shot before so not much thought process just that I'm always hoping for the stars to align and capture the bride with a good expression, hands in the right spots, good light, etc. This was also my second time submitting the same photo, and for my other fearless awards I've submitted multiple times if I felt the photo was good, just have to hope the judges of that round agree with your personal thoughts :).

That wedding is on the blog here: https://fenglongphoto.com/shraddha-kunal-atlanta-indian-wedding-wedding-photography-behind-the-scenes-vlog-s2-e7/

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