Month: April 2017

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Guess I’m guilty of not “dogfooding” enough and I should spend more time actually reading articles on the site here.

I was shocked when I saw this load time for www.jeffsteinke.com tonight:

not the best screenshot but we were seeing 30-60+ second page load times. gross.

So I got to work and did a bit of tuning. I’m not an expert though so wanted to share what I did, what I learned, and leave room for additional ideas.

  1. First, I learned what TTFB is (hint: time to first byte).
  2. Looks like I can improve TTFB by using a WordPress caching plugin. Here are some options.
  3. Ended up choosing WP Super Cache…because turns out I already had the plugin installed, but deactivated. Who knows why?!?
  4. Decided to look up my hosting details on DreamHost and compare to other options like WPEngine and Kinsta.
  5. In the process noticed that I didn’t have SSL on. Whoops! Should be fixed shortly.
  6. Deactivated and deleted plugins I wasn’t using.
  7. Turned off the Jetpack Admin Bar, which was throwing a nasty, page-load-time wasting error of its own

The result?

3-4 seconds…much better. Sure there’s plenty of room for improvement still but this is still just a lowly old blog.

The wp-admin portal is still slow (this is where you can write posts, etc) but I can at least put up with that for the time being as it only impacts me.

If you’re still seeing anything slow on your end let me know. Always open to other ideas and recommendations…

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There are a few things this post is not.

…it’s not a debate about a universal basic income.

…it’s not a philosophical discussion about the self-worth that comes with your job.

…and it’s not an argument about whether current technology/automation advancements will be different than previous technological revolutions like farming or factories, where those movements produced as many new jobs as they wiped out.

Let’s simply ask ourselves:

If you were a graduating high-school senior this spring, what career paths should you pursue to avoid “getting automated”?

To answer let’s think about where robots might struggle.

1. Jobs Where You’ll Make Rules

Robots are fantastic decision makers. They’re faster than us, completely unbiased, and don’t suffer from decision fatigue. But they don’t specialize in the creation of new rules (which the robots will ultimately be able to apply better than us).

Career ideas: Politicians & policy makers, CEOs & strategy makers

2. Jobs Where You’ll Make People Laugh/Cry/Cheer

The less we’ll work the more time we’ll have on our hands to be entertained. Or so it goes in WALL-E, which might not be far off. To clarify, this is live entertainment.

Career ideas: Athletes, Musicians, Actors, Comedians

3. Jobs Where You’ll Make New Stuff

Robots are excellent factory line workers but we still need someone to come up with new products, designs, and services to fill our factories with.

Career ideas: Entrepreneurs, Inventors, Creatives/Designers

Create, Don’t Do

The theme is obvious at this point. Take a look at your job today and ask, are you creating, or simply just doing?