Wishing you the best bro and looking forward to hearing how it goes!

For work I've learnt a whole lot at my current job and am super grateful, but I don't see myself staying with this company long-term so my goal is to get the startup a friend and I are working on to a point that I can quit my job this year. For life my main goal is also a peaceful mind - continuing my daily meditation and reading but beyond the routine, genuinely analyzing my thoughts whenever I stray away from a clear mind so I can improve. And I wanna be able to do a set of 10 strict-form dragon flags at the gym :)

@Ari Noori Appreciate it bro! Will let you know fs (currently at 3 dragon flags😂), good luck on the muscle up!

Looks great Niko, your experience in engineering hardware/low-level systems is definitely coming nicely. That's not my field of knowledge but one suggestion I have is if you know specific metrics for the impact of your work at the lab, ex. is it possible to quantify how much you "enhance the time resolution"? I know that's something employers like, even if they don't understand the specific units but percentages work great

In high school I had gotten really into coding and had also seen a bunch of YouTube videos on quantum physics which I thought were super cool and unlike anything else I'd learned about. Once I heard about quantum computing this idea of using the crazy physics properties to accelerate computing really resonated with me. Definitely also a gut feel like yours at first Ari.

@Ari Noori For sure bro. I would say in my experience being impactful at a startup has boiled down to these 3 things; these are nontechnical skills because I feel like anyone with enough technical foundations that's passionate and has these qualities will be able to learn by themselves on the job. 1. Hustle. In a small startup you're talking to the CEO daily, they see who's clocking out at 5 and who's putting in the extra effort to hit deadlines no matter what. Someone who focuses on getting stuff done instead of # of hours worked, and that can work and learn independently without being a time burden on the CEO is super valuable. My boss has mentioned these qualities multiple times when comparing the few employees at our company and who he wants to keep long-term. 2. Agency. Don't feel like you have to ask for permission for every small thing you're doing, have a bias towards action while of course talking to your co-workers and asking for advice/approval when really needed. At a startup you'll provide much more value if you look for ways to improve your product/research that go beyond just what your boss told you to do; your boss has a lot of other stuff on their plate other than building the tech, and you likely know way more of the details about what you're building. 3. Humbleness. Especially if you're an undergrad with less experience, if you can financially you should be willing to take lower pay initially than a different job you can get, knowing that working in this industry will pay off long-term. Getting to work in a job that's conventionally for more experienced/older people will definitely pull you up in your career, and once you prove yourself you will get compensated fairly or now be able to apply for similar roles elsewhere and get the better compensation. People often say you should give FOMO to employers instead of acting desperate and that is completely true once you have experience, but when you're early in undergrad it makes sense to explain how you want to learn with a certain job and that you're willing to take less to start.

@Ari Noori I appreciate all your guidance when I was tryna figure this situation out bro 🙏🏼🙏🏼