permanent-underclass-linux-x64 0.1.0-beta.16

package/data/events/ex_faang_engineer.jsonl

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+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_01_severance_screenshot", "phase": "Early", "title": "The Severance Screenshot", "body": "Your final paycheck lands with six months of severance attached. Part of the 'AI efficiency restructuring' — 1,200 engineers, all at once, stock up 4% on the news. The number on your screen is large enough that you screenshot it, then immediately feel shame about almost posting it to X. You have more money than most Americans save in a decade. You also haven't left your apartment in four days.", "choices": [{"title": "Max out brokerage, grind resumes", "body": "Dump it all into index funds and start applying immediately. Sleep is for people with jobs.", "delta": {"money": 10000, "sanity": -11, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take a week completely offline", "body": "Turn off your phone. Go outside. Remember what trees look like.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 1}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "took_sabbatical"}]}, {"title": "Announce your 'sabbatical' on LinkedIn", "body": "Frame the layoff as a choice. Use the word 'intentional' three times.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_02_rsu_cliff", "phase": "Early", "title": "47 Days Short", "body": "800 RSUs vesting in 47 days. Your termination agreement says 'unvested equity is forfeited.' You've read the document seventeen times. You've posted on Blind as 'googler1984.' The answer is always the same: you are 47 days short and there is nothing to be done. The RSUs are worth more now than when you were granted them — market priced in AI-driven productivity gains from the layoffs. Your removal made your own stock more valuable.", "choices": [{"title": "Lawyer up, contest the date", "body": "Hire an attorney. Contest the termination date. Spend money to maybe make money.", "delta": {"money": -8000, "sanity": -10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 8000}, {"title": "Accept it, touch grass", "body": "Let it go. The stock might tank anyway. You tell yourself this.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Vague 'lessons learned' thread", "body": "Post a thread that implies wrongdoing without naming anyone. Let people fill in the blanks.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -3, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -7}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_03_open_to_work", "phase": "Early", "title": "Open to Work", "body": "You open LinkedIn. Your green banner has been on for six weeks. A recruiter messages you about a role that is clearly your old job, reposted at 60% of the salary. The hiring manager is someone you onboarded in 2021. The message preview says 'Hi [First Name]' — clearly AI-generated, same template everyone gets now, role description mentions 'AI orchestration preferred.' You are being replaced by a pipeline.", "choices": [{"title": "Apply anyway, need structure", "body": "You need a reason to shower before noon. Apply.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Close laptop, go for a walk", "body": "Close the laptop. Go outside. The sun still exists.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Forward it to old team Slack", "body": "Forward the listing to your old team Slack. Watch the chaos unfold.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 0, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 7}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_04_system_design_url_shortener", "phase": "Early", "title": "Design a URL Shortener", "body": "A startup wants you to design a URL shortener in 45 minutes. You built infrastructure handling 2 billion requests a day. The interviewer is 24 and asks you to 'walk through your approach to scalability.' You explain CAP theorem. He asks you to go more basic. You are being asked to go more basic on CAP theorem. At the end he mentions they're 'evaluating whether to replace this round with AI assessment next quarter.'", "choices": [{"title": "Ace it, move to next round", "body": "Smile through the pain. Your pride is a luxury item you can no longer afford.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Politely disengage", "body": "This place isn't worth your dignity. Walk away.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Ask about their AI assessment plan", "body": "If they're replacing you with a model anyway, at least understand the timeline.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -4, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_05_startup_founder_dm", "phase": "Early", "title": "The CTO Pitch", "body": "An ex-Googler DMs you. He's building 'the AI-native logistics layer for last-mile fulfillment.' CTO role, 2% equity, six months runway. He uses the phrase 'pre-PMF but post-chaos' without irony. You check Crunchbase. He's done this three times. Two companies are listed as 'stealth.'", "choices": [{"title": "Join, 2% beats 0%", "body": "Take the leap. 2% of something beats 100% of nothing.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": -8, "audience": 5, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 2000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Pass, protect the savings", "body": "Keep your runway intact. You've seen this movie.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": 7, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Counter with 5% and a salary", "body": "If they want Google-grade talent, they pay Google-adjacent money.", "delta": {"money": 3000, "sanity": 8, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_06_leetcode_relapse", "phase": "Early", "title": "LeetCode at 11 PM", "body": "It is 11 PM. You have been doing LeetCode for four hours. You are a senior engineer with six years of production experience and you just spent forty minutes failing a medium-difficulty binary tree problem. Half the solutions online are now AI-generated — perfect, annotated, inhuman. The curve you're competing against isn't human anymore. You used this skill once, in 2018, to get the job you no longer have.", "choices": [{"title": "Commit to 2 hours daily", "body": "Treat it like training. Two hours daily until you land something.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -9, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Hire an interview coach", "body": "Pay someone to tell you what you already know, but with structure.", "delta": {"money": -1500, "sanity": 2, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 1}, "min_money": 1500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "has_mentor"}]}, {"title": "Target take-home companies instead", "body": "Skip the theater. Find companies that evaluate real work.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_07_comp_on_blind", "phase": "Early", "title": "Your TC on Blind", "body": "Someone posted your approximate TC from levels.fyi on a thread titled 'Is Google TC actually falling off?' Your number is being used as evidence that Big Tech is either overpaying or underpaying. Someone called you an 'NPC with a cushy job.' Half the thread is AI-generated accounts farming engagement — same sentence structure, same takes, same empty confidence. You no longer have the cushy job. You're reading this at 2 AM in unwashed gym shorts.", "choices": [{"title": "Reply anonymously to cope", "body": "Defend yourself from behind an alias. This is healthy behavior.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Screenshot it, send to friends", "body": "Share it with your closest people. Laugh or cry. Both work.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 2, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Delete the app entirely", "body": "Uninstall Blind. Accept the void. The void is quiet.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 4, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_08_personal_brand_advice", "phase": "Early", "title": "'Ex-Google' Is a Cheat Code", "body": "A friend tells you to 'build in public.' They say your ex-Google title is a cheat code. You could write threads about systems design. You could open source something. You could also just be a person for one week without performing expertise. An AI content advisor app estimates your 'personal brand value' at $47K. You did not ask for this number. It haunts you.", "choices": [{"title": "Post weekly technical threads", "body": "Become 'the systems person' online. Content is king. You are content.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "built_following"}]}, {"title": "Help laid-off friends quietly", "body": "Build a real network the old-fashioned way. No hashtags.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "built_community"}]}, {"title": "Delete LinkedIn for a month", "body": "Go dark. Be offline on purpose. The world will continue without your personal brand.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -4}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_09_recruiter_asks_level", "phase": "Early", "title": "'Were You L5 or L6?'", "body": "A recruiter gets on the call and asks: 'So were you L5 or L6?' Your entire identity has been reduced to a comp band and a number some manager clicked in a dropdown. The recruiter's scheduling tool is AI — the calendar invite auto-generated three 'talking points about your AI experience.' You feel the ladder dissolving under your feet. The rungs are prompts now.", "choices": [{"title": "Anchor high, refuse downleveling", "body": "You were L6. You are L6. You will always be L6. (You were L5.)", "delta": {"money": 4000, "sanity": -10, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Prove it in interviews instead", "body": "Take the loop. Let the work speak. Swallow the rest.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -4, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Find a place that doesn't speak in levels", "body": "End the call. Look for somewhere that values humans, not tiers.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 1}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_10_stealth_startup_nda", "phase": "Early", "title": "Stealth Startup NDA Coffee", "body": "A founder invites you for coffee. The startup is 'stealth.' They 'can't share details' until you sign an NDA. The coffee shop is inside a gym. Everyone is wearing black. You sign nothing. You feel the ritual happening anyway. The founder finally leans in: they're building AI agents for legal discovery. Of course they are. Everyone is building AI agents for something.", "choices": [{"title": "Play the game, keep doors open", "body": "Network, stay polite, collect business cards like survival tools.", "delta": {"money": -30, "sanity": -4, "audience": 5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 7}, "min_money": 30, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "made_industry_contact"}]}, {"title": "Decline the NDA and leave", "body": "You're tired of secrecy cosplay. Walk out before the pitch deck.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Sign and ask hard questions", "body": "Sign, listen, then ask technical questions until it's real or it isn't.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_11_therapy_waitlist", "phase": "Early", "title": "Therapy Has a Waitlist", "body": "You try to book therapy. The earliest appointment is in six weeks. Your calendar is wide open. Your nervous system is not. An AI therapy app offers an immediate session — $0, unlimited availability, trained on a million conversations. You consider it. You don't want to consider it. You close the app and consider filling the void with interviews just to feel purposeful.", "choices": [{"title": "Wait and commit to recovery", "body": "Treat healing like a sprint. Create a Jira board for your feelings.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Pay out of pocket immediately", "body": "$300/session. Your mental health is a P0 incident.", "delta": {"money": -1200, "sanity": 10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 1200}, {"title": "Grind interviews to feel something", "body": "Ignore the problem. Interviews are basically therapy if you squint.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 4, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_12_angel_investing_opportunity", "phase": "Early", "title": "Angel Investor Energy", "body": "A former PM asks if you want to angel invest in their seed round. $25K minimum. The deck has 'AI' on every slide and a TAM slide that claims the market is 'everyone.' You have the money. You also have the knowledge that most startups fail. These two facts coexist poorly.", "choices": [{"title": "Write the check, ride the wave", "body": "$25K for a front-row seat to either glory or a tax write-off.", "delta": {"money": -25000, "sanity": -8, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 25000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "invested_in_ai"}]}, {"title": "Pass and keep your powder dry", "body": "You've seen enough decks. Keep your savings where they are.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Offer to advise instead of invest", "body": "Give time, not money. Your expertise is worth more than $25K anyway.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 3, "audience": 4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "became_mentor"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_13_crypto_bro_pivot", "phase": "Early", "title": "The Crypto Pivot Pitch", "body": "A former coworker pivoted to crypto eighteen months ago. He's back. He says crypto is dead and AI is the new crypto. He wants to build 'decentralized AI inference' and needs a 'real engineer.' You've heard this exact pitch structure before, with different nouns.", "choices": [{"title": "Join him, it might work this time", "body": "Maybe he's right. Maybe this is the wave. Maybe you're desperate.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": -10, "audience": 5, "ai_skill": 5, "friends": 1}, "min_money": 2000}, {"title": "Pass, you've seen this movie", "body": "Same script. Different buzzwords. Same ending.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Offer to advise, not join", "body": "Keep your distance. Contribute without committing.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 2, "audience": 4, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 8}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_14_mock_interview_humbling", "phase": "Early", "title": "The Mock Interview Reality Check", "body": "You do a mock interview with a friend who's still at Meta. She gives you a system design problem. You solve it. She says: 'Your solution is correct but your communication is off. You sound like you're defending a decision you already made instead of exploring the space.' At the end she adds: 'Honestly, the AI interviewer tool gave better structured feedback than me.' She's right about both things. You hate that she's right.", "choices": [{"title": "Do five more mocks this week", "body": "Practice the soft skills. Communication IS the skill now.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Thank her, process the feedback alone", "body": "She gave you a gift. Sit with it. Don't rush to fix it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decide interviews are broken", "body": "The system is wrong, not you. Target companies with saner processes.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_15_severance_math", "phase": "Early", "title": "The Severance Clock", "body": "You calculate your runway. At current burn: 11 months. With cuts: 16 months. With aggressive cuts: 22 months. The spreadsheet doesn't account for the psychological cost of watching numbers go in one direction. You add a column called 'dread per month.' The formula is recursive. A recruiter's AI scheduling tool sends you a calendar invite for a role that pays 60% of your old comp. The invite has three 'AI experience' talking points auto-generated from your LinkedIn.", "choices": [{"title": "Set a hard deadline: employed in 6 months", "body": "Treat the job search like a project. Milestones. Deadlines. Reviews.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 4, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Relax the timeline, invest in skills", "body": "Use the runway to become someone new. Not just employed — different.", "delta": {"money": -1800, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 1800}, {"title": "Freelance immediately, extend runway", "body": "Any income extends the clock. Start billing. Now.", "delta": {"money": 2500, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_16_old_wiki", "phase": "Early", "title": "Reading the Old Wiki", "body": "You find a cached version of your team's internal wiki. Your design docs are there. Your meeting notes. A page titled 'Onboarding Guide (maintained by [your name]).' Half the pages now have '[Auto-archived by AI documentation agent]' stamps at the top. An AI is curating your memory. You read it at midnight like it's a letter from someone who used to care about things. That person was you. That person was employed.", "choices": [{"title": "Screenshot everything for your portfolio", "body": "This is proof you existed. Proof you built things. Save it before the AI archives you too.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 5, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Close it and move forward", "body": "The past is a wiki page with a dead link. Move.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Rewrite the docs for your portfolio", "body": "Sanitize, reframe, publish. Turn institutional knowledge into personal IP.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": 4, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_17_uber_receipt", "phase": "Early", "title": "The Uber Receipt", "body": "You take an Uber across town. $47. You used to expense these. Now you feel the money leave your body. The car is self-driving — the 'driver' is actually a remote monitor in Phoenix who's watching six cars at once on a tablet. He asks what you do. You say 'tech.' He says 'me too, I'm building an app.' You ask what it does. He describes Google Calendar but worse. You tip 20% to a man who isn't physically present.", "choices": [{"title": "Take public transit from now on", "body": "The bus is $2.50. Your pride will survive the bus.", "delta": {"money": 150, "sanity": 4, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Keep the Uber, it's not that bad", "body": "$47 is not going to save or break you. Keep the comfort.", "delta": {"money": -300, "sanity": 2, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 300}, {"title": "Help the driver with his app idea", "body": "Offer feedback. Be kind. Everyone's trying to build something.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_18_ai_generated_resume", "phase": "Early", "title": "The AI-Written Resume", "body": "You let Claude rewrite your resume. It adds words like 'spearheaded' and 'orchestrated' and 'drove 40% improvement in key metrics.' The metrics are real. The language is not yours. It reads like a person you might want to be. You're not sure if that's good or bad.", "choices": [{"title": "Use it, the game requires it", "body": "Press send. The machine knows how to sell you better than you do. That's a skill you just learned.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -4, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Rewrite it in your voice", "body": "Strip the AI polish. Sound like yourself. Slower, messier, yours.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": -1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "A/B test both versions", "body": "Send the AI version to half the companies. Send yours to the rest. Science.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_19_severance_guilt", "phase": "Early", "title": "Severance Guilt", "body": "You're at dinner with a friend who works retail. She makes $38K. Your severance was more than her annual salary. She asks how you're doing. You say 'it's been tough.' The word 'tough' hangs in the air between your $18 cocktail and her water. She mentions the store just installed AI self-checkout — they're cutting three cashier positions next month. The extinction is everywhere. Yours just pays better.", "choices": [{"title": "Be honest about the privilege", "body": "Name it. The words hang. She nods. The distance between you doesn't close but at least it's honest.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Minimize your problems", "body": "'I'm fine, honestly. How are YOU doing?' Redirect. Deflect. Survive.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Pick up the check, no questions", "body": "Money for silence. You're buying your way out of the conversation. She lets you.", "delta": {"money": -120, "sanity": -4, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 6}, "min_money": 120}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_20_phantom_oncall", "phase": "Early", "title": "The Phantom Page", "body": "Your phone buzzes at 3 AM. You bolt upright. Heart racing. Hands reaching for a laptop that's not open. It's a monitoring alert from your old system. The AI that replaced your team paged you by accident. It still has your number in the escalation path. Nobody updated the runbook because nobody human is on the team anymore. You stare at the alert. Severity: P2. You could fix it in ten minutes. You don't work there.", "choices": [{"title": "Do Not Disturb, every night", "body": "Silence the phone after 10 PM. Trust that nothing needs you at 3 AM. Not anymore.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Fix the alert, bill them later", "body": "Old habits. You SSH in, resolve the P2, and send an invoice in the morning. They won't pay it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Email them to remove your number", "body": "Write the email. Remove yourself from the dead team's escalation path. Sever the last wire.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_21_faang_like_typewriters", "phase": "Early", "title": "'FAANG? Like... Typewriters?'", "body": "You're at a local tech meetup. You mention your Google background. A 22-year-old tilts his head and says 'Oh, like legacy tech?' He's not being cruel. To him, FAANG is what mainframes were to you. He built his entire startup in a weekend with AI tools. Your six years of system design experience reads like calligraphy in the age of keyboards.", "choices": [{"title": "Explain what scale actually means", "body": "He'll understand when his weekend project hits real traffic. Or he won't, because AI will handle it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -7}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Ask him to teach you his tools", "body": "Swallow the pride. Learn from the kid. His tools are the future and yours are the museum.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 11, "friends": 8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Leave early, sit with it", "body": "Go home. Stare at the ceiling. Your resume reads like a history textbook.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_22_alumni_signal_group", "phase": "Early", "title": "G-Alumni Panic Channel", "body": "The ex-Google Signal group hit 340 members. Nobody vents about COBRA anymore. Now it's screenshots of recruiters saying 'we're looking for someone with less FAANG experience.' The consensus is forming: the Google badge went from golden ticket to scarlet letter. Someone posts a job listing that explicitly says 'no Big Tech background.' Another posts an AI-generated rejection email that suggests they 'consider retraining in AI prompt engineering.'", "choices": [{"title": "Lean in, organize the group", "body": "If you're all radioactive, at least be radioactive together.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 2, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "built_community"}]}, {"title": "Lurk for intel only", "body": "Read everything. Post nothing. Classic ex-FAANG behavior.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -3, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 5, "friends": -4}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Leave the group, scrub LinkedIn", "body": "Remove 'Google' from your bio. Become 'Staff Engineer at a large tech company.' Hide.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_23_stock_ath", "phase": "Early", "title": "Stock ATH", "body": "Google stock hits all-time high the quarter after your layoff. Analysts cite 'AI-driven margin expansion and headcount optimization.' Headcount optimization is you. You are the optimization. The chart looks like a middle finger drawn in green candles. Your former coworkers who survived are posting celebration emojis in the alumni channel. The stock went up because you left. The math is clear and the math is cruel.", "choices": [{"title": "Rage-sell your remaining shares", "body": "Liquidate everything Google. Sever the last financial tie. Watch it keep climbing.", "delta": {"money": 900, "sanity": -8, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Hold the shares, play the long game", "body": "The stock doesn't care about your feelings. Keep it. Compound the indignity.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Close the brokerage app for a week", "body": "Stop watching the chart. The chart is not your therapist.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_24_claude_writes_better_code", "phase": "Early", "title": "Claude Writes Better Code", "body": "You're prototyping a service and pull up Claude to scaffold the boilerplate. It writes the boilerplate. Then it keeps going — refactors your function signatures, adds edge-case handling you forgot, names variables better than you would have. You stare at the diff. It's not wrong. You close the tab and go back to writing it yourself. Slower.", "choices": [{"title": "Use its output, save the hours", "body": "Copy the code. It's better. Move on to the next thing.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -4, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Rewrite it yourself anyway", "body": "Your version. Your names. Your logic. It takes four times longer.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": -1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Show it to a friend, half-joking", "body": "'Look at this.' You're laughing. She's not laughing.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 0, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 7}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_25_savings_threshold", "phase": "Early", "title": "Savings Threshold", "body": "Your savings cross below $50K. You watch the number like a heart monitor. $49,847. COBRA is $900/month. Rent is $3,200. The math is a slow-motion car accident. You open a spreadsheet and add a column labeled 'months of dignity remaining.' The column has a number in it. The number is not large. An AI financial planner app offers to 'optimize your runway.' You close the tab. You know exactly how to optimize it. You just can't make yourself do it.", "choices": [{"title": "Cut everything, survival mode", "body": "Cancel subscriptions. Cook at home. The dignity column gets two more months.", "delta": {"money": 600, "sanity": -7, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take a contract gig, any contract gig", "body": "Income is oxygen. Find some. Now. The rate doesn't matter.", "delta": {"money": 2500, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Call your parents, be honest", "body": "Say the words. 'I might need help.' The hardest engineering problem you've ever solved.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 11, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_108_recruiter_lowball", "phase": "Any", "title": "Competitive Salary", "body": "A recruiter offers your old job at 60% of your old comp. The role description says 'AI-augmented team' — meaning half the headcount, double the output expectation. The message says 'competitive salary.' It is competitive in the sense that you are now competing with your former self. And losing.", "choices": [{"title": "Take it for health insurance", "body": "Structure. Benefits. A reason to exist on a schedule.", "delta": {"money": 2500, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Negotiate hard, risk losing it", "body": "If they want you, they pay. If they don't, they don't.", "delta": {"money": 4800, "sanity": -9, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, build something yours", "body": "You didn't leave FAANG to take a pay cut at a worse FAANG.", "delta": {"money": -1500, "sanity": 6, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 1500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_109_are_we_cooked", "phase": "Any", "title": "'Are We Cooked?'", "body": "Someone posts on Blind: 'Are we cooked?' 1,800 replies. Half doom. Half cope. A few spreadsheets. The top reply is from an AI-generated account — same sentence structure as fifty others, farming engagement on human despair. Even the doom is automated now. You read it like weather forecasts. Your mood shifts with each comment like a leaf in algorithmic wind.", "choices": [{"title": "Log off, go outside", "body": "Close the app. The sun is free and doesn't have a comment section.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Use it as fuel to grind", "body": "Convert anxiety into applications. Transmute doom into LeetCode.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Post a contrarian take", "body": "Write 'actually we're fine' and argue with strangers until midnight.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -5}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_110_cto_of_nothing", "phase": "Any", "title": "CTO of Nothing", "body": "A tiny startup offers you the title: CTO. Low pay, high equity, codebase is a single repo with no tests. The founder says 'we just need someone who has done it before.' You have done it before. You've also seen how it ends.", "choices": [{"title": "Take it, swing big", "body": "CTO. Three letters. One chance. Zero tests. Let's go.", "delta": {"money": -3000, "sanity": -11, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 3000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Decline for stability", "body": "Your nervous system deserves a job with health insurance.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Consult instead of commit", "body": "Boundaries. Invoices. Sanity. The freelancer's holy trinity.", "delta": {"money": 4000, "sanity": 10, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "went_freelance"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_111_old_coworker_referral", "phase": "Any", "title": "'Want a Referral?'", "body": "An old coworker reaches out: 'Want a referral?' It's kind. It's also a reminder that you used to be inside the machine. She mentions her company now uses AI to screen referrals — 'but yours should make it through, you have the right keywords.' You type three drafts. You don't want to seem desperate. You are desperate. Even the referral pipeline has a model in the middle now.", "choices": [{"title": "Say yes, be direct about it", "body": "Accept the help. Swallow the pride. Send the resume.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Say no, pretend you're fine", "body": "'Thanks but I'm exploring options!' (You are exploring the ceiling at 4 AM.)", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -7}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Say yes, offer value back", "body": "Accept and immediately offer to review their resume too. Reciprocity.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -4, "audience": 5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_112_fancy_coworking", "phase": "Any", "title": "The $50 Day Pass", "body": "You buy a day pass at a fancy co-working space to feel like a person again. The coffee is perfect. The chairs are ergonomic. Everyone is quietly talking to an agent. A guy in a vest says 'compounding' into a headset. You consider leaving. You consider staying forever.", "choices": [{"title": "Network, make yourself real", "body": "Talk to people. Collect LinkedIn connections like survival tools.", "delta": {"money": -200, "sanity": -9, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": 200, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "made_industry_contact"}]}, {"title": "Work silently, remember building", "body": "Put on headphones. Open the IDE. Remember you can still make things.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Leave early, save the money", "body": "$50 for three hours of imposter syndrome in a nicer chair. Pass.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 4, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_113_old_badge_drawer", "phase": "Any", "title": "The Badge in the Drawer", "body": "You find your old badge in a drawer. Your photo stares back. You look younger. You look certain. The gym in Building 43 replaced the badge system with facial recognition last month. Your badge is literally a relic — an artifact from a security system that no longer exists. For a moment you miss the structure. For a longer moment you remember the meetings.", "choices": [{"title": "Post it as 'chapter closed'", "body": "Farm the nostalgia. '4 years, 3 orgs, 1 badge.' Get the likes.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Throw it out, be free", "body": "Trash it. Small act. Private freedom. Nobody needs to know.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Text an old teammate for coffee", "body": "The badge is a reminder that people existed behind the logo.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_114_gym_bro_networking", "phase": "Any", "title": "The Gym Bro Founder", "body": "A guy at your gym finds out you're ex-Google. He corners you by the squat rack. He has 'the next Uber for X, but AI handles the matching.' He wants to 'pick your brain over protein shakes.' His pitch takes eleven minutes. You are holding a 45-pound plate the entire time.", "choices": [{"title": "Hear him out, give real advice", "body": "He's earnest. Misguided, but earnest. Help him for free.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 7}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Give him your card, escape", "body": "'Email me.' You will not respond to the email.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 5, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Switch gyms entirely", "body": "This is why you should have kept the home gym.", "delta": {"money": -200, "sanity": 10, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": 200}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_115_hacker_news_roast", "phase": "Any", "title": "The HN Comment Section", "body": "You post a technical blog on Hacker News. It gets to the front page. The comments are 60% constructive, 30% pedantic, and 10% someone calling your architecture 'a toy that wouldn't survive real traffic.' The top comment was written by an AI account. 400 upvotes. You built systems that handled real traffic. For Google. The commenter's profile says 'Aspiring founder.'", "choices": [{"title": "Engage thoughtfully with critics", "body": "Take the high road. Respond with data. Be the adult.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Post your resume as a reply", "body": "'I handled 2B requests/day at Google. What did you handle?'", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -9, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -7}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Close the tab, never return", "body": "HN is not real life. Close it. Go build something.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_116_family_thanksgiving", "phase": "Any", "title": "Thanksgiving: 'So What Now?'", "body": "Thanksgiving dinner. Your uncle asks what you do now. You say 'consulting.' He says 'so you're between jobs.' Your nephew shows you ChatGPT at the dinner table like it's a magic trick. Your uncle thinks it's magic. You know exactly what it is — transformer architecture, attention mechanisms, RLHF. That's worse. Your cousin, who sells insurance, says 'tech is rough right now, huh?' Your mom changes the subject to pie. You have never loved your mom more.", "choices": [{"title": "Explain your actual situation", "body": "Be honest. With your family. The people who don't understand but love you anyway.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Perform success, pivot to pie", "body": "'Consulting is great, actually.' Eat pie. Survive the evening.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -4, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Skip family events entirely", "body": "Send a text. 'Working.' Eat takeout alone. Protect your energy.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_117_3am_github_commit", "phase": "Any", "title": "The 3 AM Commit", "body": "It's 3 AM. You just pushed a commit to a project nobody asked for. The code is clean. The tests pass. You pushed it and your CI pipeline auto-reviewed it with an AI code reviewer. It approved in 3 seconds. You waited for a human review that never came. Nobody will see this. Nobody will care. But it works. And you built it. And for twelve seconds, you remember why you started doing this.", "choices": [{"title": "Ship it, tell nobody", "body": "Let it exist. A thing in the world that works. That's enough.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Post about it in the morning", "body": "Turn the 3 AM commit into a morning thread. 'Shipped something last night.'", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Go to sleep, revisit with fresh eyes", "body": "The code might look different at 10 AM. It usually does.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_118_zoom_background", "phase": "Any", "title": "The Zoom Background", "body": "You have a Zoom interview. Your background is your actual apartment. It looks like a person lives here who hasn't fully committed to being alive. You switch to a virtual background. It's the Golden Gate Bridge. The interviewer is in SF. She can see the real bridge out her window. Halfway through you notice: her webcam feed has the uncanny smoothness of an AI avatar. You're not sure if there's a real person behind it. You both pretend this is normal.", "choices": [{"title": "Invest in your setup", "body": "Ring light. Bookshelf. Plant. Look like someone who has their life together.", "delta": {"money": -400, "sanity": 5, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 400}, {"title": "Use the real background, own it", "body": "Let them see your apartment. Authenticity is a flex now.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Focus on the interview, not the pixels", "body": "Nobody got hired because of their background. Probably.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 1, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_119_copilot_existential", "phase": "Any", "title": "Copilot Finishes Your Sentence", "body": "You start typing a function. Copilot completes it. It's correct. It's better than what you were going to write. You stare at the suggestion. It knew what you wanted before you did. You press Tab. The code works. You feel a small, quiet death.", "choices": [{"title": "Lean in, become a conductor", "body": "Stop writing code. Start conducting AI. The instrument changes. You change with it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "embraced_ai"}]}, {"title": "Turn it off for a week", "body": "Write code by hand. Remember what thinking feels like without autocomplete.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": -4, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Use it, but read every line", "body": "Tab, but verify. Trust, but verify. Accept, but verify.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 2, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_26_team_condensed", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Your Team Is Now One Person", "body": "Your old team of fourteen engineers has been condensed to three. One human, two AI agents. The human — the one who replaced you — just got promoted to Staff for 'unprecedented velocity.' She shipped your entire roadmap in six weeks using Claude and zero contractors. Your fourteen-person team's output is now a rounding error.", "choices": [{"title": "Congratulate her, build the bridge", "body": "Reach out. Be a human. Maybe she knows where the other eleven went.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -4, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Study what she did differently", "body": "Treat it as data. She didn't replace fourteen people. The AI did. She just supervised.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Stoicism podcast on the couch", "body": "Lie down. Listen to Marcus Aurelius. Try not to think about headcount reduction ratios.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -2, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": -8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_27_chief_human_officer", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Chief Human Officer", "body": "A fully-automated startup emails. Twelve AI agents, zero employees. They want to hire you as 'Chief Human Officer' — the token human required by their insurance policy and, technically, by law. Your job would be to exist. To have a pulse in meetings. To sign things a model can't legally sign. The pay is $80K and the title is absurd.", "choices": [{"title": "Take it, a job is a job", "body": "You'd be the only human in the org chart. Technically, you'd be the entire company.", "delta": {"money": 3500, "sanity": -14, "audience": -1, "ai_skill": -8, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "sold_out"}]}, {"title": "Negotiate for real authority", "body": "If you're the only human, you should be making actual decisions. Not just signing PDFs.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, this is dystopian", "body": "You're not a compliance prop. You're an engineer. You used to be an engineer.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_28_ai_proctored_interview", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The AI-Proctored Interview", "body": "A startup sends a take-home but with a twist: an AI proctor watches your screen and keystroke patterns to verify you're not using AI assistance. You built infrastructure handling billions of requests. Now a model is watching you type a CRUD app to make sure another model isn't helping you type a CRUD app. The interviewer's title is 'AI Integrity Specialist.'", "choices": [{"title": "Swallow pride, do it by hand", "body": "Type every character yourself while a machine judges your humanity. The future is humiliating.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -9, "audience": 5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Refuse on principle", "body": "'I don't submit to surveillance interviews.' Close the laptop. Lose the opportunity.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Write about the absurdity", "body": "'AI Is Now Proctoring Humans to Prove They're Not AI.' The thread writes itself.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -2, "audience": 12, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "went_viral"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_29_mentoring_the_model", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Mentoring the Model", "body": "Your old team pings: 'Can you do knowledge transfer sessions? Contractor rate.' You agree. Show up. The 'team' is one engineer and an AI agent. Your job is to explain your old architecture decisions to the model. You are literally teaching a machine how to think like you. When you're done, it will know everything you know. Then it won't need you.", "choices": [{"title": "Invoice aggressively, teach everything", "body": "$400/hour. They can afford it. You're training your own replacement and you deserve premium for it.", "delta": {"money": 2500, "sanity": -14, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "automated_own_job"}]}, {"title": "Teach principles, withhold specifics", "body": "Share the philosophy. Keep the craft. Let them figure out the implementation.", "delta": {"money": 500, "sanity": 6, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Say no, protect the exit", "body": "You left for a reason. You're not coming back to feed the machine that ate your job.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_30_last_googler", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Last Googler Standing", "body": "A former teammate calls. He's the last person from your original team still at Google. His skip-level's entire org is now 3 humans and 200 AI agents. His title changed to 'AI Operations Coordinator.' He approves AI-generated PRs and attends alignment meetings that no other human joins. He whispers: 'The 1:1s are with models now. They give better feedback than my old manager.'", "choices": [{"title": "Take the call, be honest", "body": "Tell him the outside isn't better. But at least you chose it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Help him plan his exit", "body": "He needs an escape route. You've been outside. Draw the map.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Ask him about the inside", "body": "How many humans are left? What does the org chart look like when 98% of it is silicon? Gather intelligence.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_31_deflation_paradox", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Deflation Paradox", "body": "AI made most digital services free. Software tools, design work, code generation, content creation — all free or nearly free. Your $200/month in SaaS subscriptions is now $12. But your rent went UP because landlords know your savings exist. Everything except housing got cheaper. Housing got more expensive. Your $100K savings feels like $30K.", "choices": [{"title": "Cut to essentials, hoard cash", "body": "The math only works if you stop spending. Housing will eat everything else.", "delta": {"money": -500, "sanity": 7, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Move somewhere cheap immediately", "body": "If housing is the only expense, remove it. Leave the city. Now.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": 10, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Find income, any income", "body": "Free tools mean anyone can build. Build something. Sell it. Survive.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -11, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_32_ai_pitch_deck", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The AI-Generated Pitch Deck", "body": "A founder asks you to review their pitch deck. It was generated by AI in eleven minutes. The market analysis is thorough. The projections are reasonable. The competitive landscape is accurate. The founder didn't write a single word. He asks: 'Looks good right?' It does look good. That's the problem. Anyone can generate this now. The deck is perfect and meaningless.", "choices": [{"title": "Give honest, brutal feedback", "body": "'The deck is good because AI wrote it. The question is whether YOU are good.'", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Charge for the review", "body": "Your judgment is what's valuable now. Not the deck. Not the code. The judgment. Bill for it.", "delta": {"money": 500, "sanity": 0, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Help him find a real edge", "body": "The deck is table stakes. Help him figure out what a human founder brings that AI can't generate.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 3, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_33_agent_better_taste", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Your Agent Has Better Taste", "body": "You build an AI agent to manage your job applications. It rewrites your resume per company, generates custom cover letters, schedules interviews. Then you read its output. The cover letters are better than anything you'd write. The resume framing is sharper. Your agent understands your career narrative better than you do.", "choices": [{"title": "Let it run, focus on interviews", "body": "The agent handles the funnel. You handle the humans. Division of labor.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": -8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "collab_with_ai"}]}, {"title": "Kill it, do it yourself", "body": "If a machine knows you better than you know yourself, something is deeply wrong.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Open source it, help others", "body": "If it works this well for you, imagine what it does for someone without a CS degree.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 1, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "open_sourced"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_34_former_report_surpasses", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Your Former Report's AI Company", "body": "Someone you managed as a junior engineer now runs an AI company with $40M in funding and three employees. Three. The AI does everything else. She's 29 and her company has the output of your old 200-person Google org. She messages you: 'We should catch up. I have something that might interest you.' The power dynamic has fully inverted.", "choices": [{"title": "Take the meeting, be humble", "body": "She used to ask you for code reviews. Now she might offer you a job. Accept the inversion.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 12}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Study how she built with so few people", "body": "Three humans, 200-person output. The architecture of that org IS the lesson.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -11, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 12, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Feel the sting, process it", "body": "She was competent but not exceptional. Turns out 'exceptional' got redefined while you were at Google.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": -10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_35_doomer_was_right", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Doomer Was Right", "body": "Your group chat lights up. The AI safety researcher who predicted AGI by 2027 drops a link. It's 2027. The model that launched last week passed every cognitive benchmark. It's not AGI. But it's close enough that the distinction feels academic. He writes: 'Still think I was overreacting?' Fourteen people are typing. Nobody finishes.", "choices": [{"title": "Reach out privately, ask what to do", "body": "He called it. Maybe he knows what comes next.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Focus on what you can control", "body": "The big picture is terrifying. The small picture is: you need income this month.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Mute the chat, go outside", "body": "Some problems are too large to process in a group chat. Close the phone. Walk.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_36_layoff_anniversary", "phase": "Mid", "title": "One Year Later, Google 60% Smaller", "body": "It's the anniversary of your layoff. Google just announced another round of cuts. Total headcount is down 60% from when you left. The stock is up. Revenue is up. The remaining employees are 'AI supervisors.' Your former skip-level posted on X: 'Proud of what this lean team has accomplished.' The lean team is mostly models. You were the fat.", "choices": [{"title": "Write a reflection, share it", "body": "One year out. The company that fired you is thriving without humans. Document the feeling.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 12, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Delete the calendar reminder", "body": "No anniversaries. The company moved on. You should too.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Call someone who was laid off too", "body": "There are 60% fewer Googlers. That's a lot of people with the same anniversary.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_37_perf_review_mobius", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Your AI Gets a Perf Review", "body": "Your new company announces performance reviews — for AI agents. The agents have KPIs, output metrics, and improvement plans. Your performance review is a one-page form. The AI's review is a 47-page automated analysis. Your manager asks you to review the AI's performance. You are now the AI's manager. It is also your coworker. The org chart is a Mobius strip.", "choices": [{"title": "Lean into managing the AI", "body": "If you're going to be the AI's boss, at least do it well. This is the job now.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -11, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 12, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Push back on AI having reviews", "body": "'Models don't have morale. They don't need feedback. This is theater.'", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": -1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Ask how your review compares to the AI's", "body": "Dangerous question. The answer might tell you who's really replaceable.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_38_discourse_eaten_itself", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Discourse Has Moved On", "body": "Someone posts 'the entire concept of a software engineer is obsolete.' You have seventeen rebuttals prepared. Then you notice: the post was written by an AI agent with 200K followers, posting autonomously. You're about to argue with a model about whether models replace engineers. The discourse has eaten itself.", "choices": [{"title": "Write a thoughtful reply thread", "body": "Argue with the machine. Maybe the humans reading it will learn something.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Mute and move on", "body": "Don't argue with bots. This is the first rule of the new internet.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Close the app, build something", "body": "The best reply to 'engineers are obsolete' is working code. Ship something.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_39_saas_mass_extinction", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The SaaS Mass Extinction", "body": "Half your SaaS tools went free overnight because AI made them trivially cheap to run. The other half shut down because their business model collapsed. Figma: free tier is now unlimited. Notion: acquired by an AI company, free forever. Linear: dead. Vercel: dead. The tools you loved are either free or gone. The developer ecosystem wasn't disrupted. It was composted.", "choices": [{"title": "Catalog what survived and why", "body": "The pattern of what dies vs. what thrives might be the most valuable insight you have.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 0, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Build on the survivors", "body": "If the platform layer is free, build on it. The value is in what sits on top.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Mourn the ecosystem quietly", "body": "You loved the developer tools ecosystem. It was a garden. Now it's a parking lot.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_40_hired_for_being_human", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Hired For Being Human", "body": "A founder emails back: 'We specifically want someone who WON'T use AI for this role. Human-verified engineering. Our clients pay a premium for code written by humans.' The pay is good. The pitch is wild. You're being hired for the same reason people buy organic food — the label 'human-made' is the product. Your humanity is the feature.", "choices": [{"title": "Take the role, embrace it", "body": "'Human-verified engineer.' It sounds like a certification for a species. But it pays.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": -6, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": -8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "rejected_ai"}]}, {"title": "Take it but quietly use AI anyway", "body": "They're paying for the label. The label doesn't know what happens behind the screen.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": -12, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 4, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, this feels like a gimmick", "body": "You're an engineer, not an artisanal curiosity. Find a role that values your skills, not your species.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_41_every_newsletter_ai", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Every Newsletter Is AI Now", "body": "Your feed is 30% AI-generated newsletters. They're indistinguishable from human-written ones. Three of the top tech newsletters just disclosed they've been mostly AI-generated for months. Subscribers didn't notice. You have thoughts about engineering in the AI age that are genuinely yours. The question is whether 'genuinely human' is a selling point or a liability.", "choices": [{"title": "Start the newsletter, brand it human", "body": "'Written by a human, about the machines.' Make authenticity the hook.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_newsletter"}]}, {"title": "Use AI to write, don't disclose", "body": "If the readers can't tell the difference, does it matter? (Yes. Maybe. You don't know.)", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "output_is_slop"}]}, {"title": "Read instead of write", "body": "The world doesn't need another newsletter. But it might need someone who can tell the human ones from the generated ones.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_42_weekend_product", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Weekend Product", "body": "A kid on X ships a product on Saturday, gets 10K users by Monday. You check the codebase: it's entirely AI-generated. He's 19. He can't explain how the backend works. It doesn't matter because it works and it's growing. You could build something more robust in a weekend. But 'robust' isn't what wins anymore. 'First' wins. 'Viral' wins.", "choices": [{"title": "Ship something fast, skip perfection", "body": "Move like a 19-year-old. Prompt, ship, iterate. Quality is a week-two problem.", "delta": {"money": -500, "sanity": -8, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Build something defensible instead", "body": "Skip the hype cycle. Build the thing that requires actual engineering. The thing AI can't scaffold.", "delta": {"money": -800, "sanity": -5, "audience": -2, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 800, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Advise the kid, take equity", "body": "He has speed. You have judgment. Together you might be a company.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 3, "audience": 5, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_43_old_manager_laid_off", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Your Old Manager Was Laid Off", "body": "You text your old manager for a reference. She responds: 'I'd love to but I was laid off last week. Google eliminated my entire reporting chain. An AI handles team allocation now.' She asks if YOU have any leads. The person who hired you, managed you, and promoted you is now asking you for help. The ladder is gone. Everyone's on the ground.", "choices": [{"title": "Help her, share your network", "body": "She helped you when you needed it. Return the favor. This is what humans do.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Team up, start something together", "body": "Two ex-Googlers with complementary skills and zero jobs. Startup math.", "delta": {"money": -2500, "sanity": -10, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": 8}, "min_money": 2500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Process the shock, then move", "body": "If they cut HER, nobody is safe. Let that sink in. Then keep swimming.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_44_intern_ships_specialty", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Your Intern's AI Did Your Job", "body": "Someone you mentored as an intern just shipped an AI product that automates infrastructure design. Your EXACT specialty. The TechCrunch headline says 'Junior engineer ships what Google teams couldn't.' The product works. You beta-tested it. It's genuinely better than your manual process. She built in six months with AI what your Google team spent 18 months building with humans.", "choices": [{"title": "Reach out. Be proud. Mean it.", "body": "You helped create this. Even if 'this' is the thing that replaced you. Pride and grief coexist.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Ask to advise the startup", "body": "Your fingerprints are on the architecture. Make it official. Get equity in your own obsolescence.", "delta": {"money": 1500, "sanity": -8, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Go quiet. Process the inversion.", "body": "She was your intern. Now she's your industry. Let that settle before you respond.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "hit_rock_bottom"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_45_rejected_overqualified", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Rejected For Being Overqualified", "body": "Seven final-round interviews this quarter. Zero offers. But the rejections changed. It's not 'we went with someone more aligned.' It's 'we've decided to handle this function with AI tooling instead.' Three of the roles were eliminated after your interview. You didn't lose to another candidate. You lost to a model. There is no other candidate.", "choices": [{"title": "Target roles AI can't fill yet", "body": "Find the gaps. Compliance. Safety-critical. Highly regulated. The places where 'AI handles it' is illegal.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": -2, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Ask each company what they replaced you with", "body": "Data collection. Which AI tools are eliminating which roles? Map the extinction.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -9, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take a week off from the search", "body": "You're not losing to humans. You're losing to infrastructure. Rest before the next round.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": -1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_46_sunday_dread", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Sunday Dread Is Different Now", "body": "Sunday evening. No job to dread tomorrow. But the dread is different now. It's not fear of meetings. It's the quiet terror that the world is reorganizing itself around AI and you're watching from outside. Every Monday, new models drop. New jobs disappear. New 19-year-olds ship products. The dread isn't about work. It's about relevance.", "choices": [{"title": "Plan Monday like it matters", "body": "Set a schedule. Build something. Apply somewhere. Fight the entropy.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 5, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Call someone, break the spiral", "body": "The dread is smaller when shared. Call a friend. Say the quiet part.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Doom-scroll, monitor the collapse", "body": "Watch the layoff trackers. Read the AI announcements. Know the shape of the wave.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -10}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_47_podcast_problem", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Podcast: 'Were You The Problem?'", "body": "Someone invites you on a podcast. The episode title: 'Ex-FAANG Engineers: Overpaid Overhead or Misunderstood Craftspeople?' The host says it's 'balanced.' The comments on the preview are not balanced. Someone wrote: 'These are the people who built the AI that replaced everyone else. They were the problem.' You could go on and defend yourself. Or confirm their thesis.", "choices": [{"title": "Be brutally honest on air", "body": "Say it: 'Yes, I built the infrastructure that made this possible. No, I didn't know it would eat my job too.'", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, the framing is hostile", "body": "You're not going on a podcast to be the villain in someone else's narrative.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 4, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Counter-pitch a better episode", "body": "'Instead of that, let's do: What FAANG Engineers Actually Did and Why It Mattered.' Reframe.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 2, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 1}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_48_lost_to_own_code", "phase": "Mid", "title": "You Lost to Your Own Code", "body": "A coding competition. You enter. You place 12th. The winner is a model — fine-tuned on open-source contributions. You check the training data acknowledgments. Your GitHub repos are listed. The model that beat you learned from YOUR code. You trained the thing that outperforms you. You are the training data.", "choices": [{"title": "Iterate, try to beat it next time", "body": "If a model trained on your code can beat you, maybe you can learn from it beating you. Recursion.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 4, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Write about the experience", "body": "'I Lost a Coding Competition to a Model Trained on My Code.' The essay writes itself.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "plagiarized_by_ai"}]}, {"title": "Quit competitions, build products", "body": "Benchmarks don't have customers. Products do. Build something the model can't sell.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_49_stacked_monday", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Monday That Broke Everything", "body": "Before 9 AM: the company you're interviewing at announces it's going AI-only (your loop cancelled). Your side project gets replicated by a model update that shipped overnight. Your mentor texts 'I just got laid off.' Three things. One morning. You haven't finished your coffee and the week is already a write-off. The inbox is an avalanche and you're holding a mug.", "choices": [{"title": "Triage ruthlessly, save one thing", "body": "You can't fix all three. Pick the one that matters most. Let the other two burn.", "delta": {"money": -5000, "sanity": -13, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Call your mentor, absorb together", "body": "Everything is breaking for everyone. At least break together.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 11}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Turn off the phone, go back to bed", "body": "Some Mondays are not survivable before caffeine. This is one of them.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": -8, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_50_model_passes_l5", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Model Passes the L5 Loop", "body": "A model passes the Google L5 interview loop on first attempt. Perfect scores across coding, system design, and behavioral. The interview rubric — the one you spent weeks studying, the one that validated your career — was designed to filter for exactly the skills AI now has. The system selected for its own replacement. Someone posts the scorecard on Blind. The top comment is: 'Does it negotiate for RSUs?'", "choices": [{"title": "Lobby to change the rubric", "body": "If the test selects for AI skills, the test is broken. Write the proposal. Fight the system.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Ask what humans should be tested on instead", "body": "The question isn't whether AI passes. It's what a human interview even measures now.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 4, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Stop interviewing. Build instead.", "body": "If the hiring system selects for machines, exit the hiring system.", "delta": {"money": -1500, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 1500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_51_yc_zero_engineer", "phase": "Mid", "title": "YC's Zero-Engineer Default", "body": "YC's latest batch: 40% of companies have zero human engineers. Not as a novelty. As default. The batch demo day features 3-person teams with 200-person output. One founder, one designer, one AI wrangler. They call the AI wrangler a 'vibe coder.' Your resume — six years of production engineering — is a historical artifact. The batch collectively raised $400M.", "choices": [{"title": "Apply to YC yourself, pitch experience", "body": "If zero-engineer companies are the norm, maybe 'has actual engineering experience' is the contrarian bet.", "delta": {"money": -3000, "sanity": -11, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Become a 'vibe coder,' learn the role", "body": "The new job title is embarrassing. The skillset is real. Learn it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 12, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "embraced_ai"}]}, {"title": "Target the 60% that still hire engineers", "body": "Not every company has gone zero-engineer. Find the holdouts. Pray they're hiring.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_52_ai_agent_applies", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The AI Applicant", "body": "An AI agent applied to the same job you did. It has a portfolio. Generated, but real — working products, live demos, uptime dashboards. The recruiter asks if you can 'differentiate your approach from automated candidates.' You are competing with software for a job writing software. The agent's cover letter is three paragraphs of perfect English. Yours took an hour and has a typo.", "choices": [{"title": "Lean into your humanity hard", "body": "Emphasize judgment, ambiguity, the things that break when nobody understands the system. Be aggressively human.", "delta": {"money": -500, "sanity": -7, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Use AI to outcompete the AI applicant", "body": "Fight fire with fire. Use every tool available. Become the augmented candidate.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 11, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "collab_with_ai"}]}, {"title": "Withdraw, this market is broken", "body": "If you're competing with software, the market isn't selecting for engineers anymore. Exit the queue.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": -1, "friends": 1}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_53_savings_math_shifted", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The New Economics", "body": "You sit down with a spreadsheet. AI deflated digital costs but housing, food, and healthcare went up. Your $200/mo SaaS stack is $12. Your rent went up $400. Your health insurance went up $200. Everything digital got cheaper. Everything physical got more expensive. The spreadsheet says you're saving money. Your bank account says you're not. The economic rules shifted mid-game and nobody published the new rulebook.", "choices": [{"title": "Restructure around the new math", "body": "Digital costs: near zero. Physical costs: rising. Go remote, go cheap, go lean. The equation is solvable if you squint.", "delta": {"money": -500, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Use the free tools to build income", "body": "If everything is free, building costs nothing. Ship something. Monetize it before the math shifts again.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Share the spreadsheet publicly", "body": "'The Real Cost of Living in the AI Economy.' Someone needs to publish the new rulebook. Might as well be you.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -1, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_54_acceleration_pair_prs", "phase": "Mid", "title": "94% of PRs Are AI Now", "body": "Three months ago, an AI agent's first PR at Google was screenshot-worthy. Slack channels exploded. People shared it like a moon landing photo. This morning: AI agents wrote 94% of PRs this quarter. Nobody tweeted about it. The screenshot from three months ago is in a museum exhibit about 'the transition period.' The number went from novelty to infrastructure while you were updating your LinkedIn.", "choices": [{"title": "Learn the new PR review workflow", "body": "If 94% of code is AI-written, the skill isn't writing code. It's reviewing machine output at scale.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 12, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "embraced_ai"}]}, {"title": "Write about the speed of normalization", "body": "'From Screenshot to Infrastructure in 90 Days.' The pace of acceptance is the real story.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Close the laptop, go for a long walk", "body": "The number will be 98% next quarter. The walk will be the same length. Choose the walk.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_55_vc_doesnt_need_engineers", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The VC Doesn't Need Engineers", "body": "A VC takes you for coffee. Halfway through, he says something chilling: 'We're not funding engineering-heavy companies anymore. AI handles the engineering. We fund distribution and taste.' Your entire career was engineering. Engineering was the hard part. Now the hard part is... having good taste? The oat milk latte costs $7. It tastes ironic.", "choices": [{"title": "Ask what 'taste' means, practically", "body": "If taste is the new engineering, you need to understand its spec.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Argue that engineering still matters", "body": "'AI generates code but can't reason about failure modes at sc--' He's checking his phone.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Pivot the conversation to consulting", "body": "If VCs need someone to evaluate AI-built code, that's a service. Bill for it.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_56_design_partner_ai_you", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Design Partner for an AI You", "body": "A startup asks you to be a 'design partner' for their product: an AI that replicates senior engineer decision-making. They need you to teach it your judgment. They'll record your sessions, extract your heuristics, and train a model on your thinking. In exchange: early access and a $500 Amazon gift card. They're buying your brain for the price of a TV.", "choices": [{"title": "Do it, but negotiate real equity", "body": "If your brain is the product, you should own a piece of the company built on it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, protect your knowledge", "body": "Your judgment is the only thing that can't be Googled. Don't give it away.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Do it and document everything", "body": "Let them record. You record too. If your thinking becomes a product, you want receipts.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 11, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_57_portfolio_museum", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Portfolio Museum", "body": "You rebuild your portfolio site. Five projects, three behind NDAs. The two you CAN show were just replicated by an AI in a live demo you watched this morning. Your portfolio is a museum of things machines now do better. You add a section called 'What I Understand' because the things you built are no longer impressive. The thinking behind them might be.", "choices": [{"title": "Pivot to 'thinking' content", "body": "Write about WHY you built things, not WHAT you built. Architecture philosophy as a product.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Build new projects using AI", "body": "Show you can wield the new tools. The portfolio should demonstrate adaptation, not nostalgia.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 2, "ai_skill": 11, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Ditch the portfolio, lean on reputation", "body": "Nobody hires senior engineers from portfolios anymore. They hire from trust networks.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_58_ai_doctor", "phase": "Mid", "title": "AI Doctor Says You're Fine", "body": "COBRA expires. Instead of the marketplace, a friend suggests an AI health service: $39/month, AI diagnosis, AI prescriptions, human doctor 'available if needed.' You try it. It's shockingly good. It catches something your old Google health plan doctor missed. The AI doctor is better and cheaper. You're grateful and terrified in equal measure.", "choices": [{"title": "Use the AI service, save money", "body": "It works. The savings are real. Accept that a model is your primary care physician.", "delta": {"money": -200, "sanity": -9, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "embraced_ai"}]}, {"title": "Get the expensive human plan", "body": "Health insurance isn't optional. And you want a human to look you in the eye when they say 'you're fine.'", "delta": {"money": -400, "sanity": 11, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 400}, {"title": "Use both, hedge your bets", "body": "AI for routine stuff. Human for anything serious. Belt and suspenders.", "delta": {"money": -450, "sanity": 8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 450}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_59_side_project_traction", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Side Project Gets Traction", "body": "Your side project has users. Not many -- 47 -- but they're real humans who found it organically. One of them emailed you to say thank you. You haven't been thanked for building something in two years. The feeling is disorienting.", "choices": [{"title": "Go all in, quit everything else", "body": "47 users is 47 more than zero. Ship features. Chase product-market fit.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": -11, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 13, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 2000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "side_project_shipped"}]}, {"title": "Keep it small, keep it yours", "body": "Don't scale. Don't fundraise. Just build the thing you want to exist.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Open source it and let go", "body": "Give it away. Let strangers maintain it. You built the seed.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -4}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "open_sourced"}]}], "requires": ["started_side_project"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_60_freelance_feast_famine", "phase": "Mid", "title": "Feast or Famine", "body": "Freelancing month three. Two clients paid late. One ghosted. A fourth wants you to start Monday on a three-month engagement at $250/hr. You're either broke or flush and there is no in between. This is the life you chose.", "choices": [{"title": "Take the big contract, stabilize", "body": "Lock in the engagement. Three months of certainty. Accept the golden leash.", "delta": {"money": 2000, "sanity": -10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Diversify: three small clients", "body": "Never depend on one client again. Spread the risk. Multiply the invoices.", "delta": {"money": 1500, "sanity": -7, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Raise your rates, fewer clients", "body": "Charge more. Work less. If they balk, they aren't your client.", "delta": {"money": 1000, "sanity": 4, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["went_freelance"], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_61_mentee_goes_viral", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Mentee Goes Viral", "body": "Someone you've been mentoring posts a technical thread that goes viral. 50K impressions. They credit 'a mentor who changed my perspective.' They don't name you. The thread is good. You helped make it good. The anonymous credit tastes like sparkling water -- refreshing but somehow not enough.", "choices": [{"title": "Celebrate them publicly, ask nothing", "body": "Be the bigger person. This is what mentorship means.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Privately ask for a shoutout", "body": "You helped. You deserve credit. Just ask nicely.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Write your own thread, better", "body": "If they can go viral, so can you. Write the version you wish they'd written.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["became_mentor"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_62_rug_pull", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Rug Pull", "body": "The AI startup you invested in turns out to be running GPT-4 behind a fake 'proprietary model' interface. The CTO was a contractor. The 'research team' was three prompt engineers in a WeWork. Your $25K is gone. The founder's LinkedIn now says 'Exploring new opportunities.'", "choices": [{"title": "Lawyer up, try to recover funds", "body": "Sue. It probably won't work. Sue anyway. It's the principle.", "delta": {"money": -2500, "sanity": -8, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 2500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "got_scammed"}]}, {"title": "Write about it as a warning", "body": "Name names. Tell the story. Save someone else's $25K.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 4, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "got_scammed"}, {"op": "set_flag", "flag": "went_viral"}]}, {"title": "Absorb the loss, learn the lesson", "body": "Expensive education. At least you learned what due diligence actually means.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "got_scammed"}]}], "requires": ["invested_in_ai"], "forbids": ["got_scammed"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_63_contact_delivers", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Industry Contact Delivers", "body": "That founder you met at the gym coffee shop? They just raised a Series A and want you to lead infrastructure. Real equity. Real salary. Real engineering. Sometimes networking actually works and it feels illegal.", "choices": [{"title": "Take the role, go all in", "body": "This is the one. You feel it. Jump.", "delta": {"money": -500, "sanity": -9, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 11, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Negotiate for more equity", "body": "They want you. Make them prove it with numbers.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 3, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": -11}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Consult first, join later maybe", "body": "Test the waters. Don't commit to another machine you might need to escape.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": 6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["made_industry_contact"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_59_model_ships_your_startup", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Model Ships Your Startup", "body": "You've been building a dev tool for six months. At a demo day, a founder shows that the latest model does your core feature AND your roadmap AND your stretch goals — in a single prompt, for free. Your entire company is a feature in someone else's foundation model. The founder asks, gently, 'Did you not see the announcement in January?'", "choices": [{"title": "Pivot to what AI can't do", "body": "There must be a gap. A human-shaped gap. Find it before the money runs out.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": -13, "audience": -1, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 2000}, {"title": "Open source everything, pivot to consulting", "body": "The product is dead. The expertise isn't. Give the code away, sell the judgment.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "side_project_failed"}, {"op": "set_flag", "flag": "open_sourced"}]}, {"title": "Become a 'legacy system archaeologist'", "body": "New job title: someone who understands systems built before AI did everything. There's a market for that. Somehow.", "delta": {"money": 3000, "sanity": 11, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "pivoted_career"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_61_identity_therapy", "phase": "Late", "title": "Therapy: The Identity Problem", "body": "Your therapist asks: 'Who are you if you're not the person who was smart enough for Google?' You stare at her for thirty seconds. The answer used to be obvious. You could pass the interview. You could handle the complexity. Now AI handles the complexity better, faster, cheaper. You weren't smart enough for Google. You were smart enough for a world that no longer exists.", "choices": [{"title": "Keep going, do the work", "body": "Stay in therapy. Process the identity collapse. It's expensive and necessary.", "delta": {"money": -1200, "sanity": 13, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 1200}, {"title": "Redefine yourself without the badge", "body": "You're not 'smart enough for Google.' You're a human who builds things. Start there.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Write about the identity collapse", "body": "The breakdown is the content. 'I Defined Myself by a Badge. The Badge Defined a World That's Gone.'", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -3, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -6}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_newsletter"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_63_eulogy_keynote", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Eulogy Keynote", "body": "A dev conference asks you to keynote. The topic: 'The Last Generation of Software Engineers.' They want you to eulogize your own profession. On stage. To an audience of people who are scared but won't admit it. The honorarium is $500. The catharsis might be worth more.", "choices": [{"title": "Write the honest version", "body": "Name what's dying. Name what's being born. Don't sugarcoat. The room goes silent. Someone is crying.", "delta": {"money": 500, "sanity": 5, "audience": 12, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "shipped_creative_work"}]}, {"title": "Write the hopeful version", "body": "Find the angle where this isn't an ending. 'We're not the last engineers. We're the bridge.'", "delta": {"money": 500, "sanity": 8, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, you're not ready", "body": "You can't eulogize something you're still grieving. Not yet.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_64_just_prompt_it", "phase": "Late", "title": "'Just Prompt It'", "body": "A VP tells you to 'just prompt it' when you propose building a proper service. You explain failure modes, retry logic, graceful degradation. She says: 'The AI handles edge cases now. We don't engineer around failure anymore. We just re-prompt.' Your entire philosophy of reliable systems — the thing Google drilled into you — is being dismissed as overthinking. Maybe it is.", "choices": [{"title": "Ship the prompt-based version, document risks", "body": "Build it her way. Write a doc called 'What Will Break and When.' Wait.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Build the reliable version quietly", "body": "Do what she asked. Then quietly add the guardrails. She'll thank you at 3 AM when it doesn't crash.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Leave for somewhere that values reliability", "body": "'Just prompt it' is the new 'just ship it.' Find a company that still fears outages.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": -2, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_65_ai_outperforms_you", "phase": "Late", "title": "Bottom Quartile", "body": "Performance review. The company's AI agent scored in the 99th percentile on every engineering metric. You scored in the 24th. Bottom quartile. The AI doesn't have bad days. Doesn't need coffee. Doesn't waste twenty minutes on Blind before standup. Your manager says 'we need to talk about your AI leverage score.' The conversation is short. The subtext is shorter: the machine is better at your job than you are.", "choices": [{"title": "Optimize for the AI metrics", "body": "If the rubric measures AI leverage, become the best AI conductor alive. Game the system.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": -13, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "embraced_ai"}]}, {"title": "Push back on comparing humans to AI", "body": "Write a doc: 'Why Human Performance Reviews Should Not Include AI Benchmarks.' Fight the rubric.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": -1, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Quietly start interviewing", "body": "If they're benchmarking you against the model, it's a matter of time before the model gets your desk.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -1, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_66_last_engineering_jobs", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Last Engineering Jobs", "body": "Two offers. One: $350K at a defense contractor. Build things that work. No AI shortcuts allowed (classified systems). Two: $120K at a startup where you'd supervise AI that does the actual building. The defense job is a time capsule. The startup is the future. One lets you be an engineer. The other lets you be relevant.", "choices": [{"title": "Take defense, be a real engineer", "body": "Build things with your hands. Metaphorical hands. In a SCIF. With people.", "delta": {"money": 6700, "sanity": 11, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": -4, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take the startup, ride the wave", "body": "The future is AI supervision. Get good at it before everyone else does.", "delta": {"money": -1000, "sanity": -10, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 1000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "embraced_ai"}]}, {"title": "Go indie, reject both paradigms", "body": "Neither relic nor supervisor. A builder. Moonlight, freelance, scrape. Ship YOUR thing.", "delta": {"money": -1000, "sanity": 5, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 12, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 1000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_67_explain_ai_to_board", "phase": "Late", "title": "You Explain AI to a Board", "body": "A founder asks you to join a board meeting. Investors want to understand their AI stack. You explain it. Then one investor asks: 'So why do we still employ engineers?' The room goes silent. The founder looks at you. You ARE the engineer. The question isn't hypothetical. It's about you. In the room. Right now.", "choices": [{"title": "Make the case for human engineering", "body": "Explain edge cases, trust, liability, the things AI can't own. Sell your species.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 4, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Answer honestly: 'You might not need to'", "body": "Say the quiet part loud. Be the engineer who admits the engineer might be optional.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -10}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "blew_the_whistle"}]}, {"title": "Redirect to what SHOULD be built", "body": "Don't argue defense. Play offense. 'Here's what you should be building that requires humans.'", "delta": {"money": 3000, "sanity": 9, "audience": 12, "ai_skill": 3, "friends": 3}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_68_office_mostly_empty", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Office Is Mostly Empty", "body": "Your office was designed for 200. Twelve humans work here. The rest of the output comes from agents. The open plan feels like a set after the crew wrapped. Someone's monitor runs an autonomous agent — no human at the desk. It does code reviews. Its Slack avatar is a cartoon cat. You share a floor with ghosts and machines.", "choices": [{"title": "Make friends with the remaining humans", "body": "Twelve people. Learn all their names. They're real. Hold onto that.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "WFH, the empty office is depressing", "body": "Working alone in a space designed for hundreds is a horror movie. Work from home.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 5, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Document the emptiness, write about it", "body": "'200 Desks, 12 Humans, and a Cartoon Cat.' The photo essay writes itself.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_newsletter"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_69_nuclear_plant_offer", "phase": "Late", "title": "The 'No AI' Sector", "body": "A nuclear power plant offers you a role. Good pay. The catch: zero AI allowed. Regulatory ban. Everything is human-designed, human-reviewed, human-maintained. The stack is C++. The deploys take months. The meetings are in person. It feels like 2018 in the best and worst ways. You'd be engineering again. Actually engineering. With humans. In a bunker.", "choices": [{"title": "Take it, engineering is engineering", "body": "C++. Deploys that matter. Failure modes that are real. Humans who depend on you. Peace.", "delta": {"money": 5000, "sanity": 10, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": -4, "friends": 3}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "pivoted_career"}]}, {"title": "Decline, you'd be hiding from the future", "body": "A regulatory bunker is safe. It's also a dead end. The AI ban won't last forever.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 3, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take it temporarily, hedge your bets", "body": "Work in the bunker. Study AI at night. Be ready for either future.", "delta": {"money": 2500, "sanity": -1, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_72_prove_youre_human", "phase": "Late", "title": "Trial Project: Prove You're Not AI", "body": "A startup's trial project has a new requirement: complete it on camera with screen recording, no AI assistance, narrating your thought process. They need to verify a human did the work. Two weeks of surveilled labor to prove you're a person. The recording will be reviewed by an AI that evaluates human authenticity. You're being judged by a machine to prove you're not a machine.", "choices": [{"title": "Do it, play the game", "body": "Narrate your thoughts for two weeks while a model watches you code. This is the job market now.", "delta": {"money": -2500, "sanity": -10, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 3, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 2500}, {"title": "Negotiate paid surveillance", "body": "'If you're recording me, you're paying me. $200/hour for the performance.'", "delta": {"money": 4000, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, this is dehumanizing", "body": "Performing humanity for a machine's approval is a line you won't cross.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_77_legacy_archaeologist", "phase": "Late", "title": "'Legacy System Archaeologist' Role", "body": "A bank offers you a role they invented: 'Legacy System Archaeologist.' The job: understand codebases built by humans before AI took over software development. Nobody under 30 can read human-written legacy code anymore. Your ability to read Java from 2015 is a rare archaeological skill. The pay is $300K. For reading old code. The absurdity is the salary.", "choices": [{"title": "Take it, become the Indiana Jones of code", "body": "You understand human code because you were human when it was written. That's the credential now.", "delta": {"money": 5000, "sanity": 8, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": -3, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "pivoted_career"}]}, {"title": "Negotiate for a team, build the practice", "body": "If this is a niche, own the niche. Build an archaeology team. Charge accordingly.", "delta": {"money": 5000, "sanity": 6, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": -1, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, it feels like being a museum piece", "body": "Reading old code isn't engineering. It's taxidermy. You want to build, not preserve.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_78_classified_government_role", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Last Human-Only Sector", "body": "A recruiter calls about a classified government role. 'AI is banned from this work by executive order. We need humans who can still think without models.' Enormous salary. Invisible work. Eight-month clearance process. You'd be engineering in a world preserved in amber. A nature preserve for engineers. The irony: a decade ago you'd have laughed at government work.", "choices": [{"title": "Take the call, explore it", "body": "A sector where being human is the security clearance. That's perversely appealing.", "delta": {"money": 500, "sanity": 10, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": -2, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, you're not done with civilian life", "body": "You survived the private sector collapse. You're not retreating to a bunker.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": 2, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take it and document (illegally)", "body": "The world should know what human-only engineering looks like. Even if it's classified.", "delta": {"money": 8000, "sanity": -14, "audience": 4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -11}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "blew_the_whistle"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_82_human_ai_interface_designer", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Strange New Job", "body": "A job listing: 'Human-AI Interface Designer.' Not UX. Not engineering. Something new. The salary is good. The job description could have been written about your last two years of confusion. You're not leaving the arena. You're finding a new position in it. The role didn't exist a year ago. Neither did your qualifications — unless you count surviving.", "choices": [{"title": "Apply, this was made for you", "body": "You've been the human interfacing with AI for two years involuntarily. Now it's a paid position.", "delta": {"money": 2600, "sanity": 11, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 11, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "pivoted_career"}]}, {"title": "Start your own practice", "body": "Don't apply. Build the consulting firm. 'Human-AI Interface Design' is a category. Own the category.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": -10, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 2000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "went_freelance"}]}, {"title": "Keep searching, this feels like cope", "body": "New job titles are just old jobs with new names. You want something real.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_83_empty_campus", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Empty Campus", "body": "You drive past the Google campus. Half the buildings are dark. The shuttle lot is mostly empty. A sign says 'AI Operations Center — Authorized Personnel Only.' The micro-kitchen is visible through the window. Still stocked. For the operators. Maybe thirty cars in a lot that held thousands. Two weeks ago there were sixty. The campus is deflating in real-time.", "choices": [{"title": "Drive away, don't look back", "body": "The campus is a monument to a world that ended. You don't need monuments.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take a photo, post it", "body": "The empty Google parking lot is the photo of the decade. Share it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "went_viral"}]}, {"title": "Call an old teammate, share the moment", "body": "Someone else should see this. Someone who remembers when the lot was full.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_84_cofounder_is_ai", "phase": "Late", "title": "Your Cofounder Is an AI", "body": "At a 'cofounder matching' event, someone pitches you on being CTO. The team: 'Me and the AI.' The AI handles product, design, marketing, and most of the code. They need a human for 'trust and compliance.' The equity split proposed: 60% human, 40% AI. The AI doesn't need equity. The AI doesn't need anything. You do.", "choices": [{"title": "Take it, this is the future", "body": "Human-AI co-founding. The org chart has one person and one model. Someone has to go first.", "delta": {"money": -2500, "sanity": -8, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 2500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}, {"op": "set_flag", "flag": "collab_with_ai"}]}, {"title": "Counter: only humans get equity", "body": "'The AI doesn't need equity. It doesn't eat. Give me 80%.'", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 4, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Leave disillusioned", "body": "A cofounder that's a language model. This is where we are. This is where we are.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_85_two_weeks_geological_time", "phase": "Late", "title": "Two Weeks Off = Geological Time", "body": "You take two weeks off. Return to: framework deprecated, company you applied to acquired, your role eliminated in a reorg. Two weeks was a geological epoch. You left a world and came back to its fossil record. Your out-of-office auto-reply bounced from three addresses that no longer exist.", "choices": [{"title": "Never take time off again", "body": "You can rest when acceleration stops. Acceleration won't stop.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -13, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": -5}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Accept the new tempo, build resilience", "body": "If two weeks erases the world, stop building on the world. Build on yourself.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Document the delta, write the essay", "body": "'What Changed in 14 Days: A Field Report from the Wrong Side of Acceleration.'", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 0, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_newsletter"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_86_ai_therapist_vs_human", "phase": "Late", "title": "AI Therapist vs. Human Therapist", "body": "AI therapy is better. It's also cheaper. $12/month vs $300/session. The AI remembers every session perfectly, never gets tired, never projects. Your human therapist forgets which company laid you off. You correct her. She apologizes. The AI would never need correcting. You keep seeing the human. It costs more. The choice isn't rational. You're paying for the irrationality of connection.", "choices": [{"title": "Switch to AI therapy, save the money", "body": "Better outcomes. Lower cost. The math is simple. The feeling is not.", "delta": {"money": 600, "sanity": -1, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 5, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Keep the human, pay the premium", "body": "She forgets your details. She's imperfect. That's why it works. Humans need humans.", "delta": {"money": -1200, "sanity": 10, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": 1200}, {"title": "Use both, don't tell either", "body": "AI for the data. Human for the feeling. It's not cheating if both are helping.", "delta": {"money": -800, "sanity": 10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": 1}, "min_money": 800}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_90_interviews_cancelled", "phase": "Late", "title": "Interviews Cancelled. Not the Format. The Role.", "body": "Three companies cancel your interview loops. Same week. Not rescheduled. Cancelled. The roles were eliminated. Not filled by someone else. Not frozen. Eliminated. The recruiter's email is automated. The recruiter was also eliminated. There is nothing to interview for. The pipeline doesn't end in a job. The pipeline ends.", "choices": [{"title": "Target the remaining human roles", "body": "Somewhere, humans are still hiring humans. The list shrinks daily. Get on it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Stop applying, start building", "body": "The job market is a dead end. Build your own entrance.", "delta": {"money": -1500, "sanity": 7, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 0}, "min_money": 1500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}, {"title": "Sit with it, let the grief arrive", "body": "The role is gone. Not the role at that company. The role. Everywhere. Let it land.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "hit_rock_bottom"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_91_side_project_burnout", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Side Project Death March", "body": "Your side project is hemorrhaging money and you're the only engineer. The codebase is a monument to midnight decisions. Users want features you don't have time to build. Four hours of sleep. You call it 'hustle.' Your body calls it something else.", "choices": [{"title": "Shut it down, cut losses", "body": "Kill the project. Mourn it. Move on. You learned something.", "delta": {"money": 600, "sanity": 10, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 1}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "side_project_failed"}]}, {"title": "Find a cofounder to share load", "body": "You can't do this alone. Admit it. Find someone.", "delta": {"money": -500, "sanity": 4, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": 500}, {"title": "Automate everything with agents", "body": "Let AI handle support, deploy, and half the features. Pray it holds.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "collab_with_ai"}]}], "requires": ["started_side_project"], "forbids": ["side_project_failed"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_92_newsletter_2000", "phase": "Late", "title": "Newsletter: 2,000 Subscribers", "body": "Your newsletter about engineering in the AI economy hit 2,000 subscribers. Three sponsors reached out. The content is good because it's honest. You're worried sponsors will make it dishonest. You're also worried about rent.", "choices": [{"title": "Take sponsors, maintain quality", "body": "Money doesn't have to corrupt the writing. Just... be careful.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": -10, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "built_following"}]}, {"title": "Stay independent, no sponsors", "body": "Keep it pure. Keep it yours. Keep eating rice and beans.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Pivot to paid subscriptions", "body": "$10/month for deep dives. Let the readers decide what you're worth.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": 1, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["started_newsletter"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_93_angel_followon", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Angel Follow-On", "body": "The startup you angel invested in wants a follow-on. The metrics are 'promising.' The founder sends a deck with a hockey stick graph. You've seen a lot of hockey sticks. Most of them were lies. But some of them weren't.", "choices": [{"title": "Double down, write another check", "body": "You're already in. Might as well believe in it.", "delta": {"money": -10000, "sanity": -11, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 2}, "min_money": 10000}, {"title": "Pass on the follow-on", "body": "You invested once. That's enough exposure to someone else's dream.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Offer sweat equity instead", "body": "No more cash. But you'll build something for them. Your time for their upside.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": 3, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["invested_in_ai"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_94_whistleblower_journalist", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Journalist Calls Back", "body": "The journalist you briefed on background wants to go on the record. Your name. Your face. Your former employer's legal team. You started this. Now it wants to finish itself. The story is true. The consequences are real.", "choices": [{"title": "Go on record, own it", "body": "Say your name. Say what happened. Accept whatever comes next.", "delta": {"money": -8000, "sanity": 10, "audience": 14, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -13}, "min_money": 8000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "burned_bridge"}]}, {"title": "Stay on background, protect yourself", "body": "The truth can come out without your face attached to it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Retract everything, kill the story", "body": "You're not ready for this fight. Not now. Maybe not ever.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -11, "audience": -10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["blew_the_whistle"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_95_community_needs_leader", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Community Needs a Leader", "body": "Your ex-FAANG community has grown to 200 members. Job fairs, salary data, mock interviews. Someone suggests making it official — nonprofit, board, real structure. You built this. Now it wants to be bigger than you.", "choices": [{"title": "Formalize it, become president", "body": "Build the org. Write bylaws. Become the person who makes it real.", "delta": {"money": -1200, "sanity": -11, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 14}, "min_money": 1200}, {"title": "Hand it off, stay in the back", "body": "Let someone else lead. You started it. That's enough.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Monetize it: paid events, sponsors", "body": "200 people is a market. A market that trusts you. Tread carefully.", "delta": {"money": 3000, "sanity": -10, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -13}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["built_community"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_96_open_source_burnout", "phase": "Late", "title": "Issue #847: Please Fix", "body": "Your open source project has 3,000 stars and 200 open issues. Someone opened a bug titled 'Please fix' with no description. Another contributor submitted a PR that rewrites your core module 'for performance' and breaks three things. You haven't merged anything in two weeks. The project is a success and you are drowning.", "choices": [{"title": "Recruit co-maintainers", "body": "You can't do this alone. Find people. Share the burden. Share the blame.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 2, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Archive the repo, walk away", "body": "Mark it read-only. Write a farewell. Let it become archaeology.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Set up GitHub Sponsors, go pro", "body": "If they want maintenance, they can fund it. Open source isn't free labor.", "delta": {"money": 500, "sanity": -9, "audience": 12, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -13}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["open_sourced"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_97_credit_card_statement", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Credit Card Statement", "body": "You maintained the FAANG lifestyle on zero FAANG income. The credit card statement arrives. $12K/month on a $0 salary. The math was always going to catch up. It caught up.", "choices": [{"title": "Drastic cuts, sell the car", "body": "Downsize everything. Sell the Tesla. Buy a used Corolla. Survive.", "delta": {"money": 12000, "sanity": 11, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take any job immediately", "body": "Pride is a luxury. Income is a necessity. Apply to everything.", "delta": {"money": 3200, "sanity": -11, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Borrow from a friend, buy time", "body": "Ask for help. Actually ask. Out loud. To a person.", "delta": {"money": 5000, "sanity": -10, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 13}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "took_on_debt"}]}], "requires": ["lifestyle_crept"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_98_ai_cant_teach", "phase": "Late", "title": "The AI Can't Teach (Yet)", "body": "A university offers an adjunct position. Every other CS course is taught by AI tutors. Your class — distributed systems — is one of the last with a human instructor. Students specifically request human teachers for 'hard' subjects. You'd be a premium product. A human luxury item in an automated education system. The pay is $4,800.", "choices": [{"title": "Take it, human teaching matters", "body": "The students want a person. Be the person. $4,800 and a room full of humans.", "delta": {"money": 320, "sanity": 11, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 7}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_teaching"}]}, {"title": "Negotiate: 'I'm the only human left'", "body": "If human instruction is premium, charge premium. Use scarcity as leverage.", "delta": {"money": 533, "sanity": 9, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_teaching"}]}, {"title": "Decline, find where humans are valued more", "body": "Teaching's not the only place humans are premium. Find the others.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}], "forbids": ["started_teaching"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_99_debt_conversation", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Debt Conversation", "body": "You owe $40K across two credit cards and a personal loan. Minimum payments eat your consulting income. A financial advisor says 'you need a real conversation about your relationship with money.' You want to say 'my relationship with money is that I used to have it.'", "choices": [{"title": "Consolidate and make a plan", "body": "Spreadsheet time. Real numbers. Real timeline. Real discipline.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": 11, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Take a high-paying contract to clear it", "body": "Sell three months of your life. Buy back your financial freedom.", "delta": {"money": 5000, "sanity": -11, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -4}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "debt_cleared"}]}, {"title": "Declare bankruptcy, start over", "body": "Nuclear option. Reset everything. The shame is temporary. The relief is immediate.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -4, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "went_broke_once"}]}], "requires": ["took_on_debt"], "forbids": ["debt_cleared"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_100_sponsorship_dm", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Sponsorship DM", "body": "A developer tools company DMs you: '$2,000/month to mention us in your posts.' You have 15K followers. The product is fine. Not great. The money would cover rent. Your audience trusts you. That trust is worth more than $2,000. Or is it worth exactly $2,000?", "choices": [{"title": "Take the sponsorship, be transparent", "body": "Disclose it. Be honest. Take the money. Hope they don't suck.", "delta": {"money": 2000, "sanity": -7, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Decline, protect the audience", "body": "Your credibility isn't for sale. Not for $2,000. Maybe for more. No. Not for more.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Counter with a higher rate", "body": "If they want your audience, pay market rate. You're not a charity.", "delta": {"money": 3000, "sanity": 5, "audience": -9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -2}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["built_following"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_101_sabbatical_ending", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Sabbatical Clock", "body": "Your sabbatical is ending. You feel better. Not fixed, but better. The world kept spinning without you optimizing it. Now the question: go back to what you were, or become something else? The answer feels obvious until you check your bank account.", "choices": [{"title": "Re-enter the market, refreshed", "body": "Go back. But differently this time. With boundaries. (You hope.)", "delta": {"money": 3000, "sanity": 11, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 2, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Extend the break, risk the runway", "body": "You're not ready. Give yourself more time. The money will figure itself out.", "delta": {"money": -1200, "sanity": 12, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 3}, "min_money": 1200}, {"title": "Pivot entirely, new direction", "body": "Don't go back. Go somewhere else. Anywhere else.", "delta": {"money": -1000, "sanity": 9, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 12}, "min_money": 1000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "pivoted_career"}]}], "requires": ["took_sabbatical"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_102_bridge_burned", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Industry Is Small", "body": "You burned a bridge. The industry is small. The person you burned now runs engineering at a company you desperately want to join. They're on the hiring committee. A mutual friend's face said everything.", "choices": [{"title": "Reach out and apologize directly", "body": "Eat humble pie. Write the email. Mean every word. Send it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Apply anyway, hope they forgot", "body": "Maybe they moved on. People forget. (People do not forget.)", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -10, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Target a different company entirely", "body": "Avoid the blast radius. Find another path. There's always another path.", "delta": {"money": -300, "sanity": 6, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 1}, "min_money": 300}], "requires": ["burned_bridge"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_91_panic_at_the_demo", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "Panic Attack at the Demo", "body": "Livestream. New model. It solves distributed consensus — the problem your entire discipline spent four decades on. On stage. To applause. Forty years of research. Forty seconds of compute. Your chest locks. Hands shake. Laptop closed. Floor. Forty minutes of your body remembering every system it ever built.", "choices": [{"title": "Full week offline", "body": "Everything off. No demos. No launches. Just a body in a room, remembering it's a body.", "delta": {"money": -300, "sanity": 13, "audience": -9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 6}, "min_money": 300, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "had_health_scare"}]}, {"title": "Grief therapist, not regular therapy", "body": "Not anxiety. Grief. For a career. For a field. For the thing you were.", "delta": {"money": -1200, "sanity": 14, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 6}, "min_money": 1200}, {"title": "Post about it", "body": "Normalize the shaking. Other engineers are on their floors too. They should know.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 0, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_92_colony_goes_quiet", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Colony Goes Quiet", "body": "Ex-Googler colony. Portugal. Coffee. Surf. Peace. Then something drops — a capability so far beyond comprehension the whole colony goes silent. Nobody panics. Nobody doomscrolls. They just sit. Forty engineers staring at the Atlantic, understanding nothing. The colony wasn't an escape. It was a waiting room.", "choices": [{"title": "Stay. Silence is honest.", "body": "The quiet is the only rational response. Sit with it. Let it reshape you.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 11, "audience": -9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 13}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Leave. Understand what happened.", "body": "You can't just sit. You need to know. Even if knowing changes nothing.", "delta": {"money": -1500, "sanity": -10, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": -3}, "min_money": 1500}, {"title": "Call your old manager in Lisbon", "body": "She left Google before you. Maybe she's further along. Maybe she knows how to sit.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_93_final_knowledge_transfer", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Final Knowledge Transfer", "body": "Record every architectural decision you ever made. With reasoning. So agents can replicate your judgment. Not documentation. Your soul in structured data. When you're done, the model thinks like you. Never needs salary, vacation, therapist. You're writing your obsolescence letter. One JSON object at a time.", "choices": [{"title": "Maximum extraction, walk away", "body": "Top invoice. Full transfer. The money and the knowledge that you finished the job.", "delta": {"money": 6000, "sanity": -14, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -5}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "automated_own_job"}]}, {"title": "Refuse. Judgment isn't data.", "body": "Experience isn't JSON. Say no. Accept what follows.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 3}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "rejected_ai"}]}, {"title": "Teach principles, keep intuition", "body": "Share the framework. Withhold the instinct. Let them figure out the gap.", "delta": {"money": 2000, "sanity": 9, "audience": 2, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_teaching"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_95_forked_economy", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Forked Economy", "body": "Two economies now. AI economy: microsecond transactions, incomprehensible value creation, machine speed. Human economy: skills, attention, presence. Almost artisanal. You exist in the gap. Both economies have a word for you. Neither word is flattering.", "choices": [{"title": "Go full human economy", "body": "Teach. Build. Repair. Slow work for slow money. Honest.", "delta": {"money": -500, "sanity": 13, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": 500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Bridge the gap", "body": "Translate between economies. Neither side understands the other. That's a job.", "delta": {"money": 1500, "sanity": -6, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 8, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Bet on the machine economy", "body": "Learn to swim in microseconds. Or drown trying. At least the money's real.", "delta": {"money": 3000, "sanity": -11, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_96_renaissance_faire", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "Renaissance Faire Engineer", "body": "Someone offers money to record your 'engineering process.' Not for training data. Entertainment. People watch humans code like they watch blacksmiths at faires. Artisanal computation. Your debugging process is a spectator sport. Comments section: 'So inefficient it's beautiful.'", "choices": [{"title": "Do it. Get paid to be a relic.", "body": "Performance art. You type. They watch. The algorithm promotes your slowness. Irony has a salary now.", "delta": {"money": 2000, "sanity": -8, "audience": 13, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Refuse. You're not a zoo animal.", "body": "Engineering was a discipline, not a curiosity. You won't perform your own obsolescence.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 5}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Counter-offer: teach, don't perform", "body": "Not entertainment. Education. Show them what thinking looks like when it costs effort.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": 8, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_teaching"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_98_what_was_an_engineer", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "What Was a Software Engineer?", "body": "Your nephew asks what a software engineer was. Not mockingly. Genuinely never heard the term. You try: 'Like... a person who told computers what to do?' He looks confused. 'Why would a person do that?' You don't have an answer. He's eight.", "choices": [{"title": "Explain it like history", "body": "Once, humans and machines didn't understand each other. People like you were the translators. The translators aren't needed anymore.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Show him. Write code together.", "body": "Open a terminal. Type something. Watch his face when letters become a program. Archaeological dig, party of two.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 13, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Change the subject", "body": "Some questions don't have answers that fit in a sentence. Or a lifetime.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -7}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_102_ai_agents_negotiate", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Commodity", "body": "Two AI agents negotiating whether to hire you. You're not in the room. One argues you bring 'organic problem framing.' The other: 'latency exceeds acceptable parameters.' They decide in four seconds. You wait three days for the email.", "choices": [{"title": "Take the gig. Swallow the process.", "body": "Hired by machines to do human work. The org chart has changed. You haven't.", "delta": {"money": 2500, "sanity": -10, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Refuse work mediated by agents", "body": "If the hiring manager is a model, the job isn't a job. It's a task assignment for a biological subprocess.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -1, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 6}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Build a human-only job board", "body": "Humans hiring humans. No agents. No latency parameters. Just people choosing people.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": 5, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 11}, "min_money": 2000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_side_project"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_61_embraced_ai_ceiling", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The AI Ceiling", "body": "All in on AI tools. Fast. Ship constantly. Can't debug without an agent anymore. Someone asks you to explain a system you built last month. You don't understand it. Built it. Shipped it. Don't understand it.", "choices": [{"title": "Slow down, rebuild fundamentals", "body": "One month. No agents. Remember how to think without autocomplete.", "delta": {"money": -1200, "sanity": 13, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": 13, "friends": -1}, "min_money": 1200}, {"title": "Double down. Speed is the skill.", "body": "Understanding is overrated. Velocity is the metric now.", "delta": {"money": 1800, "sanity": -14, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 1, "friends": 0}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "output_is_slop"}]}, {"title": "Teach your workflow", "body": "If you can't explain the system, teach the process. Teaching forces understanding.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 4, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 3, "friends": 7}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_teaching"}]}], "requires": ["embraced_ai"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_62_health_scare_aftermath", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Follow-Up Appointment", "body": "Cortisol levels 'concerning.' Years of on-call and severance anxiety rewired your endocrine system. Doctor asks about stress. You laugh. She doesn't. Prescription. 'This is not optional.'", "choices": [{"title": "Follow the doctor's orders", "body": "Prescription. Diet. Walking. Boring. Alive.", "delta": {"money": -600, "sanity": 13, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 7}, "min_money": 600, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Ignore it, push through", "body": "Survived worse than elevated cortisol. Probably.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -11, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 6, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Write about burnout recovery", "body": "Medical chart as content. Help others. Help yourself.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 7, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -4}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["had_health_scare"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_64_rock_bottom_recovery", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Comeback", "body": "Bottom. You know because you can feel the floor. Weird thing: it's solid. You can push off. Former colleague calls. Real opportunity. Not a startup, not a grift. 'We thought of you.' Someone thought of you.", "choices": [{"title": "Take the job, rebuild quietly", "body": "Show up. Do the work. Don't post about it. Just be reliable.", "delta": {"money": 3000, "sanity": 13, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 5}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "recovered_from_crisis"}]}, {"title": "Negotiate hard", "body": "Even at rock bottom, you have leverage. Skills didn't evaporate.", "delta": {"money": 4000, "sanity": 10, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "recovered_from_crisis"}]}, {"title": "Take it and mentor others", "body": "You survived. Help someone else survive.", "delta": {"money": 2000, "sanity": 13, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 14}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "recovered_from_crisis"}, {"op": "set_flag", "flag": "became_mentor"}]}], "requires": ["hit_rock_bottom"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_65_moved_abroad_adjustment", "phase": "Early", "title": "The Time Zone Problem", "body": "Lisbon. Beautiful apartment. Espresso: one euro. Problem: clients in SF, your morning is their yesterday. Living in the future, billing the past. Sunset from the balcony. You watch it during standup.", "choices": [{"title": "Restructure for async", "body": "No real-time meetings. Async docs. Async trust. The sunset is yours.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Find European clients", "body": "New continent. New network. Build from scratch. Again.", "delta": {"money": -1500, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": 1500}, {"title": "Move back", "body": "Beautiful while it lasted. Some experiments end.", "delta": {"money": -5000, "sanity": -8, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 6}, "min_money": 5000}], "requires": ["moved_abroad"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_67_automated_own_job_aftermath", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Agent Does Your Job Better", "body": "The agent you trained on your patterns makes better decisions than you did. Manager shows the metrics. Incident resolution: 3x faster. Your documentation was too good. You built the thing that obsoletes you. It works.", "choices": [{"title": "Pivot to managing the agent", "body": "You built it. You understand it. Become the interface.", "delta": {"money": 2200, "sanity": -11, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 4, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Leave before they notice", "body": "Writing on the wall. Read it. Act. Go.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 5}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "got_laid_off"}]}, {"title": "Write about it, warn others", "body": "Cautionary tale. Tell it before it becomes a case study.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 4, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -4}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "went_viral"}]}], "requires": ["automated_own_job"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_73_slop_confrontation", "phase": "Mid", "title": "'This Reads Like AI'", "body": "Client reads your deliverable. 'This reads like AI wrote it.' They're right. You polished it. Not enough. Client isn't angry. Disappointed. That's worse.", "choices": [{"title": "Rewrite from scratch, by hand", "body": "All night. Every word yours. Remember what craft costs.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -9, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Own it. Apologize. Fix it.", "body": "'I leaned too hard on tools. I'll redo it.' Accept the shame.", "delta": {"money": -2500, "sanity": 7, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": 2500}, {"title": "Defend it, double down", "body": "'AI-assisted is standard now.' Say it with confidence. Feel nothing.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["output_is_slop"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_75_teaching_second_semester", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Student Who Gets It", "body": "Student stays after class. Distributed consensus questions better than yours at Google. She's 22. No industry experience. More curiosity than your former org. First time in months: useful. Not impressive. Useful.", "choices": [{"title": "Invest deeply in her growth", "body": "Mentor. Recommendations. Open doors. This is the work now.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 13, "audience": -4, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 13}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Recruit her for your project", "body": "Talented. You need talent. The alignment is obvious.", "delta": {"money": -1500, "sanity": 10, "audience": 2, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 7}, "min_money": 1500}, {"title": "Keep professional distance", "body": "Don't get attached. You're an adjunct. This is temporary. Right?", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -9, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["started_teaching"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_132_the_union_whisper", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Human Workers' Alliance", "body": "Not a union. 'Human Workers\\'  Alliance.' Membership surging. Demands: human hiring ratios. AI displacement insurance. Retraining. Your old self: ridiculous. Your current self: reading the form.", "choices": [{"title": "Join. Become an organizer.", "body": "Collective bargaining for the species. This is where the fight is.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -9, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 11}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "joined_union"}]}, {"title": "Stay out. Too risky.", "body": "Just got stable. Don't rock the boat. The boat is sinking but don't rock it.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": -3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -8}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Advise them technically", "body": "Help the alliance understand the systems they're fighting. Technical knowledge IS the weapon.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 2, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_133_the_layoff_wave_again", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Final Layoff Wave", "body": "'Full AI operations.' Not layoffs — 'transition to AI-native staffing.' Eighty percent gone. You: 'transition consultant.' Help agents take over. Then leave. Fire yourself. Slowly. Professionally. HR calls it 'graceful degradation.'", "choices": [{"title": "Do the transition, take severance", "body": "Professional self-elimination. At least the severance is generous.", "delta": {"money": 2300, "sanity": -9, "audience": -1, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "got_laid_off"}]}, {"title": "Refuse. Force them to fire you.", "body": "If they want you gone, they can say it. You're not writing your own pink slip.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Rally the remaining humans", "body": "Twenty percent about to lose everything. Organize before the deadline.", "delta": {"money": -1500, "sanity": -11, "audience": 8, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 11}, "min_money": 1500, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "joined_union"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_134_lost_housing", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "Priced Out by the Machines", "body": "Landlord raises rent 40%. AI companies buying neighborhoods for 'compute-adjacent housing.' You helped build the infrastructure. Now data centers price you out of the city you created. Your apartment: 'AI Operations Staff Suite.'", "choices": [{"title": "Move to the ex-Googler colony", "body": "Portugal. Four hundred euro rent. Humans only. Evacuation route well-documented.", "delta": {"money": 2000, "sanity": 10, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "lost_housing"}, {"op": "set_flag", "flag": "moved_abroad"}]}, {"title": "Find compute-adjacent housing", "body": "Can't beat the data centers, live near them. 'Human operator' housing is subsidized.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -8, "audience": -1, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "lost_housing"}]}, {"title": "Move in with another ex-FAANG", "body": "Split rent. Share the indignity. Two senior engineers. One apartment. Zero job security.", "delta": {"money": 1000, "sanity": -8, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 11}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "lost_housing"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_136_went_viral_aftermath", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "Main Character Syndrome", "body": "Post went viral. 500K impressions. 2,000 replies. Half love you. Half: 'part of the problem.' DMs: warzone. Three journalists. A brand sponsor. You wanted attention. Got it. It's awful.", "choices": [{"title": "Ride it. Build the audience.", "body": "The window. Post again. Keep momentum. Become someone.", "delta": {"money": 1500, "sanity": -11, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -9}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Go dark for a week", "body": "Notifications off. Replies unread. Remember who you were before.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": -9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 7}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Thoughtful follow-up", "body": "Address the criticism. Show nuance. Be the adult in your own mentions.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 4, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 8}, "min_money": null}], "requires": ["went_viral"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_137_rejected_ai_consequences", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "The Luddite's Dilemma", "body": "Refused AI tools. Velocity 40% below team average. Nobody's said anything. The metrics dashboard says it for them. Working by hand in a factory that switched to machines. Your code is cleaner. Nobody measures clean.", "choices": [{"title": "Adopt selectively", "body": "Don't have to love it. Have to survive it. Start small.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -5, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": 6}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Double down on craft", "body": "Hold the line. Manual work. Human craft. Bet that quality surfaces.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -8, "ai_skill": 5, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Find the artisans", "body": "Leave for a company that values craft. They exist. They're hiding.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": 5, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 11}, "min_money": 2000}], "requires": ["rejected_ai"], "allow_freeform": true, "once_per_run": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_105_speed_event", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "Four Minutes", "body": "Startup launches. Competitor launches same product. First startup pivots. Second acquires first. Acquirer gets acqui-hired. Parent company dissolves. Four minutes. You watched the entire lifecycle of a company in less time than it took to microwave lunch.", "choices": [{"title": "Stop watching. It's not your speed.", "body": "Geological creature. Geological pace. Accept the clock you're on.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -1, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 7}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Study the pattern. Find the seams.", "body": "Even at machine speed, there are patterns. You just need different eyes.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Laugh. Then close the tab.", "body": "The absurdity is the only honest response. A lifecycle in four minutes. What a time to be slow.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": 6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 5}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_106_blind_post_relic", "phase": "Endgame", "title": "Blind Is a Museum", "body": "Someone finds your old Blind posts. 'What's TC at L5?' 'How to negotiate RSUs?' Archaeological artifacts. A thread goes viral: 'Engineers used to negotiate SALARIES with HUMANS.' Comments: 'insane that this was manual.' Your TC obsession is a historical curiosity. Levels.fyi is a memorial.", "choices": [{"title": "Laugh at your old posts", "body": "You really asked strangers what L5 paid at Meta. In public. With anxiety. Beautiful, extinct behavior.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 10, "audience": 3, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "found_balance"}]}, {"title": "Write the obituary for TC culture", "body": "Someone should explain what 'total compensation' meant when humans had leverage. You were there.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 5, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": -7}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "shipped_creative_work"}]}, {"title": "Delete everything. Scrub the history.", "body": "Your Blind posts. Your levels.fyi submissions. All of it. Let the artifacts die.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": -11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 4}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_57_the_ability_floor", "phase": "Mid", "title": "The Ability Floor", "body": "A think tank publishes a report: 'AI displacement correlates with cognitive task complexity — but inverted.' The easiest cognitive jobs survived (they're too cheap to automate). The hardest survived (AI can't yet). Everything in the middle — your range — got compressed. You're not in the permanent overclass or the permanent underclass. You're in the permanent middle, which is worse. The middle is where the floor drops out.", "choices": [{"title": "Push up — target the hardest problems", "body": "If the middle is collapsing, climb. Find the problems AI can't solve. Yet.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -6, "audience": 0, "ai_skill": 9, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Organize with other mid-tier workers", "body": "The middle is millions of people. That's a constituency. That's leverage.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 6, "audience": 9, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Accept the new topology", "body": "The ladder was always an illusion. At least now the shape of the economy is honest.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 9, "audience": -5, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 2}, "min_money": null}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_89_economy_of_specification", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Economy of Taste", "body": "Value migrated. Not to people who build. Not to people who code. To people who can describe what they want with enough precision that machines build it right the first time. 'Specification engineers.' The VC was right — taste IS the new engineering. Your Google training taught you to build. Nobody needs builders. They need people who know what to build. You never learned that. Nobody at Google did. The system built what the PMs specified.", "choices": [{"title": "Learn to specify, not build", "body": "The craft shifts. From hands to mouth. From code to language. From engineering to articulation.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -7, "audience": 1, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": -1}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "embraced_ai"}]}, {"title": "Find orgs that still value building", "body": "Somewhere, the hands still matter. Shrinking list. But not empty.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": 8, "audience": -6, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Teach specification as a skill", "body": "If this is the new literacy, someone has to teach it. Your building experience makes you the translator.", "delta": {"money": 800, "sanity": 6, "audience": 10, "ai_skill": 7, "friends": 3}, "min_money": null, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "started_teaching"}]}], "allow_freeform": true}
+{"id": "ex_faang_engineer_90_the_permanent_floor", "phase": "Late", "title": "The Floor That Doesn't Rise", "body": "Your former Google shuttle driver is fine. The cafeteria workers are fine. Hands-on, physical, human-presence jobs — untouched. The founders above you are fine. They specify, AI builds. But your tier — the skilled cognitive middle — is a crater. AI didn't replace the bottom or the top. It replaced the middle. And unlike every previous technology, it's not creating new middle-tier jobs to absorb the displaced. The permanent underclass isn't below you. It's you.", "choices": [{"title": "Go physical — teach, build, make", "body": "Hands. Presence. The things machines don't have. The pay cut is real. The dignity isn't nothing.", "delta": {"money": -2000, "sanity": 10, "audience": -7, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 9}, "min_money": 2000, "effects": [{"op": "set_flag", "flag": "pivoted_career"}]}, {"title": "Push into specification work", "body": "Join the people above the floor. Learn taste. Learn to describe what machines should build.", "delta": {"money": 0, "sanity": -9, "audience": 7, "ai_skill": 10, "friends": -3}, "min_money": null}, {"title": "Fight the structure itself", "body": "The floor is policy, not physics. Lobby. Organize. The middle class didn't die — it was killed.", "delta": {"money": -800, "sanity": 5, "audience": 11, "ai_skill": 0, "friends": 10}, "min_money": 800}], "allow_freeform": true}