Startups try to hire software engineers disproportionately from top schools. Starting engineering salaries at startups tend to be in the 80-100k range (sometimes higher). This is the case in SV, but also in NYC and many other markets.

The trend likely doesn't hold generally because it's a very local distortion. Startups like to hire young people and almost never hire engineers over 35 [1]. Essentially they're driving up demand for a small subset of the work-force, and the price for that subset has changed accordingly.

[1]: This is a blatant overgeneralization and is definitely not true for all startups, but does appear to hold for the vast majority.

It seems to be commonly thought that there is a notion of "well-roundedness" which is important in itself. This seems to be a very common reason for learning musical instruments, languages, etc. The person may not find the particular skill or subject to be important, but will do so anyway in pursuit of the well-roundedness that they do consider important.

Can we please taboo "memorize" here? It seems to me the problem is conflating two different mental activities: 1) developing the ability to recall specific discrete responses to stimuli, and 2) gaining cohesive understanding of the component pieces of a "big picture", and the connections between them. It seems not at all surprising that the best approach for each would differ, with spaced repetition being good for the former and things like venn diagrams, mnemonic pictures, and memory palaces being good for the latter.

Concrete examples for clarity: In the first category would be vocabulary learning, e.g. mapping the stimulus 国 to the response "country". In the second category would be, say, abstract algebra: learning the group axioms and how they relate to the semigroup axioms in one direction and the abelian group axioms in the other direction.

I've found identity to be a very useful tool for habit forming. For example, when I wanted to start running regularly, I decided to adopt "runner" as part of my identity. This made it much easier for me to actually get up and run every morning. Similarly, when I quit drinking, I decided that "I'm not the kind of person who drinks." I've done the same thing with waking up early, and a few other habits. This does result in adding a lot of things to my identity, but I don't expect them to be any harder to remove than they were to adopt, if that becomes necessary.

How about simple enjoyment? I don't know what kind of exercise you're doing, but e.g. for running most people who get through the initial pain end up really enjoying it. I'm sure there are parallels for other forms of exercise.