Spreadsheets became popular in the 80s, before PCs were ubiquitous and cheap. Computers cost in the order of 5 to 10 thousand dollars, with lots of incompatible systems. Spreadsheets were a killer app that drove adoption and grew the market, so I'd say on balance it was positive for programmers and software generally.

AI comes at quite a different time, when tech adoption was already pretty mature / saturated to start with.

Yeah, fair enough. I think the same general principle applies though... figure out what the rules are around medical leave, and err on the side of taking medical leave and having the job protected rather than trying to push through it and having performance called into question.

If you're in the US, look into FMLA, or possibly even consult an employment attorney to put together a plan.

If you are going to be in and out, not 100%, etc... you are better off erring on the side of taking medical leave, asking for accommodations as needed, rather than trying to "soldier on" and have any unavailability used against you or characterized as a performance issue.

Aside from that, treat your new boss as a new job / new company that you need to prove yourself too. Your new boss didn't choose you, and may have a desire to "make changes", bring his own people in... etc.

It's an interesting question.

Email has morphed into something quite different from when it started, and was a good way for humans to send messages to each other. That use case has mostly been supplanted by SMS, whatsapp, the social media app of the day, etc.

These days, it's really only used for that purpose mainly inside organizations, and "public" email seems to be overwhelmingly marketing material and automated notifications, with only the sporadic message from a human being. It's kind of functioning as what people wanted RSS to be.

The cynic in me would say that it survives because it is an effective tool for marketing, and the subscriptions / recipients are controlled by the sender.

Fundamentally, it's because the "marketplace" is owned, operated and funded by the seller. So, they fill it with ads and dark patterns to get you to buy what they want you to buy, which is probably some high-margin junk, and not what you want to buy.

If there were a hypothetical "marketplace" that was operated by, say, a consumer co-operative, funded by subscriptions from consumers, then it would operate with different incentives. It would be something like... Consumer Reports. But, it turns out, people would rather scroll through ads than pay for that kind of service with money, so that's why we have what we have.

Even a traditional marketplace owned by a municipality, or an association of vendors, or a shopping mall, is a bit more consumer friendly because they impose some standards on the tenants/vendors. A true "marketplace", like a stock market, or a fruit and vegetable market, needs to be vendor neutral, and there aren't any "marketplaces" like that on the internet.