[HN Gopher] Maybe you should do less 'work'
___________________________________________________________________
Maybe you should do less 'work'
Author : jwhiles
Score : 473 points
Date : 2022-03-28 11:08 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.johnwhiles.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.johnwhiles.com)
| Melatonic wrote:
| There was a time during the first shut down when my company
| decided to reduce peoples hours and also reduce their salaries
| instead of laying off more employees. I end up working 20 hours a
| week (instead of my normal 35) with a reduced salary (and I was
| even able to collect partial California unemployment benefits for
| the remainder of the reduced hours under a special program called
| Workshare).
|
| Honestly it was amazing - made me really want to find a job that
| was less pay but also that low in hours. Working less than 40 is
| nice but once you get down to 20 you have whole DAYS where you
| can do whatever you want. You sometimes start work at noon or end
| at noon and then have the remainder of your weekday to yourself
| or in the company of others. It was an odd experience seeing my
| neighbours and friends going through so much stress and pandemic
| related BS while I was (temporarily at least) having revelations
| about how much I wanted to work in life. Fortunately and
| unfortunately it was very short lived.
| npsimons wrote:
| > made me really want to find a job that was less pay but also
| that low in hours
|
| This was a very large factor in why I quit - old job wouldn't
| let me cut back hours, even at reduced pay, even framing it as
| "leave without pay", so I had no choice but to quit to get my
| time back, and I had enough money.
|
| As it is, I'm content staying in that "learning and broadening"
| mode, even though I'm 20-ish years in on my career.
|
| I don't think I'll go back, unless I absolutely have to, or a
| project catches my interest, but even then, no amount of money
| is going to convince me to work so many hours or ever in an
| office again (another reason I quit was they wanted us back in
| the office, despite my being much more effective working from
| home).
| shoo wrote:
| > old job wouldn't let me cut back hours, even at reduced
| pay, even framing it as "leave without pay",
|
| I was curious what your role was, at what the incentives
| might have been for your old job to refuse this.
|
| In your about page I see:
|
| > Previously a programmer in the DoD world
|
| speculation: were you working for a contractor that needed to
| bill your time out by the hour to the government? So if you
| weren't working maximum billable hours, they weren't making
| maximum profit margin on your hours, compared to someone else
| who would?
| shoo wrote:
| Some companies have flexible work policies that give employees
| the option of switching to part time. My current employer
| (megacorp, not tech) has such a policy documented internally,
| not really widely advertised. I read about it, discussed it
| with manager, I framed it as "it doesn't make sense for me to
| work full time any more. I'm still open to doing part time. Can
| we switch to part time, per company policy?". Manager agreed, I
| negotiated with managers of project I was allocated to, to let
| them lock in the 3 days a week they wanted me at work, provided
| it left me with a contiguous 4 day weekend.
|
| I've been part time for over a year now, 4 day weekends every
| week. It is pretty great. I don't do anything much productive
| with my days off, but that's okay. I worked full time for about
| a decade prior to this point.
|
| Perhaps part of this is having negotiating power to frame the
| switch to part time not as a request, but instead implicitly
| framing it as "we need to figure out a part time arrangement or
| I'll need to find another employer that does", rather than
| requesting a switch to part time. Part of the negotiating power
| is being good enough at what you do for your skills to be in
| demand, and having resources or alternatives to fall back on if
| company is not willing to agree to a part time arrangement.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I agree with the content of the article, but I don't agree with
| the premise that these things aren't also "work".
|
| Engineers tend to obsess over, "focused work" like it's the only
| way to be productive, and anything that's not "focused work" is
| wasted time. That is a surefire way to burn out.
|
| Instead, finding ways to "riff" on your job by doing work with
| longer time horizons of payoff keeps your job fun.
|
| It's all "work". Maybe the title ought to be, "Stop obsessing
| over focused work."
| giantg2 wrote:
| Well, the bosses usually only care about work the helps produce
| value. They might like the fact that you know some new tech
| that they can use in their latest assignment, but they weren't
| giving you credit while you were learning it the year before
| just for fun.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| "Learn about new tech" is only one of a great many other
| things.
|
| Cultivating your relationships professionally is also "work",
| as is talking to your customers, reviewing and discussing
| code, writing about and showing others what you've built,
| keeping your resume and interview skills sharp, staring up at
| the ceiling and thinking about work, etc.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, and most of that similarly doesn't count when it's
| time for the chips to fall.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| I wonder if the same is true for other professions as
| well? Athletes must have to design their entire lives
| around a few minutes of competition. Surgeons need to
| train for years, and all that is evaluated is the patient
| outcome in the operating room. Lawyers need to train,
| study, and prepare, and only the court outcome matters.
|
| Maybe this is an unfair parallel, but I cannot see why.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Maybe that is a fair comparison for IT as a profit
| center. If seems that wouldn't work so well for IT as a
| cost center.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Very few lawyers, proportionally, ever enter a courtroom.
| The vast majority of "lawyer" work never sees a courtroom
| at all.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| My point is it absolutely does "count"; what your boss
| values is not what's best for your career. That's
| extremely short-term thinking.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I guess I've only ever had a job and never a career.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I think for going from junior to senior, this is true, but
| for going from senior beyond, it's the opposite.
| gedy wrote:
| Lord, not my last boss. Basically was dividing salary by #
| of Jira tickets to measure productivity even for architects
| and directors. I got out of their asap.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wish I could say this surprised me.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| That might be true for what your direct boss writes on your
| annual performance review but what do his peers and his
| bosses think? What do other potential collaborators, bosses,
| and investors in your local area or your industry think?
|
| I think engineers can become obsessed with MinMaxing the
| wrong, purely local optimum without thinking: "what work-
| adjacent things might lead to a CTO role in five years?" and
| this is often quite a different question than "what makes Mr
| Shankly happy in this quarter's performance review?". Yeah,
| if your immediate boss thinks you're useless and sacks you
| then your overall profile might not help much but being an
| invisible cog in the their team will only improve the esteem
| that they hold you in and not your larger professional
| reputation.
|
| Did "the bosses" reach their own positions by closing the
| most tickets every month? I kind of doubt it and it is worth
| distinguishing what makes you useful to them vs puts you on
| the path to join them. If that seems overly careerist, well
| fire up Jira and get another bug sorted after dinner.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Find better bosses and employers. They are out there.
| jader201 wrote:
| At the end of the day, even the best bosses care about
| making money, because that's what _their_ bosses (i.e.
| investors) care about.
|
| So even if you find a boss/employer that is supportive of
| "the fun stuff" for a season, that will eventually come to
| an end.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I had a boss who became a friend that borrowed me $30k on
| 24 hours notice, made me a partner at their startup, and
| was the best man at my wedding. n=1
|
| Rare? Absolutely, but so is finding good people in
| general. Gather whatever signal you can, and keep rolling
| the dice, just as you would with friendships and romantic
| relationships.
| dominotw wrote:
| except finding a boss is a tedious process vs swiping
| right.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sounds like an idea for a new employment app. Maybe HN
| specific to map the who users of the monthly employees
| threads to profiles, then swipe for an interview.
| dgb23 wrote:
| There is a startup idea in there.
| [deleted]
| eden-alpha wrote:
| Honestly that's what anyone employed to a company should
| care about. Your aim should be delivering value, which
| sometimes means making long term investments that improve
| the development environment.
|
| You also should spend a portion time learning as it
| enables you to create more value over time.
|
| And yes you should take time to get to know your
| colleagues, take breaks, play ping pong, etc. This helps
| you refresh yourself and avoid running out of steam.
|
| But the work is meant to create value, hence why you are
| rewarding with currency you can exchange for things you
| value.
|
| Manage a positive work life balance and and do the "fun"
| stuff outside of work. Life is not all work and work is
| not all of life.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Your aim should be delivering value, which sometimes
| means making long term investments that improve the
| development environment."
|
| That makes sense as long as it also matches the
| employee's goal of being paid for the work they do. If
| you work at a place like my job, you will never be
| promoted if you do this necessary behind the scenes
| stuff. It's as if the motto is "if the business user
| doesn't see it, it never happened". Sucks if you're
| spending a lot time on things that are supposed to be
| invisible to a user, like security or availability.
| Msw242 wrote:
| Companies invest in all sorts of things that don't have
| an immediately tangible impact.
|
| In terms of developer productivity, it all depends on
| management's assumptions built into their labor model. If
| you are paying top of market for "A players" who do
| "10x," the company might need the few engineers it has to
| do a huge/unsustainable amount of "focused work"
|
| If management's model depends on high-potential team
| members upskilling on the job, "the fun stuff" might just
| be priced in.
|
| The above are absolutely reductive and do not cover all
| cases.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I have different advice. Focus less on what your bosses
| want and more on what you want. Doing what your boss wants
| is a cost you pay, do as little of that as possible so that
| you can do the things that you want.
|
| This is an exchange in a market. If Best Buy wants $500 for
| that new TV, would you go in and offer them $750 for it? If
| Wal-Mart will sell you the same TV for $400, consider going
| there isntead.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree.
|
| A fun side story is when I got a new manager a while
| back. In our first one-on-one, he told me that he has
| connections through the company and can use them to get
| me promoted to another team if I make him happy. I get
| that making the boss happy is part of a job, but that
| should be accomplished by doing good work. This direct
| proposition just felt too quid pro quo and had a stink to
| it, in my opinion.
| couchand wrote:
| Was your new manager new to being a manager? I could see
| that kind of offer coming from an operator, but I could
| just as much see it coming from someone lacking
| confidence trying to project a miscalculated sense of
| authority.
| dominotw wrote:
| How does one go about this?
|
| You interview your boss in the interview process and get a
| feel for what type of preson he is and then go with that
| gut feeling yes/no
|
| when your current boss leaves and you get a new boss that
| you don't like. Quit and go back to step 1.
|
| Does anyone operate like this? doesn't seem very practical
| or foolproof.
| Msw242 wrote:
| Smaller companies are more culturally homogeneous. With
| smaller companies, managers are usually a reflection of
| the company's cultural values.
|
| If you accept the above as true, then you can start to
| reach out to team members at the company and ask them
| what the work environment is like.
|
| If the work environment lines up with your values, then
| you'll probably be fine, even when the hiring manager
| moves on to greener pastures.
| dominotw wrote:
| > ask them what the work environment is like.
|
| I've been asked this when i interviewed ppl but i never
| gave them the truth and I've never gotten any honest
| truth when i was on the other side also.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I find there's generally a hidden truth in _how_ they
| answer it, but not in the answer itself. Stuff like
| hesitation, over the top praise, indirect answers, etc.
| If it sounds like they 're telling me what I want to hear
| (or sounds like a sales pitch), then the BS meter starts
| clicking.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I've had great bosses, all the way up the chain... but they
| were all held captive to the "efficiency" measures of the
| time-tracking system. Everywhere I've ever worked has
| implemented a methodology that, regardless of what they
| called it (XP, Scrum, Kanban, whatever) boiled down to:
| write down everything you're going to do, write down how
| long it's going to take, and I'm going to measure how
| accurately you predicted how long it was going to take. And
| then they start clamping down on the "what you're going to
| do" part and make sure that everything you're "going to do"
| aligns with the business goals (that is, has a direct,
| immediate path to more money). Obviously reading an entire
| _book_ would never fly under this regime.
|
| It's doubly frustrating because it's always there, and
| drives so much inefficiency _in the name of_ efficiency.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > but they were all held captive to the "efficiency"
| measures of the time-tracking system
|
| Were you working at an agency or consultancy that billed
| hours to clients?
|
| I've never seen a good engineering organization use time
| tracking software on their engineers.
|
| I'd go so far as to take it as a major negative sign
| against the company if your time is being tracked like
| that. Exceptions of course to any business that is
| billing hours, which obviously must be tracked. However,
| even those organizations are smart enough to know that
| writing code isn't the only productive activity.
| cardosof wrote:
| Not parent poster but I've seen more and more startups
| setting up their jiras with whatever the folks who
| invented "safe" (scaled agile framework) say, while
| obsessing over measuring and predicting delivery metrics,
| all in order to have hard data to backup roadmap claims.
| wins32767 wrote:
| You're performing a local optimization rather than a
| global one. The reason predictability of delivery matters
| is that the rest of the company needs to do a bunch of
| work for the set of features you're delivering. Support
| needs training, marketing needs to send some emails, the
| sales team needs to update their demos, etc.
| aprdm wrote:
| For what it's worth, I've been doing this for 10+ years,
| being a lead, a manager, and I never worked anywhere that
| tried to have "efficiency" measurements of devs.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have looked but haven't found any.
| IAmNotAFix wrote:
| > That is a surefire way to burn out.
|
| Any source on that? I agree with the assessment about engineers
| (althought it's a generalization), but I always thought it was
| because their "focused work" is what they actually like doing.
| In my experience work was most stressful when it strayed the
| most from focused work.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit on what kind of "source" you'd like
| to see? I'm trying to imagine what could possibly satisfy
| this request and I'm coming up blank.
|
| Generally, slapping "Source?" in a reply to a comment is a
| lot less helpful and productive than you might initially
| think.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If you can maintain a state of focus and actively like your
| work, you are likely near peak productivity and quite far
| from possible burnout. Just don't push _beyond_ your
| reasonable limits or you might end up giving yourself a heart
| attack.
| Qub3d wrote:
| I think the article author agrees with you. That's why they put
| 'work' in quotes.
|
| It is useful for their argument to split 'work' and 'not work'
| along these lines because they are trying to reach readers that
| honestly _do_ believe that any time not actively writing code
| for a jira ticket isn 't work.
| rconti wrote:
| For me, I think it was related to conflating my value as am
| employee to being able to efficiently and effectively complete
| tasks to a high standard in a short amount of time. It felt
| like if I wasn't producing enough tangible results fast enough,
| I wasn't doing a "good enough job". It didn't really matter if
| it was a day/week/month where I was absolutely crushing it, or
| a time period where I was having a hard time focusing; the end
| goal was the same. The internal satisfaction, if you can call
| it that, was accomplishing tasks. It wasn't (usually) to the
| point of overwork or burnout.
|
| But the problem was, I never considered my own growth. It never
| felt like a good use of time to take on more challenging
| projects because I wouldn't get the same sense of
| accomplishment. It would be hard, I wouldn't have much to show
| for myself for a few weeks, and so on.
|
| Obviously this is all subconscious, you don't realize you're
| choosing things you're good at, or an expert on. Expertise
| feels nice! And, to be fair, not everyone's employers give them
| the freedom to choose/learn/grow that many of us enjoy.
| tunnuz wrote:
| This is very relatable to me. Since you're using the past
| tense, would you be happy to share what helped you get out of
| that mindset?
| drekipus wrote:
| I really resonate with this post; I don't want to say I there's
| something I "struggle" with but I do feel the need to be able to
| balance my time a bit more.
|
| I'm often a very productive member of my team, I love challenges,
| and I love digging into things and coming out the other side and
| feeling accomplished; My manager gets me onto things and asks
| when they might be done by, and I feel complied to deliver more
| in shorter time frames.
|
| It's not so much that I feel "pressured" by expectations; but
| more I feel "involved" - my failures are the teams failures, my
| success is the team's success. and I want my team/product/company
| to succeed, so I spend my effort contributing to that.
|
| However, this does swamp out time for my personal things that I
| want to do; I am wanting to learn lisp, and have some of my own
| personal projects that I want to play around with, in a multitude
| of technologies; I don't have spare time outside of work, so it's
| really on work time that I want to be able to experiment with
| these things. as the author puts it - "it doesn't offer any
| immediate value to me or the company, ... but I think generally
| made me fitter smarter and more productive"..
|
| So for me, the balancing act, is to assert time to
| reflect/recharge in other spheres of technology, while also
| feeling the communal duty of our team to get the company going.
| informal007 wrote:
| Except you like your work
| swamp40 wrote:
| >> *Obviously I don't practise any of what I talk about here*
| da39a3ee wrote:
| (a) You should you whatever makes you happy. If that's work then
| ok, but see (b)
|
| (b) If doing "work" is what makes you happy, then when you are
| doing work on your own time, I'd suggest trying to stretch
| yourself. Try to do something which seems difficult, or radical.
| Allow yourself to fantasize that you're going to become famous by
| doing this thing whatever it is.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| One should definitely not be working hard. You need to minimize
| work and maximize income. The more you work, the less you
| actually make per-hour invested, if the income does not grow
| proportionally to surpass the current ratio. Unless you're in a
| good strategic position which ensures you will get huge benefits
| by working hard (think large stake in the company), working hard
| is a losing game.
|
| A company will pay you the bare minimum it can get away with,
| taking into considerations all sort of parameters (such as risk
| of attrition) so naturally, your optimal behavior should be to
| work as little as possible to not get fired. Use the extra time
| to invest in yourself or just enjoy life.
| muse900 wrote:
| Personal experience has taught me that there is a MAXIMUM amount
| of COMP that you will receive as an employee, no matter how much
| hard work you put into your company.
|
| So basically what is happening, is that you are working hard for
| some achievements, that someone else is going to benefit off.
| giantg2 wrote:
| And that max level is specific to each individual based largely
| on things out of their control, like politics.
|
| Edit: why downvote?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yes. Compensation is best measured as hourly rate: $/h. Working
| too hard just decreases that ratio because work hours increase
| while money stays constant.
| jhgb wrote:
| > Working too hard just decreases that ratio because work
| hours increase while money stays constant
|
| I assume this may hold for the US, but not for many other
| countries. For example in my country the hourly rate for
| overtime hours is higher by law. Your hourly compensation
| decrease while working longer would only decrease if you were
| an external contractor paid a fixed amount of money for
| completion of a specific task.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| We aren't really talking about overtime though, which also
| exists in the US, but the amount of output during a normal
| 8 hour day. You might get paid somewhat more than a peer
| for putting out 2x the output but there are massive
| diminishing returns.
| jhgb wrote:
| What I was responding to literally talked about "work
| hours increase". I don't see how you can have "work hours
| increase" and simultaneously keep the same "normal 8 hour
| day". That sounds contradictory to me.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Even for salaried employees it is not rational to work
| too hard. You may spend 8 hours at work but you don't
| spend every minute of that time actually working. You
| could optimize that if you wanted but you're not going to
| be rewarded proportionally if at all. Returns diminish
| quickly and that's if your efforts are even noticed.
| Burning oneself out to finish something quickly can even
| backfire since managers can always just find more work
| that needs to be done.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| In the USA we have this but not for salaried positions, and
| most engineers are salaried - hence why they are
| incentivized to work less.
| honkycat wrote:
| Lately I have been using the metaphor of "keeping the temperature
| low" at work to describe how I am approaching my work.
|
| You see, in the past, I would work on all cylinders constantly
| worried about how I was performing and trying to get work done as
| fast as possible.
|
| I would let the temperature rise and rise until I was boiling
| over.
|
| And I would get a lot of work done! However:
|
| 1. This is unsustainable. It stressed me out and left no slack
| room for me to take on additional work.
|
| 2. It was annoying to work with me because I was constantly
| stressed out about nothing.
|
| I was judging myself for not working hard enough, while working
| harder than anyone else around me. And what comes naturally from
| judging yourself is judging others. And it was a viscous cycle.
|
| Any more my priority is to take regular breaks, meditate, create
| space for myself to find compassion and love for the people
| around me, and overall just try and be a positive calming force
| in the company.
|
| And people love it! I am complemented for my maturity and
| sensitivity and leadership abilities.
| jmfldn wrote:
| "Any more my priority is to take regular breaks, meditate,
| create space for myself to find compassion and love for the
| people around me, and overall just try and be a positive
| calming force in the company"
|
| This is great, and very wise too. Great for you and great for
| everyone around you. People who generate peaceful relations and
| harmonious cohesion within a team (or society) are like force
| multipliers for the quality of that team or society. I work on
| a team where this is somewhat the case and where I try to
| embody this (imperfectly... but I try!) and it makes for a
| productive team, harmonious and strong communication and
| general happiness.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| Don't need to read the article just the headline I'm on it
| already !
| sna1l wrote:
| I think the main point this article is missing is that having to
| work extremely hard (10-12 hrs+) usually implies there is
| something structurally wrong with the team. Your team is
| criminally understaffed, you aren't getting enough time to fix
| tech debt, etc. While understaffed, there are times that you just
| have to work hard to keep things together, but if you don't
| surface these issues up the chain then you will for sure burn
| out.
| caffeine wrote:
| You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to
| the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows
| funds, etc.
|
| It's your job to decide how that company is run. It's your job to
| decide what investments that company needs to make to get good
| returns.
|
| It's also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters
| into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-
| manage legal hazard, reputational hazard, etc.
|
| There is nobody _else_ to run this company. It does not have a
| _right_ to a good outcome. A lot of companies fail. Your company
| of one WILL fail if you make poor decisions.
|
| When you truly internalise that last fact is when you become an
| adult.
|
| (Edit: clarified that the last paragraph refers to the previous
| one specifically)
| verisimi wrote:
| > When you truly internalise that fact is when you become an
| adult.
|
| When you truly internalise that life is about making money,
| that you need to make a good return for your stakeholders (aka
| family), etc is the day when you have been fully assimilated
| into the borg.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| >When you truly internalise that last fact is when you become
| an adult.
|
| When you truly internalise that last fact is when you truly
| internalize capitalism. Congratulations. There will be no
| prize.
| shuntress wrote:
| I notice you forgot to mention mutually beneficial
| collaborations, soft skills, and "intangibles". Through
| unofficial back channel communication between my company and
| yours I would like to suggest you work on refining your
| metaphor to include these things more prominently.
|
| Also maybe don't focus so much on _"Personal Responsibility"_.
| ausbah wrote:
| people aren't perfectly rational individualistic economic
| agents. no one operates like this and expecting anyone to do so
| is psychotic and dehumanizing
|
| this reads like a teenager, or ironically someone who never
| mentally moved past the point of being a teenager, who just
| read Atlas Shrugged for the first time
| dxbydt wrote:
| ffs.
|
| Humans have lived on the planet for 200000 years. This way of
| organizing people as a company interacting with the labor
| market with assets & investments & risk management...is at best
| a 100 years old. Its like a drop in the ocean of time.
|
| That said, when I was taking courses in Finance as a young 20
| something, I came up with this same exact analogy & took it to
| its logical end - I conceived a stock exchange called the Human
| Stock Exchange, where every human being was a human stock
| ticker, and if you liked the performance of your colleagues you
| would buy their human stock so their human stock price would go
| up. You could sell short the poorly performing colleagues on
| your team...its a pretty toxic concept, if you think through
| it.
|
| Ofcourse, since its such a toxic idea, given the extremely
| virtuous nature of our benign species, this toxic idea must
| already exist & thrive. See for instance Will Smith's stock
| taking a beating after what happened yesterday -
| https://www.hsx.com/security/view/WSMIT
| bsedlm wrote:
| > I conceived a stock exchange called the Human Stock
| Exchange, where every human being was a human stock ticker,
|
| I've had a very vague (somewhat similar) idea that I'm stil
| trying to articulate well.
|
| something like what you said but the stock is run on a
| blockchain
|
| then every person can emit their own stock which can get
| traded around.
|
| at some point, the emitter person must (somehow) be made to
| respond for what they emitted.
|
| naturally, some people will be reliable (and their emited
| credits will have high value) and others will constantly flop
| and default so nobody will be interested in having lots of
| their credit.
|
| so far, this "idea" (which is just barely a sketch) poses
| more problems than solutions (maybe it's a bit of a barely-
| baked idea looking for a problem?) but it's fun to think
| about what else we could possibly do that nobody's thoght to
| do yet.
| caffeine wrote:
| Ha it's actually sort of already happening with NFTs. If
| your celebrity status goes up your NFT value does too.
| ozim wrote:
| What is your idea of how people were living for most of that
| history?
|
| You think being human stock ticker is worse than:
|
| living on average 25 years, starving most of your life,
| having high chance of being literal slave not figurative,
| being ostracized and killed for any silly reason by local
| community, being dumped into trash or simply killed if local
| community found you were not useful or weak
|
| So if you take it into perspective of 200000 years - being
| human ticker is actually really nice and comfortable.
| svnt wrote:
| > living on average 25 years, starving most of your life,
| having high chance of being literal slave not figurative,
| being ostracized and killed for any silly reason by local
| community, being dumped into trash or simply killed if
| local community found you were not useful or weak
|
| This is all outdated colonial myth. You should turn on your
| educational updates.
| ozim wrote:
| I agree average lifespan of 25 is a bit unfair as that
| was mostly because of infant death rates.
|
| But I still think hunter-gatherer that broke his leg had
| maybe couple of months to live.
|
| Peasants in middle ages in Europe that were not able to
| "simply" change jobs or move out to live wherever they
| want. That would have to put up with abuse from land
| owners and other "nobles".
|
| The same hell if one would be a woman in past times - not
| just no ability to vote - just daily abuse as in rape and
| violence.
|
| I would like to see some real arguments for "life was
| better back then, now we are mindless drones".
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Wait, I can think of myself as a company selling my labor power
| on the labor market? Interesting thought experiment, let's see
| where it goes.
|
| I sell this commodity on the market, to whom? Business owners,
| I guess. And this is a weird one: I actually have to sell this
| commodity on the market, if I want to eat and live and all. So
| does almost everyone else. But the buyers have other options,
| so I guess everyone on the sell side basically has to undercut
| each other til there's no more profit left on our side. What
| does it mean if I'm not profiting, I sell my labor at the cost
| of production? Best I can hope for is find an inefficiency and
| hope to eke out a little bit myself until I can afford to be a
| buyer? Maybe the whole thing doesn't quite work.
|
| Yeah, I'd say internalizing the, uh, implications of this setup
| is pretty much a requirement for being a grown adult.
| lliamander wrote:
| > But the buyers have other options
|
| That's not always an assumption that holds. Many "buyers of
| labor" in the tech sector right now are very limited on their
| options, whereas the "labor sellers" have many options.
|
| > Best I can hope for is find an inefficiency and hope to eke
| out a little bit myself until I can afford to be a buyer?
|
| You will always be a buyer of some things and a seller of
| others. "Spending" your time to invest in rare and valuable
| skills that you can "sell" on the labor market can net you
| very nice returns.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| adenozine wrote:
| Do you have kids?
|
| This makes no sense from my perspective.
|
| I could literally put myself through anything that I needed to,
| if it meant the safety or well-being of my children. It's not a
| company, it's a primal force from thousands of years of
| primordial reinforcement. I'd manage with less capital, so that
| my kids have a chance at college. I'd manage with less chance
| of promotion, so that my kids can have my presence at important
| functions. I'd manage with anything that arose, if it meant
| something better for them.
|
| I think it's important to understand, and deeply internalize
| the personal responsibility that adult life brings and the
| extent to which our decisions influence the things that end up
| happening, but this analogy of yours borders on psychosis if
| taken to it's literal end.
|
| A little deeper still, and I think what you're really pointing
| at is the boundary that decisions can't cross, that certain
| things are out of our control. Risk management can come into
| play, but ultimately risk can never be negated. You can only
| shift it. You can evade the risk of being run over by a bus by
| never leaving home, but maybe that raises the risk of dying in
| a house fire, or by being poisoned by lead paint, etc. These
| aren't "company decisions" they're just a byproduct of life in
| the natural realm.
|
| I sincerely hope that you don't actually conduct this thinking
| deep into your lifestyle, perceiving things as though one big
| company spreadsheet of assets and liabilities.
|
| Much love, friend.
| nostrademons wrote:
| It's the same calculus, it's just the kids need to figure
| into it once you have them.
|
| I made a number of choices differently once I had kids. I
| folded up a startup and took steady employment at a company
| with good work/life balance. I bought a house in a good
| school district rather than renting and taking the risk that
| rising rents would force them away from their grandparents. I
| make a choice to drop the work at 4:30 so I can go walk to
| pick the older one up from pre-school rather than get an
| extra 20 minutes of work in.
|
| But all of these are still _choices_ - they 're weighing the
| things important to me and deciding that I'm going to
| allocate my labor and capital in different ways. Once you
| start getting into the economics of pricelessness, when you
| _must_ do this for your kids or you 're a bad parent, bad
| things often happen. You lose the ability to make rational
| trade-offs, and your kids often sense that and never learn
| the ability to make rational trade-offs.
| caffeine wrote:
| > Do you have kids?
|
| Yes.
|
| > I sincerely hope that you don't actually conduct this
| thinking deep into your lifestyle
|
| I think what I said holds true about your economic decisions
| (which the article I'm commenting on is about).
|
| I don't believe you have to (or even really can) view your
| entire life through an economic lens. I didn't mean to imply
| you are ONLY a company and nothing else.
|
| I did mean the last bit that nobody else is going to make
| sure you don't have a bad outcome as applying to life
| generally.
| sanderjd wrote:
| > _I 'd manage with anything that arose, if it meant
| something better for them._
|
| You had me up until this one. It is not (in my view)
| necessary to optimize monotonically toward anything that
| makes life better for my children. All the stuff you said
| before that, I would certainly do if the alternative was
| _deprivation_ for my children, but having secured their basic
| well-being, making things even better for them is only one
| consideration among others. As an extreme, if I had enough
| money in the bank to secure them shelter, food, education,
| and enjoyment, I would not then take or continue in a job I
| hate in order to pad out a big trust fund.
|
| I fear this is a pedantic point I'm making as I suspect this
| sort of going above and beyond is not what you meant, but it
| was my reaction to the end of that first paragraph.
| allisdust wrote:
| To expand the analogy further, your children are the
| shareholders of course and your partner is the board (:
| adenozine wrote:
| I dare not imagine my wife's response if I were to say this
| to her.
| AitchEmArsey wrote:
| "You're fired"
| lliamander wrote:
| It's metaphor about how to manage your career, nothing more.
|
| The point of the metaphor is to not depend upon your current
| employer to manage your career for you. If you do, they will
| inevitably manage your career to suit their own interests,
| not yours.
|
| I follow the parent poster's advice in part because I have
| kids. I manage my career to serve my personal success so that
| I can care for those who depend upon me.
|
| Not all of life is one big spreadsheet of assets and
| liabilities; just those things that are relevant to my career
| growth.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| I don't see how changing the perspective of selling labor to
| ...selling labor really jumps the gap into psychosis.
| adenozine wrote:
| Your children (they're human beings btw) are not extensions
| of your "inner company" is the point I was making. It's not
| rational to reduce children to that sort of algebra problem
| thinking. That's a huge red flag for someone's mental
| state. If you're not able to recognize that you can only
| solve human problems with human solutions that incorporate
| human needs and wants, then you start down the path of
| psychosis and anti-social behaviors. It's small animal
| torture, fire-setting, bed-wetting, and then it's full-
| blown serial killer.
|
| I'm obviously exaggerating, but not THAT much.
|
| You can't just paint over that with an analogy. Maybe I
| just treat my kids different, but there's literally nothing
| about work that I care about even remote as much as my
| childrens' well-being. I'd burn my inner company to the
| ground if it meant they get a chance at a decent life. I
| believe it's a biological imperative to remain willing to
| self-sacrifice to any necessary extent for the betterment
| of the offspring.
| kritiko wrote:
| The etymology of economics is household management.
| Children are dependents of your household.
|
| I'm not really sure what your objection to this analogy
| is.... Choosing to work more so you can send your kids to
| an elite private school is one action that somebody can
| take. Choosing to work less so that you can be more
| involved in your children's lives is another. All the
| analogy is asking is that you be intentional about how
| you are managing yourself and your household.
| Jensson wrote:
| > I could literally put myself through anything that I needed
| to, if it meant the safety or well-being of my children
|
| Right, the main difference is that nepotism is bad in a
| regular company but in a personal company it is the opposite,
| not practicing nepotism makes you look bad.
|
| Aside from this the difference isn't that big.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| Having kids enhances his analogy, as it increases the need
| for your "company" to make good decisions. Ultimately the
| GP's message is an empowering one. You have value, you have
| agency, you can leverage these things to improve your
| situation (and by extension your family's situation). People
| are getting stuck on taking the post literally.
| kawfey wrote:
| completely off topic - user:adenozine replied to
| user:caffeine. What a coincidence lol. (Caffeine keeps us
| alert and awake because it blocks adenosine)
| powvans wrote:
| I think this is a great way to look at things and would just
| like to add that when you have a spouse and children, aka
| additional stakeholders, it's not _exactly_ a business of one.
| [deleted]
| mathattack wrote:
| I was trying to disagree with you on the point of becoming an
| adult, and I couldn't come up with one.
| zormino wrote:
| Wow people are not liking this for some reason. This way of
| thinking about selling your labour in a market is exactly why
| it's called the labour market. People selling labour need to
| understand how the market works in order to participate in the
| most advantageous way for their own situationq. Nothing said
| here detracts from the fact that the calculus of how you go
| about this changes with your priorities, for example having
| children might lower your risk tolerance when deciding where to
| sell your labour, so maybe the 'company of one' way of naming
| it doesn't fit, but the concept is solid. It isn't meant to gut
| you of your humanity, just provide a thought framework to make
| sure you are competing in the market fairly.
| srveale wrote:
| > When truly internalise that fact is when you become an adult.
|
| Implying that everyone who runs a company is mature and makes
| responsible decisions, which is not true.
| mc32 wrote:
| Not all companies survive. Some companies, like people
| survive despite odd choices due to corruption, etc.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| We live in societies that find it unacceptable for people
| to fail, to varying degrees depending on where in the world
| you are, and at least personally, that's a difference
| between companies and people that I'd like to maintain and
| even strengthen.
| screye wrote:
| There is are 2 assumptions here, that needs to stated more
| loudly.
|
| 1: "Companies maximize profits. Humans maximize utility.
| Profits != utility"
|
| 2: "Profits are absolute. Utility is perceived."
|
| Utility is an under-defined combination of components on
| Maslow's pyramid. Even more vexing, is the realization that
| these components vary from concrete (health, food, shelter) to
| hedonistically moving targets (social acclaim, money, material
| wants) to merely perceived (self-actualization). The term:
| "under-defined combination" is doing a lot of heavy lifting
| here. Because some utilities are uncomparable. 'Time spent with
| your children' cannot be quantified in corresponding wealth or
| social acclaim. Till date, I am yet to find a better compact
| representation (meme) of the human condition than Maslow's
| pyramid.
|
| However, to a more technical audience I prefer the 'RL agent'
| analogy. A human is an RL agent in a weakly observed universe.
| The utility function it weakly defined, expected outcomes vary
| from true outcomes and you can only control your action space.
| As any RL researcher will tell you; an agent tries to maximize
| their utility. However, they must periodically update the
| utility function itself and the manner in which the world is
| observed. This directly applies to humans. Every once in a
| while, use previous experiences to re-evaluate your perception
| of the world. Reflect on the very foundational drivers of your
| goals with this new perception in mind. Find new goals. In
| between these iterations, a person focuses on reaching whatever
| their current perception of the goal is, until the next
| iteration.
|
| This RL model is incredibly effective. If each iteration leads
| to massive changes in goals, then 'regularize' or use 'RMSE' on
| your utility function. If each iteration sees too little change
| and your utility isn't good enough; then you're stuck in a
| local minima. Increase your learning rate and lean more on
| exploration (try something new) instead of exploitation
| (staying your course).
| Toine wrote:
| From a certain extreme perspective, there is _some_ truth to
| what you 're saying, but wow, this is so one-sided, extreme,
| partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing
| has done to people.
|
| This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not robots
| only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. We are
| hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs,
| this is scientifically proven.
|
| I hope young people don't read this and blindly believe it.
| sanderjd wrote:
| The parent comment didn't say that the "company of one" is
| _all_ that you are. It is a useful concept for the part of a
| person 's life that entails their career, and it's also
| critical to recognize that a career is only one of a number
| of the important facets of a life.
|
| So I agree with you that it's a very partial treatment, but I
| didn't read it as attempting to be totalizing.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I think you're severely misreading the original comment, and
| to be frank, your interpretation is pretty juvenile. Nowhere
| does the person say that we are robots.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yeah, I took it as rather the opposite of saying that we
| are robots. Ultimately, being responsible for one's self is
| a choice, which is something robots can't do.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Right. I didn't even take it as disagreeing with the
| piece - there's enough nuance there to see harmony
| between the post and the comment.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| the parent is critiquing the argument that we are all homo
| economicus - an agent whose primary function is to operate
| within the market at maximum efficiency to optimise for
| profit. The counterargument is that no, we aren't, and
| optimising for market exploitation is both an effort in
| frustration and anathema to human wellbeing. The GP is
| encouraging us to act like robots by living our lives in
| accordance with market calculations, not human
| actualisation and need-fulfilment.
|
| It's an ideological position, and a harmful one at that. We
| aren't all totally independent actors competing in a
| ruthless market to maximise profits.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| OP did not say that you have to optimize for profit.
| However, they said that we have to optimize for
| something. In other words, there's opportunity cost to
| everything we do.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| > You are the boss of a company of one. Your company
| sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in
| assets, it borrows funds, etc. It's your job to decide
| how that company is run. It's your job to decide what
| investments that company needs to make to get good
| returns.
|
| > It's also your job to interpret the contracts your
| company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to
| appropriately risk-manage legal hazard, reputational
| hazard, etc.
|
| This is an argument that you have the responsibility
| alone to optimise your behaviour in the market. Yes, your
| utility function could be oriented towards something
| other than profit, but OP specifically oriented their
| argument towards getting "good returns".
|
| While this is the direction that neoliberal capitalism
| pushes you in, what with the social alienation and
| commodification of everything in life, but that's because
| it's not aligned with human wellbeing. Your self-image
| should not be one of a company optimising its market
| behaviour; this precludes socialising, spending time in
| nature, exercising for reasons beyond increased economic
| productivity. It reduces human existence down to rational
| behaviour in a market.
|
| To present an alternative, because criticism in a vacuum
| isn't very effective: I personally think that you should
| optimise your involvement in the economy, so that you are
| minimally involved in the economy, so that you can spend
| your precious little time on earth doing things that
| actually matter to you - whether that's social
| relationships, hobbies, communities, whatever. The market
| is something to be avoided, not exploited. To do this
| effectively you have to understand the market, sure, but
| it's the same way an accountant for an enterprise company
| has to deeply understand tax law in order to avoid paying
| taxes.
|
| If that's also what OP was arguing for then that's a
| whole other thing, but that's not the impression I got at
| all with the whole "you are a company, start acting like
| one" spiel.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| "Good returns" are what you'll make of your time that's
| worthwhile to you. The interpretation that this means
| only money is entirely _your_ interpretation.
| nautilius wrote:
| Caffeine doesn't say that anywhere, though. Quite the
| opposite.
| bigbluedots wrote:
| The parent is critiquing an argument that the OP did not
| make.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is a new trend, or if I've only just
| begun noticing it over the last decade. People seem to
| have completely lost the ability to infer the meaning of
| words if it lies beyond face value. What a trite, shallow
| interpretation.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| This has always been the case, but you notice it more and
| more over time due to your own continually deepening
| perspective.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Watch older movies to see this in action. A older movie
| might say "The terrorists will get their hands on
| uranium!" and leave it at that, the audience
| understanding the implications. A movie from the early
| 2000's goes as far as "The terrorists will get uranium
| and make a bomb!", expecting less than the audiences from
| before. Now it's "The terrorists will get uranium, make a
| bomb, and blow up San Francisco, killing millions of
| people, including women and children!" and repeat that
| statement 4 - 5 times so that the lowest common
| denominator in the focus group gets it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| People are always playing the "I Never Actually Said"
| gotcha-game these days. Someone says A, B, and C, which
| strongly, and obviously imply D, but when you push back
| against D, the retort is "Ha! I never actually said D...
| You're _putting words in my mouth!_ " This often happens
| when D is some abhorrent viewpoint, but A, B, and C are
| benign when taken strictly at face value.
|
| Not saying there was anything abhorrent in this thread,
| but I agree with you that I'm seeing this pattern more
| and more in today's hyper-sensitive climate.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Yeah but that's not what my comment was, was it? If
| anything, I might have been reading inferences that
| weren't intended by the author.
|
| Why do you feel the need to be so condescending? Someone
| disagrees with your perspective and its because they are
| the least intelligent person in the room?
| beaconstudios wrote:
| my point is that we should oppose the system that forces
| everybody to be in market competition with each other. I
| understand the position being forwarded, but I think it's
| describing a system that's antithetical to human values
| and thus should not be just accepted as a fact like
| gravity.
|
| Perhaps it is you who is being shallow and trite, not
| understanding the actual objection I have. I know that
| what the OP is saying is a description of how to optimise
| your economic standing - I've done it plenty myself
| because optimisation comes naturally to me; I'm saying
| that's a shite way to live and invest your time and
| energy.
| jka wrote:
| Markets can behave in ways that are either competitive
| (my tomatoes are better than your tomatoes) or co-
| operative (my tomatoes are a perfect complement to your
| cheese). And sometimes they morph from one mode into the
| other.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Maybe this is a definitional argument, but I'd say the
| latter would be complementary, not cooperative. A
| cooperative model is one where people work together to
| achieve an outcome, like two kids working together on a
| school assignment.
|
| Outside an individual company, competition is favoured
| over cooperation, except when companies work together on
| e.g. supply chains.
| jka wrote:
| Yep, you're correct about that terminology, thanks. I'll
| leave my comment as-is because it'll be less confusing
| for anyone reading yours.
|
| It's possible that companies (knowingly or unwittingly)
| co-operate under some circumstances, though - even if
| competition is generally the {expected/favoured} model.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > The counterargument is that no, we aren't, and
| optimising for market exploitation is both an effort in
| frustration and anathema to human wellbeing
|
| I don't see how an argument that agrees with the parent
| is counter argument. They literally said we all need to
| look out for our own well being, and a part of that is
| managing our participation in voluntary exchange.
|
| > We aren't all totally independent actors competing in a
| ruthless market to maximise profits.
|
| I missed the part where the parent said that. Where was
| it?
| beaconstudios wrote:
| The model that the parent is positing is that we are all
| totally independent actors competing in a labour market
| and our primary goal should be to optimise our behaviour
| in said market.
|
| While that's an accurate description of neoliberal
| economics, I'm arguing that it's neither natural, nor
| necessarily productive, nor conducive to human wellbeing
| to mould one's behaviour to fit that system. Or to be
| more concrete: you're wasting your life studying the
| labour market for opportunities, learning new disciplines
| to increase your wage, reading through employment
| contracts looking for advantages (obviously you should
| check for big fuck-you statements in contracts, just for
| self-protection). Not only is the market irrational, such
| that behaviour based on a rational model of the market is
| a poor guarantee of positive outcomes, but that living
| such a life based on market rationality is pretty
| immiserating and misaligned with what actually makes
| people happy.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > The model that the parent is positing is that we are
| all totally independent actors competing in a labour
| market and our primary goal should be to optimise our
| behaviour in said market.
|
| Parent never said totally independent, just that the
| assumption is the most useful operating mode. "Don't jump
| in a pool expecting a life guard" is good advice whether
| there is a tower nearby or not.
|
| They also never said optimizing our participation should
| be a primary goal, but that our participation needs to be
| managed with our actual goals in mind. It's like he told
| everyone they should exercise and the counter argument is
| "Not everyone should quit their jobs to be a fitness
| model". It's nonsense.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I think it's a matter of differing interpretations. When
| I hear "you are a company of one, and it's your job to
| manage your labour in the market and your investments to
| get the returns you want", it sounds to me like the
| commenter is saying that you should view yourself as a
| company operating in the marketplace and act accordingly.
| How do companies act in the market? They optimise for
| profit, they interact transactionally as opposed to
| through social and communal relations, and they hire
| specialised labour (or in the analogy, develop
| specialised skills) to fulfill their fiduciary and legal
| requirements. Your interpretation may differ, but that's
| the nature of perspectives.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| The entire comment is him explaining exactly how to
| interpret the you are a company statement, elaborating on
| the ways in which he intends the metaphor to be used.
| Extending it with your own biases and arguing against
| those biases is reactionary and not super useful.
|
| You could have phrased much of your statement as "this
| should not be extended to mean...", or "If you are also
| implying X then Y", and it would have been totally valid.
| The counter argument framing is the issue, because it's
| just not a counter argument.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I just went back and reread it to see if I missed
| something, but aside from the profit-centered angle
| (which I've already conceded was a misreading on my
| part), nope, it still appears to be entirely market
| focused. I couldn't say if that was intended or if the
| author just over-extended the analogy (obviously I
| inferred the former), but the whole comment was framed
| around operating effectively within the market economy.
| That's explicitly what it says.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > but the whole comment was framed around operating
| effectively within the market economy. That's explicitly
| what it says.
|
| Exactly. So where does all of this other stuff about
| being a robot and only optimizing for profit come in? The
| topic is work, and he's telling you how to think about
| work, not how to think about relationships with
| colleagues, hobbies, life goals, etc.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Well I didn't make the robot comment, but I think it's
| valid to say that promoting people trying to operate
| rationally in the market can be pretty robotic if that's
| your primary motivation. However, given I withdrew that
| contention, having realised the OP was not talking about
| making market optimisation and profiteering your primary
| goal but just talking about how the labour market works,
| of course the robot thing isn't relevant anymore either.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Different perspectives for looking at the same thing provide
| different benefits, and they can be held simultaneously. For
| example, getting married to someone involves love and
| commitment and all that jazz, but I also like to advise also
| looking at it as a business, especially if you have or are
| going to have children. It is no different in that the two
| parents (and maybe even other adults in a multi family
| household) need to manage tasks, inventory, money, etc.
|
| That does not mean you should treat your family or yourself
| exactly as a business, but there are some aspects that are
| beneficial if managed in that manner.
| ftlio wrote:
| Yes, the idea that you can't hold "the neoliberal view" of
| your household, and "the communist view" and the "romantic
| view", and the "spiritual view" all together for all their
| benefits and tradeoffs seems worse to me than even
| subscribing to one holistically without this imperative.
|
| I've had this called out as absolutely faux pas if not
| totally asinine by people who are deep into philosophy, but
| I'm doing great, a lot better than some of them born with
| silver spoons.
| bckr wrote:
| > faux pas if not totally asinine
|
| These people are embarrassed that you can think for
| yourself.
|
| Life has such a high fractal dimension. It's highly
| unlikely that a single theory, expressed in a serial
| language, can be a very good description of life, at all.
|
| But it feels good to believe one thing strongly. It feels
| so, so good. And it feels good to hate people who believe
| the other thing, and to think they're wrong.
|
| But the right way really is to believe in all the things
| at once. It's weird, schizoid, scary, and completely
| logical.
|
| I'd like to put something together to help people
| understand this. I think the quickest way to get there
| is:
|
| * math doesn't work the way you think: see Wittgenstein
|
| * space and time don't work the way you think: see
| Einstein
|
| * matter doesn't work the way you think: see the double
| slit experiment
|
| * rationality doesn't work the way you think: see tons of
| psychology
|
| Given the above, do you think anything could possibly
| work the way you think it works? The best way forward is
| to just be incredibly weird. (And yet, somehow, be
| incredibly normal at the same time).
| javajosh wrote:
| I like where you're coming from, but I think you're
| stopping too soon. You can learn how math works (well,
| that's the most general one, least likely to be mastered
| by a single brain, and it's not clear how meaningful that
| accomplishment would be). Spacetime theories can be
| mastered. Quantum theories can be mastered. You can
| become acquainted with psychological theories and even
| psychological practice. Moreover, you can do most of this
| within a single lifetime. So, why not get a physics
| degree and at least cross two things off your list?
|
| But yes it's hard to describe life, because of that
| fractal complexity you mention. So the best we can do is
| go over and over it again and again with different
| lenses, at different scales, different rates, and get a
| feel for the thing that way. (Then you must sample all of
| that, cut it together with music, and release a Terrance
| Malick movie).
| caffeine wrote:
| > We are hardcore social animals with huge biological &
| affective needs, this is scientifically proven.
|
| Totally agree.
|
| > We are NOT companies
|
| Actually, we are humans. However, when it comes to our
| economic activity, we are _also_ a company. Both things can
| be true at once.
|
| > this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What
| decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people.
|
| Woah. Anything you specifically disagree with?
|
| I put it in economic terms to address the article, but if you
| replace "company of one" with "life" and "returns" with
| "outcomes", the message is largely the same..
|
| Edit:
|
| I think you disagreed so hard because you think I'm saying
| "you're only an adult if you think everything is about money
| and personal gain."
|
| But what I was trying to say was "you're an adult once you
| realise you're _it_ ; you _can_ fail; and it's nobody else's
| job to make sure you don't" - which I didn't think was such a
| controversial point..
| andrewjl wrote:
| > "you're an adult once you realise you're it; you can
| fail; and it's nobody else's job to make sure you don't"
|
| There's an embedded ambiguity in your sentence in that
| there are two kinds of failure. One is a failure of
| endeavor where one don't get what one necessarily wants but
| who has the basics. Two is a catastrophic type failure with
| some combination of deprivation, insecurity, and health
| problems as a result.
|
| Most people would agree with your statement when it comes
| to one. When it comes to two I don't think such a consensus
| exists.
|
| My interpretation of the disagreement you are replying to
| is that possibly differing definitions of failure are being
| used.
| caffeine wrote:
| > There's an embedded ambiguity in your sentence in that
| there are two kinds of failure.
|
| Fair enough.
|
| In 2008 somebody asked me if I wanted to try cocaine. I
| didn't. He eventually moved on to heroine and his life is
| now utterly "failed." in the worst sense. My life is
| good.
|
| In 2013 somebody told me I need to buy as much bitcoin as
| I can. I didn't. That guy is now a billionaire and I'm
| still an average dude.
|
| Personally I see those two situations as basically the
| same: decision -> outcome.
|
| There is a continuum of outcomes and the "fail" end could
| be really catastrophic, for you, your finances, your
| life, loved ones, possibly even the whole planet in the
| extreme.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Despite enjoying Smurfs, a show about hardcore social
| animals, as a kid, I still hope young people believe they
| can fail.
| javajosh wrote:
| Being a parent, you get a sense for what young people
| believe, and why. It comes from you, but also from
| friends at school, and of course media - books, tv,
| movies, games. IMHO the 'ability to fail' message is
| quite poor, overall, from media. Mr. Rogers being the
| (usual) exception. That said, failure occurs often in
| real life, desired goals always exceed capability,
| hopefully you can give them iterated games they can
| experience failure, adaptation, and success at their own
| pace. Often they will invent their own games, which we
| too often call "misbehavior".
|
| But yes, entertainment obsession in kids (on-demand media
| plus working single parent works out quite badly for the
| kids), media emphasis on those who are unaccountably good
| at a thing, means media portrays failing far less often
| than is realistic, and when it does it's a Rocky style
| training montage. Plus no-one really wants to write the
| manual for kids on how to give up on your dreams.
| dxdm wrote:
| What you wrote sounds extremely biased towards turning life
| into economical transactions on the labor market, while I
| think there's already too much of this mindset, and people
| need to be reminded that there is much more to life than
| economic theory.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It's the other way around.. a company act as a legal
| person. Companies are people. (natural person vs legal
| person in Dutch)
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Maybe "people" in a "legal entity" sense, but companies
| are definitely not people, and shouldn't ever be.
| kqr wrote:
| What set me off (not the one you're responding to) about
| your comment was the bit about not having a right to a good
| outcome.
|
| Depending on what one means by "good", that one doesn't
| have a right to it is a fairly strong statement of
| political opinion, but it was presented as a universal
| truth.
|
| I also think it's very important that people are allowed to
| enter risky ventures and "fail" while still being secure of
| a somewhat good outcome. Anything else puts a lid on
| innovation. (As they say, if you don't fail a lot, you
| aren't running bold enough experiments.)
|
| ----
|
| You may have meant it descriptively ("I have observed that
| most societies don't allow for individual failure") and not
| prescriptively ("societies shouldn't allow for individual
| failure") but the rest of your comment was written in a
| prescriptive tone so it was hard to pick up on.
|
| Either way, congrats on writing a popular and controversial
| comment!
| vasco wrote:
| How is it political opinion to realize a fact of the
| universe, which is that living beings need to take care
| of themselves and make good decisions for themselves or
| else "they fail". Barring the simplification, what you're
| responding to sounded like just a descriptive statement
| rather than a political stand.
| pavlov wrote:
| But it is not an axiom of the human condition that
| everyone must take care of themselves or fail. Taken
| literally that means no infant could survive, and then
| we'd have no adults either.
|
| From that point of view it's probably more defining of
| humanity as a species that we take care of others, not
| that we survive personally at all costs. There are
| thousands or millions of species on this planet that only
| do the latter, and they don't write books and invent
| recipes and create startups.
| andrewjl wrote:
| This is a common pattern in social science discourse. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| >What set me off (not the one you're responding to) about
| your comment was the bit about not having a right to a
| good outcome. Depending on what one means by "good", that
| one doesn't have a right to it is a fairly strong
| statement of political opinion, but it was presented as a
| universal truth.
|
| I think this is a really important thing to highlight in
| what I think is a real contradiction that is exposing its
| self and largely driving our global political narrative.
| Does one have the right to a "good life"? It looks like
| oop edited his original phrasing, but I'd like to take a
| moment and step into this question, because to me, it
| seems like its one that is still working itself out in
| real time. Its a question that for me, the US declaration
| of independence and framers were trying to address (for
| their identity, not necessarily for others).
|
| Does one have an inalienable right to a "good life"? Do
| rights exist if we aren't will to fight, tooth and claw,
| to maintain them?
|
| I think there is a real divide out in the wild about ones
| right to a 'good life', and a lot of people are being
| swindled by failing to think through and understand where
| the right to a 'good life' is borne. So many on one side
| argue that
|
| Oop is getting a ton of flack for their framing, however,
| for me, it was once I adopted an almost identical framing
| that I started getting my worth at my place of
| employment. I started understanding that I was
| responsible for and being paid for or paying for all of
| my time. I may not like the game, but I didn't make it
| and playing ignorant to its rules wasn't going to help
| me.
|
| There's clearly a lot of hate for neoliberalism in the
| responses to OOP's comment. I despise neoliberalism as
| much, and likely more than most of those respondents. But
| you can't fight something you don't understand. Sometimes
| its important to think through and understand how another
| group might frame something. Just because a belief
| happens in your mind doesn't mean you are that thought.
| Its ok to look at things from other perspectives,
| especially those you disagree with.
| leonroy wrote:
| > This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not
| robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy.
| We are hardcore social animals with huge biological &
| affective needs, this is scientifically proven.
|
| I think you're taking the OP's comments out of context. They
| did not say that we are not social animals, etc. they made an
| allegorical comparison likening a person and their value in
| the marketplace to a company. That does not mean a person
| does not have value as a human being, as a member of the
| community, as a friend, partner, parent etc.
|
| I think the comparison is apt when weighing up our careers -
| which is what the actual article is about - that is of course
| my own humble opinion, but you're implying meaning which I
| don't see in the OP's comment.
| knubie wrote:
| > We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free
| will, we don't live in an economy.
|
| It's just an analogy. A different way of looking at the
| decisions you make throughout your life.
| chc wrote:
| And so is "We are not companies," but you apparently felt
| the need to argue with that.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's actually harsher than that. A company that fails
| typically doesn't kill the owners.
|
| But as the CEO of you, you can easily get yourself killed in
| a couple of minutes of bad calls.
|
| The laws of physics are the only laws.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| It's harsh, but the conclusion of what he's saying is also
| very liberating, namely, that in your interactions with your
| employer, there is no "social animal" on the other side of
| the table caring about your needs, so learn its language to
| protect yourself and take responsibility over preserving your
| own humanity.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free
| will, we don't live in an economy. We are hardcore social
| animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is
| scientifically proven.
|
| We are companies. You can be a company of one and not a
| robot. Being a company of one doesn't imply giving up free
| will or somehow not being meat and bone. That's nothing to do
| with the statement he's making.
|
| I hope every young person reads it and take it seriously,
| because it's reality. No one can manage your time, your
| money, your mental health, like you. No one will.
| draw_down wrote:
| jka wrote:
| > This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies
|
| That's true, although, in a way, I think it's reasonable for
| the parent commentor to want to identify as a corporation if
| that's what they feel like.
|
| Are there preferred pronouns for corporate identities?
| Perhaps people would display a personal stock ticker symbol
| instead?
| caffeine wrote:
| Hah! I hadn't intended that at all but this is hilarious.
|
| I wonder if the IRS would play along: "I identify as a
| corporation so you may only tax me on my profits not my
| income"
| jka wrote:
| Well, without agreeing or disagreeing yet: if corporate
| personhood is considered valid, then perhaps personal
| corporatehood should be as well.
|
| (in practice: there are probably a lot of reasons why
| it's a terrible idea)
| KolenCh wrote:
| This comment is a very emotional, irrational response to a
| very logical analysis. What a contrast.
|
| The kind of response is also very childish (, not in the
| sense I am insulting you as childish, but actually just some
| kind of reaction that would comes from a child. Eg emotion
| and incoherent thoughts.)
|
| Eg
|
| The "decades of brainwashing" comes out of nowhere and
| essentially projecting a political view to a logical
| argument. If you think the argument is wrong, argue with
| facts not branding it as something and attract that thing in
| general.
|
| "We are NOT companies". Again sounds like an argument made by
| a poor politician (I mean good politician wouldn't fall into
| this kind of fallacy.) Clearly it was an analogy to
| illustrate a fact. I mean what's this argument arguing
| against? What's "are" means in this context? In Chinese
| there's an idiom Bai Ma Fei Ma comes from a similar fallacy:
| is black horse a horse? Is white horse a black horse?
| Therefore white horse is not a horse.
|
| "We don't live in an economy": what? What kind of
| brainwashing would results in that conclusion?
|
| "We are ... social animals" and then quote "scientifically
| proven". What's the point? "We are just a bunch of carbon and
| stuffs worth collectively not more than a few bucks." This is
| scientifically proven too. We should all quote random facts
| to argues against some view we don't like.
|
| This is so sad, really. I hope any people would exercise more
| logic and stops politicize things and argue based on hatred,
| not on HN at least.
| ls-lah_33 wrote:
| > You are the boss of a company of one
|
| Nitpick, but companies have limited liability, natural persons
| do not. It's for that reason that I would probably never get
| hired if I actually was an employee of a "company of one"
| (formed me for example). Companies would obviously prefer to
| contract with me directly, not my company.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability
| lliamander wrote:
| The amount of bad faith interpretation and just missing the
| point in response to this solid bit of career advice is just
| astounding.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I'm equally wary of the hubris in declaring one has defined
| all of the required variables for living well.
|
| A review of ages of history would tell that nobody ever nails
| it down that fully. Everything has its price, including a
| bank account that never goes red.
| lliamander wrote:
| That has nothing to do with what caffeine actually said.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| What I said had to do with what you said. OP set out a
| prescription (quite literally defined adulthood for
| everyone), it was questioned and you criticized the
| questioners. I'm questioning the criticizing of the
| questioners.
|
| Why assume bad faith in the other comments? Try a
| different perspective while reading OP's comment.
|
| That is to say, the industrial-entrepreneurial worldview
| is a valid one. But there are many other valid ones
| besides.
| lliamander wrote:
| > What I said had to do with what you said. OP set out a
| prescription (quite literally defined adulthood for
| everyone), it was questioned and you criticized the
| questioners. I'm questioning the criticizing of the
| questioners.
|
| I'm correctly critiquing yourself and others for not
| actually understanding what caffeine said. It seems that
| you still don't.
|
| > Why assume bad faith in the other comments? Try a
| different perspective while reading OP's comment.
|
| I'm _inferring_ bad faith on the basis that people seem
| to use caffeine 's comment as a spring-board to engage in
| anti-capitalist rants, rather than actually engage with
| the quite reasonable career advice it was.
|
| > That is to say, the industrial-entrepreneurial
| worldview is a valid one. But there are many other valid
| ones besides.
|
| No one said it was the only one. Only that it is an
| important perspective to have on managing one's career.
| bavell wrote:
| It's pretty incredible that such a benign statement caused so
| much ruckus! The misunderstanding is palpable.
| vkou wrote:
| There'd probably be a lot less bad faith interpretation if it
| didn't end with a double-zinger of 'And once you reduce your
| life to a neo-liberal economic model, is when you will
| finally grow up and become an adult'.
|
| That last part in particular poisons the rest. Sure, it
| _could_ be interpreted in good faith, but as it 's so damn
| condescending - why put the work in?
| lliamander wrote:
| > 'And once you reduce your life to a neo-liberal economic
| model, is when you will finally grow up and become an
| adult'
|
| Case in point. You use quotes, and some of the words are
| the same, but what the author actually said and what you
| think the author said are just different things.
|
| It's not even about giving the benefit of the doubt for
| something that was poorly worded. I just don't think you
| understand what was actually written.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I don't get these knee-jerk reactions, clearly a lot of
| people here are putting their wishful statements into his
| mouth/keyboard - where I see none.
|
| Take ownership of your life, nobody else will. Set
| priorities straight, nobody else will. Beware of far-
| reaching mistakes, you can screw up your life irreparably,
| nobody is going to magically save you like in Hollywood
| stories.
|
| What the heck? These are some solid life advises. They are
| crystal clear to any adults, yet so many people fail with
| those, often badly, and their lives are ruins.
|
| Were you told these things at least once when growing up in
| a manner that actually sticked with you? I didn't and for
| sure I wish I did (I ended up all right but I believe I had
| more luck than average and sometimes risked way too much)
| caffeine wrote:
| > And once you reduce your life to a neo-liberal economic
| model, is when you will finally grow up and become an adult
|
| I apologise. It's not what I meant, in two different ways:
|
| 1. You're not JUST a company.
|
| 2. The adult realisation isn't that you're a company - it's
| that you're responsible, and your decisions have Real
| Consequences.
|
| I wish I could write more clearly. I made an edit to try to
| address this.
|
| Thanks.
| lliamander wrote:
| > 2. The adult realisation isn't that you're a company -
| it's that you're responsible, and your decisions have
| Real Consequences.
|
| More specifically, would it be fair to say that you
| shouldn't depend upon or expect other people (such as
| your employer) to manage your career for you?
| mesozoic wrote:
| Or as Jay-Z puts it "I'm not a business man. I'm a business,
| man."
| s_dev wrote:
| >You are the boss of a company of one.
|
| This is a poor analogy and and an analogy that isn't needed
| (what exactly have you simplified for the reader here -- the
| concept of self-determination?). Not sure why you think that
| every person is basically a temporarily embarrassed CEO of a
| minuscule company and then to grandstand on that as if anyone
| who doesn't subscribe hasn't hit the same threshold of
| maturity.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| I think it's a great analogy. It's a shift in mindset, don't
| take it literally, the point isn't that you're a temporarily
| embarrassed CEO.. the point is that for example when you
| interview for a position, don't think about it in terms of
| getting a job, but in terms of a business transaction (ie you
| also interview the company) or, when you're constantly in
| crunch mode, ask yourself whether or not your 'company' is
| being taken for a ride under an unfair contract.
|
| You trade time, health, mental energy for money and health
| insurance (and/or reputation or whatever you get from your
| job). That's pretty much it. We (well, most of us) live in
| free countries, so if the business transaction does not
| benefit you, you're free to take your 'business' elsewhere.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >the concept of self-determination
|
| The concept of opportunity cost.
| s_dev wrote:
| Not sure why it helps to think like a CEO to understand
| that concept.
|
| Adages like: You can't have your bun and your penny. Or
| 'you can't have your cake and eat it' describe such a
| situation.
|
| Whats happening here reminds me of an old git/hacker news
| joke: "Git gets easier once you understand branches are
| homeomorphic endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert
| space"
|
| Think like a CEO and making where you apply for work and
| delegate your time descicions even easier!
|
| Want more money -- just think like a sequoia investor!
| Jensson wrote:
| > every person is basically a temporarily embarrassed CEO
|
| That wasn't the point. The point is that businesses are
| people, so people are businesses. And while regular
| businesses can be run by a separate CEO, the business of your
| own person can only be run by yourself, so you got to learn
| to think like a real CEO to run the business of your person,
| even though this business will never have more than one
| member.
| Rury wrote:
| And the counterpoint being made here is that: _you can tell
| yourself that, but it 's not true._
|
| Why? Because bussinesses aren't people, rather businesses
| are made up of people. People aren't businesses, people do
| business.
|
| You can tell yourself "you got to learn to think like a
| real CEO to run the business of your person" and "make good
| decisions" or else "you will fail".
|
| Or you can tell yourself "I am my own man (CEO), I can
| decide what my goals are, and what's considered
| success/failure. And I have decided that I don't actually
| want nor have to work so hard". The day you can do that, is
| the day you hold a huge component to being happy.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Companies === People. People === Companies. Understood.
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| The short term reward of feeling good about completing a feature
| or fixing a bug is intoxicating. Even learning a new skill can
| quickly make you feel better about yourself. It's easy to justify
| that spending excess time on things like this because it has a
| clear ROI - you become a better developer, you get paid more, you
| feel smarter.
|
| Just be careful to also invest in things that have a more distant
| ROI. Family, kids, health, friends, community service, mental
| health, spirituality - whatever it is that you value.
|
| If you are unfamiliar with what else there is out there that can
| bring happiness, I'd suggest reading "How will you measure your
| life?" by Clayton Christensen. He's the same guy that wrote the
| "Innovators Dilemma".
| bentobean wrote:
| There are times at which developers must give 110% effort in
| order to address critical business needs, unexpected outages,
| emergency pivots, etc... But in order for people to rise to such
| occasions, they must have some excess capacity from which to
| pull.
|
| TL;DR - If you run the engine at redline all the time, you're
| destined for a blowout.
| ascar wrote:
| This reads a bit like deliberately aiming for Parkinson's law.
| "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its
| completion."
|
| However, I agree to some extent. I'm especially opposed to the
| concept that there should be 8 productive hours in a day. I
| sincerely believe that this is for most people not possible in
| creative knowledge work, which includes software engineering. So,
| if you have 5 productive hours of engineering and finished your
| goal and are in line with expectations, there shouldn't be a need
| to drain yourself to keep going, but rather spending your extra
| time on something else like job-related learning is a great way
| to prevent mental fatigue.
|
| This is especially true as there can be very different "energy
| distribution" between people. One person can achieve in 4
| productive hours what another can in 8. But one works in
| productive bursts and the other in sustained effort. The first
| can't just sustain or expand that burst to 8 hours.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > rather spending your extra time on something else like job-
| related learning is a great way to prevent mental fatigue.
|
| Learning be as draining (or more) as work! Figuring out and
| internalising new stuff takes a lot of mental power. I don't
| know why people propose it as some lightweight way to fill the
| time.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I'd rather learn something useful that keeps me sharp then
| pretend I'm working.
| pm90 wrote:
| 100% agree.
|
| Let's be clear though: you may need 4 hrs but sometimes you may
| need 12. Creative professions can be that way. Reaching an
| understanding that both can happen and accepting that fact is
| important.
|
| To a certain extent, it's just recognizing the reality of what
| actually happens today anyway, rather than trying to fit into
| the 8hour workday concept.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Honestly I feel like we could take it a step further. Most
| people are not going to put in five real hours of work every
| day either. Which makes the eight hour workday in some ways all
| the more ridiculous.
|
| 20 hours a week is pretty much the ceiling in my experience
| beyond big crunch times, special events, etc. If people really
| stepped back and thought about how much time they spend
| screwing around at work I think they'd be surprised, like how
| many people were surprised to discover how many hours they
| spend on social media apps when screen time tracking was
| introduced in phones.
|
| I worked in the film industry for several years on the
| Hollywood side before switching over to commercial. 12 to 14
| hour workdays were pretty much the norm. When I flipped over to
| the more commercial side, our workdays typically ended at 8 to
| 10 hours. And let me tell you, the commercial productions were
| exponentially more efficient. We got more done per day by a
| large margin, no matter the scale or complexity compared to the
| films I worked on. When you know there is less of a threat
| threat of the company extending the hours, you tend to get
| things done in the time allotted.
| someguydave wrote:
| I think the norm of an 8 hour workday for salaried employees
| has more to do with excluding the possibility of your
| salaried "executives" taking on second jobs than it has to do
| with productivity.
|
| In other words I think that the 40 hour work week is often
| structured more as a kind of quasi-indentured servitude than
| as a factory production shift.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| There is also the alignment of schedules requirement for
| meetings, especially at higher levels. 8 hrs of productive
| work may not be required but calendar availability is to a
| certain extent, especially for higher-level roles.
| mrozbarry wrote:
| I work at a software consultancy, and here are my hot tips around
| this:
|
| - Take breaks between tasks. Your flow should mostly allow 5-10
| minute breaks often (like once an hour or so) without anything or
| anybody blowing up.
|
| - It's healthy that your client (or bosses) will always want more
| work, especially if you and your team do good work.
|
| - Always instill in your client (or bosses) that work will get
| done when it's done. They are paying you to know how long
| something _should_ take, and to identify obstacles that could
| make something take longer, as well as the time you need to
| plan/prepare to keep you and your team sane.
|
| - Your best working state is when you're relaxed. People have
| told me they work best under pressure, and I really refuse this
| to ever be true. You can certainly work under pressure, and even
| work fast, but I honestly believe your best work is the work that
| you enjoy and care for, not just the work you spit out fast.
|
| - You can have fun doing just about any task if it's not
| stressful. Sure, there are a lot boring tasks in software, like
| waiting for compiles, or doing slow-moving dev-ops work, but if
| there is a clear path with no major obstacles, it really won't be
| that bad.
|
| The biggest thing for me is having me and my team take breaks
| often. It's a good time to reflect on the work that's been done,
| think about a problem, or just take your mind off a larger
| problem for a few minutes. Depending on the industry, your
| client, your boss, etc., your mileage is going to vary, but as a
| software consultant, it is your job to advise on what time you
| need to get something done right.
|
| So I guess I agree with the article. Not that you shouldn't
| regularly give 100%, but you should always be buffered so in high
| stress, high stakes, you and your team have capacity to go above
| and beyond the usual, but your average work load isn't maxing you
| out all the time.
| theguyovrthere wrote:
| "People have told me they work best under pressure"
|
| What I have learned about this phrase is "I work best when I am
| hyper focused on a singular <event, issue, project, task> and
| that is usually associated with being "under pressure" that
| causes us to slide into a state of hyper focused thinking.
| oo0shiny wrote:
| This is common in people with ADHD. Focus is an issue unless
| there's a stimulus provided: either joy or fear. Which is why
| those of us with ADHD will either hyper-focus on only what
| they enjoy unless there's the pressure of a deadline to kick-
| start the motivation to focus.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm glad they talk a good bit about perceptions. That's really
| what it comes down to at the end of the day. Who cares if you're
| doing a lot of work or a little work if nobody sees it.
|
| I don't know what's expected of me, at least not in an objective
| way. They apparently want me to go faster. One thing they are
| looking at is if I'm finishing early and asking for more work. So
| they are using that as an indicator, which is contrary to this
| article's advice.
|
| I wish I had time to learn new skills. The work is so disjointed
| that you can never become an expert in one technology. Just
| constantly bouncing between systems, stacks, and languages. It's
| a mess. I have no desire to learn a new technology right now just
| because I know I will never get the chance to use it or become
| good with it.
| pm90 wrote:
| Sounds like you need a vacation : )
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have a toddler - vacations don't really exist at this stage
| of life.
|
| Plus the past two years have seen me using most of that time
| for family medical issues. This year I'll be using about 1/4
| of my time off for my wife to go on vacations.
| scruple wrote:
| Your story is similar to mine.
|
| Expectations at work are unrealistic, bordering on complete
| fiction.
|
| We have 3 young children and my wife is still on disability
| and recovering from childbirth 6 months ago.
|
| A vacation would be great but it isn't happening anytime
| soon.
|
| Vacations at this point in my life just means I work even
| harder than I do for my day job. Vacations are when the
| daycare is closed, which is actually more often than I can
| believe (especially contrasted against the exorbitant price
| of child care...).
|
| It sounds bad but it isn't that bad, I've definitely had
| worse periods in my life and that was before marriage with
| children. I wouldn't do anything differently, except maybe
| finding a different job before kid number 3 came along...
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| Ok. Great. You have established you're exceptionally talented and
| can do it all. Now the question is whether you should do it all,
| and only you can answer that question. :)
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| This is quite correct. Never assume YOU KNOW what people expect
| of you WITHOUT EXPLICITLY ASKING for details.
|
| For me, when I was a young buck, I assumed they wanted the
| perfection that I EXPECTED. Turns out 99% of the time, I was
| grossly overestimated what and how much others expected or wanted
| from my efforts. So I developed the habit of asking lots of
| questions about what would satisfy them (boss, customers, peers,
| employees, etc.) for just about any task, project, effort, etc.
| It also meant (often) that I had to work far less and with less
| stress.
|
| NEVER ASSUME. Always ask what would be sufficient and then ONLY
| do what is sufficient. The advantage is they get what they want
| and you can get schedules, deliverables, etc. right and on-time
| which makes everyone happier than overdelivering and being late
| at the same time.
| SpodGaju wrote:
| Maybe the most important reason: If you are a salaried employee,
| the more work you do only cheapens your labor. And it cheapens
| the labor f your fellow employees.
| ArcMex wrote:
| Being in tech has the advantage of me being knowledgeable enough
| to pursue tools and languages of interest that will benefit both
| my business and day job.
|
| That is what I did. I learned web development and used those
| skills to do projects at work and for my clients on weekends.
|
| Later on, I learned project management. Used those skills at my
| day job and made a consultancy killing as a PM for hire.
|
| I feel privleged to have been in this position. So, yes, I do
| advocate for spending time increasing your value at work. But
| that time should also work for you outside of that day job.
| Decabytes wrote:
| I'm convinced that the only people who actually make what they
| are worth (at least in my industry) are people who either
| contract or start their own business. During my grad school
| years, my PI contracted with other companies for a minimum of
| $300 an hour, but I've seen others in the industry with higher
| rates. The higher up you go in our company go from being able to
| reimburse a couple thousand dollars in travel, to capping out at
| over 8 figures. The way I see it, being self employed is the only
| way for most people to achieve these types of numbers. Now I
| don't have aspirations to ever work at those levels, I'm more
| focused on being debt free in the next ten years so I don't have
| to work such a high powered job, and I can retire early. But when
| I see compensation numbers like that, it certainly makes me think
| twice about picking up more than my fare share of work just to
| generate good will within the company.
| jokoon wrote:
| Beyond those arguments, it's also important to remind that we
| should work between 20 or 30 hours per week, not more.
|
| It's about health, being able to rest, do leisure, physical
| activity, see friends, date, etc.
|
| There are things to learn about the antiwork mentality. Not
| saying everyone should quit their job, but still, it would be
| nice if everyone could be able to negotiate with their employees.
|
| I have often been called a parasite, and honestly, it comforts me
| in realizing that I should not compete with people who turn work
| into a competition. Those people will generate enough taxes and
| labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| "Should"? Based on what? This phrasing implies some law of
| nature like diffraction of light or the nitrogen cycle, but
| it's just an opinion that you don't even bother to try to
| justify. It's feel-good nonsense with no basis in reality, or
| for that matter, history.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy
| people like me, and it's okay.
|
| Feels odd to me to make a statement like this. Is it in jest?
|
| In my view everyone should pull the same minimum. Not have some
| people work more to offset other people working less.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Do you think we should have some cap on wages as well, to
| keep things fare on the other side of the equation?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Do you think everyone pulling the same minimum will ever
| happen? I don't, and it might be important to come to terms
| with that concept... otherwise I imagine you'd harbor some
| malice towards people who don't.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > Do you think everyone pulling the same minimum will ever
| happen? I don't, and it might be important to come to terms
| with that concept...
|
| Well i read the parent comment as if it was referring to a
| hypothetical "less work" society. With better work-life
| balance. Of which i agree with.
|
| What i don't agree with, is balancing this society on the
| fact that some are required to work more than others. Ie
| just because some people are addicted, or even healthily-
| like to work more, that they would be required to work
| 40h/w where as perhaps the parent comment would only be
| required to work 20h/w.
|
| "Required" in this context would be for society to stay
| afloat due to taxes or whatever hypothetical reason. It's
| pretty loose, i'm inferring a lot from the parent comment
| of "Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for
| lazy people like me, and it's okay".
| Cerium wrote:
| If you are pretty good at your work that minimum might only
| take 20 hours?
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Well i'm not talking hours, to be clear. Just some idea
| that we're all equal.
|
| Ie, if a hypothetical society depends on addicts working
| more than "lazy people" (in the parents words) then it
| feels to me we're set up for failure.
| noahtallen wrote:
| How does one avoid the inequality, though? One could be
| working 60 hours a week at fast food joints and not make
| anywhere close to a part time software developer. As a
| result, the "lazy" developer is generating more tax
| revenue. There are too many possibilities to make it
| "fair", unless we get rid of the income tax. Even if
| everyone paid the same amount, it wouldn't be fair,
| unless everyone made the same amount of money. Which also
| doesn't seem fair.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| It's not a complete avoidance. Rather, i'm just
| advocating that we don't build the idea of less work on
| the shoulders of people who work more. That seems to me
| to almost codify the need for some people working more,
| and that seems a slippery slope for _some_ people getting
| good work-life balances and others not.
|
| My argument is that we _all_ should qualify for a work-
| life balance. Not depend on some people not getting a
| good work-life balance.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I agree that the original commenter's last paragraph was
| a bit unnecessary, but let's not kid ourselves either: if
| everyone put in a solid 2 hours a day doing good,
| essential work all good, essential work would be done in
| 6 months. Most of our time at work is spent doing things
| which are either pointless or downright damaging.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| I can .. somewhat agree with that.
|
| Not to disagree with your general direction though, but i
| don't honestly think i could boil what i do down into 2
| hours. On paper? possibly. In practice i spend far more
| time thinking about problems, taking breaks from
| problems, etc - than i do actually writing the solutions.
| But i'm not claiming i'm any good heh, just that it often
| takes me hours and hours.
|
| Your assertion is generally correct i think in efficiency
| sake. Ie when i put in 14h days, i'm exponentially paying
| a higher tax on my efficiency by putting in extra hours -
| i'm over worked and tired, i'm far from my best. But i
| still think i can more work done in those 14h than i do
| in 8, or especially 4/etc.
| pydry wrote:
| If you're after parasites, lazy software developers
| aren't the low hanging fruit. People who pull in multiple
| thousands a month plus from dividends, bonds, rental and
| stock portfolios are where the real fat is.
|
| Weirdly American culture has twisted these people into
| paragons of success while the people who do all the
| really tough and necessary work are paid poor wages, made
| to feel like shit about it at the same time and tricked
| and cheated when they try to unionize.
| dahfizz wrote:
| In that case, you're probably not living off of welfare.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| While I'll likely continue working my whole life, one thing I
| would like is some time off to think about my relationship with
| work and where I should be focusing my energy. Some kind of UBI
| or other anti-work outcome seems like it could actually provide
| space for that. I haven't had more than a 2 week lapse in work
| for 2 decades... and if I did I'd probably be extremely anxious
| the whole time.
|
| When health insurance and housing rely so heavily on work
| (speaking from the perspective of an American), not working
| feels terrifying.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > When health insurance and housing rely so heavily on work
| (speaking from the perspective of an American), not working
| feels terrifying.
|
| It seems as though the American system is intentionally setup
| so that we feel this way. We go through some cycles where
| capital is in greater control (the Gilded Age, and our
| current age from about the 80s till Covid)) and then the
| pendulum swings the other direction for a while and labor
| gets more of an upper hand - The Progressive era in the early
| 20th Century, During the Great Depression, COVID (referring
| to the Great Resignation and the rise in wages that has
| accompanied it). Let's hope we can continue with labor having
| a seat at the table again, but given our electoral college
| system and how our Senate work (Wyoming's less than 1 million
| population gets the same representation as CAs 39 million +
| filibuster) I'm not optimistic that this will last long.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy
| people like me, and it's okay.
|
| Sorry, but it's definitely not ok.
| cinntaile wrote:
| More taxes are a result of earning more and not really from
| working more although they are usually related, so they still
| get compensated for that "extra" work.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >More taxes are a result of earning more and not really
| from working more although they are usually related
|
| Even the mythical 10x engineer is not really getting paid
| 10x more than their same level peers so no not really.
|
| So this even furthers the argument. Why bother having 10x
| the output if you only see a smidge of that productivity as
| increased income?
| cinntaile wrote:
| We're not talking about being more productive in the same
| number of hours. If you earn $2000 you pay more taxes
| than if you earn $1000, even if you work double the hours
| to earn $2000. So you still get rewarded for your extra
| time.
| pydry wrote:
| It's not that uncommon for one software engineer to
| outearn another by 10x, assuming a little job hopping.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| I agree but I think it's more relevant to compare the
| same levels at the same org. I would be pretty shocked to
| hear that there is any 10x delta in total comp across L5s
| at Google lets say.
| thn-gap wrote:
| The 10x delta exists. You just have to compare the L5
| engineer from the lowest paying region with the L5 from
| the highest paying one. And for the same effort and
| output.
| alexk307 wrote:
| Why not? Everyone has to be maximally productive at all
| times?
| dahfizz wrote:
| No, but I should not have to subsidize your laziness. I
| don't care if you want to lay on the couch all day, but it
| is not okay to steal money from me to do so.
| alexk307 wrote:
| You're just making things up now. They said they want to
| work 20-30 hours a week, not lay on the couch all day.
| How would someone else working 10-20 hours less than you
| equate to them stealing money from you?
| TuringTest wrote:
| https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-
| idleness/
| cinntaile wrote:
| He says everyone should work 20-30 hours, not more. How
| do you equate that with laying on the couch all day?
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| He's taking it to the limit to illustrate that even if
| you are minimally productive, he wouldn't care as long as
| you don't ask him to support you.
| cinntaile wrote:
| He actually edited his post and the wording of his last
| sentence has a different meaning now.
| Spivak wrote:
| Eh, I think the point is that there are some who are so far
| gone into the "live to work" mentality that there's really no
| point in trying to convince them otherwise. The only option
| is radical acceptance and taking as a silver lining that they
| will probably produce higher than average output which
| benefits you ever so marginally.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Actually it is, and only a very strict and damaging
| protestant work ethic would tell you otherwise.
|
| Oh, you meant that those poor workaholics shouldn't exhaust
| themselves by overexerting over too much work? With that I
| can agree. But taxing those producing the most so as not to
| leave behind those who have received fewer gifts, inheritance
| or good contacts? That's how you build a civilization. If
| only because those producing the most are also those
| receiving the most from their peers upfront.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Implicit in your position is a lack of agency. The high
| producers only produce highly because of receiving gifts
| from their peers. And the low producers are those who have
| not received enough gifts.
|
| You leave no room for agency, competency, motivation. OP
| explicitly mentions that he just wants to be lazy....
| TuringTest wrote:
| I linked elsewhere to an essay showing how 'lazy' or
| 'idle' aren't insults, but mere synonyms for 'efficient'
| and 'purposeful'.
|
| I don't get how you deduce that there's no room for
| agency. You seem to confound that with the different
| amounts of leverage that people with widely different
| origins get; those coming from a more resourceful
| starting point will produce more, regardless of the
| actual effort they put in.
| alexashka wrote:
| 100% this, but let me add the _why_ :
|
| Most people don't want to do good work, they just want to get
| paid and fuck off. It is really hard to grok this because it is
| just so disappointing and demotivating.
|
| Most people lie constantly, to appear as if they want to do work,
| as if they give a fuck - they are lying to your face.
|
| Once you realize this much, once you come to terms with what most
| people _are_ - the rest will fall into place.
|
| Until you grok this, these sorts of posts will seem like cynical
| takes, like someone who doesn't want to work hard, who wants to
| be a free loader. No, these sorts of posts are cautionary tales
| that society is _filled_ with free loaders and liars, so you need
| to tread with caution and know how to deal with these 'people'.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| From the other side of the coin. Your employer is free loading
| off of you. You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that
| your work actually generates. If your work generates 100
| dollars... you're paid 10.
|
| So essentially your employer is fucking you and any other
| attitude other than to treat the situation for what it is, is
| delusional.
|
| Don't call us 'people'. You're the one that doesn't get it.
|
| Now I'm not saying you need to freeload. But I do what I'm paid
| to do because this is a business transaction that favors the
| employer. After I'm paid, I fuck off, because I just got
| shafted by my employer and I owe him nothing until he can pay
| me again. My work is only good to the point where my employer
| is willing to continue paying me.
| alexashka wrote:
| I don't employ anyone. I'm not coming from a place of a
| disgruntled employer complaining about the workers being
| 'lazy' or whatever.
|
| I'm coming from a place of what the blog talks about -
| someone who came in starry eyed doing good work, only to find
| out you won't get paid 3x for doing 3x the work relative to
| everyone else, but instead they'll try to get you to do 4x
| the work for a 10% yearly bonus, until you drop dead of
| exhaustion.
|
| Oh, and your co-workers will hate your guts and try to
| undermine you. Nice system, right?
|
| That's the dynamic I'm addressing - if you're enthusiastic
| and starry eyed and think people are out there wanting to
| change the world for the better or at least take a modicum of
| pride in their work - be very careful, the real world is not
| like that, at all.
| ianbutler wrote:
| For what it's worth I've only experienced this long term in
| corporations. Small companies that are actually still in
| the prime of producing and growth can't afford that with
| everyone and expect to survive. If it's systemic the
| startup just fails after meandering for a little bit. I
| derive a little satisfaction from that fact.
|
| It starts to tilt after you've gotten a couple hundred
| employees and people can hide more.
| alexashka wrote:
| Small companies have a different problem.
|
| I figure there are about 1 in 10,000, if not 100,000
| software devs that have the brains and fortitude to eat
| shit for 4-5 years, solving hard problems.
|
| Not only do start-ups normally not have 4-5 years, but
| they don't even try to solve hard problems - they mostly
| just try to solve some trivial bullshit to exploit a
| legal loophole or insert themselves as middlemen in a
| corporate/legal swamp.
| ianbutler wrote:
| > Not only do start-ups normally not have 4-5 years, but
| they don't even try to solve hard problems - they mostly
| just try to solve some trivial bullshit to exploit a
| legal loophole or insert themselves as middlemen in a
| corporate/legal swamp.
|
| I don't really agree with that, the time horizon on a
| successful startup, one that's acquired or goes public,
| is 7-10 years. I also don't agree with the class of
| problems. Like everything there's tiers. C tier player
| get's a C tier company with C tier problems. Naturally
| there's more C tier people than A tier, but that's not an
| indictment specific or by any stretch unique to startups.
|
| Edit: Honestly, the prevalence of easy capital means
| bullshit like you say stands out more but I'm not sure if
| a lot of companies like that are the winning bet for
| another like Google or whatever. They're over pronounced
| for sure but the moment venture capital stops having so
| much money floating around they'll die out imo. It does
| mean you have to do a little more work to find the
| interesting ones though.
| alexashka wrote:
| I thought about it a bit more - I was unfair to start-
| ups. It's not that start-ups largely solve trivial
| problems - it's that humans largely solve trivial
| problems.
|
| There are factors that make start-ups more likely to
| solve trivial problems vs say, a research institute, but
| it almost doesn't matter in the scheme of things.
|
| There are exceptions - they come once every few decades,
| per industry, give or take. Then the millions of regular
| people take it and do what they can't help but do :)
| ianbutler wrote:
| Yes I think I now largely agree with you. Most humans do
| mundane work and solve trivial problems. It's how the
| system keeps working though. If that stopped we'd be too
| busy sifting through the wreckage to produce the few
| exceptions where most of our value (not necessarily
| monetary) comes from.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| I think I misinterpreted your post. We're talking about the
| same thing.
| ironmagma wrote:
| > You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your
| work actually generates
|
| There are organizations that don't do this. They are called
| nonprofits. Why don't people just work for nonprofits all the
| time? Because they are less stable and there is less upward
| mobility. So there's something that is actually _bought_ by
| this extractive capitalism, and we sign up for it when we
| sign up to work at for-profit companies.
|
| It's hard to call it freeloading off of me, when I benefit
| from this arrangement.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| Nobody is promoting communism here. But capitalism is
| imperfect in the sense that it's unfair. The unfairness
| motivates productivity. It's the best system but it is
| still highly flawed. Wealth inequality is one of the major
| consequences of capitalism that we haven't quite figured
| out how to tame.
|
| It is freeloading in every sense of the word. You pay a
| slave a dime for work that generates you hundreds of
| dollars the slave still benefits, but you are still
| freeloading even if the slave is benefiting by a ten cents.
|
| It's how things are, I'm not calling for a better system.
| But I'm not so stupid as to sell 100% of my loyalty to a
| company that in the end is shafting me.
| ironmagma wrote:
| You have a very different definition of freeloading. The
| slave situation is totally incomparable on account of how
| the slave cannot quit aside from by dying.
|
| > It is freeloading in every sense of the word.
|
| Every sense, except the dictionary definition, is what
| you meant, I take it? "Freeload - take advantage of other
| people's generosity without giving anything in return."
| Giving ten cents is not the same thing as not giving
| anything. And if an employer gave me ten cents for a day
| of work, I would quit and go elsewhere as would every
| other free person in America.
|
| As for capitalism being unfair, that's basically the
| _point_ of capitalism, in the essence that "unfair"
| means "not everyone is compensated the same."
| deltaonefour wrote:
| Oh my bad. Throw a penny at the employees face and it's
| no longer freeloading. This isn't freeloading. Maybe a
| better term is "fucking over".
|
| Employers fuck people over, they don't freeload off of
| them. My bad.
|
| >As for capitalism being unfair, that's basically the
| point of capitalism, in the essence that "unfair" means
| "not everyone is compensated the same."
|
| Why you're repeating something I stated is beyond me. I
| said capitalism is unfair. You say that being unfair is
| the "point" of capitalism. We're saying the same thing.
| Does the word "point" change the nature of what I'm
| saying? No.
| ironmagma wrote:
| > Why you're repeating something I stated is beyond me. I
| said capitalism is unfair.
|
| You said that as a means of supporting your larger point
| which is that capitalism is flawed. I am arguing that
| unfairness (as I defined it) is the whole essence of
| capitalism, which is very different from saying it's an
| unwanted byproduct of it. We want unfairness.
|
| If you instead want fairness, there are other systems for
| that in use by other countries. You can move to one of
| those countries if you prefer that system. But there are
| good reasons that capitalist countries are the most
| prosperous.
|
| > Employers fuck people over, they don't freeload off of
| them.
|
| It's equally possible for employees to fuck over
| employers, we just tend not to do it (for good reasons).
| deltaonefour wrote:
| >You said that as a means of supporting your larger point
| which is that capitalism is flawed. I am arguing that
| unfairness (as I defined it) is the whole essence of
| capitalism, which is very different from saying it's an
| unwanted byproduct of it. We want unfairness.
|
| Thank you for the clarification. No we don't want
| unfairness. Wealth inequality is universally a very bad
| thing. Nobody wants this, you'd have to be insane to want
| it. That is unless you're the one doing the fucking.
|
| Let me make one thing absolutely clear. I never said I
| prefer another system. I just said the current system is
| flawed. Please don't tell me to move to another country.
|
| Also you obviously don't understand capitalism. Adam
| Smith originally conceived of the invisible hand that
| would influence market forces to distribute wealth
| fairly. This was the intent, the outcome is clearly not
| the case. Wealth is distributed unfairly with people who
| contribute the most to GDP not getting the most wealth.
|
| The people who get the most wealth are owners of capital,
| not the people who generate or increase capital. This is
| universally known.
|
| >It's equally possible for employees to fuck over
| employers, we just tend not to do it (for good reasons).
|
| So? The problem here is every employee under a capitalist
| system is getting fucked over. So if I'm getting fucked
| over then of course I owe the employer nothing beyond
| stated business obligations.
| bspear wrote:
| Extra credit at school means something tangible. Extra credit at
| work rarely does.
|
| I think this message applies especially to people working in big
| tech and/or people working primarily on salary, not equity.
|
| When you have equity in a startup though, each person doing more
| of their best work can actually make a massive difference to the
| trajectory of the business. And if you're working on a promising
| business, working better and faster is the highest ROI thing that
| can be done.
|
| So it all depends.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _Obviously I don 't practise any of what I talk about here, and
| diligently ensure that I spend all my time at work delivering
| business value._
|
| Obviously!
|
| ;)
| horse90 wrote:
| I cannot disagree with the author given that modern companies are
| little more than an aggregation of short-term individuals each
| with her own agenda many of whom would happily backstab you in
| order to advance it.
| cowanon4757 wrote:
| This is very solid advice. Once you become so productive that you
| don't need all of your working hours to do your job, you should
| spend that time on skill acquisition - either learning about
| something adjacent that you don't do daily or learn something
| that will be required for the next level (if that is your goal)
|
| This is the only sane way I have found to progress in a tech
| career. The daily and weekly learning really adds up too - in my
| experience this is the difference someone who has 10 years of
| experience and someone who has "2 years repeated 5 times"
| ArcMex wrote:
| >This is the only sane way I have found to progress in a tech
| career. The daily and weekly learning really adds up too - in
| my experience this is the difference someone who has 10 years
| of experience and someone who has "2 years repeated 5 times"
|
| I agree. Thankfully, my culture does not shun 2-3 year job
| spells on your resume. Typically, this is what I do. When I
| learn enough to do my boss's job, I leave. I am now at a point
| of running my own, small consultancy service. Only need a few
| more clients to finally quit my day job for good.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| This is why I roll my eyes out of their sockets when I hear a
| recruiter or job description that mentions years of experience
| as a qualification.
| kkfx wrote:
| The point IMVHO should, must be: did you work to live or did you
| live to work? Work is needed, not just because of the actual
| society but because even with the most advanced automation we
| need countless of thing that demand manual/brain work, that's is.
| But we live to live, not to work.
|
| So we should and must work to obtain what we need and want, a
| certain safety etc, more than that is illogical. Some might like
| their work so doing it is a pleasure and for them work hard means
| being satisfied and that's perfectly fine, however there is still
| a need to craft a life, because while we live in a society we
| need a family, friends, kids etc not just colleagues and
| services.
|
| The above, at philosophical level for the whole society have
| issues, for instance since we have evolved enough to reduce
| natural selection by a big extent we need to learn to regulate
| our reproduction to satisfy both individual desire and social
| needs in resources terms, like avoiding being too much to been
| able to live or too little to make the species on the brink of
| extinction but that's an a bit loose thing for individuals, just
| well studied incentives or disincentives likely suffice leaving
| individuals with significant willingness free to decide. Family
| and friend however are still a need, arriving at 80 alone at home
| and then go to a old people's home is not that nice for most, for
| instance. Being able to organize a party with people we like is
| part of our life, we are social animals and reduce themselves to
| "make a neighbor party" it's not good either. The rest is life.
| bentobean wrote:
| "You didn't tell him how long it would _really_ take, did you? "
| - Montgomery Scott
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I think for people who don't agree with the article, perhaps
| seeking jobs that are outcome based are ideal. For those that are
| output based, I think it's totally reasonable to cut back
| strategically.
| ArcMex wrote:
| It's funny, ever since I dedicated the morning to normal duties
| and afternoons to growth and development, I deliver results
| faster. Could be that I only use 4 hours to do all my work so I
| plan better and action faster.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Yeah exactly. Knowledge work is much less about the actual
| work we do. We're regularly on the clock having our brains
| work whether we like it or not. This focused and diffused
| time is crucial to be effective.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Why the difference? Most places that talk about outcomes are
| really measuring outputs, just with more secret sauce in how
| it's measured (still based on the perception of the bosses).
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Most places that measure outputs are not driving business
| results, they are measuring the wrong things and even
| promoting the wrong people.
|
| Outputs = Productivity. How much stuff you do.
|
| Outcomes = Efficiency. How much useful stuff you do.
|
| Don't aim to get more stuff done (productivity), rather aim
| to have less stuff to do (focus / efficiency). Do more with
| less. Frequent activity & context switching is hardly tied to
| achievement.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm aiming to keep my job. So until the bosses actually
| start measuring outcome, I'm stuck with output.
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| Can confirm this will not get you promoted, it will just get you
| more work. You are more valuable as a peon than management if you
| are this good at your job. Always act dumber than your boss.
| digianarchist wrote:
| I worked pretty hard at getting promoted at my last job which
| unfortunately didn't happen. In the end I did the cost/benefit
| analysis of the amount of extra work I was doing compared to
| the 15% raise that I would get from being promoted.
|
| In the end I moved companies and got a raise of about 35%. I'm
| back to doing the same amount of work I was doing before I
| tried to get promoted.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| This is honestly a really big sickness within our industry
| and it seems to be everywhere.
|
| I don't think I will ever work towards a promotion again.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| Working towards a promotion is not just about productivity.
| You have to display leadership qualities.
|
| But here's the key. Not all managers want leaders. It an be
| viewed as a threat. When the time is right, you can show
| off your leadership skills.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Don't forget politics. You can display leadership
| qualities all you want but politics play into whether
| your project will ultimately suceeed, be deprioritized,
| and who gets credit for what.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| See also: 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, highly
| recommended.
| grumple wrote:
| > Can confirm this will not get you promoted, it will just get
| you more work. You are more valuable as a peon than management
| if you are this good at your job. Always act dumber than your
| boss
|
| I've been promoted at every job I've had by working both smart
| and hard, but never exceeding 40 hours except in very rare
| exceptional circumstances. Devs have higher IC roles to fill so
| that helps. But now I get to be miserable as a manager. Be
| careful what you wish for. And please, be smarter than me so I
| feel good about you taking my place when I leave.
|
| That said, I don't think many people are productive for more
| than 20 hours a week for sustained periods and we should all
| work less.
| argc wrote:
| I haven't figured out how to not work all the time, but I'd like
| to. More likely though I'm just going to quit without a job lined
| up long enough to recover from burnout and go back to things I
| love, until I need to work again.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| The problem is, the idiot who pushes himself to 100% sets a
| standard that the rest become expected to follow.
| Fertilio wrote:
| "You should try and spend your time in ways that will benefit you
| and your employer."
|
| This doesn't mean to work 4h a day on a 40h week contract and
| playing gets.the rest of it.
|
| And I think people doing that, are blocking their own carriers.
|
| I make double what I made 6 years ago and can cut back to 50%
| with a still good salary.
|
| If I would not have used my te properly I would be stuck in a job
| I probably don't like because I'm not really contributing or
| really feeling appreciated because for what?
|
| Is my boss happy enough with me can't feel good.
|
| Getting kudos because your stuff makes it easier for others or
| adds value or runs smoothly gives confidence and pride.
|
| At least I like my work and tx to my attitude and skills I have
| more freedom not less.
| someelephant wrote:
| Work addicts will have a hard time following this advice unless
| they get the same dopamine boost from other tasks like
| networking. Unlikely to happen until they accept they have a
| problem.
| jacknews wrote:
| One problem with this argument is of course that what is really
| expected of you, ultimately, is at least what the other guys are
| delivering, not just a certain amount of work a week.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| And the worst part of this is that it winds up being a
| popularity contest. If your manager doesn't like you, they
| won't weigh your productivity the same way they weigh their
| favorite's.
|
| Even if you are delivering as much or more than others, you
| also have to be liked.
| CiPHPerCoder wrote:
| Enter the prisoner's dilemma
| jacknews wrote:
| LOL, I'm not sure that actual game theory game applies
| directly, but the name is perhaps apt, a bit like how
| "salary" is similar to "slavery".
| nanochad wrote:
| >If you can meet these expectations in fewer hours than you are
| supposed to work, then you shouldn't just find more to do.
| Instead you should do something different.
|
| This one really struck home for me. I will often quickly finish a
| task like refactoring a class heirarchy, then I will spend
| another 3 hours looking at it and the surrounding code to check
| for any unoptimal usages. But it always turns out to be a waste
| of time, because we have much bigger things on the backlog.
| Thanks for reminding me.
| 0des wrote:
| Getting my task completed at my own pace makes me feel good.
| Often that is fast and on time. In my heart, when I touch the
| keyboard, I feel like a greyhound dog with a little Bob Ross afro
| - it can be a race, a competition, but it is also an expression
| of my art.
|
| This article makes me feel bad because in the authors world,
| people like me are relegated to worker bee monkies trying to
| please the bossman due to pathology or some such delusion. I work
| this way because it pleases me. Doing my tasks diligently and in
| a timely manner affords me more time to relax, review what I have
| created, and enjoy it rather than drag myself to the next task.
|
| A bit off topic but as of late there is this creeping
| normalization of intentionally subpar or less optimized results
| I'm noticing in our industry but also general society.
|
| When did we become so not only complacent but also discouraging
| of any genuine effort? It is as if everyone is so aloof that if
| you show any effort or appreciation of your craft that you're
| societally acknowledging your own serfdom or that you're serving
| "the man".
| freedom2099 wrote:
| That is not at all what the article was about! It was never
| stated that you should be late or take too much time in doing
| tasks... it was about using more wisely your time (if the
| sizing claimed the task needed 5 days to be done and you are
| done in 2 maybe you could have spent more time thinking about
| the design or if everything is ok try to using the extra time
| to generate value in other ways instead of rushing towards the
| next task)
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sounded more like if you get it done early, wait until the
| due date to hand it in. Them use the extra time for other
| stuff.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Exactly. Then divide the saved time on things you can learn
| from, that you enjoy or to prep for things that can for
| your advantage (e.g. G-jobs).
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Who establishes that sizing? I've yet to see anyone who can
| accurately estimate their own tasks let alone someone who can
| estimate that for others.
|
| In agile, I think a great time for reflection is between
| sprints.
|
| Also, I'm super fast but I'll instead take frequent small
| breaks in the middle of work (read hacker news, write up
| documentation etc). There are other times to reflect than
| between tasks.
| 0des wrote:
| on this topic, I would like to add this:
|
| _The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering,
| Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)_
|
| by Frederick P. Brooks
|
| ISBN 13: 9780201835953
|
| ISBN 10: 0201835959
|
| https://www.biblio.com/9780201835953
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I read that twenty years ago, and it is still relevant.
| 0des wrote:
| Just curious, do you have any other recommendations that
| are more or less timeless?
| Splizard wrote:
| SYSTEMANTICS. THE SYSTEMS BIBLE / How Systems Work and
| Especially How They Fail
| pm90 wrote:
| You decide as a team.
|
| Concepts like story points and processes like agile sprints
| are intended to create a more realistic estimate of the
| work a _team_ can deliver. The process comes with
| tradeoffs; it won't work for everyone. So then it's up to
| them to bring it up during retrospectives and decide to
| either change the process or... not.
|
| It's important to understand that working on a team means
| that you just don't get to have all the nice things that
| you would working individually. You gotta approach it with
| that mindset.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| And you ask the "stakeholders" you are producing for.
|
| If you still want some perfection, ration it out on an
| easier schedule and use incremental perfection as "treat"
| for the stakeholders over time while you get something
| for it at each incremental delivery.
| yahn00 wrote:
| pm90 wrote:
| I'm not a big fan of the term IC since you're rarely
| delivering anything truly individually (on the average,
| yes there will be outliers). IMO "software engineer" is
| just fine as a role.
| yahn00 wrote:
| [deleted]
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Outsourcing task estimation to the team still doesn't
| solve the estimates are broken issue. I've not seen
| estimates get meaningfully better in an environment where
| the team collaborates on establishing the expected time
| for a task.
| pm90 wrote:
| It's not perfect, and importantly doesn't claim to be.
| It's something in the absence of other ways of
| estimation. Use whatever works best for your team.
|
| Nit: It's not "outsourcing" in any meaningful definition
| of the term to have the team responsible for executing a
| task come up with estimates.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I did not read the article how you read it. It seems to me you
| are doing exactly what the author is suggesting. You are doing
| your work and then taking time to do other things.
|
| The author isnt saying dont give a shit. They are saying when
| you finish your work you don't have to ding a bell and say,
| "NEXT TASK PLEASE" right away. There are other aspects of work
| that are important too.
| krinchan wrote:
| It sounds like you're misinterpreting the article or you did
| not read it.
|
| > When did we become so not only complacent but also
| discouraging of any genuine effort? It is as if everyone is so
| aloof that if you show any effort or appreciation of your craft
| that you're societally[sic] acknowledging your own serfdom or
| that you're serving "the man".
|
| In my decades long experience in corporate programming, when
| people accuse everyone around them of not putting in enough
| effort one of two things are happening.
|
| The first, which is very rare, is that you are truly in a dead
| end job with a toxic work environment. If this is the
| environment you're in and you aren't looking for the first exit
| and interviewing constantly, frankly, you deserve to stay there
| and suffer. You may succeed in the short term but only because
| you'd have to dig 6 feet into the ground to find the bar. Your
| managers only see you as a resource to exploit before you burn
| out and fall to the same level as your co-workers.
|
| The second, and this is the most common, is that you are
| sprinting constantly and have yet to develop any sense of
| work/life balance. In essence, you're convinced the world
| itself is insane and you are the only one truly "working". You
| are on the path to burnout and the people who are "aloof" are
| actually trying to help you find a path to long term work over
| decades.
|
| Mind you, maybe you just work in bursts. You find a high
| pay/high pressure cooker of a job, throw yourself into it till
| you just can't, and then take a year long sabbatical. I don't
| know you, but I've seen these sentences so many times and 90%
| of the time it's the same unawareness and inexperience with
| maintaining a sustainable level of work.
|
| I'm not trying to attack you here. I am trying to impress upon
| you that I was once of the same opinion as you. Through the
| years I've become more open to the idea that that Good Work
| Ethic is mostly a product of Capitalist Propagandizing (TM)
| starting as early as primary school.
|
| Even though I maintain and am praised consistently for my "work
| ethic", I am keenly aware of the constant pressure to produce
| more value for a vanishingly smaller share of that value. That
| awareness makes me able to make better decisions about how much
| and for how long to disturb the equilibrium of work/not-work,
| and how much time a task takes at both a sustainable pace and
| at a "crunch" pace.
|
| Burn out and the more obvious visible symptoms take years to
| set in, and then it takes almost as long to counteract, if you
| can at all. Some people burn out _permanently_ and never truly
| recover. It 's just better to not get to that point at all.
|
| The ways around this are individual, because what is
| sustainable is individual. One co-worker works roughly 4 10
| hour days and is available-but-not-working on Fridays. Another
| is very strict about having a 3 day weekend every month. One
| often works lightly during the week and then works Saturday
| when they can have more heads down time.
|
| TL;DR: If you feel that everyone around you is telling you
| you're working too hard, you probably need to assess the
| sustainability of your level of work. You may or may not need
| to make changes, but (again, in my experience across tens of
| years and companies) you almost certainly need to put in place
| long term plans if you're running net-negative on your burn out
| battery.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| On the other hand, there truly are people who can sustainably
| work 60+ hours weeks for decades. Some of the Internet
| celebrity developers, like John Carmack or Jon Blow, are like
| that. However, they mostly work on their own thing, which
| must help a lot with sustaining motivation.
| krinchan wrote:
| It really does! Startup compensation is heavily built
| around employees having a stake in the company for this
| reason. A sense of ownership really does increase your
| capacity.
|
| Unfortunately, with corporations being so blatantly "mask
| off" recently, you've really seen that sense tank outside
| of small startups. It's just much more in the employees
| faces now. It could explain the trend, but I still stand by
| my stance that a vast portion of American-style Work Ethic
| is really just propaganda to keep workers undervaluing
| their labor and mental health.
| CipherThrowaway wrote:
| The theme of the article is not that you should be less
| productive, it's that stepping back and slowing down can make
| you more productive. For example you could have saved yourself
| some offense if you had taken the time to consider the author's
| point before reacting.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > When did we become so not only complacent but also
| discouraging of any genuine effort?
|
| Overcorrection for burnout and other consequences of poor WLB.
| And because WFH has distilled many white collar remote jobs to
| their essence shorn of the trappings of the office, causing
| people to reflect on what work really means.
| 0des wrote:
| Curious if there would be a book about this in the future
| when some time has passed
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Given your reading comprehension of the OP, I'm not sure
| you'd get much out of such a book, seeing as how you missed
| the point of the article is essentially "work smarter, not
| harder" and to use excess time at work for career
| development and continuous learning.
| [deleted]
| 0des wrote:
| Bless your heart, I hope your day gets better.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Thanks, you too! Maybe yours will become better too after
| you try rereading the article and getting past its
| clickbait title and provocative framing.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > When did we become so not only complacent but also
| discouraging of any genuine effort? It is as if everyone is so
| aloof that if you show any effort or appreciation of your craft
| that you're societally acknowledging your own serfdom or that
| you're serving "the man".
|
| People perceive (perception being more important than reality
| in this case) growing inequality, and see that society as a
| whole isn't moving toward any goals they care about, so they
| just grift as be they can, coast and collect their paychecks.
| Society used to dream of a future of abundance and robot house-
| maids, now we picture the future being scarcity and
| catastrophic climate change and nuclear fallout. Am I wrong?
| Please tell me I'm wrong. I want to hear what future dreams
| society is persuing other than moving money around and making
| investment portfolios grow.
| 0des wrote:
| You're wrong. These concerns, in many forms, have been
| present for years, however we were once instilled with the
| instinct to overcome, but now frailty is more valued because
| even in failure you can not criticize those who are less
| able. Those appearing less able while still managing to
| overcome, even when due to random chance, results in more
| peer accolades and ironic fanfare in the face of adversity or
| some other disadvantage. The privilege industrial complex
| continues.
|
| Am I kidding? Please tell me I'm kidding.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| > These concerns, in many forms, have been present for
| years, however we were once instilled with the instinct to
| overcome, but now frailty is more valued because even in
| failure you can not criticize those who are less able.
|
| Actually I think you are totally off base here. I know in
| my cohort of age 30+ millennials there is a strong sense of
| doom. Many people have the attitude of "why should I have
| kids when they'll be born into a hellscape" or "why bother
| trying to save for retirement when the world will probably
| collapse before I reach 70." These are very real and very
| pervasive thought patterns I have seen in younger people in
| particular. It has nothing to do with frailty and your take
| smacks of boomerisms.
| 0des wrote:
| > boomerisms
|
| I think we are done here, have a great day
| adwn wrote:
| > _boomerisms_
|
| Kind of ironic, given that "boomers" lived under the 4
| decades long threat of total nuclear war. Frankly, as an
| instance of those "age 30+ millenials", that would
| instill a far stronger sense of doom in me than the
| rather gradual, rather benign (compared to WW3 between
| the US and the USSR) effects of climate change.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Nuclear armaggedon is avoidable with some luck and enough
| safeguards. Catastrophic climate change is inevitable at
| our current trajectory.
| adwn wrote:
| Climate change can be mitigated by technological
| solutions. Sure, you also need political action, but it's
| a marathon, not a sprint: a chain of bad decisions will
| make matters worse, but you'll still have a chance to
| recover. During the cold war, a chain of bad decisions
| could have led to immediate, full-scale disaster. That
| you had to depend on "some luck" to prevent the collapse
| of civilization as we know is terrifying.
| svnt wrote:
| Your argument makes no sense.
|
| Lots of people have to push lots of buttons they've never
| pushed before for nuclear war to occur.
|
| Lots of people have to change their entire lives to
| prevent climate change.
|
| Do you see the difference?
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >rather benign (compared to WW3 between the US and the
| USSR) effects of climate change.
|
| There's nothing benign coming of the
| acidity/temperature/luminosity levels of oceans going so
| out of whack that planktons start dying.
|
| Changing nuclear Armageddon for food scarcity Armageddon
| doesn't make it any less of an existential threat.
|
| Last I heard Mr Putin was playing games with the nuclear
| shitshow a few days ago, to boot.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Climate change is not comparatively benign. Unpredictable
| localized calamities can quickly spiral into
| unpredictable geopolitical conflagrations. There's no red
| phone to deescalate the drought that motivated the Syrian
| Civil War.
| vkou wrote:
| > Kind of ironic, given that "boomers" lived under the 4
| decades long threat of total nuclear war.
|
| We still live under that same threat, almost nothing has
| changed... Other than _public perception_ [1] of the
| dangers.
|
| All the same failure modes that lead to nuclear war that
| were in place in 1980 are still here, today. [2] All the
| same kinds of people are in still in charge.
|
| [1] Just because the news has gotten bored of writing
| about a subject doesn't mean the subject has gone away.
|
| [2] Also, India/Pakistan/North Korea are now nuclear
| powers, but as someone who doesn't live in Asia, I'm far
| more concerned about the Russia/US dynamic than any of
| that. Neither of those three parties can 'end the world'
| in the same way the latter two can.
| glitchc wrote:
| My 10 year old feels this way. His depiction of the
| future is far more pessimistic than mine was at his age,
| and the conditions under which I grew up were objectively
| worse compared to his present circumstances (he has his
| own room, multiple electronic devices, gaming consoles,
| etc. etc., typical middle-class). There seems to be a
| persistent message saying "buckle your belts, things are
| going to get worse" across all social groups, from school
| to friends to popular media.
|
| There seems to be concerted effort to prepare these kids
| to expect less than previous generations. Parents can
| only do so much to block these influences.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > There seems to be concerted effort to prepare these
| kids to expect less than previous generations.
|
| There is no concerned effort. It is reality.
|
| > Parents can only do so much to block these influences.
|
| Maybe parents should not be in denial and block reality.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I mean, we've been hearing crisis warnings for decades.
| When I was a kid, it was acid rain, then styrofoam cups,
| smog, leaded gasoline, ozone holes. Each, it was
| promised, would surely destroy the environment for good.
| And when one didn't cause Armageddon, the next one would
| definitely destroy the environment any day now. Today,
| it's climate change, next decade maybe something else.
| It's the same song, just a different verse. Somehow, my
| generation mostly escaped the pessimism the next ones
| somehow got. Not sure what changed--maybe the persuasion
| tactics are more mature and effective these days, or
| they're just starting kids on it younger, I don't know.
| schimmy_changa wrote:
| Ha - those examples are all environmental nightmares that
| were dealt with _because_ of "songs" that accurately
| explained the danger we were in as a society. See: Y2K as
| a non-environmental example.
|
| Agree that it's the same song and somehow the generations
| feel it differently ... maybe because they really are the
| first generation to have lower life expectancy compared
| to their parents. Or maybe because climate change is so
| much harder than acid rain due to the full-civilizational
| scale of it...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Even getting past climate change gloom, present economic
| situations don't inspire much confidence. College
| admissions seem much more stringent than they were a
| decade or two ago, never mind the rising tuitions, the
| debt obligations, and so on. Housing prices continue to
| climb. A lot has happened since the Great Recession.
| 0des wrote:
| You realize this has been going on for at least a
| century, right? At one point we literally confiscated all
| of the gold by order of government. Whether the overton
| window is shifting or not, this stuff has been going on
| since time immemorial.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I'm talking about specifically concerns that the youth
| would have. And the Overton Window does not refer to
| things getting worse, nor does it mean things were
| inevitably getting worse for an American audience until
| living memory. Certainly '90s kids can point at a solid
| decade of optimism, until it all abruptly ended. To
| children growing up today, this must all feel like a step
| back compared to those earlier eras.
|
| The reference to the end of the gold standard is a
| complete non sequitur.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > A bit off topic but as of late there is this creeping
| normalization of intentionally subpar or less optimized results
| I'm noticing in our industry but also general society.
|
| > When did we become so not only complacent but also
| discouraging of any genuine effort?
|
| And these same people are going to expect nothing short of the
| best of the best from surgeons / plane pilots / car
| manufacturers / etc.
|
| So they can slack of... But doctors are expected to do the
| work!
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Sure but most engineers aren't working on anything with near
| that level of importance.
|
| Like sorry but another bugfix on Youtube or the Uber app
| really pales in comparison to a Triple Bypass or safely
| landing a plane with 200 passengers during a high crosswind
| for example.
| [deleted]
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >And these same people are going to expect nothing short of
| the best of the best from surgeons / plane pilots / car
| manufacturers / etc.
|
| Going under the knife of a surgeon at the end of a 12 hour
| shift would worry me. I'd like think the pilot of any plane I
| was on was well rested as well.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| You obviously didn't read the article since the author's
| point is to work better/smarter, not to work less. For
| example to improve your skillset rather than to frantically
| jump from task to task.
|
| Not very conscientious of you to comment without having read
| the submission.
| falcolas wrote:
| > surgeons / plane pilots
|
| All of whom have downtime and at least one (if not more)
| backup. Software developers typically don't (strict adherents
| to pair programming aside). They also spend company hours
| getting better at their craft, building professional ties.
| Just like the article suggests software developers do.
| 0des wrote:
| Are you the author?
| falcolas wrote:
| Nope. Just someone who sees wisdom in the message.
| [deleted]
| tnzk wrote:
| > Doing my tasks diligently and in a timely manner affords me
| more time to relax, review what I have created, and enjoy it
| rather than drag myself to the next task.
|
| This looks like what exactly the author says in the article to
| me
| 0des wrote:
| To a high performer the tone of this article is a shot across
| the bow.
| shock-value wrote:
| You read it wrong then.
|
| > affords me more time to relax, review what I have
| created, and enjoy it rather than drag myself to the next
| task
|
| This is exactly what the author is promoting. A
| hypothetical so-called "worker bee" would indeed be moving
| on to the next task at the fastest possible clip.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It also says
|
| > You should try and spend your time in ways that will
| benefit you _and_ your employer.
|
| Which is hardly antagonizing their boss, or slacking.
| AitchEmArsey wrote:
| Depends on your definition of high performer.
|
| If you prize delivering short-term value by chugging
| through the task pile faster than other people can, then
| sure this article is not aligned with your ideals.
|
| That is not what I would call high performance; I would
| much rather be someone who can take a razor/lawnmower to
| that pile of tasks and do exactly the subset (down to
| potentially none at all) which delivers the most marginal
| value for the units of time I think are warranted for the
| project as a whole - then repeat until the goals are met.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > This article makes me feel bad because in the authors world,
| people like me are relegated to worker bee monkies trying to
| please the bossman due to pathology or some such delusion.
|
| Is this a new kind of brag? Maybe an "offense brag"? This
| article makes me, a very conscientious and productive person,
| feel offended because it tells me that I should chill out a
| little. (Except that's not what it says; more on that later.)
|
| > Doing my tasks diligently and in a timely manner affords me
| more time to relax, review what I have created, and enjoy it
| rather than drag myself to the next task.
|
| From the article:
|
| > If you can meet these expectations in fewer hours than you
| are supposed to work, then you shouldn't just find more to do.
| Instead you should do something different.
|
| Completing tasks in a speedy manner makes it so that you don't
| have to rush to the next task. Seems in line with the article.
|
| > When did we become so not only complacent but also
| discouraging of any genuine effort?
|
| From the article:
|
| """ If you optimally fill your time at work doing 'work' work,
| then this means that you are likely:
|
| - Not developing other skills
|
| - Not building your network inside the company as well as you
| could
|
| - Probably working less efficiently than you could
|
| - Unable to respond to new or changing demands without working
| longer hours or stopping something else that you think you need
| to do. See the ongoing supply chain crisis for why you should
| have some slack in your system. """
|
| Two of those points are about working on other things than
| whatever narrow task that you are assigned. So apparently it's
| not about being complacent at all.
|
| Don't fret. This is HN. We are all A-type, elite white collar
| workers at this place.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| The key is doing visible work. This is why being a frontend dev
| is so rewarding at times. I can spend weeks cranking out some
| heavy algorithmic/data structure code that does some incredibly
| important data manipulation that our app fundamentally relies on,
| but it won't get as much kudos as a 10 line, 5 minute CSS fix
| that made someone's workflow easier.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Most people work within some kind of incorporated structure, as
| employees or contractors on hourly wages or salaries. Unless
| they're also invested in the corporate structure, i.e. they're
| the providers of capital, they'll see no real benefit from the
| success of the business other than avoiding losing their job when
| the business crashes.
|
| The solution is pretty obvious, and is fairly common in Germany
| at least: employees and investors must be viewed as equivalent
| stakeholders. This means worker organizations should have as many
| voting seats on corporate boards as the investor organizations
| providing the capital do. It's not one or the other - generally
| speaking, no workers means no business, and no capital also means
| no business. The result would be that profits get distributed
| equally to workers (as bonuses on top of wages/salary) and
| investors.
|
| Otherwise it's the same problem as communist countries had: why
| work hard and be productive if you get the same reward for it as
| someone who sits around doing little or nothing? In response
| upper management will trot out lines like 'we're all a family
| here' and 'you should enjoy the pride and satisfaction of a job
| well done' and similar nonsense.
| xwdv wrote:
| If you want to work hard because it's some kind of virtue, pick
| up a second job in tech. Juggling two full time remote jobs will
| give you all the work you need for twice the income.
| jlengrand wrote:
| 100% hard agree.
|
| One thing that I'd like to add as well. If you're an employee,
| getting 120% of the same job done will 99% of the time NOT get
| you promoted faster.
|
| The folks who get promoted typically do because they're visible
| in several places.
|
| Do 100% of your job, and then do 20% of something else. Blog,
| Mentor, do POCs, network, .... Find your own way.
|
| It's maybe unfair, I know, but I've seen so many frustrated folks
| seeing other get promoted while "they were the ones going the
| extra mile for their project".
|
| Plus, if you do things visible outside, you can sell that much
| easier to whoever employer comes next than "I've pushed out more
| features than my colleagues".
| mwattsun wrote:
| > What do I mean by working as hard as possible? I mean someone
| who can finish all the work that is expected of them in less than
| the total time that they are meant to spend working and then asks
| for more, similar, work to do.
|
| I was surprised the author didn't use the term 'workaholic' but
| I'm older so maybe it's an older term. Google trends does show a
| steady decline in the use of the term [1]
|
| Oxford defines a workaholic as "a person who compulsively works
| hard and long hours." There are too many reasons for this
| compulsion to go into in a comment...
|
| [1]
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=w...
| almost_usual wrote:
| I think most engineers who always search for tasks and work long
| hours are dealing with some form of anxiety or imposter syndrome.
|
| If management hasn't brought up any performance issues and you're
| anxious about your job you need to talk to someone. You're on the
| road to burnout.
| pm90 wrote:
| Managers and senior engineers should be responsible for making
| them feel better in these situations. Having a support group of
| peers is also really helpful.
|
| If you reach Senior level ranks and continue to suffer from
| these feelings though...
| almost_usual wrote:
| > If you reach Senior level ranks and continue to suffer from
| these feelings though...
|
| They need to consult a therapist because they're likely
| dealing with anxiety disorder.
|
| If someone truly enjoys working 12 hours a day and weekends
| constantly then I suppose it's fine.
| mtberatwork wrote:
| A note on burnout: once you have had one burnout, the next one
| comes on faster and with less triggers needed.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I've been in jobs where was less was expected of me than I was
| capable of delivering and, more often than not, jobs where more
| was expected of me than I was capable of delivering, at least for
| any considerable length of time without burnout.
|
| Both were difficult. I like to think that if I had one of the
| lower effort needed jobs now that I would find other useful
| things to do like the author mentioned. At the time I mostly read
| books or played video games with other staff when I was done with
| my work. It was nice but a bit frustrating because I would go
| home and feel like I had already read and/or played video games
| so I didnt have fun things to do after work.
|
| Absolutely a problem from the top of the hierarchy of needs but
| still a problem.
| gigaflop wrote:
| I like to think that I "sell" myself assuming 80% capacity, in
| order to avoid spending too much time operating at the bleeding
| edge with all pistons engaged. Nobody can deliver at 100% for
| an extended period of time without suffering some consequence.
|
| So long as I have just as many 60% days as I do 100%, and
| average out near the benchmark of 80%, then I have fulfilled
| the expectations that have been set, and I can be comfortable
| shutting the lid of my laptop at 1700 sharp.
|
| I'm currently working in downtime(which I expect to continue
| for some more time), and have been spending my time trying to
| build something for internal use that also counts for my self-
| education goals. There's definitely a temptation to goof off
| and read, play games, or watch movies, but I'd rather be 5%
| efficient at figuring out how to get Azure to cooperate than
| 'opt out' and take unofficial personal time. I want to be able
| to show that I can independently produce value, and increase
| the value of my 80% for when raises come around.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I'd like to rewrite this as "Why you should maybe not work so
| hard for someone else". Intrinsically motivated people (you'll
| know what I mean is you are one too) know no bounds to the
| ecstasy of work. Struggling toward a self-defined end is like
| flying in the clouds. In "flow", work is no longer work at all.
|
| It is labour relations within a late-capitalist system of
| dehumanising exploitation, over-systematisation and rampant
| financialisation that turns life's greatest joy of having skills
| and purpose into farcical performance art, into an inefficient,
| resentment-fuelled spectacle of self-harm.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I am self-employed and I love doing what I get paid to do but
| there are many other things I like to do as well. I work hard
| enough to pay my bills and really not much harder.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| That "zero surplus" living sounds like a nice balance. As I
| get older, and especially with kids around, it's what I
| aspire to more.
| incomingpain wrote:
| From my read, the title doesn't seem accurate at all.
|
| >You should try and spend your time in ways that will benefit you
| and your employer.
|
| The title says to do less work, but in reality seems you're still
| doing as much work but rather developing those other skills.
| Really just improving yourself.
|
| My 2 previous jobs were MSP. Like all MSPs, you wont control your
| schedule. someone else decides that you only need 30 minutes of
| your time to work on ticket X. It doesn't matter if that ticket
| requires you to drive 45 minutes away and then 45 minutes back.
| You will get chewed out for not completing the work in the
| allotted time.
|
| You will be required to do all the self-improvement on your own
| time and own dime.
|
| My current job though is awesome. I have been afforded the time
| during work to work on open source python projects that are
| beneficial to the team.
|
| For example, I had recommended we get solarwinds. less than a
| year later the solarwinds supply chain thing dropped. we dropped
| solarwinds. I decided screw it. I rebuilt the functionality we
| wanted in django. Prior to this job I didnt know python. Now I
| have multiple useful python projects.
|
| I can certainly confirm that this approach has been much better.
| dmje wrote:
| Um, because life is more important than work? Because your kids
| will only be young once and they don't give a sh*t about your CV?
| Because you could be dead tomorrow? Because there is lots apart
| from work that gives you love, satisfaction and pleasure? Because
| you don't need to be insanely wealthy? ...and a gazillion other
| reasons.
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