> I imagine building solutions to problems I see in my surroundings. For some irrational reason, I feel a desire to give back to society.
I think there is nothing irrational about this. Look up “purpose economy”. Grinding away your life in the interests of some company that basically just wants to achieve financial gains is not satisfying at all, we’re just normalizing it because it’s lucrative and we live in a world where bills need to be paid. The future isn’t build by greed and hustle, but by ambition and dreams. Don’t let people tell you off for this. Artists don’t do what they do because they seek any kind of validation for it, yet they shape the cultures that we identify with. All relevant progress, both individual and societal, comes from people who don’t care for the established worldly order. The future is build by dreamers and visionaries, not by people who confuse the treadmill for a life worth living. You do you.
it's not irrational. Unless you ignore the lower needs on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs and spend your efforts on the higher needs.
The lower needs are basic - sustenance and safety etc. If someone is wealthy enough to meet these needs with time and resources to spare, then it makes a lot of sense to spend the extra resources on the higher needs.
But it is irrational to try to fulfil a higher need, when you don't already have the lower needs fulfilled first.
It's the net effect of asset holders working in their collective self interest and a society that allows them to.
They are on the other side of the bargaining table from the needy and much, much stronger. The moment the lower classes obtain a bit of spare cash and start to think about climbing Maslow's Hierarchy, rent goes up and the spare cash vanishes. Or wages inflate away and shareholders benefit. In any case, someone with an asset is standing by to hoover up the cash.
It's not exactly malice -- it's self interest with lopsided power dynamics and neglect for side effects -- but the dedication with which people weave excuses around this process can really feel like it's malicious some times.
It's not a conscious design effort in the sense that the blueprints were designed and implemented this way. It's more that gradually with every political decision that is based on greed, we sink deeper in a world that is defined by it.
I'd go with a TSA as an example of such spending. It's a net negative to the society - lots of money being spent to give an impression of security while it's proven that they clearly fail at their mission:
If you are analyzing the impact of the TSA on basic needs in our current economy, it's very positive, providing jobs and causing minor distributed irritation that doesn't really count as a negative impact on basic needs.
(You can argue that it would be better to give the money away without requiring the jobs, but that ain't the world we have)
The fact that it is a show doesn't make it negative towards basic needs. Like people that can't afford to fly aren't going to go hungry because of the TSA.
I wouldn't be surprised if slightly discouraging business travel is anyway a net positive (it's going to take more than an irritating line to inhibit necessary travel and some amount of travel is almost certainly waste).
Oh, I definitely agree with your point. But what I'm saying is if you remove the security theater from the equation, you are left with comparing the job creation of a "pointless" but legitimate institution, versus the costs of diverting that money to different programs as well as the cost to travelers.
> What money is the US spending in order to worsen it's own citizens basic needs?
Here's one that bugs me occasionally:
Gatekeeping who is allowed to benefit from societal help. Welfare, specifically. There's so much bureaucracy around identifying who gets welfare and who does not (not to mention the identification and enforcement of the "no" people who find ways to get the money regardless) that it takes a legion of employees to manage.
Even more relevant to the question: it introduces complexity that harms citizen's basic needs by putting in place knowledge inequities. You can make the tax code as complicated as you want, and the hyper wealthy will still be able to pay for people to understand it and squeeze out every drop of value because the absolute amount of money in play makes it feasible. Spending $200k to "save" $1million is a good deal. That's maybe a couple full time employees. If you wanted to save $100 instead, throwing $20 at is isn't gonna get you anything.
So all those people who can't "subcontract" their way through the complexity with specialists are left to their own devices. And they don't have the time or expertise to navigate it themselves. So the tests and checks and processes and discoverability weeds out deserving people constantly just in the hopes of preventing some "undeservings" from having access.
It'd be like writing an algorithm and every branch of logic you put in you have to do a random roll and throw an exception some percentage of the time. Each new branch compounding to filter more and more while also costing more and more to facilitate. But that execution reality is ignored so that the pure logic can be focused on in a vacuum.
It's all like the opposite of Blackstone's ratio regarding crime that "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer". Social programs are designed such that they would often rather let ten innocent people suffer than one guilty person benefit.
I wonder how many people would be out of work if the US opted for universal programs (UBI, universal healthcare, guaranteed parental leave, subsidized childcare etc.) and in the process gutted much of the bureaucracy required to maintain the current systems.
Well, including the armed forces, state, and local employees, there's around 24 million federal employees. So, if even 1% were laid off, that'd be over 200,000.
So yeah, I'd definitely go with the "probably more".
Universal healthcare would be a fantastic move for the US.
I don't think the US spends money on making healthcare worse for people though. (Unless you want to argue that universal healthcare would be cheaper than the current standard and thus by way of opportunity cost the US is spending on worsening the healthcare of it's citizens)
The US actively spends money propping up a broken healthcare subsidized marketplace and means-testing people as a way to gatekeep Medicaid, both of which prevent people from accessing affordable/single-payer healthcare.
The defense budget increase is $70B this year, Covid spending was $45B and ran out this year for things like securing next gen vaccines and stocks of drug treatments.
That’s true of course, it comes down to the relative position in maslows model. Maybe I just assumed that the HN-audience is at the top of the pyramid almost by definition, but failed to do the adequate elaboration. Thanks!
Some people enjoy their work very much. They're not "grinding away". For example, I know salesmen who enjoy what they do a lot. People who build houses like building houses, etc.
> The future isn’t build by greed and hustle, but by ambition and dreams.
Those two are not distinct at all from each other.
BTW, dreamers don't accomplish anything unless it is accompanied by the other three.
I think it's important to note that the generic "artist" doesn't shape the world around us. A miniscule elite of artists shape the world around us. The vast majority live and operate in obscurity.
The future isn’t build by greed and hustle, but by ambition and dreams.
I'm struggling to think of a significant example of where this has been true in the past. Large scale change that someone can attribute to their own effort only seems to happen when they monetize it.
Linux? You could argue that red hat did the monetization there, but torvalds didn't, not before it got bigger.
Penicillin would also be one. It had to be forced on the industry because they couldn't monetize it, so you could argue that "more hustle would have helped".
Short term benefit, long term disaster. Penicillamine (metabolised penicillin) causes copper depletion reduces Interleukin-2 which increases the risk of some cancers and the effectiveness of the white blood cells.
To the OP:
Find a problem you can fix, want to fix, monetise and try to stay legal.
I'm learning that govt legislation is sometimes a posterior covering position whilst trying to maintain some semblance of authority over the population. This can hold back innovation so where legislation controls your activities (food supplement legislation is a good example), and there will be, make sure you have the arguments figured out before hand because you might be calling upon them in court as one of your customers may be forcing you to court directly or indirectly whether you like it or not.
Re Penicilin: the 'short term' benefits of not dying from a lung infection are pretty significant though. We might have better drugs today, but it was quite a miracle back then.
I'm not knocking the use of antibiotics, but you never get a GP telling you to take a copper supplement after course do you?
Getting the diet right in the first place can also help enormously with prevention.
And I find some medical tests can actually qualify me with a disease just from taking some supplements, like taking creatine and then my estimated glomular filtration rate shows high levels of creatinine which is used to indicate some stage of kidney disease all because the test cant factor in creatine supplementation.
Or I could take above RDA amounts of B6 which will increase my immune system response but the test could also indicate me with a different type of disease, and its not until we are several tests later do the medical experts start enquiry about my diet? We dont live in the 1990's or earlier when vitamin and mineral supplementation was a novelty, its fairly wide spread now.
Could more people use taking a break, for no particular reason, and not necessarily to work on anything - just taking a break for taking a break's sake? I think so.
Especially hackernews people who are overwhelmingly more likely to be privileged enough to be able to do it compared to most.
"...leisure is time away from work, not facilitating it.
By viewing work as something we do to support our leisure time, rather than our hobbies as something to lower our stress so we can get back to work, we can actually start enjoying our lives. (I know, wild idea.)"
would love to take a nice long break and turn my head off for a bit. kinda hard when your employer stops paying you and the landlord still wants his rent
Seems like the problem is in your attachment to your flat. Fixer-upper houses in the countryside are basically cheaper than a year's one-bedroom rent in the Bay Area. It's all a question of trade-offs. Would you rather
a) have a soul-crushing job and a nice flat or
b) live happily, but in the Mid-West?
Those are ramifications one should consider when deciding to do either of those things. Having done one of those, I wish I had done the other. No one can make you happy but you, so the best predictor of happiness is having the independence to pursue your own interests.
“Perhaps I am not suited for working in a services company with rapid transitions“
I think you’re right. You read like you’re a people pleaser. I know it because I am too. You, like me, might have a difficult time with having a dynamic yet firm grasp on our purpose in, what is more often than not, textbook Kafkaesque situations; situations we put ourselves in, and we’re accountable for, too.
Good luck in your journey of discovery. And you read like you’re also young-middle aged, also like me. So, from one to another, just remember it’s quite the privilege to publish a statement declaring in a public space that you’re “taking a break” from work. I don’t think you’re a trust fund baby, but you know, not everyone who gets you would sympathize with that statement. Maybe here, perhaps.
Maybe I’m totally wrong about the author, or maybe I’m sort of over the tone deaf articles I read on here, like we aren’t all so fucking lucky to have these software engineer jobs, the ones that pay. Is it worth your mental health? Of course not. Find a new company, I had to. Best decision I ever made.
So if I’m wrong, it’s worth the risk because I hope it drives home the point this article reeks of privilege.
> "So, from one to another, just remember it’s quite the privilege to publish a statement declaring in a public space that you’re “taking a break” from work."
Why this anger towards the author for doing what he considers to be the best thing for himself?
Yes, being able to take a break from work is a privilege. But it isn't one that people should be publicly shamed for when needing to exercise it. Rather we should work towards having that option on the table for as many people on this planet as possible.
Worker's rights have been so completely eroded (or never even established) in so many places around the world, that it breeds this kind of sick attitude of turning against those who decide to put them selves or loved ones before the employer and work.
I say this as someone who is personally about to take a long sabbatical, with full pay, because of incredible burnout after having gone through a very traumatic period involving a partners cancer treatment.
This is only possible because of the incredible strong union that I am a part of.
> Why this anger towards the author for doing what he considers to be the best thing for himself?
Because most of us don't have the luxury to take a break from work.
Honestly, I feel jealousy towards people who can take a break from work. I've been feeling like I'm on a treadmill since my teen years.
I am not ashamed of it, though - jealousy is a human feeling and we can't wish it away, we can only control it and not let it interfere with our lives.
There's a term for that type of thinking: "crab mentality". It's named after the behavior of crabs when they are placed in a bucket. When a crab tries to escape, the other crabs notice and begin pulling the escaping crab back into the bucket.
For us humans, when we manage to climb out of a bucket we land in a larger bucket that contains the one we climbed out of. Eventually we get our bearings and begin to see the new walls that surround us. Unhappy with the walls, we start climbing again. And so goes the story of Sysiphus.
Oh it's from a local show (in Cantonese) which is ~2x years ago. Here is the approximate content.
Supposed there is a merchant selling fish balls (in sticks). Then two people (A & B) buy one stick of fish balls. A gets a stick of 6 and B gets 5. B complains about it.
Merchant says: OK I will give you back one more. B: No I don't want one more. I want you to take away one of A's fish balls.
Since then all locals who watched the show would refer it as "fish ball mentality" and kept being used on local online forums/social media groups.
"crab mentality" was never mentioned anywhere (for me at least, until I see it here).
On the other hand, many of us do have such a luxury, especially on hackernews, but may be too afraid or too institutionalized to use it. It's nice to have people reminding us that we can make deliberate choices about our work life.
I do not. In fact, I would do the same given the proper circumstances. The other person asked a question, and I gave my best approximation of an answer.
> Because most of us don't have the luxury to take a break from work.
If you ask the 5 whys, you'll see that you actually can take a break from work, you are just unwilling to deal with a (potentially rapid) change in lifestyle.
I know enough IT people who at age 40 decided to become potters, or motorcycle repair folks, or blacksmiths. They immediately stopped earning six figures. They live in metropolitan areas no longer. But they all seem to be a lot happier now.
No one is going to applaud you for your money high score when you leave that body of yours. Life is about enjoying the dance, not racing to the end.
This is some fatalistic nonsense. There is a long way to go for an IT person to die of starvation. It would have to be intentional: wanting to die of starvation.
The path is not realistic, there's a lot between "don't work -> run out of money", including using up savings that you had, taking up unemployment benefits, finding another kind of work or going for part time, getting help from a large number of charities... And finally, if you end up actually on the verge of starvation, as an IT person you most probably can get another job even with a gap in your resume.
The whole "if you don't work you die" is very dramatic but not very true in the west, and most people that die of poverty are dying from other reasons than starvation, mostly drugs and cold.
Strangely, I'd bet that the strongest link between poverty, food and dying is through obesity, not starvation
> there's a lot between "don't work -> run out of money", including using up savings that you had, taking up unemployment benefits, finding another kind of work or going for part time, getting help from a large number of charities... And finally, if you end up actually on the verge of starvation, as an IT person you most probably can get another job even with a gap in your resume.
I mentioned that one of the solution to stop a specific job is to pick a different line of work, and that even if worse comes to worse, the jump away from work is not that risky because you can come back.
But I also mentioned a lot of alternatives, including charity and government benefits, which are enough in most western countries to not starve.
> one of the solution to stop a specific job is to pick a different line of work
That does not count as "taking a break" from work.
> But I also mentioned a lot of alternatives, including charity and government benefits, which are enough in most western countries to not starve.
I see your point, but not all of us are lucky to be born in such a place. I do admit that my bitterness may come from the fact that I live in a country where the social program is... not really the greatest, to say the least.
I think you are getting the skepticism from others because most of the time these limitations are artificial and self imposed.
I certainly have felt that way when I was severely depressed and fed up with my job/life.
I felt helpless and blamed my situation, when in reality I was simply refusing to take ownership of my choices. I could quit my job, I could leave my partner, I could abandon my kids and family. I could go sleep in a park, I could buy a van and travel the country.
> I felt helpless and blamed my situation, when in reality I was simply refusing to take ownership of my choices. I could quit my job, I could leave my partner, I could abandon my kids and family. I could go sleep in a park, I could buy a van and travel the country.
The fact that you have a hypothetical possibility to do whatever does not mean anything in the real world. Besides, I am not depressed and I do not want to change my life, I like my life, I just want to not have to work.
> Why do you think you cannot afford to not work?
Why is it so hard to imagine that there is a corner in this world where not everything is taken care of for you by the big daddy govt?
To answer your question - if I were to stop working, two simple things would happen:
My intention was not to express anger, wokeyness, etc. but I can see why that might be interpreted here. I identify qualities of myself in the author. So this isn't misplaced rage, more of a plea packaged as contempt to cut through this internet posturing we all do in this public place. +1'ing / sandwiching critique with agreeable statements is more of the same social network bullsh*t that I come here to escape from. I have no idea how to speak candidly to a complete stranger, this was my best attempt.
Unions? I'm all for them as a means to fix inequity, but not for me. That's my personal choice, and a privileged one at that. They certainly address the worker's rights aspect conversation that is worth talking about.
The article is an artifact of a personal experience, not necessarily an artifact of worker rights--or perhaps that's what I'm doing--trying to provide unambiguous insight to author that they a̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ could be called out and tragically misunderstood. The internet can be brutal, no good deed goes unpunished. Also, I wonder how the author feels about unions?
All that written, my comment was a crude attempt to showcase that their attempt to connect with this community was undermined by the stank of their privilege. There are more elegant ways to obviate the smell of privilege, and to reach the intended audience (which I assume is every one of us).
So what if the author is privileged? Unless you're living in a mud hut and subsistence farming, you can count yourself among the privileged as well. I guess you don't get to write anything on the internet because you might offend someone, somewhere.
I love hearing about how people make deliberate choices about their life and their work, even if they are starting with something more than the average person.
I love hearing it too, I'd like it to be well-received, even by those human beings living in "mud hut and subsistence farming" should they encounter their writing.
That's ridiculous. If I'm writing a recipe, I don't put 50 disclaimers in it about how I know not everyone can afford chicken and how I am so privileged to have food. Why would the author need to clutter up their writing in that way?
I am not triggered, lost no sleep over it. I'm happy for them, truly. And I care about this stranger, because when I read their writing, they don't seem like a stranger to me. I see myself in them. There is a nuance I wanted to convey that I know I do not have the literary skill to accomplish.
> I joined my last company because I was sold on an idea.
Holly moly. I’ve been heavily burnt with the same mistake. The lesson I learned is : yes, SE don’t struggle to find work at good condition, but your project will probably be shitty and/or boring and/or deceptive and/or full of tech debt.
Now I prefer to focus on the people I work with more than being sold on a project I’ll never own completely anyway.
Yes, but my point was to never choose a job based on the project you'll work on or on the product of the company. You WILL be disappointed.
I guess the best way to work on a project you'll love is to be a founder. But as an employee, you'll need a looot of luck to work on an interesting project. I'm not saying that it doesn't exists, but rather that they are pretty rare, and you have very few opportunities to discover those from the outside.
I left my last job because it wasn't really going how I wanted it to go. My wife and I have setup our finances such that we can live on a single income. For almost two years I did nothing but tinker on toy projects, personal projects and explore electrical engineering. I certainly found interesting companies along the way to apply for, and took contracting jobs that interested me, but largely I got to just explore. I finally found a job at the beginning of the year that felt right and was interesting enough for me to want to get involved.
I have always had the attitude that work should be something you look forward to each day. If you aren't, leave. I have never worried about the consequences of those decisions because financially we are fine and with software engineering opportunities always available, I don't feel a sense of urgency to take the first thing that comes along. I know that not everyone is so privileged to live this way, but with careful financial planning, it's been enough for me.
We all need rest, we all need time away. Plan your life according to you or your family's needs, not clients and not companies. We only get one chance at life, why waste it being unhappy in the pursuit of some distant future that may never come.
This guy seems smart and ambitious but has a very romantic/naive mindset. A job is an exchange of services, never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".
I disagree heavily with this. Lots of people make a living doing what they love/building a better world. Just because we normalized selling our attention to the highest fiscal bidder, doesn’t mean that the highest fiscal bid is actually valuable in terms of life quality. Nobody looks back and says “eh, I wish I’d have worked more at [soulless job]”. I think your perspective is extreme dystopian, and it makes me sad to think about how many people live their lifes with that mindset. Look up “purpose economy”
I might come off as really cynical, but i agree with your statement completely. The best place i worked didn't feel like work, smart motivated people with little managerial oversight and a shared vision, awesome times.
What I'm trying to say is: look out for yourself out there because no one else will, don't let yourself be exploited
I really appreciate this response and relate to this.
I think I was in a really similar mindset as OP, the last company I was at I was very naive and believed this pitch about the company. Come to find out the company had nothing. What I did gain is a great learning lesson on how I should approach work and more.
My current company I looked for specific things and listened during the interview. I know interviews can only give you so much, but when I decided on the last job I ignored so many red flags in hope that this will turn into something huge, I should have looked at it as a true red flag that this will be a rough experience.
Also having ADHD this is something that is tough at times
Not going to try to look like I'm explaining how life works just my 2c: life is complicated and quality comes in different shapes and forms. "A job is an exchange of services" is a way to reduce this complexity and cut down on the interdependence of dimensions we optimize for.
I personally don't have the constraint that i need to give everything to my job and it needs to give back, so i agree with the GP and don't see it as dystopian, just one of the many ways of living.
Others legitimately do have this constraint and probably have to simplify elsewhere (not have kids is something I've seen a lot).
> Nobody looks back and says “eh, I wish I’d have worked more at [soulless job]”
There are a lot of people which quit their "soulless" job and to chase their dream just to ultimately be forced to give up on them after loosing years of savings. I very much doubt that none of them regret leaving their jobs
> I very much doubt that none of them regret leaving their jobs
Maybe in the moment. But savings don’t buy you anything when you’re dead. I’m inclined to believe that you’d later look back on that period of your life as ‘sure glad I did that when I could’.
There is plenty of time in one life to work for both dystopian corporations and follow your passion.
It's tricky, because in the alternate universe those people are regretting wasting their life instead of trying to follow their dreams. The only situation that doesn't lead to some form of regret is the one where following the dreams works out.
>Lots of people make a living doing what they love/building a better world.
Really? America must be a great place then. Don't know anyone like that where I live. My doctor friends would be closest but they certainly don't have a good quality of life and their lives are quite dystopian.
How do you explain the ten's or hundreds of thousands of people in the world that already have financial freedom (i.e. enough in the bank to live comfortably the rest of their lives), and yet still get up everyday and goto work?
The issue with the world view that "a job is an exchange of services" is that it is unsustainable. The sheer time magnitude of work - 40 hours a week + commute for many decades dictates that it is a very significant portion of your life. On top of that on a day-to-day basis the timeslot itself between 9/5 is the best part of the day for the vast majority of people.
Seems like in order to have a deeply fulfilling life you need to have a job that you like and find it deeply meaningful. There is just no way around it, it is too much.
Moreover, check your tax filings next time you want to feel like you give back to society.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t do anything extra-curricular, but as a wage earning citizen you are already doing a good bit of your fair share just by earning money and handing it over as tax revenue.
(Where I am sure this falls down, for many people, is that their local and federal government is useless at moving the needle on any kind of issues for social good. Hands up if you live in a nation with both aircraft carriers and child poverty!)
IMO I'm in the camp that the money you 'lose' to taxes were never yours to begin with, and not worth all the handwringing people give about rates. It only really makes sense to consider take home minus fixed costs such as rent when considering how much money a job is making for you, since that's the only cash that's actually yours at the end of the day anyhow. If I want more of that given these fixed costs, seems like I need to demand more in wages if I'm left with too little every paycheck.
Taxes don't go one way though. Governments provide plenty of useful services. If your government provides no useful services then that would be stealing, and you should probably move asap.
On a more local level this can apply in terms of city and state as well, so not just country. If you get literally no useful or beneficial services from a city government that's not a bad reason to move away unless you have no need for anything governmental.
This may be a fact, but that doesn't mean it aligns with human psychology. Most of us do want to spend our days doing something we can take pride in and enjoy. This doesn't necessarily imply high income. But it does involve interacting with other people who respect you, solving problems/tasks, and being given at least enough autonomy to feel one has ownership over those problems' solutions.
> A job is an exchange of services, never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".
A job is also a significant portion of your time. Its hard to make it be both, but its also near impossible to both follow your dreams and work full time separately. Seems like making a job be both is a worthy goal if you can make it work.
I agree with this but it's also possible to, realizing your job is unfulfilling, and realizing you also don't want to turn your calling into your job, just checking out entirely. (at least for a time)
> never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".
I would hesitate to use the word “never,” there.
It’s kind of amazing, when a job becomes a vocation and a calling.
These days, that kind of describes where I’m at. I don’t get paid a dime, and work harder (and more productively) than I ever have. I’m doing work I never dared to dream of.
I had to be forced into this position. Long, sad story. Get your hanky. TL;DR, no one wants to play with someone over 50, that used to be a manager.
But the last few years have convinced me that you couldn’t drag me back into the rat race with a locomotive. I’m almost deliriously happy.
I’m extremely fortunate, in having built up enough to get to this point, and also, in learning to live humbly enough to have my needs met.
I wish the OP well.
Happiness is something that has no price tag, and is often found serendipitously. For some of us, we are only truly happy, when we are working.
1. We are all struggling with mental health. Such is life. That's no shame.
2. Counselors recommend stability, thus jobs. No shock there.
3. Counselors don't recommend quitting your job with no plan. What's the real story there? I can't tell. You proceed boldly, though . . .
4. You don't have endless possibilities. In fact you just ended one of them yourself, quite publicly!
5. If pragmatic decisions are a burden, consider seeking help. Other people or institutions can make pragmatic decisions for you while preserving your future options.
6. You don't owe anyone an explanation of why you were taken in. It's normal. We all are, sometimes, I think.
7. Real software engineers understand that they don't solve perfect math problems that will be taught in universities in perpetuity. We make things that will be (in some way) destroyed. And we are proud to build destroyable things. Sorry nobody told you abuot that. Seriously. I wish we were clearer!
8. Again, engineers get reassigned. Same as above. Sorry nobody explained that. It is hard for some people to deal. Especially the first time it happens. Hope they have good mentors/managers!
9. It's not any judgement on you. It's seriously not about you. It's about the project(s). It's impersonal and with no kind of malice directed at you.
10. You grew corporate domain knowledge. Companies claim they care abuot that. They don't. They show they care with money. And they pay money for core skills. (Note also, these skills do not degrade over time and you can gain them over a long career.)
11. Talking about "irrational" things. Stop. That's tainted with bad faith. Even if it matters, stop and take a breath.
12. What's next? You don't know but you have some bridges to burn. That should help give you direction.
I only ask that if you stick with software, this is not a meditative profession so much as a highly collaborative one. We work together (and try to understand one another and talk with one another just like this) because we love being makers with other makers. There is nothing so delightful as creating a new thing with someone new, stranger!
>5. If pragmatic decisions are a burden, consider seeking help. Other people or institutions can make pragmatic decisions for you while preserving your future options.
> pragmatic: relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters : practical as opposed to idealistic
I think the problem here is many people accept this definition of pragmatism and believe they should strive to be pragmatic in most aspects of your life.
This leads people to optimize their life for stability and income, and neglect their emotional and intellectual needs.
Sometimes what you want as an individual is out of alignment with pragmatism, and that's OK! You are allowed to be illogical, follow a whim, burn bridges, and fail.
I loved doing coding on my own. Then I started to work for a few companies.
Out of all of them there was only one where I felt good.
It was a public research facility, they were doing scientific work. But they hadn't the money to hire me. (I was an intern there).
The rest were just BS jobs.
I quit, started my own projects and I am making enough money on them to live.
I cut off all the costs related to work. (Expensive housing to live near the workplace, transportation, food, and health as I am not stressed anymore and much happier).
I left my job when covid started and I do not intend to return into the workforce ever. I run some small projects and make a bit of money on it, although it is much less than what I did with the 9-5 job I have more money now than before.
That's because Working has a cost:
- living in an expensive area with high rents
- transportation to the company
- Eating out (No time to cook)
- Taxes!
- Health (Sitting around so much got me neck issues)
In the end you end up not making any significant money and just playing into the pockets of some greedy landlord or company.
> I do not intend to return into the workforce ever.
the thing is, if you could already live off your own wealth and assets, then yea, this is great. But what of those who do not own enough assets to support themselves without a paying job?
Start a new venture. It takes literally pennies to serve a web app on something like AWS Lambda. You don't even need to pay a server. Invest some few hundred dollars on YouTube ads, targeting channels your audience watches. Learn how to craft effective ad videos with this course [1]. It's a lot of work, but I don't think we can excuse it on top of "I'm underprivileged". You can choose not to do this work. But it's your choice.
Sounds like the job just treated devs as replaceable, identical "units", but the author comes across as an individual. The management would hate any sign of life from the "units".
"We'll get a new front-end resource soon".
"We're opening two more backfills for backend resources".
"We need a front-end resource to unblock this ticket".
I have a interview on Monday which I will decline. Literally copy pasting from their meeting invite - "Request to panel-Please Take Resource Snapshot along with Any ID Proof and share the Feedback along with IRF post completion of interview."
Currently I'm working for a USA based product company with ~1000 employees (The ones who said
"We'll get a new front-end resource soon". "We're opening two more backfills for backend resources". "We need a front-end resource to unblock this ticket".)
The interview invite was for the position of a Tech Lead in an outsourcing firm in India. (The ones who said "Request to panel-Please Take Resource Snapshot along with Any ID Proof and share the Feedback along with IRF post completion of interview."
Edit: In a recent anonymous survey, I gave the feedback to stop treating the India employees as code monkeys or outsourced work, because several have started considering this as "yet another service-company type job", and are thinking to leave. With outsourcing companies, you expect it. But if most indian engineers had clarified that "the India office is not a outsourcing office for this company" before joining, people are gonna be more pissed on being treated like that.
when i spent not quite a year working for (non AWS) Amazon, a document was leaked that such treatment was actually business plan. It was beyond obvious before the document was leaked.
I contrasted the structure of several years of Apple engineering with the insanity of this business plan, which put roughly a dozen layers of non technical middle managers above our team of people with pretty hardcore technical degrees and who were dependable and capable, yet who were treated like fungible assets.
I became resolute to quit as soon as possible...but it DID take months to believe my perceptions of the stupidity were valid.
That's pretty much kitchen rotations 101. If you ever wonder why your food isn't cooked right, this is why. They always have new people having to reacclimate to a new kitchen on a regular basis. And then they claim they can't find anyone decent to do the job. It's absolutely a lie on their parts.
They use the probationary period laws incorrectly to fire people they don't like for literally any reason, even if it might be discrimination, cause they can just claim "no reason, I just don't like you."
It's fucking amazing how much these motherfuckers will screw with people too. I've been kept on for jobs until the last day of my probation, or a week away, or a month away... and let go for 'no reason'.
I would love to know the reason. Perhaps I can do something about it. But nope... if you even insist on getting some truth from these people... they just start fighting you. Sometimes even physically.
I have no fucking clue what is wrong with them, or me if that's the case at this point.
Anyone looking to get into the 'normal' job market best avoid the kitchen industry. It's going nuclear, slowly.
I'm getting out of the industry as fast as possible. BUT... Until I have enough money saved aside to do just that, I have to keep working in it... and keep getting my record of employment tarnished more and more because of their dumb bullshit.
I wish I could just sue them all. Can't though. They are legal, even if evil.
...there’s a deeper reason... so many people don’t have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon... When your identity is linked to your hobby — you’re a yogi, a surfer, a rock climber — you’d better be good at it, or else who are you?
Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it... It steals from us one of life’s greatest rewards — the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy.
...leisure is time away from work, not facilitating it.
By viewing work as something we do to support our leisure time, rather than our hobbies as something to lower our stress so we can get back to work, we can actually start enjoying our lives. (I know, wild idea.)
> When your identity is linked to your hobby [...]
> Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it...
Isn't this the issue, though? If "you are what you do", because you link your identity to that, and what you do isn't "good", I can see how than can cause some issues.
To take your example, if you're taking up jogging, so you can run a marathon, so you can take some Instagram photos at the finish line, so you can get the likes, this is the end result. So of course, just cruising around the block won't attract the likes, so it doesn't really help the end goal, does it?
I think the issue is one of not stopping to smell the roses.
Social affirmation is a common desire. It's not wrong to want social affirmation though. The problem only comes when you either never achieve anything worthy of affirmation, leading you to feel useless, or you fake things to get social affirmation (such as those weird "animal rescue" videos, which turns out to be the owner abusing their animals and filming a rescue for likes etc).
I say, people who desire social affirmation should introspect, and see if they are doing something they like doing or it is entirely only affirmation they want.
I have seen this a lot in my hobby (flying gliders). People spend boatloads of their time and money chasing some temporary fame, meanwhile suffering from something that not a lot of people are able to experience.
I’m curious to learn more about your ideas, but you’re more or less equating a person’s identity to their relationship with social media, it’s not a strong argument.
Not exactly. My point was that people may be equating their identity with certain activities in order to attain social media status.
As another commenter said, social validation is something sought after by people, and may be common enough to be considered "normal".
But my idea is that if you only take part in an activity because, for whatever reason, you want to be "a person who does X" and associate your identity with it ("I'm a runner"), you are unlikely to partake in that activity in a "leisurely fashion", because you have to conform to what "a person who does X" is expected to do by their audience. The comment to which I was initially replying was giving the example of running, so I was looking for an explanation of why many people won't just "cruise around the block" but instead try for a marathon, complete with selfies at the finish line.
While I definitely don't hold social media in high regard, my post was not intended to be a dig at it. But I understand that my position is likely to color my discourse to things related to it.
I'm embracing the spirit of wandering in my life, and there is something special about knowing what is a priority versus what is joyful work.
For example, I'm currently working on a low-latency durability solution for my SaaS (shameless plug: https://www.adama-platform.com/ ). Do I need to be working on this? No... I should be working on the consumer side. However, I'm currently getting decent results. Granted, I'm having to wade through a bunch of optimizations, but the potential is right there: 1 ms commit time.
Just need to figure out why it craps the bed every 30 seconds or so. It's super fun! And, I'm already got 8x the performance of RocksDB.
I had to quit my job due to mental health (autism). I rationalised it at the time, thinking with all the newfound time I could get so much done specifically for what I wanted to achieve personally rather than what brings in revenue for some billionaire family I don't know in Germany. 4 months later, I'm feeling a lot better mentally. My discipline has returned and all that. But there was a very heavy dip, especially due to the loneliness. That ritual of seeing some light every morning commute and meeting a lot of people every day is very undervalued, if you like me mostly judge a job by the tasks you have to get done. But it was worth it, quitting your job is a short term loss and a long term gain. We only have one life, and have to sacrifice money and an awe-inspiring LinkedIn facade to find beauty and passion. I'd rather learn music instruments, read three books a week, paint and sew clothes, than to have every day look the same in a cubicle and watch the months go by quickly and forgettably.
This is one of the most relatable blog post I have read in recent time.
> precedence says I will fall into inaction and misery, and achieve nothing. Complete nothing
Exactly what I am afraid of; and this fear is keeping me from quitting my job.
At my current job I worked hard to deliver on a "innovative" solution, which would have removed a lot of manual work, but the project got re-prioritized when the manager was fired.
I don't find any satisfaction in the current project; earlier I used to look forward to work, now it has become a chore. I have enough savings to last me 6-8 months. But I don't know if I'll be able to bounce back in case I end up wasting all those months.
I quit my job too. I learnt that you should move fast to validate and launch projects. There also needs to be hard benefits for users. Set deadlines to launch your MVP. Some things I have worked on:
https://tradecast.one Automated crypto trading. The main benefit here is obvious, making profits.
https://cxo.industries Business tools for startups. This is the project that lots of people were interested in, but not many tried. I don't think I sold the benefits that well, but will take another look at it in the future.
https://nexusdev.tools/ Dev tools I built in the process. This was a by-product of tools I wanted for myself. I want to get the first Open Source code drop out next month to validate if others want to build with this. Then perhaps build a commercial/Pro version.
Right now only CxO has launched. Not many people were interested in trying it out. I believe the reason is lack of product/market fit as the existing features aren't enough to hold peoples' attention.
However I am planning to implement features that are far more interesting and closer to what people have asked for. I launched to get a working web app out the door in the spirit of shipping early. So it's minimum but perhaps not viable.
I want to launch the MVP of TradeCast next month, which will be demo trading only. I'll soon know whether there is product/market fit. But then I was also scratching my own itch when I built it.
There has been some interest in Nexus Dev Tools, which is encouraging, despite the admittedly sparse information on the landing page. I plan to release some code next month and will take it from there.
I wish the Charan all the best.
Can't help but think this resonates so well with me may be because I sailed the same boat for 2 years now. Employers need to manage burnout , some of the smartest guys got so severely burnt out the last 2 years (may be stay at home thing) . To make it worse there was a constant imposter syndrome question that this was purely my productivity problem and did not speak to anyone about it. Now that i met a few in the office (like the real one , not home office) looks like a lot of them are on this roller coaster
I genuinely wish the author all the best, but I can't help but feel concerned.
ADHD might be better named as "novelty addiction". I myself have quit jobs many times when I would have done better to stay put, always hunting for something new.
If the author was successful as a freelancer and as an employee then he seems to have the ADHD under control well. That gives me hope that he will find his footing as he takes his next steps.
I'm no MD, but I would say it's more accurate to describe it as an inability to control impulses, which puts important relationship commitments at risk, romantic or otherwise.
I'd love to work on something as a passion. Just big enough to keep my mortgage payments going out.
I have no idea where to start. Dropping out of the work force sounds scary. I couldn't support my family for very long if I tried. I wish New Zealand paid as well as I hear the US does.
fwiw plenty of overseas companies are hiring remotely in NZ these days, some explicitly eg atlassian, gitlab, but anecdotally, many others are willing to hire here even though their job ads say US only. This is pushing salaries up in a big way - not to parity, but a heck of a lot better than it used to be. Worth looking around if your salary hasn’t changed in a few years :)
> I want to spend some time making impractical decisions. I want to build software which solve the problem of making me happy, or at least entertained.
I hope you get a chance to do that, at least for a while. I want that too.
I interpret this as you may not have had previous experience with therapy that's focused on you. If I'm right, then my two cents is, avoid telehealth. The convenience is not worth it, the stakes are way too high and technology is nowhere near capable of replicating the intimate, human experience that you get (for free b/c the cost is tragically the same) by physically sitting across from another person.
Other than that, finding the right person requires a little bit of luck. I responded really well to a therapist who was an LMFT and focused on boundaries, family systems.. I did a little CBT with them, changed my life fundamentally. You may not need all that. Regardless, avoid telehealth unless you have to.
No idea what the conversation prompt would be, I just want to hop on the trend, and tell people, mostly women, that I hopped on the trend. People are like "more men should have therapy", okay sure can't wait to casually mention that. If there is some silver lining of actually having something "unpacked" or introspected, then ideally I'll be a beneficiary of that too.
I think there are people for whom jobs are never a natural fit. I am one of those people. Could never stick to a job for very long but could work on my personal project for years. That's why right now I'm unemployed too but I don't ever want to have a boss.
Honestly... as someone looking at going into freelancing due to how fucking shitty the job market seems to be as of late... I don't suggest getting a day job.
Now of course it may depend on the job market you are in. I admit that. But my experience over the past 17 years I have worked now (minus pandemic years I guess...) I have never seen anything as bad as what I am witnessing on a regular basis now for 3 full years now. This isn't even the Pandemic that gets to be the one to catch all the blame for this. These employers are so heinous they have been this way since before 2019.
But the pandemic has made it even worse. It's made it so that even employers who were once kinda decent are now even worse.
And the cherry on top of this shit sundae? I've found proof that helps prove my point in regards to some of my old jobs. One of them was never a good place to work at in the first place, but it looks kinda nice and seemed better than most. How wrong was I?
Well, so wrong that even though my reporting of them to the health board had them fail atrociously, they had already failed atrociously for multiple years now. Going back as far as 2010 if I remember correctly. And this seems to be a repeat occurrence the more I dig into the subject. Bad bosses have bad kitchens. (Yes, I'm food industry.) And bad kitchens tend to be run by bad bosses. There are exceptions to the rule it seems, but generally speaking... if you think you should report a place; you probably should have already done it before you stepped foot into the building.
That's how bad it is right now. In Alberta, Canada.
Again, there are a lot of good employers too, but I seem to keep missing them. Some I thought were bad though... turned out to be not half bad once they got their heads back on straight though. Hence my mentioning of that even the kinda decent ones earlier.
One such employer, might just hire me back on, cause he's having a hard time finding anyone wanting to work in the kitchen. Can't say I blame them, since it's a small kitchen and it can be easy to get annoyed with other people in a small kitchen. Very easy. But none the less, he basically offered me a job back after talking to him about my last paycheck I left there during Wave 3. (And yes, if he were to read this, he would know exactly who I am right now. heh...)
Anyways.
I'm sure this fellow has his reasons for getting out of freelancing; but to me the freedom of being answerable ultimately to only myself is kind of nice. I don't mind hustling for a decent gig if need be, just so long as they treat me like a freaking human being. And so far... I seem to get that treatment more so from people I am helping doing gig work on the side, than I get from people who should know better than to treat their fellow coworkers like crap. Or their employees. Etc.
As a final note: I highly suggest any Albertan's or anyone looking to come to Alberta for any reason at all, to avoid any restaurants that look even remotely dingy or seedy. If that kitchen doesn't sparkle, don't go into it. Yeah, it's that bad. Places that seem respectable on the outside will have some of the unholiest of kitchens on the inside. It's so bad, I'm considering moving back to Saskatchewan... the place I left to get away from BS back there. (Totally partially my fault.)
I think there is nothing irrational about this. Look up “purpose economy”. Grinding away your life in the interests of some company that basically just wants to achieve financial gains is not satisfying at all, we’re just normalizing it because it’s lucrative and we live in a world where bills need to be paid. The future isn’t build by greed and hustle, but by ambition and dreams. Don’t let people tell you off for this. Artists don’t do what they do because they seek any kind of validation for it, yet they shape the cultures that we identify with. All relevant progress, both individual and societal, comes from people who don’t care for the established worldly order. The future is build by dreamers and visionaries, not by people who confuse the treadmill for a life worth living. You do you.