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Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#161
Congrats, you’re human.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of being envious. Envy and greed turn into resentment and anger. You need to nip it.

If you know the person, you know what’s a great way to handle this... Give the guy a call or drop by and congratulate them on their good news.

And for yourself, grab a notebook, go sit at the library or wherever and write down the things you want to do. Anything, this is for you. Write that you want to be the president. Channel your inner Office Space and write that you want to have a threesome. Or be the next Zuck. Or catch a fish. Whatever.

Then write down a high level plan of attack to achieve each thing. One thing per page. Then write the list of things you really want to do.

In my personal experience, envy is usually more of a reflection of what I failed to do or dream or plan vs what some other person achieved. Be secure in who you are and what you want, and you will be better for it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#162

In most cases, you probably have no real idea what is involved in their so-called success. Sometimes it's mostly hype and hot air. Theranos was valued at $10 billion. It dropped to basically zero overnight. Now the founder is set to be prosecuted on criminal charges. Other times, sure, their success is real -- and comes at the cost of divorce, chronic drug use to manage consequent health issues etc. Rich and famous p…

...but at the same time it’s because those people are the real deal. Most people I know are in the latter camp. Yeah, they can run marathons and got into a DL team at Google and got 2350s on their SATs and made a million in crypto, what of it? I’m very skeptical that the people better than me aren’t better than me for a darn good reason.

In eighth grade, I got in trouble for trying to explain to another student how a letter-substitution puzzle worked at all. It was for extra credit.

The other student was Hispanic and spoke English as a second language. He had no idea where to even start. He didn't even know what it was.

My dad did the Cryptoquote in the newspaper every single morning. I knew exactly how this worked.

I was one of the "smart" kids at school, but my ability to solve this puzzle had little or nothing to do with innate intelligence. I just had seen such puzzles many, many times and helped my dad when he got stuck because he didn't like failing to solve it. So if he couldn't do it on his own, he began asking family members to look at it.

Meanwhile, I never have really become fluent in a second language like the Hispanic student I was trying to assist because it struck me as unfair that he had zero hope of solving this puzzle through no fault of his own.

But he was a poor immigrant of the wrong ethnicity. The school system and world around him placed no value on the extra knowledge he had due to who his dad was. Instead, it placed value on what I knew because of who my dad was, somewhat randomly and arbitrarily, not because there are careers to be of solving puzzles in the daily paper and not because being bilingual is useless.

There is so much luck, happenstance, born into the right family, right-place-and-right-time involved in "success" that I just can't be arsed to invest a lot of emotional heat in looking at other people and wishing I had their stuff.

I've worked hard at making my private life work. I think if I ever have "success," it will be sustainable and not destroy me/my life. In contrast, many people with public success got it by making crippling personal sacrifices. In some cases, it literally kills them.

I'll pass on that. It's simply not anything I want.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#164
Anyone who's anything-er than you can be your teacher in that thing, if you approach them that way — even if only in your own mind.

If you bring envy to your interactions with these people, the things you'll tend to notice are those that trip envy. If you engage with them as people from whom you can learn something, the things you'll more often observe are just that: things you could learn. They may even be the very same thing; the intent you bring can color your experience of them that deeply.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#165
In the past, I would see peers and think of them and realize wow that's cool they're doing X thing and I'm not. I used to think of how ambitious I used to be and how I wasn't driven anymore.

I may get hate for this because the idea has been touted as a "miracle" by many folks... but I used the framework from the philosophy of Stoicism to approach this problem. At the end of the day, envy alone is a waste of my time. I can't control the world around me but I can control the feelings and perceptions and that in turn can lead to my actions.

I turned that envy into action. I turned to introspection and became very self-aware about my skills, experiences, knowledge gaps, and yes sometimes the privilege peers had that got them ahead of me (like rich family, inherent network, nepotism, etc). By mapping that out, I was able to mirror and compare myself to this ideal version of myself.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#166

At the end of the day, it's just a fucking job. If you need the money I understand the envy, and I've been there. But ultimately most of us are working really hard to make other people rich. Being really good at that game (and it's a pretty bitter game) isn't something to be envious of. I have never seen a high paying job in tech that wasn't ALSO higher stress and generally more hours. I'm sure exceptions exist, but…

My question to people with this attitude is, what is the point of your life? I've lost a lot of friends and recognize that life is way too short to not be putting as much time as possible toward something you find totally compelling. The stock answer is contentment and "happiness." The most content person I've ever met was a flower cart man in Belmopan, Belize. Probably made $100 a week at most. He knew all he wanted…

Solid point, Not OP, but I also want to point out that OP seems to enjoy his working term (no commute and all), but enjoying the work doesn't have to make an impact on you.

It's just a fucking job, yes, we make other people rich, yes, but it's also the kind of job that I wanna do. I also don't commute, and also have more time to meet with my daughter compared to most dads, and I really glad about this term.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#167
The Yoga-Sutras have a couple of nice aphorisms (from http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/yogasutr.htm) for mind training;

"1.33. By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and indifference towards vice, the mind becomes pure."

"2.33 When improper thoughts disturb the mind, there should be constant pondering over the opposites."

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#168
post #108

At the end of the day, it's just a fucking job. If you need the money I understand the envy, and I've been there. But ultimately most of us are working really hard to make other people rich. Being really good at that game (and it's a pretty bitter game) isn't something to be envious of. I have never seen a high paying job in tech that wasn't ALSO higher stress and generally more hours. I'm sure exceptions exist, but…

This is a solid observation. I made a personal decision sometime in my late 20s to never do anything for money that I wouldn't also be willing to do for free. As a result of this decision I make a lot less money than many of my peers, but I'm always working on projects I'm excited about and I have more free time than most of the people I know. If anything, like you, I feel sorry for the people I see working all the t…

Money buys freedom from wage slavery.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#169
post #78

This quote from Naval Ravikant: “You have to be that person. Do you want to be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, and their self image? If you’re not willing to do a whole sale, 24/7, 100% swap with who that person is, then there’s no point in being jealous.”

Exactly. Admire traits, but don’t (or, try not to) envy. Admiration, and the motivation that can come with it, can be good! But blind envy or jealousy can overlook the negatives that someone might be dealing with.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

#170

I'm not envious of people like that - they are still corporate slaves, working on other people's ideas, trading all their time for a little bit of extra money. The praise/acclaim they are getting is so bosses/society can exploit them better. The difference between $80k or $200k salary makes almost no difference in quality of life. The $200k dev is often more stressed and not as happy as they look on the outside. Most…

>The difference between $80k or $200k salary makes almost no difference in quality of life. I don’t see how this is true for any urban area, where $80k will not let you save any significant amount whereas $200k will provide you a decent cushion in case your incoming cash flow experiences turbulence. The peace of mind resulting from this certainly improves quality of life, especially if you have mouths to feed. Also,…

Hello from Montreal, where everything you said is true for either dollar amount, even in Canadian dollars. And indeed, tech salaries in that range are plenty available here. The low end of tech salaries is below $80k, but the threshold where things start getting tight is also below $80k, so no problem.

(Of course $200k will allow faster growth of savings and investment or a more luxurious lifestyle, but even $80k can work here for comfortable middle-class living.)

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