Money isn’t everything.
Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#32Put down your phone when talking to family and friends. Don't just keep typing and say "I'm listening."
Thanks for writing this. Came just at the right moment.
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#33Why is almost everyone on HN hellbent on being more productive. I believe people should relax a bit and be grateful for what they have. Yes, its okay to try to do more things, but life is not about productivity. We are not machines, we are human beings. Invest some of your time in your family, friends, volunteering, or just being thankful for what you have.
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#34Get over yourselves. You are a very arrogant bunch.
You are not a genius and neither am I. Being able to write a unit test does not automatically make you smarter than someone who studied humanities in college.
Living in the USA does not make you a more effective worker than someone who does not.
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#35Sleep and exercise are the two most important things you should absolutely be doing to improve your life. Followed by diet and meditation. Also, if you’re anything like me, forcing yourself to spend time with people will make you significantly happier. (Speaking as someone who has a tendency to isolate themselves.
This. Also, I'd like to add: being kind to yourself.
How to be kind to yourself? I have heard this phrase before, but never able to figure out what it means!!
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#36The sky isn't falling, and technological advancement still represents a key element of improving the human condition. The actions of a few bad actors, as dismaying as they are, don't indicate that everyone in tech has malicious intentions or anything.
We should strive to do better than systems of governance that involve an implicit (or explicit) threat of violence in order to coerce people into behaving the way we want. And we have no moral standing to use violence in that way to begin with.
Read lots of awesome books, and listen to great music. But don't let anybody else define for you what constitutes "awesome books" or "great music". Take suggestions and hints and recommendations from others, weight them as you see fit, but in the end: "to thine own self be true".
In the words of the immortal Aleister Crowley "Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law".
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#37Genuinely listen, even to people who disagree with your strongly held opinions. Listen to really give their position a fair hearing, not just looking for something to argue with. This has several benefits:
- You could actually be wrong, even if you don't think that's possible. You might learn that your position is mistaken.
- You might see that the other person's position, while you still don't agree with it, is still not as nuts as you thought it was.
- Even for a position that you totally disagree with, you might learn how to better refute it. You might even learn how to more accurately state it in the process of refuting it. (It's always better to refute something that your opponents recognize as their real position, rather than a strawman.)
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#38No one knows quite what they’re doing. You deserve to be here. Keep learning, you’ll get there.
When you see the giant exit, the perfect job, the super-cool ultra-light digital nomad lifestyle... that guy doesn’t know what they’re doing either. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Be nice to yourself.
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#39I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US and make barely above the local minimum wage. I decided to learn to code, but there's all this anthropological stuff that I don't know, and I don't have a network at all.
I keep getting discouraged and giving up. I write code and don't publicize it. It's all niche anyway. There are months where I don't apply to anything, but I hardly ever get called back - I graduated from college, but with a liberal arts degree. (I got really bad advice.) I apply to fifty jobs and get one phone screen, and then I teach my friends in the Bay Area about how compilers work and so on. I know a guy in a similar position who gave up and became an expat, and I've been helping him learn Python, but I don't let on that it probably won't pay off.
My lease is almost up, and my roommate is going back to college anyway, so I'm going to move back in with my family and work full-time on getting a job and grinding interview problems. But they don't even have an internet connection! Maybe I could get dialup to work. I don't know. I'll probably become a regular at the local McDonald's.
I don't think I'm any good. I'd give up, but the alternative is aspiring to someday become an assistant manager of a fast food joint.
Working these crappy jobs, I've met a lot of people in similar positions. Smart people from hopeless backgrounds who ended up working nothing but retail, or IT guys who can hold their own in web development shop talk but lost their jobs in 2008, ended up homeless for a while, and now push carts in warehouses.
How the hell do people without traditional backgrounds make it? Do I have to go through a boot camp and give up another few months of my life? (Besides, I tried that once already and it didn't pay off - although that was right after I finished college and realized I had some toilet paper, so I had hardly any work experience.) Does it all come down to networking?
Is there any hope?
Re: Ask HN: What would you like to say to your fellow HN readers?
#40I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US and make barely above the local minimum wage. I decided to learn to code, but there's all this anthropological stuff that I don't know, and I don't have a network at all. I keep getting discouraged and giving up. I write code and don't publicize it. It's all niche anyway. There are months where I don't apply to anything, but I…
I don’t know what i’m doing either. Whether software is the right industry for me. I’ve spent 10 years of my life doing it. Might as well continue. I’m dreading my job and may quit in a couple of months. Don’t have anything lined up.