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Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

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Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#341

Post by zer00eyz »

matte_black wrote: post #208

I’m not convinced that productivity is a virtue for software engineers. I have production code running untouched for over 8 years that was produced in the laziest straight forward way as possible, simply because I didn’t feel like working so hard. Indeed, I delayed writing any code until I came up with an idea of the minimum amount of code I could get away with, then I minimized that some more. I’ve eliminated entire…

By that same token:

I know of two engineers who are pot smokers (wake up and smoke type of people) - without pot they are bulls in china shopm with pot they tend to be calmer and more personable. I don't advocate for self medicating but these two have it down to a science and it is of benefit to their code quality.

By that same token I can point to two people who smoked pot and wrote the worst code imaginable....

The difference between them is night and day -

I get a lot of honest reactions from current drug users because I'm very frank with my past (I ate all the chemicals) -

I think that there is a big set of distinctions between recreation, abuse and use of drugs, and that every one not only treats what they take differently but reacts very differently to it as well.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#342

Post by nerfhammer »

jacquesm wrote: post #235
whalesalad wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though the entire ethos of my comment suggests that you wanna stay away from this stuff ... occasional/recreational use is not a big deal. He never pushed it on me, it was just something that I could take advantage of on occasion. I don't look back on it and think it was predatory or a big deal or a malicious thing. I definitely don't think he deserves to be in jail or punished.

The guy is in a power relationship with his subordinates, he is definitely not the one to go and prescribe medication. The best thing he could have done is to send you to a doctor. If a CEO here in NL suggested I take some pills in order to improve my productivity and offered to supply them my first step would be to inform the board in writing and my second would be to resign my position. This is simply not ok, and n…

Not that it makes a difference completely but I have a feeling the employee was 22 and the CEO was 24

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#343

Post by neveradmitmyid »

Eilene wrote: post #326
neveradmitmyid wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A somewhat odd reoccurring conversation we all have is discussing our dislike of long periods of not being stoned. I personally feel I get naively optimistic, and being stoned make me more critical. I am more easy going (too easy going?) when completely sober, and tend towards obsessive creative introspection when high. It is not a rare topic, the discussion of our long term heavy use, for those of us that are more h…

Do you all discuss the heavy use because you're concerned about the toll it could take on your lungs, in the same way you might be concerned if it was tobacco? or is it more than that? (also I can't believe you can run marathons and smoke that much!)

It's split between discussions of physical health and mental health. General consensus towards physical seems to be between belief they are a bit less than cigarettes to surprise and interest in pot being significantly less harmful, somewhat similar to a typical city's smog. Discussions of the mental impact are concession we all achieve flow and greater life stability from the high. Perhaps there is a general tendency towards mild hyperactivity among us, and we're a leveling self medicated crowd that all happened to be around when entertainment went digital. We all certainly know one another, at the multiple studios, now spread out globally. Over the last few decades we've worked at all the major animation/vfx/game studios.

Also, getting high is much, much less smoke than 1 cigarette, sorta. The hits, the draws, are much larger, but in 1-2 minutes you're done. Versus a cigarette is 15 to 20 draws over 5-7 minutes. Getting high 10 times a day is about the same as 2-3 cigarettes. Whereas a cigarette smoker goes though 10-20 cigarettes per day.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#344

Post by JauntTrooper »

lordofmoria wrote: post #111
woah wrote: post #84

I would be careful of overestimating the amount of stimulant use based on comments and emails here. People who use a lot of stimulants tend to love talking about themselves and often have a belief that anyone successful must be taking stimulants secretly. It plays into the motivation of most stimulant users which is that the stimulants have given them a special cheat code in life. I worked in construction in my young…

Logged in to upvote this. Birds of a feather flock together. I’ve personally never come across anyone who (admits) to using anything stronger than Redbull. In fact, we have some employees who don’t even drink coffee, opting for “natural” stimulants which come with less of a crash. Yerba Mate seems particularly popular these days. However, I may be in my own bubble; I’m very interested in seeing what you find!

I’ve been in investment banking, finance, and consulting for ~15 years and had a similar experience. The last time I saw illicit drug use was marijuana in college.

I find stories like this to be important reminders that it is likely happening around me, and I need to be alert for it.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#345

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #198
Bartweiss wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm trying to determine too if all of the drug use in tech is really aimed at enhancing performance/productivity or if it's also used to stave off depression, anxiety or just that feeling so many of us have and have had that we're not doing anything particularly meaningful in our professional work. This is a fascinating possibility, and apparently there's at least one researcher working on exactly that. [1][2] On a…

The emotional blocks to productivity are a very real phenomenon. I've only ever done this once, but I pushed through a really annoying emberjs refactor through Ballmer Peaking overnight.

The referenced xkcd https://xkcd.com/323/

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#346

Post by unimpressive »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #295

There are several topics here that are related in this community. 1) Hacking your mind/body through the use of physical/mechanical environment changes: meditation, exercise, diet, and so forth. A lot of hackers do this. 2) Hacking your mind/body through the use of Over-The-Counter chemicals: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, roots, nootropics, and so forth. A lot of hackers do this. 3) Hacking your mind/body through t…

This.

I would very much appreciate if the author managed to take a more nuanced view than darpa_escapee here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16468350

This entire thread is probably being massively selection biased by one crowd that wants to costly signal their purity by talking about how no one they know does things in that nebulous 'drugs' category and they would never consider it. And then it's being selection biased by another set that wants to countersignal their insight by talking about how actually, everyone secretly does drugs, how do you think people manage those all nighters, clearly they sit on a throne of stimulants.

I suspect the reality is less dramatic. ADHD is one of the most common adult mental disorders, just on this basis alone we should expect a lot of basically non-abusive stimulant use (and some basically abusive stimulant use, it is an addictive drug after all). My informal impression is that ADD is more common than base rate in programmers, I don't have any formal proof of this but the LessWrong Community survey indicates a rate far above normal.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/nqa/2016_lesswrong_diaspora_survey_a...

Of course, that almost certainly has other selection biases involved than just being a computer programmer.

Beyond that you have a large number of people who are higher on Big Five Openness than normal, and are probably willing to take substances in a cautious way for benefit. The entire 'nootropics' strain is testimony to this particular brand of cultural oddity. I suspect these people are distinct from the sort of people you normally think of as meth junkies.

And then of course, nobody wants to talk about this but even just reading hacker news you'll get people occasionally come onto anon accounts to discuss their struggle with heroin or ridiculously unhealthy doses of stimulant drugs. These people are often invisible because their sort of drug use is not fashionable, and so it's often assumed that they simply don't exist in polite society. They of course do, and I suspect their mindset and lifestyle look different from the groups mentioned above.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#347

Post by sudosteph »

Seattle based techies I know definitely seem to enjoy weed. With legalization and advances in weed tech (e-nails), dabbing concentrates or vape pens are the typical mode of usage. It's a daily thing for most of the ones I know.

I do see some stimulant usage (adderall, modafinil, caffeine, 5 hour energy), but it's usually in people with ADHD who are taking prescribed medication. Sometimes others will take it too, though I suspect some of those are are people who probably have ADHD and aren't getting treatment. Hyperfocus and love of novelty make tech an appealing field for ADHDers and those with ADHD tendencies.

I've only known one techie to use coke, and thought he was crazy and way out of the norm for my group.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#348

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

Eilene wrote: post #289
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #248

I remember your article. I hope it helps to have the ability to so beautifully render the tragedy that befell you in words. I'm in tech. My first experience with drugs other than weed, which I just don't enjoy, happened relatively late. I was around 30 at the time when I joined friends of a friend taking MDMA at a club. I have experienced chronic depression for as long as I can remember. I was rarely actually "sad",…

it was enormously freeing to finally be able to write about what happened to my family, yes, thank you. I felt like I was living in a John Grisham created hell, afraid of telling anyone what really happened and instead acting like Peter was the victim of his own stringent work ethic (which is true and not true). May I ask you what you do for a living? Are you a developer?

I earn my living running a small company selling a consumer product online. The business is mostly automated these days, and my productive time is spend on two projects in the machine learning space, one focussed on politics and one on music.

While still in high school, I started a software company selling mostly to large business and government. It was there that I noticed that I'm incapable of functioning in a corporate world with multi-year 7-figure projects. So the next business was deliberately focussed on many, smaller customers, each of whom I can hang up on if I so feel.

You can email me at anthonyDOTk e m p AT protonmail.ch (remove spaces, replace DOT with . AT with @) if you have more questions.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#349

Post by thecupisblue »

Bartweiss wrote: post #166
Eilene wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this manager still going this route? And do you think any of the microdosing (or other drug use) goes beyond the 10x productivity stuff? Could it be some of the tedium of programming work? Does it relieve any of that? I'm trying to determine too if all of the drug use in tech is really aimed at enhancing performance/productivity or if it's also used to stave off depression, anxiety or just that feeling so many of…

> I'm trying to determine too if all of the drug use in tech is really aimed at enhancing performance/productivity or if it's also used to stave off depression, anxiety or just that feeling so many of us have and have had that we're not doing anything particularly meaningful in our professional work. This is a fascinating possibility, and apparently there's at least one researcher working on exactly that. [1][2] On a…

Ha! I was just noticing this recently, smoking a joint early in the day makes it easier for me to focus and way more productive.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#350

Post by werber »

I have had a fairly large amount of coworkers who microdose LSD to tackle heavy problems. They all seemed to speak of it very highly, but a few of them ended up using harder drugs because they bought it along with their LSD via whatever dark web channel they used. One person in particular moved from just microdosing to using Crystal Meth, while still being a highly functional developer.
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