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Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

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Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#521

Post by ahs1 »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #501
ahs1 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apolitical answer: Markets prefer political stability. Average annual S&P 500 returns are around ~7% adjusted for inflation, but ~12% when a President is in his second term. Political answer: A Trump loss would be presumably be to one of the self-avowed socialists running which would certainly crash the markets. Furthermore, even without a market crash, a socialist implementing mark-to-market capital gains taxation w…

> A Trump loss would be presumably be to one of the avowed socialists running Oh bless, the tendency in the US towards labelling people still right of the centre by most countries' standards as "socialists" for being left of the Republicans is cute.

edit: self-avowed socialists

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#522

Post by OJFord »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #501
ahs1 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apolitical answer: Markets prefer political stability. Average annual S&P 500 returns are around ~7% adjusted for inflation, but ~12% when a President is in his second term. Political answer: A Trump loss would be presumably be to one of the self-avowed socialists running which would certainly crash the markets. Furthermore, even without a market crash, a socialist implementing mark-to-market capital gains taxation w…

> A Trump loss would be presumably be to one of the avowed socialists running Oh bless, the tendency in the US towards labelling people still right of the centre by most countries' standards as "socialists" for being left of the Republicans is cute.

I'm not American, but the Democratic party self-describes as social-liberal.

Of course people can agree or disagree with the ideology, but only you here seem to have attached stigma to the word.

(Though the same could have been said for 'fascist', which certainly now has widespread stigma attached, and most proponents have stopped self-describing as such.)

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#523

Post by Zenbit_UX »

NeverFade wrote: post #417
whack wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been away from the bay for a while, but it's amazing how bad the dating scene is, for exactly the reasons you described. I'm currently engaged to an amazing woman who has only ever lived in working-class suburbs and smaller cities. Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. She keeps telling me ho…

> Engineers in places like SFBA severely underestimate how attractive they would be anywhere else in the country/world. I agree completely. > Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. Here's what happened: Guys who are intellectual, attended college, have good discipline, and stayed away from substanc…

> she'd find at least one guy who is an exec or VC making 7 figures per year, and it would usually be a match.

> "120k/year"? You'd make her laugh.

I don't understand this fixation on earnings, I wasn't making half that when I found my partner. Making 7 figures won't get you a girlfriend, but thinking it will makes it likely any partner you do find won't stick around long.

One of two things are happening, either a, all the women you're meeting truly are fixated on nothing but a man's wallet (highly unlikely but possible) or b, you have some seriously unhealthy views towards women and relationships that you should work on before attempting to enter a meaningful relationship.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#524

Post by Bahamut »

streetcat1 wrote: post #455
Aeolun wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 10x engineers do not actually exist, but maybe 0.1x engineers do, and when a 1x engineer is in such an environment they may seem like 10x by comparison.

They do. However, they can do 10X work only in deep work env, I.e. private office, no email, no meeting, etc. Once you put the 10X eng in regular work settings, he will quickly become 1X or 0.1X

There are different ways of making teams more productive than doing just technical work.

For my own anecdote, I often can fix a lot of bugs/feature requests that come by in I also spend the most time in meetings of any IC on my team - reducing how many ICs are in meetings frees up their time to learn and grow.

I often float ideas to people for approaches to problems and designing apps/systems/features - I’ll also let others do the same. However, I also often take a light touch and leave ultimate decision making to others so they can gain that experience even if I disagree. Letting others take ownership improves the team’s capabilities.

There are many ways to expand productivity of those around you that even those who aren’t as technically gifted can do. Leadership is a very underrated part of being an engineer IMO. I do all these things as a mid-level engineer in title, but gained massive respect from management & senior ICs where they come to me for advice/ideas. I don’t fall into the trap of jealousy that others are getting credit/hampering my ability to get promoted because my work speaks for itself & I celebrate when others do well - I have no reason to feel insecure, and so help unlock my team’s productivity by removing that ego in my actions.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#525

Post by Zenbit_UX »

NeverFade wrote: post #437
TwoBit wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most startup CEOs don't make much. Are there really very many VCs out there?

> Most startup CEOs don't make much. Depends on the startup and what stage it is. If it's a successful startup, then the CEO is sitting on a pile of stock that will likely be worth millions. If it's also a later stage startup, then likely he is making at least as much as his senior developers on top of that. Either way, he's a much better bet if you want to be a millionaire's wife some day. Also, executives typically…

Of all the women I know, not one of them aspires to be "a millionaire's wife".

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#526

Post by joatmon-snoo »

foota wrote: post #349
joatmon-snoo wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current Googler here; my solution to staving off complacency has been constantly asking myself if there are other problems I can and will work on - and they don't have to be problems on your team. (Although, I will say that at a certain point, if you're growing, I think your responsibilities should be shifting from solving problems to identifying/prioritizing the problems.) Every team has a looonnngggggg list of thin…

Snoo@? :)

hm. dropped an email in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#528

Post by thrills »

dhuyrv wrote: post #130

You remind me myself a few years ago: a talented, but bored slacker who didn't see any point in investing any energy into that project. Turns out I was right: the project didn't go anywhere after I left and investing any extra time would be a clueless thing to do. So what's changed since then? Have I found meaning in work? No! I've become a professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what bod…

>Work is just work and unless you're curing cancer, you shouldn't put any effort into making some billionaires richer.

The same thing applies at small software companies. I find there are a bunch of family members and friends in the managerial positions who barely even turn up to work, and have no clue about programming or the work involved in the products that are making them their money.

>Very few people in the world have this level of freedom.

If you were honest with yourself, this is probably just coping with making a decision or living a life you know is wrong. People seem to have made a sport of dreaming up what life is like for people in various "third world countries".

Anyway, my opinion for all programmers is treat everything like a war. If you are working at a small company, you should start duplicating their products at home in preparation of using your inside knowledge to launch a competitor. If you are working at a large company, you can do the same on a smaller project. You can also start thinking about how to invest the money you make in getting out of there from day 1.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#529

Post by wpietri »

darkerside wrote: post #463
NeverFade wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's true the male/female ratios are worse The fact that there are way more men than women in the Bay is a statistical reality, which you admit yourself. Then you bring an opinion blog-post by a single woman as counter-evidence. Ironically, all these complaints about "guys there that have a disgusting sense of entitlement" just go to show how picky she is, and can afford to be, in San Francisco. Nothing in GP's pos…

> guys who would be considered attractive and desirable in most other locations Your conception of what women are looking for in a man might not hew as closely to reality as you think.

Exactly. A lot of the single women I know moved here for pretty specific reasons. Maybe he's right that these poor, poor men are exactly what women want in Ottumwa, Iowa, although I doubt it. But I'm quite sure that many of the people who live in the Bay Area are here precisely because they want something different than what they could get elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?

#530

Post by daniel_reetz »

jedberg wrote: post #370
djcapelis wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the engineers who want to have an impact on stuff, if you’re skilled and your ideas are good and you can convince others about that, you can be given as much impact as you can eat. There’s a huge spectrum of how much impact people opt to go for. Apple is a good place to come if you want to change something about how a billion people use some technology. And generally Apple is cool with people shipping those ideas…

Right, to be clear what I'm not saying is that all Apple engineers are slackers -- far from it. Just that from what I can tell talking to many FAANG workers (and working with a bunch of them who came from other FAANGS), Apple seems to be the easiest place to get away with slacking if you want to, Google also being an easy place to do it. It's why most of the people I worked with left those places -- they got tired of…

I worked at Apple. I saw all kinds of things, but never slacking. Quite the opposite.
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