Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 642 posts

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

#561

Post by IkmoIkmo »

davidsong wrote: post #224
raphlinus wrote: post #202

I'll add a data point, though it's almost entirely negative. I've been at Google over 10 years and have yet to come across a person using illegal hard drugs. I can think of three people with serious drinking problems. There's been a drinking culture (many offices have beer on tap), but I see that changing, as people are more conscious of the negative effects. A bunch of people use marijuana, but off-hours. I haven't…

Is it that because you don't use drugs, the people who do use them tend not to discuss them with you? I was just joking with a colleague about trying the gas and air when his wife gives birth, and everyone in our bank of desks thought that would be outrageous behaviour. There's no way I'd admit to these guys that I have a load of N2O canisters stashed at home and will go full-balloonatic during festival season, let a…

> I have a load of N2O canisters stashed at home and will go full-balloonatic during festival season

Hahaha!

> There's no way I'd admit to these guys

This absolutely though.

Just to add... I've never used any drugs for performance enhancement, just occasional recreational use with no less than 2 months in between any single consumption, usually 4 times a year. But I'd never talk about this with anyone at work straight up. But we do talk about music, going out, parties, festivals.

So when a colleague name-drops they're going to an electronic music festival that lasts 10 hours into the night with glow-in-the-dark effects where >60% of the drinks that are sold are pure water, you basically have a 99% chance the other person either takes drugs or goes to parties full of people (with friends) who're on drugs, and is completely comfortable with it. And that's when you say went last year and talk about what candy you were on.

Most of these parties are obscure enough to be completely meaningless to people not in the know. The might as well be classical music concerts. Similarly, pictures on FB of colleagues wearing sunglasses and holding a water bottle at a festival can be pretty meaningless to someone who's never had friends using drugs or did it themselves.

There's definitely these little rituals going on that prevent people from knowing if they're not into it themselves.

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

#562

Post by sguav »

Andrex wrote: post #419
btrettel wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll second this. I don't even drink coffee. I've encountered people who seem absolutely incredulous that I take no stimulants at all. "How do you stay awake?" is something I'm asked. My go-to response now is "I don't. If I'm tired, I get more sleep." Some of these people probably think that I'm lying. There are a lot of people who think that sleeping at work is a bad idea, but I think it's a lot better than guzzling…

As a corollary to the OP, it seems like the people who deliberately don't take stimulants _also_ love talking about themselves and how it's a superior lifestyle. :) Not saying you're wrong, but the sanctimony from both sides can be a little exhausting is all.

What I have experienced in my present job (with hardware and software engineers) is that there are _many_ who voluntarily or by prescription skip caffeine in favor of hot drinks with no stimulants, but none of them actually is "showing off".

Can't say it's true everywhere, I work in Italy and coffee is a ritual, but I sense that recent trends and issues in nutrition are just making people more self conscious about their health. Some do like talking about it, in my experience I haven't seen that happen within "educated" environments.

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

#563

Post by ikurei »

ht85 wrote: post #454
btrettel wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll second this. I don't even drink coffee. I've encountered people who seem absolutely incredulous that I take no stimulants at all. "How do you stay awake?" is something I'm asked. My go-to response now is "I don't. If I'm tired, I get more sleep." Some of these people probably think that I'm lying. There are a lot of people who think that sleeping at work is a bad idea, but I think it's a lot better than guzzling…

When I used to smoke, one of my worries about quitting was that I wouldn't be able to do those intense, uninterrupted, full focus 10-12 hours coding sessions. Every couple hours, those 5 delicious minutes, the fresh air, the nicotine rush, then right back at it. I quit smoking a few years ago when my wife got pregnant and have smoked only twice since. I can actually grind more nowadays, and I'm less tired when it end…

> I can actually grind more nowadays, and I'm less tired when it ends. It probably doesn't have anything to do with smoking or not[...]

Well, your respiratory system is probably much healthier now. I would expect better oxygenation to make you less tired, to give you more stamina.

I've never been a smoker, so I'm curious, how big an impact would you say healthier lungs had in your life?

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

#564

Post by yannis7 »

Blahah wrote: post #42

I am open to discussing this in raw detail - contact in my profile. Most programmers, scientists, people in finance and startups I know take a lot of stimulants. I take a lot of stimulants. [Edit - as others have pointed out, there's a strong selection bias going on here. I actively seek out people who I know take stimulants, and we naturally congregate socially based on a bunch of subtle and explicit cues that signa…

with all due respect my friend, and honestly I don't mean to insult you, but what you're describing "drugs are everywhere / everyone does them / everyone works best with them / it's all prevalent and normal" is a bit of a drug addict's mentality.

I have friends who are potheads and they swear that everyone smokes weed and everyone who's ever done something meaningful in their life is because of marijuana.

Not everyone does drugs, and not everyone works best with them, it's not normal, it's not enhancement.

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

#565

Post by s3nnyy »

harryf wrote: post #548
donquichotte wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel completely the same! I have been working in electrical engineering in Zurich, and I've never seen or heard anyone use anything other than caffeine during and alcohol after work. Now I wonder whether I'm just naive or there is a massive cultural divide between Silicon Valley and Central Europe w.r.t. stimulants.

Meanwhile cocaine usage in Zürich is one of the highest in Europe ( https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/drug-capitals_zurich-is-europe-... ) which boggles my mind - I assume this is the finance industry

Not only that but Zurich has been a drug hotspot in the 80s; we had cocaine, heroine, and, we believe, we found out how to fight it: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-02-12/us-can-learn-lot-zuri...

Now it changed for the better but still the drug scene is relatively big and cocaine is used a lot both by youngsters 18-25 yrs olds and probably also by bankers.

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

#566

Post by inDigiNeous »

nordicnarcotic wrote: post #408
nordicnarcotic wrote: post #400

I'm a programmer. 22M. And oh boy do I love telling other people about drugs! It started from pure taurine. It made me talkative like coffee and was in white powder form like cocaine. Nowadays, it has come to the point that a friend of mine has started giving me a notice that once I am drunk, I don't shut up about drugs. Last time he said, in a very lightweight manner, that maybe I have a drug problem. Couple weeks l…

For some reason, I can't edit my post, so I'll just self-reply: In the Nordics, none of my peers use drugs.

How do you know ? Another Nordic here.

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

#567

Post by romanovcode »

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…

> 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

The quality of a senior software developer.

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

#568

Post by lug0r »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #348
Eilene wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corp…

did you just dox yourself?

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

#570

Post by jiggunjer »

copper_think wrote: post #82
whalesalad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure about that (never seen it myself)... but cocaine is a LOT more prevalent than people realize. There is a funny meme I saw recently that rings true: Two biggest shocks of adult life. 1. everyone does cocaine 2. cheese is fucking expensive

Man, I really wouldn't. My understanding is that of the people who present to the emergency department with chest pain, something like a third of them have been using cocaine. It causes Real Problems. https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug-relate...

That could also mean a third of the population uses cocaine.
Post reply on HN