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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?

#701

Post by erikbye »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #613
md5wasp wrote: post #162

Hi there, I did the exact same thing as you (at Google Sydney), before eventually deciding that I must strike out into the wilderness. In the few years since I left; I worked as a solutions architect managing a team, a team lead, a remote dev, and now in a startup. Front-end, back-end, flip-side, all the ends. So I've been deliberately trying different angles of my career to see what suits. I'd describe this process…

"If you stay at Google, make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life. If I'd've stayed, I could have comfortably raised some kids with my wife by now - but that's still on the todo list." THIS all the way. When we are young, we think that we will be remembered by the company that we worked for and the people that we worked with. The sad truth is that in 99.9999% none of those people will rememb…

What was the dream you wanted to pursue?

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

#702

Post by bitL »

throwaway8291 wrote: post #326
ajcodez wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook hires tons of zero passion 10am-4pm engineers. It might not be deliberate slacking but it’s definitely not hard working.

I met two FB engineers a few years back. They seemed average, at most. But one quality stuck out (we spent half a day together at an event): They seemed to be excellent at following company rules.

That's what top schools teach you - conform 100% to the assignment requirements or there is no A/A+ for you. Also, most companies "get what they measure", so figuring out which metrics are visible and preferred is the way to go in large corps.

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

#703

Post by barry-cotter »

himinlomax wrote: post #618
cantrevealname wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…

> respectful Serious question: why do you think being "respectful" has any positive correlation with being a magnet for women? I can't prove the "chicks digs bad boys" cliché is scientifically accurate, but as the only convict I personally know is both objectively ugly AND a magnet to girls half his age, I am pretty sure the converse is wrong.

https://pipubs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/The-Dark-Triad...

The Dark Triad personality: Attractiveness to women

It has been suggested that the Dark Triad (DT) personality constellation is an evolved facilitator of men’s short-term mating strategies. However, previous studies have relied on self-report data to consider the sexual success of DT men. To explore the attractiveness of the DT personality to the other sex, 128 women rated created (male) characters designed to capture high DT facets of personality or a control personality. Physicality was held constant. Women rated the high DT character as significantly more attractive. More- over, this greater attractiveness was not explained by correlated perceptions of Big 5 traits. These findings are considered in light of mating strategies, the evolutionary ‘arms race’ and individual differences.

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

#704

Post by stefek99 »

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…

"professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks"

You are my spiritual brother!

Same here...

I was really motivated in my 1st and 2nd job after leaving uni. Then the gravity kicks in, realized that noone wants me to work extra hard as that only makes other people look bad.

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

#705

Post by tcgv »

My two cents: Consider starting some side projects on your spare time.

Choose topics in which you have genuine interest, use tech you're not familiar with, adopt different architectural styles, make it public (ex: GitHub) and share progress with developer friends / team mates.

Before you know you will feel more confident with your tech skills, may start seeing opportunities to apply recent learnings into your daily tasks and even if you really decide to jump ship these projects may come in hand while interviewing for other positions.

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

#706

Post by partyboat1586 »

glangdale wrote: post #494
cantrevealname wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…

I like how a guy earning a fairly unremarkable-when-we-adjust-for-cost-of-living salary with a bunch of fairly unimpressive table-stakes credentials: "clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful" (whaddaya want? a cookie?) is meant to be a Amazing Pussy Magnet. One of the major factors - aside from the gender ratio - behind tech guys not finding partners is this weird expectation that if they shave, clip their f…

Clipping nails is probably all you need from that list. You can still be unshaven (provided your stubble looks like man stubble, not pubes) be a bit of a dirtbag, earn slightly less money and get more women. No one gives a shit if you are well spoken, you can have a silver tongue without using the Queen's English, in fact it helps if you enjoy abusing grammar.

As for attracting interesting women you actually wanna marry. Yeah you should probably have interests outside of tech. If all you are interested in is tech that makes you really boring because it's one of those subjects with no spillover. If you're an artist people might not appreciate the technicalities of mixing oil paints but they will enjoy looking at your paintings. Tech is impenetrable unless you are also in it. No one gives a fuck about that graph problem you solved that just made your distributed system more scalable because they don't understand half of those words. Imagine two people speaking a language you don't speak to each other and all they want to do is talk in that language. So boring.

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

#707

Post by iso1210 »

m0zg wrote: post #359
snak wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you on some points, the cost of life in European countries is not the same as USA.

The taxes are also much higher in Europe, especially on those compliant "upper middle class" techies we're talking about here. For anyone with basic understanding of arithmetics it's not even a question that EU techies are woefully underpaid, which is why all the good ones work in the US or for EU subsidiaries of US companies which actually respect the engineers.

In the UK, someone on £80k ($105k) will pay £25k ($33k) in tax. That includes healthcare

In the US, someone on that amount in Denver will pay $29k in tax.

That's not an extraordinary difference, even before you factor in health care costs.

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

#708

Post by swiley »

NeverFade wrote: post #595
Apocryphon wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those men are transplants, isn’t the demographic skew partially their fault?

Yes, if you move to an area that's known to have dating demographics badly skewed against you, don't be surprised when your dating life there is disappointing. However, when we have a discussion about Bay Area dating, and most comments blame men for "not being interesting" and completely ignore, deny, or fail to even mention the gender imbalance, I don't think it helps men to make informed choices.

The fact is that either because of infanticide or nature there are fewer younger men in the world so you’ll have this problem in most places.

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

#709

Post by krageon »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #525
NeverFade wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

To contrast this, I think at least a quarter of the ones I know have this as an ambition. Knowing people that do want something or that do not has nothing to do with averages, unless you happen to know everyone :)

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

#710

Post by fredgrott »

beat me in the number of cognitive science books and studies read and learning to apply....

Yes, seriously even! The count is n ow almost 100 books and studies only including the CS AI part not other CS parts and whole lot of neuroscience

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