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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?

#711

Post by krageon »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #561
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. Being interesting as a human and working on yourself is so much better than trying to get credit for being "respectful". That's like saying: "look I shower every day!" Be interesting.

What do you personally do to be interesting?

Accept that you are the way you are and like the things you like. When people talk about what they like, engage with them. Be a human being.

From experience, this will already put you so far outside of the usual spectrum of what people meet that this is more than enough. There's a nice side-effect that you don't need to feel like you need to "do things" to be interesting, which really isn't a healthy stance to have towards yourself.

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

#712

Post by krageon »

glangdale wrote: post #692
apatters wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect most of them were told (by their mothers, continuously for the first 20 years of their lives) that this was in fact the way to land a good woman. Be a nice clean cut guy and earn $120K a year. If you know so much then what's your prescription for them?

Well, first of all, lose that sense of entitlement. It's hard to think of much that's less appealing than petulance. It's also a pretty great way to blind yourself to what 'league' you're actually in. A number of my tech friends have wasted an extraordinary amount of time chasing women absurdly out of their league because they've been convinced that "having a decent job", "being well-spoken" and "eating with their mo…

> lose that sense of entitlement

When you are told you need to meet specific criteria to achieve a goal, it's not entitlement to expect those criteria to lead to that goal. When trying to get people to listen to what you are saying, try not to start with a put-down.

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

#713

Post by burntoutfire »

struct wrote: post #2

> it's almost like I've been using only 10% of my mental capacity for work (the rest was on dating/dealing with breakups/dealing with depression/gaming/...) I think that could give an indication of what might be wrong here, I can relate (somewhat!). I work for a top-flight tech firm, straight out of school, for about 5 years or so, and for a long time I felt just like that: I focused for a very long time on achieving…

> I work for a top-flight tech firm, straight out of school, for about 5 years or so, and for a long time I felt just like that:

Hah, I misread as "I work for top flight-sim firm" and though - aaaawww, I thought at least this kind of work would be fun.

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

#714

Post by burntoutfire »

sfblah wrote: post #211
zzzcarrot wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow what level or how did you manage this?

I don’t want to dox myself here. My level range should be obvious from my salary. I’m a manager not an IC. Yes everyone on my team knows what’s up.

Ah, so you're probably one of those overpaid non-managers that everyone hates... We have a bunch of those, they avoid work and responsibility like the plague, and in result the project is in severe leadership crisis.

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

#715

Post by kayla213jems »

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

#716

Post by ryanmercer »

ec109685 wrote: post #159
pavlov wrote: post #42

I think you underestimate your value to the company. “All I do is copy code from the internal codebase and patch things together until they work” — this is exactly what established tech companies mostly need from their engineers. They want people with enough CS competence to not fuck things up while patching together new solutions from the institutional code soup that everyone knows how to navigate and review. If you…

You didn’t read his whole post. They’re bored. Their value to google is high enough to keep them employed but the job is beneath their capabilities. The failing for google is not providing this person a path to do more or at least understanding their ambition to do more.

>They’re bored.

Welcome to working.

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

#717

Post by aryamaan »

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…

>I've become a professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what body language to use to make the desired impression, what to say and what not to say. My managers think I'm a high performer who also makes valuable social contributions to our team and this is reflected in pay rises. I see my mission at work in carefully educating the overly enthusiastic co-workers by dropping a few seemingly random hints or observations that make them think and challenge their beliefs.

Tell use more.

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

#718

Post by namelosw »

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

This sounds bad. But it is so true that people ignore it all the time. Big companies like Google asked their employees to do measurable contributions to the projects in order to be promoted in the performance review, while most projects don't have any measurable/non-measurable contribution to society. Some of the projects are even neither benefit to the society nor not profitable, they are completely pointless, and just wait to be abandoned years later.

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

#719

Post by read_if_gay_ »

scottishfiction wrote: post #640
franze wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Uh oh. Unseen Risk Fallacy Just because you don't experience risk, doesn't mean it does not exist. The company just hides risk from you, but it's still there, culminating without feedback. As raising a child i…

Speaking of fallacies, how about the one where parenthood increases your risk of underperformance 'exponentially', or is in any way a 'risk factor'. Check your bias. Parenthood is as likely to make you better at your job.

And how about the strawman? GP didn’t argue that parenthood may make OP lose his job, but that he already is in a position where he might lose his job due to underperforming previously. And if that happens, he’s unquestionably better off without kids.

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

#720

Post by rayiner »

Galanwe wrote: post #550
rayiner wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, please, bear in mind that you cannot directly compare US and EU salaries. Your 80k€ gross in e.g. France should be the equivalent of $150k for a US worker; if you account for the same level of medical care and retirement savings. Not much of a difference after you realise this. What makes you think that? As to retirement savings, American retirement payments replace 70% of working income on average, versus 60…

You are completely missing the point here. Not only are you trying to argue against things that I did not say, but you are also comparing things that cannot. What Europeans call "gross" salary is NOT what Americans call "gross" salary. And you are mixing them together, which is exactly what my comment was trying to prevent. > the comparison of 80k euros being less than $150k, because retirement savings will come out…

In both countries, there is an employer contribution and an employee contribution. In both countries, “gross” income excludes the employer contribution. In the US, it also excludes employer-paid health insurance premiums. In France, it excludes the employer-paid health insurance tax.

As to the precise mix, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that more will be paid by the employer in Europe. In both countries, medical is paid mostly by the employer, and deducted before the $150k/80k euro number. Both countries have a similar employee-paid social security rate (6-7%). As explained above, the base Social Security payment will return as much in absolute terms as the French retirement system. Any 401k you contribute to will return a lot more in retirement than what you would receive in France.

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