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Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

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Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#41

Post by fallingfrog »

mikekchar wrote: post #40
fallingfrog wrote: post #33

They wouldn't call it work/life balance if work was really part of your life. It's dead time, lost time. I've always felt that way anyhow. You can convince yourself otherwise maybe, if you're a musician or something. For most people though that's the truth of it.

I think you have it the other way around. People for whom work is dead, lost time really need to get their work/life balance sorted out. If you view work as part of your life, then it's a much less binary view of prioritisation. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't prioritise. It just means that the prioritisation is more nuanced than: do what I don't like for 8 hours and then do what I do like for the rest of the da…

Well I think my point is that it feels completely different when it's self directed. I built a shed this summer with my brothers- and it didn't feel anything like work does- it felt joyful, playful. I get some of the same feelings when I'm working on my own programming projects. But at work? No, I'm creating something for someone else, to make someone else richer, and if I left tomorrow nobody would care.

You might be able fool yourself for a while with the power of positive thinking but a happy servant is still a servant.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#42

Post by mikekchar »

fallingfrog wrote: post #41
mikekchar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have it the other way around. People for whom work is dead, lost time really need to get their work/life balance sorted out. If you view work as part of your life, then it's a much less binary view of prioritisation. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't prioritise. It just means that the prioritisation is more nuanced than: do what I don't like for 8 hours and then do what I do like for the rest of the da…

Well I think my point is that it feels completely different when it's self directed. I built a shed this summer with my brothers- and it didn't feel anything like work does- it felt joyful, playful. I get some of the same feelings when I'm working on my own programming projects. But at work? No, I'm creating something for someone else, to make someone else richer, and if I left tomorrow nobody would care. You might b…

A happy servant is happier than a sad servant. Being happy or sad does not change your status as a servant. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face, is all I'm trying to say.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#43

Post by ranman »

guhcampos wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…

I don’t normally empathize with hackernews comments but I 100% agree with this.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#44

Post by kinkora »

Ctrl-f + "fire" in comments... Nothing??

The author mentioned FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early) which, IMHO, a big factor in your happiness at work based on my own experience being on both ends of having money and nothing.

Some background context - worked for a decade+, quit job to go travel for 6 months with sizable savings in bank account, came back almost broke, now back in the workforce.

So I am one of the lucky ones in the world to absolutely love the industry I am in hence never hated "work". Colleagues, office politics, etc is another matter but "work" itself was always interesting thus I was happy in the sense that I never hated doing my actual "work". What I noticed that contributed to my happiness at "work" was how correlated it was to the savings in my bank account. The more my bank account grew, the less I worried about the "other things" (crazy bosses, stifling politics, strange colleagues, etc) and the more I could relish enjoying the challenges of doing my actual "work".[1]

Fast forward a decade, I then quit my job to travel and it was absolute bliss of happiness! Kind of a taste of retirement life. HOWEVER, while I had a huge chunk of savings, it wasn't exactly FU forever money so as the bank account started dwindling while traveling, I noticed my happiness was correlated again and I started enjoying traveling less.

Once my bank account was down to an unacceptable level (for my own standards), I made the decision to go back to work to replenish it and work again towards my FIRE goal. I managed to get another job in an industry that I enjoyed doing the "work" but I wasn't exactly feeling happy this time round due to the constant worry about being laid off, having to pander to colleagues and/or bosses, dealing with politics, etc. Doing the work was fine but a lot of my unhappiness came from worrying about "everything else" at work due to me depending on the paycheck.

Fast forward to today, my savings are back to healthy levels and once again, I'm happy at "work" even though nothing has changed in terms of "everything else". Makes me realise that anecdotally for me at least, having FU money in my bank account contributes A LOT to my happiness at work - assuming of course with a caveat that you love doing what you are doing at work.

[1] I put apostrophes (") around the word work because I defined work in this context as not the job/position as a whole but the actual thing that I do. I.e. If work is Software Engineer at Google, I defined "work" as doing code related stuff.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#45

Post by erobbins »

plankers wrote: post #36

In my (relatively short) life, I've always been far more happy in my periods of unemployment than when I was "gainfully employed." Don't expect a single person on HN to share this view, but there it is.

I'm the same way. I took a year off once, and it was awesome. I regret not being a lucky trust fund kid.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#46

Post by kilroy123 »

guhcampos wrote: post #10

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…

I feel exactly the same way and also just hit the 10-year mark. I'm literally working at the worst place I have ever worked at in my career. Next Friday will be my last day.

I'm seriously considering trying to get out of tech forever after this last gig. I'm moving to Asia in a few weeks to try to work on bootstrapping a small company.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#47

Post by fallingfrog »

mikekchar wrote: post #42
fallingfrog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I think my point is that it feels completely different when it's self directed. I built a shed this summer with my brothers- and it didn't feel anything like work does- it felt joyful, playful. I get some of the same feelings when I'm working on my own programming projects. But at work? No, I'm creating something for someone else, to make someone else richer, and if I left tomorrow nobody would care. You might b…

A happy servant is happier than a sad servant. Being happy or sad does not change your status as a servant. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face, is all I'm trying to say.

Fair enough

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#48

Post by TheCoelacanth »

cbanek wrote: post #28
diminoten wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get a chance to see the comment before he edited it out, but in some countries (Canada I think?) "engineer" is actually a protected title, requiring licensure. I don't know what his point was, but as a "software engineer", I sometimes wonder if I should be called a "developer" and let my PE friend keep the "engineer" title, just for clarity's sake.

This, also there was that kerfuffle in Oregon about someone saying they were an engineer, but not licensed, and how that was apparently illegal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/0...

That was more about the state getting the insane idea that criticizing traffic light timings was "unlicensed practice of engineering".

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#49

Post by mancerayder »

kinkora wrote: post #44

Ctrl-f + "fire" in comments... Nothing?? The author mentioned FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early) which, IMHO, a big factor in your happiness at work based on my own experience being on both ends of having money and nothing. Some background context - worked for a decade+, quit job to go travel for 6 months with sizable savings in bank account, came back almost broke, now back in the workforce. So I am one o…

I can relate but it's a treacherous, rocky path to follow the pot of gold. Sometimes it's a compass. And if you live in a very expensive part of the world, it can quickly land you in a pressure cooker environment. Now, the issue is that as you get older, you start to explore other paths. Ideally, rather than travel for six months like you do, laudable in itself, I try to use that money to invest in stuff for the future. One hopes then to have even more relaxing six month adventures, if I still have the energy.

Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

#50

Post by jonstaab »

fallingfrog wrote: post #41
mikekchar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have it the other way around. People for whom work is dead, lost time really need to get their work/life balance sorted out. If you view work as part of your life, then it's a much less binary view of prioritisation. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't prioritise. It just means that the prioritisation is more nuanced than: do what I don't like for 8 hours and then do what I do like for the rest of the da…

Well I think my point is that it feels completely different when it's self directed. I built a shed this summer with my brothers- and it didn't feel anything like work does- it felt joyful, playful. I get some of the same feelings when I'm working on my own programming projects. But at work? No, I'm creating something for someone else, to make someone else richer, and if I left tomorrow nobody would care. You might b…

Sounds like you might want to move on. I've been at kinda crappy startups for 4 years now, not being paid much and working hard. But like, Idaho hard. 55ish max hours a week. And I've stuck to it because I have so much agency. I live a very modest life, but work flexible hours from home, self-direct my work, make my own decisions. There are things I miss (e.g. working with other engineers), but the work is valuable, meaningful, and mine. I like it and from what people are saying in this thread I seem to have it made.

I understand it's not always simple to make the change (which is why I've kept my standard of living relatively low on purpose). But it can be done, there are places way out in the sticks that need good talent, and even if you're not architecting realtime distributed systems there can be interesting projects on tiny teams.

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