Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by projektir » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #59

projektir wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, these definitely seem more exciting than my case, which is usually more "feeling uninspired and feel that others at work don't care about the product".

I’m much more cynical now. I don’t get my “inspiration” from my job. The only reason I went to work up until my current job was to get a paycheck and learn skills to get a larger paycheck. As long as that was happening, I was happy. Now, things are different. I’ve come close to maxing our as an individual contributor in my local market, I have no desire to be a manager, and a dev lead position doesn’t pay enough more…

I think that's generally the part I don't like about most jobs. It seems everyone is checked out and is just there to collect a paycheck and build their resume.

My job is fine in terms of paycheck and learning, but it feels like I'd have an easier time if I just ignored issues but that's not really the kind of person I want to become.

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

#62

Post by systematical » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

I enjoy my day when I am allowed to work uninterrupted. The task doesn't generally matter, but some are not as "cool" as others. However, I can find joy in reducing cyclomatic complexity of code, improving readability etc. of whatever dumb fuck feature marketing thinks is important.

Today I changed how our promotions work. Do I think its a wise use of resources? Nope. It was probably a waste of 2 hours of my time. Marketing will probably ask me to switch it back in a few months because they have no idea what they are doing. After stepping away from the task for 5 minutes and ending the arguments in my head against the task. I hopped into the code. I began enjoying figuring how to organize the code in a way that creating unit tests would be easy. I refactored some small things here and there and checked off the task. I was pleased with what I created despite being displeased with the task. I then moved on to a more interesting and useful task.

What kills me. Is a bug that interrupts my flow. Each day I create a list of a few work items I will accomplish. There may be a meeting, a few small tasks, and then a piece of a larger project I am working on. When that gets thrown off by some asshole trying to hijack the sprint or a critical bug it pretty much shatters my day. I feel so unproductive. Resolving a must-fix-now bug is both handling debt and incurring debt (through loss of time). It really fucking kills me.

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

#63

Post by brokenmachine » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:05 AM UTC

plankers wrote: post #58

brokenmachine wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the exact same thing. It was great. I don't understand these people who can't find things to keep them occupied outside work. I don't have enough hours in the day to do all the things I want to do. Work is just 8 hours per day that I can't do those things.

I'm kind of the opposite, I just love laying around all day doing nothing but reading. I spent most of my time at my last job doing this, but surrounded by people, noise, and fluorescent lighting. Plus, being able to attend events spontaneously and stay out as late as you want is pretty great.

Reading is one of the things I'd like to do that is prevented by that 8 hours per day of work.

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

#64

Post by inertial » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

What's the trick to be happy & joyous (without any strings attached) ? How does one train the mind to not be achievement driven (especially if you are on HN everyday) ?

Can anyone recommend a course or a book to achieve that ? Something that makes you happy naturally (not forced).

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

#65

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:18 AM UTC

kilroy123 wrote: post #46

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.

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by madjackwalker » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

zeus_hammer wrote: post #3

This is great! I wish I'd started doing something like this long ago. The closest thing I've found to this that I'm able to at least remind myself to use regularly is this, https://daylio.webflow.io/ It'd be interesting to leverage something like this to decide when I should take vacation... If my happiness is slowly decreasing and visualized like this, it'd serve as a nice reminder to schedule some vacation. I'd als…

That's a nice idea, yes. If the happiness on non-work days is getting increasingly bigger compared to work days, at some point you should receive a bleep with "hey take some vacation will you?"

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

#67

Post by oceanman888 » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:24 AM UTC

kilroy123 wrote: post #46

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.

Good for you and good luck!

just curious which Asian country?

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

#68

Post by kinkora » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

mancerayder wrote: post #49

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 futu…

I completely agree that some people pursuing FIRE can be too fanatical about chasing the pot of goal and only waiting until old age to "enjoy". I kind of skirt in the middle (i'm more of a FatFIRE) and think of FIRE more as a North Star. :)

I should mention that I do live in an expensive part of the world (think SF but not SF) and the bank account was just the liquid assets bit of the portfolio. Been on the FIRE journey for 10 years now so I have some illiquid assets (properties, stocks, etc) but I tend to not think of touching it ever.

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

#69

Post by madjackwalker » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:28 AM UTC

bsmithers wrote: post #20

Really interesting. It must take such discipline to collect this data for 3.5 years. Trying to answer the question of "does work make me happy?" is much more complex than comparing happiness levels between work and non-work days - they are not independent. How much of your happiness of a non-work day is precisely because it is a day off? An imperfect analogy would be the feeling of enjoying a holiday but also being g…

You're right. It's much more complex. Comparing happiness levels between work and non-work days was one way of trying to answer it. This method is still distorted by a lot of things, like you mention. I'm open for any different methods! If you have any ideas, I'd love to know :)

It takes me about 3 minutes every day to track happiness, and the advantages go much further than just the collection of data. It's also a moment of self-reflection and meditation in a way. It puts my mind at rest.

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

#70

Post by madjackwalker » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

bargl wrote: post #2

This is an awesome way to quantify the happiness you feel as a order of time. I wish I did this on a daily basis so that I could see the things that contribute and take away from my personal happiness. I tend to be a pretty introspective guy so I think about this kind of stuff on a regular basis, but I'd be curious to see if analyzing when I'm working out, vs playing videogames has an affect on my real happiness VS t…

Sounds like this could be interesting for you then! :)

I describe my method here (it's really simple): https://www.trackinghappiness.com/about/method

There are other apps out there that do the same, but approach it differently. You have to find what works for you. No method is wrong in my opinion, it's just that you have to find the method that works best for you. ;-)