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

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

#81

Post by xab9 » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:37 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.

Same here. Ten year check, worst company ever check. I never ever walked out during the trial months but this time I did and it was liberating. I will stay in tech, but after this "experience" my expectations just went down to zero. Whatever will be, will be.

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

#82

Post by plankers » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 8:38 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #63

plankers wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well cheers to that, mate. Hope you find a way to get more of your time to yourself.

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

#83

Post by emptyfile » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 9:12 AM UTC

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.

>They wouldn't call it work/life balance if work was really part of your life.

Wow, absolutely agree.

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

#84

Post by lawn » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 9:17 AM UTC

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 love the idea of FIRE and I'm working towards it. However I find it's difficult to grasp and truly appreciate right now.

I need to be disciplined over several decades until I can reach it. Being disciplined isn't something that comes natural to me and it's sometimes very exhausting (applies to eating, exercising and sleeping a well).

Thinking about this awesome goal far into the future makes me sad right now. It makes it harder for me to be present and appreciate what I already have (also something I've always struggled with).

Therefore I try to avoid focusing on FIRE too much. I don't maximize my savings rate as much as possible and instead taking a more relaxed approach. I'm playing with the idea of going down to 50% at work and 25% for hobby hacking and 25% parental leave. This will affect my FIRE date but I hope it'll make me happier right now.

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

#85

Post by xab9 » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 9:39 AM UTC

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 envy you :) I always had this fear deep inside that I will run out of money and boom, poverty awaits (even now, that I have a more than decent salary).

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

#86

Post by ionised » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 10:05 AM UTC

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…

What do you consider bad work ethic?

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

#87

Post by Wed19Sep » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 10:14 AM UTC

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 it's not a matter of the field (engineer or musician), but rather a matter of personality. I know some people who really take pride in their accomplishments at work, as if the project they worked on is really part of what they were proud to achieve in their life as a whole. I also know other types of people for whom being an employee merely means being at the service of a project that isn't theirs, which will therefore never deliver any actual satisfaction. For this latter category the true way around is to find a way to live by monetizing their own ideas and projects, either by trying to create their own company, or by trying to monetize open-source stuff, etc

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

#88

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 10:22 AM UTC

geforce wrote: post #16

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…

Yeah, I feel the same way. What hurts is when you decide to switch to another company, which has good rep, and finally find out: it's the same. Everywhere. After the big bosses do stupid shit, they get promoted elsewhere, leaves you fix the broken plates, rince and repeat until a merger, bankruptcy, or major reorg. Meanwhile middle management gets bigger and everything gets slower. Good employees leave, bad one get p…

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 10:25 AM UTC

ionised wrote: post #86

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…

What do you consider bad work ethic?

Coming to work to fill the seat?

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

#90

Post by xab9 » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 10:37 AM UTC

systematical wrote: post #62

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. Ma…

Heads up mate, last time I had been building an "intelligent banner system" for two months, adding a one megabyte payload to the initial site load, "because marketing".

When I feel grumpy because of popup bugs, asap tasks and really stupid marketing/seo requests I usually tell my self that hey, I still get my paycheck so if this is what makes them happy, then let's make them happy.