Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is 0 a red flag also? :)
On a scale of 1 to 5, 0 is definitely some color flag.
If 5 is red, 1 must be violet. So I guess 0 is an ultraviolet flag.
Ask HN: Are you ok?
291–300 of 898 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the system has morphed it into a way to grind talented people into the ground with impossible deadlines and insane demands My experience with computers has been the same. That and music. I make it a major point to watch for flags of that kind of environment with any company I speak to. I'm a realist and not every day can be the most fun ever—sometimes there's a bit of a grind—but it shouldn't be the default status.…
> That and music Given the subject matter and I happened to be listening to Avicii at the time, there was a particular resonance.
Haha nice. I've always come at it more from the analog side, myself. We all still get there, though.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#293Thanks for asking. Not really, and it's 100% work-related. I dread coming in to work and it's given me awful anxiety that's turned into occasional passive suicidal ideation. Once I leave work, I feel like a totally different person and all the symptoms disappear. My boss calls me stupid, incompetent, r*tarded, and "like you have part of your brain missing". He grills me on literally everything I do, like why I'm gett…
A little perspective. $40k/year is about what glassdoor suggests you should make as the manager of a 7-11. A little one. Don't be afraid of a temporary career change. I've done it twice to save myself from burnout. We get overly attached to a narrative about ourselves as developers and become convinced that we need an unbroken ladder of the latest gee-wiz frameworks and libraries to stay in the game. Outside of FAANG…
I work in FAANG in a senior/tech lead engineering role. I don’t think unbroken ladder of latest gee-whiz frameworks and libraries is even remotely accurate of what developers in these companies care about or need.
If anything, wanting to adopt the latest and “greatest” is usually a sign of an inexperienced engineer.
If you’re at FAANG, especially at a team that is optimizing for throughput or scale, you’ll care more about design trade offs and performance, availability, and resiliency concerns as opposed to the latest framework. If anything, something tried and true that’s been out a long while and vetted out is a lesser risk than something released in the past year or two. In other words, maturity is an important factor (the weight may depend given your other considerations).
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#294Thanks for asking. Not really, and it's 100% work-related. I dread coming in to work and it's given me awful anxiety that's turned into occasional passive suicidal ideation. Once I leave work, I feel like a totally different person and all the symptoms disappear. My boss calls me stupid, incompetent, r*tarded, and "like you have part of your brain missing". He grills me on literally everything I do, like why I'm gett…
I could only conceive this behaviour as rational (although still uncivilised) if he wants to fire you and cannot. In my country this sort of thing is illegal (work harassment).
Listen to this person OP. If your boss really felt a tenth of the things he says about you, he'd fire you and forget about it. Knowing nothing else about you, his treatment alone says you're worth much more than $40k, and I'd bet the house your criminally abusive (seriously, talk to a lawyer, slurs like this aren't kosher even in the US) boss knows this.
I'm sure your HR department would also like to know they have a sadist working for them.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
I made it out a few times. After a break-in, I took off backpacking and lived off $20k NZD of savings for nearly a year: https://khanism.org/perspective/minimalism/ I attempted this a 2nd time in a car and it wasn't quite as good, but I'm still glad I did it: https://khanism.org/perspective/a-tale-of-two-journeys/ If you're under 30, holiday work visas are great. Tons of countries have these agreements, they're cheap…
I just want to make an aside point here, that for the vast majority of people on the planet, the idea that they would have 20k in savings to take a year off is just wishful thinking. To be able to even get to the point of having 20k in savings, you must have an incredible safety net in terms of both society and family that allows that to happen. You are incredibly privileged to have been able to even save that kind o…
I got the idea from a guy I met in a hostel in Australia who saved up $10k. He only did restaurant and fishing work in the US. He drank and traveled for a year until he ran out (occasionally taking up restaurant work under the table here and there).
I dated am American in Germany who lived off less than €400 a month (mostly from teaching English) for several years .. although that's kind a bad example because she lost her visa for not having enough work.
Sure my field makes it easier, but it's not necessary. I've met people who were not in high paying fields who could do the same (and honestly if I had been better with my money and lived like them, I could have made it 2 or 3 years on that much). It's really about your priorities.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#296I am doing ok. Thanks for asking. I am working in my first "hard tech" job after graduating from the help desk. I am also working in my first real job. I am in my late 40's. I am a Unix sysadmin for a fortune 10 company. I have some old debts that I am slowly paying off. They are from years of bad jobs and bad decisions. I am working on getting a better job, migrating into development. My first HN comment. I hope I d…
Sounds like great movement in the right direction, congrats!
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#297I am the CTO of a semi-successful startup but I believe, this is actually my biggest cause of stress and depression. I have been a software developer for roughly 8 years so I am still learning a lot. I was able to scale the company to handle hundreds of thousands of photos a day but the second I hired a more senior developer I find myself feeling like an imposter. I am always second-guessing myself, how I name things…
Life's Plot Twist = Most people in C-level positions are "making it up as they go along". Don't worry too much if you are not doing a "perfect" job as a CTO. I consult for a various companies and it amazes me that you can do everything wrong (sometimes illegal) and still make millions. I try to convince these companies that if they did everything right, they can make so much more money. I too wish I could go back to being a developer. Being a consultant feels like you are getting paid lunch money to do everyone else's high-school homework.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#298As a team lead, one question I always ask in my 1-on-1's: On a scale of 1-5 (low good, high bad), what's your stress level since we last met? If my teammate says 4 or 5, I ask what we can do to bring it down to a 3. We also address this as part of the simple assessment we do in each sprint retrospective. My company struggles to define meaningful KPIs and OKRs. This is the one that's most important to me.
My company does this. Everyone's answer is always either 2 or 3. Anyone who answers 4 or 5 is going to get a talking-to and special attention and that's the last thing they want unless they're genuinely on the verge of quitting.
It's not a meaningful KPI where I work, since everyone's basically bullshitting all the time to keep the number low.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#299I'm kinda struggling right now. I'm a few months from graduating with a BS in CS, and I'm scared. Not scared about getting a job (I've had a few internships and have a solid handshake return offer from more than one of them) or “the next step” (kids? house?) independently, just the combination of all those things. How do I find a job that's is within a same commute distance, but also affordable? How do I find a job t…
A lot of people live their lives without having kids or buying a house. Make sure that anything you do is something you want to do independent of the desires of those around you that are trying to influence you into being the person they want you to be for their own perceptive advantage. Parents are often really bad at that after ~20 years and a whole houses worth of investment in you.
Its perfectly reasonable to grab your degree, walk off the stage, and take a backpack and rummage the wilderness for a few months. The rest of the world can wait, you always have time at that age, and there is no race - you just have to look at those twenty years your elder to see where trying to run the predetermined path gets most people. And the answer is usually hard drug use, depression, and stress related illness for the rest of their lives, maybe with some investors profiting quite lavishly off of years taken from them during their inspired years.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
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