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Ask HN: Are you ok?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#401

Post by supr_strudl »

baalimago wrote: post #247

Apart from the chronic daily suicidal thoughts, sure. Ironically enough, always choosing the future-safe choice of education, jobs, friends and so forth resulted into me not really wanting to have a future at all. My new strategy of finding relationships which guilt me into staying alive seems to be working out though. Good times. Longing for that plane crash or random heart attack I couldn't prevent. Of course I wor…

You’re depressed big time. Get professional help if possible. Rooting for you!

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#402

Post by cicciop »

UseStrict wrote: post #56

No, I'm really not okay. My current job is insanely unfulfilling, but I need to keep up appearances so I don't go bankrupt. I am saddled with a lot of debt, some of it stupid decisions, some of it valid, all of it soul crushing. I moved to a new city for my current job with a referral from a friend. But I have struggled to make meaningful relationships here in the last year. This is also impacting my career as while…

State the city and someone might "volunteer" to take you out. You could go to tech meetups together; in general, it's easier to break ice when you're not alone in the room.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#403

Post by majormajor »

satokema wrote: post #162

Nth-ing no social life and the related whines. I hate the mild feeling of discomfort I get when I tell most people I'm a software engineer. I hate having eclectic or traditional "nerdy" interests and getting a similar reaction. I've been enjoying Classic, and I have a small online circle for the niche games/music/art I like. I hate that I like these things in spite of the detriment to my social benefit to liking them…

> I hate that I like these things in spite of the detriment to my social benefit to liking them. I have no interest in turning off that part of my brain so I can fit into the sportsfan stereotype or netflix-watcher or chronic-substance-abuser or extremely-self-improving-gogetter.

I've known sports fans with no friends, etc... these are somewhat orthogonal things. There's also a lot of judgment in this quoted line in particular. Which fits with the general problem of just "I don't like where I am but want something different but don't know what that is." Unfortunately (but also fortunately!) the cliche answer is true here: the only way to change what you're doing is to change what you're doing. I can't tell you what hobbies or social groups or whatever, but if you're not looking for them, you're not going to find any. Nothing is gained without practice.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#404

Post by buildawesome »

agumonkey wrote: post #361

I'm having a weird issue. I kinda care about programming, but I don't know if I can actually work in the field. I'm not good enough to able to pwn interviews [0] and to submit resume to senior positions. And the few recruiting agencies I went through I probably playing games with people like me (gap in resume, not enough big names in it too). This is utterly stressful because I have no idea how fast a normal develope…

Your [0] resonates with me. Coming out of a bootcamp, I've been in the industry for 2 years. My feeling is that I'm supposed to be farther along but still feel like I don't know anything. Oh and I can't do interviews either.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#405

Post by frereubu »

GuB-42 wrote: post #391

As a software developer myself, I always wondered why it is considered a stressful profession. - Most of us aren't going to kill ourselves or others in case we screw up. The stakes may be higher for people working with safety critical systems, but such systems often have multiple safeguards. - Most deadlines and time pressure are completely made up. So what if we don't deliver on time? It is not like the fate of the…

In general I agree with you. However, I think that the "deadlines and time pressure are completely made up" aspect can actually make things more stressful. An example would be managers not understanding that they're being unrealistic. If you want to get a 100-tonne object from X to Y there are pretty clear parameters and it's easier to push back in understandable terms. If you want to refactor a codebase so you can do Z, not so much. I'm lucky in that I run my own business and generally get to choose my clients, but I've worked in large organisations before and I know how that kind of bureaucracy can complete crush people.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#406

Post by Topgamer7 »

theanine wrote: post #55

Thanks 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…

You should look into better help, its a monthly thing. but you will get like 4 sessions in a month for $150 iirc.

https://www.betterhelp.com/

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#407

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

suyash wrote: post #390
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #178

Call me cynical, but my guess is that no one asking the question actually cares about the answer, especially if they are prompted to do so by a PSA. It's like those assholes who show up and tell suicidal people the number to the suicide hotline. They don't give a shit, they're just virtue signaling that they care about others in the least-effort way they possibly can.

Everyone has their comfort zone or in this context empathy zone, some people are very empathetic, some don't know how to show empathy or care towards others and that is just a personality thing, we shouldn't hold that against people. Think of it the other way, most people reading here and replying at least care enough to show concern and empathy, some maybe more empathetic than others. To counter your point about Sui…

My point is that they don't really give a shit. I'm not saying that's a bad thing per-se, there's only so much a human being can genuinely care about and devote effort to after all, but such actions are shallow to the point of being somewhat insulting.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#408

Post by rubicon33 »

djsumdog wrote: post #373
rubicon33 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is the 20k savings a barrier of entry for most people, but this type of advice comes with massive assumptions about one's own life. Good luck doing this if you're in a committed relationship. Good luck doing this if you have kids, for example. For anyone who's put down even basic roots, this is a difficult bit of advice, if not downright unhelpful.

I mentioned the two friends who had the RV life. I meant to add that it helped they had jobs which allowed for remote work. It is a big investment too, as you're essentially buying a house that will go down in value. If you read my other comment, I mentioned people who did the same thing that were low income too. I'm not saying it's for everyone, but if you can get it to work with your current skills and situation it…

Fair enough. I just see posts like this often and, to me at least, they strike me as the "easy" answer. I don't have any good answer for if you are locked into a relationship, kids, etc... That's kinda the life you chose, and you gotta take the good with the bad. I guess?

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#409

Post by sad-throwaway »

C4stor wrote: post #258
sad-throwaway wrote: post #211

No... but I'm not sure what to do about it I spoke with a therapist, but it hasn't helped me much; he basically admitted he didn't know what to suggest. Maybe I'm weird, and need to find the right therapist, which is what people suggest when I tell them this hasn't been that useful What else can I do, HN? I feel so lonely all the time. I don't have any close friends and people only talk to me at work about work. I do…

Not sure what are your hobbies (if any). If you have some passion that you're unable to share, I'd advise actively looking for people with a similar taste online. It's usually quite easier to make friends from unknown people sharing a similar taste than to convert your existing social group to what you like. Also, if you're kinda good at something, googling some pedagogy basics and teaching it for free in your spare…

>If you have some passion that you're unable to share

I like firearms - but it's frowned upon to like guns in the UK. There's nothing on meetup.com for that

I like animals - not sure that actually translates well into an activity to share with others though

I used to play online games during my time at school - even went to a few LAN parties - but I'm not so good. After a long time (maybe a year - or more), I just stopped trying as I wasn't having fun. I wasn't getting invited much anyway since people don't want to play with someone who isn't very good

>Also, if you're kinda good at something, googling some pedagogy basics and teaching it for free in your spare time will make you meet grateful people.

I can teach you to write code and shoot guns

For the former, I already give talks at my local user group. I suppose I could try to advertise explicitly to beginners? I usually teach intermediate-to-advanced people (especially FP, monads, clean code, security, encryption)

For the latter, nobody (around me anyway) wants to learn

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#410

Post by hazeii »

ibejoeb wrote: post #236
hazeii wrote: post #65

How did we even end up here? As a greybeard, messing with computers has always been fun for me. Yet somehow, slowly the system has morphed it into a way to grind talented people into the ground with impossible deadlines and insane demands - to the point where we need websites like this.

Guess it depends on how grey. If you saw garage tinkering turn into a new industry, it was probably fantastic. If you came up in the already industrialized times, a job's a job, right? From my perspective I'd say that programmers, in general, have it pretty good, as jobs go. That doesn't mean a programmer is going to be happy. You just might not be happier doing anything else, either, and you might even dislike it mo…

It's been good to me (my first home computer was a Z80 with 768 bytes of RAM, my first pro job was to go onsite and sort a blown bulb in a paper tape reader - that should say how grey :) ).

Punching in and out isn't so bad (I've done it), it's probably gone out of fashion because then people would get paid for all the hours they work :)

What seems wrong nowadays is how exploited workers are (and not just programmers).

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