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Ask HN: Are you ok?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#651

Post by bewareandaware »

I've been having different sensations on my belly, and thought this had something to do with my stomach and digestion. Turns out that heart palpitations is one of the symptoms of being highly anxious and stressed out. On tuesday I had my first anxiety crisis and ran out of the office, only to return after 30 minutes.

For the first time in my career this week I've left with a sick leave that will endure until the week following the next one. Since medical leave is paid by the state, my winnings will be cut to around 50% for the time that I'm home, and I feel ok with it. I feel that a week and a half won't cut it.

Guess that's what happens when you burn your brain on a project you don't fully understand why it's being done and interview around 200 different people in the timeframe of an year.

Fuck company growth and fuck the company.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#652

Post by teppifk »

undulation wrote: post #536
teppifk wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate the mild feeling of discomfort I get when I tell most people I'm a software engineer. Most software engineers have a healthy circle of friends and social life. > I hate having eclectic or traditional "nerdy" interests and getting a similar reaction. It's not any different when an electrician, lawyer or a doctor wants to talk shop. Most people you will interact with don't have the same interests as you. > I h…

>> I hate the mild feeling of discomfort I get when I tell most people I'm a software engineer. > Most software engineers have a healthy circle of friends and social life. Huh? OP's allusion to "mild-discomfort" when talking about their career field leads you to respond with the patronizing suggestion that "most software engineers have a healthy circle of friends"? That's an unhelpful and presumptuous piece of advice…

Heh, well I read it through, and I totally see what you're saying. It comes across a bit thoughtless if read as a direct reply to the statement rather than as part of the larger post below (which is totally sensible to read it that way). Unfortunately I can't edit it now, but the intent was to make a point that even for a software engineer: depression, social anxiety and isolation, etc are not "normal" and one should not resign themselves to that view regardless of stereotypes or perceptions. That statement isn't that important, I should have omitted it.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#653

Post by sjeohp »

seibelj wrote: post #479
Waterluvian wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate the mild feeling of discomfort I get when I tell most people I'm a software engineer. When I lived in Waterloo, everyone was a software person or related so it wasn't a problem. But I moved to a small city where almost everyone is a factory worker of some sort for farming or auto industries. When someone asks and I say I'm a software engineer, it usually stops there. Or they'll say something along the lines…

If not automating jobs that could be automated was better for the world, then we would simply pay everyone unemployed to cut grass using scissors. Productivity gains help the world by allowing more services and products to be provided at cheaper rates. This software engineer self-loathing I keep reading about is completely misguided, it's like you are expected to hate yourself for doing valuable labor.

> Productivity gains help the world by allowing more services and products to be provided at cheaper rates.

That can be true and still not ease the pain inflicted by unemployment. The poster is confronting the consequences of their work and you are suggesting The Greater Good should simply trump their basic human empathy... An alternative might be to accept both benefits and costs of said work and make an effort to mitigate the costs via charity, volunteering, support for social programs, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#654

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

anon9001 wrote: post #616
aristophenes wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please understand that I am saying this in a compassionate, not a judgmental way. I think the key developmental step is to be able to get over yourself. I think this is a fundamental part in becoming a mature person. Many of us are forced through this step against our will and maybe without realizing it. Either through our job, or significant other, or kids, or some other experience that just overwhelms you. Apparent…

Thank you. You shouldn't be downvoted for saying this. I feel like you're saying what everyone else around me is thinking, but nobody has ever actually said. I don't even know why you'd have to preface it by saying you mean to be compassionate. If your belief is the common one, why isn't that something people talk about? Is it that taboo? Shouldn't this death of self be celebrated if it's how were made to be? Also, I…

Perhaps another way to phrase a similar thought.

You’re probably right, ones life, and the world for that matter, could be different in ways that would be better. And this fact certainly deserves some amount of mourning. Especially things that seems to be just within reach.

But then again, if we take that thought to it’s extreme there’s no end to it, how different can we which for before being unreasonable? My goto example being that I wasn’t born with wings, and yes sometimes this fact saddens me, but overall not to an extent that it takes away my happiness for everything in my life I’m thankful of. Flying would be nice, but so is spending an evening dining with family, and this I can do (a fact I’m grateful of, not everyone is so lucky).

Perhaps it would be better to be born in another era, say a thousand years from now? A million? And yet, this place and time is probably so much better than many others I could have been born in. Would I be happier if I didn’t need oxygen? Eternal life? Perhaps. But why bother thinking about it The die has been cast, the rules of the game has been selected, I might as well enjoy it while playing.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#655

Post by daksatech »

arikr wrote: post #601
Waterluvian wrote: post #393

I recently experienced months of sleeping problems. Where I wouldn't sleep for days. Or would sleep a few hours. I would be exhausted and my head would hit the pillow and BAM adrenaline and I can hear my heart pounding and I'm awake. It got so bad I would go into the basement and destroy a wall that I kept repairing. I would cry in frustration. I started to have suicidal thoughts. It was harming my marriage and made…

For others reading this thread with sleep struggles, I highly recommend the book "The Sleep Book" by Meadows. It solved my insomnia where nothing (black out curtains, eye masks, ear plugs, sleeping pills, room temperature, CBT, etc) did. It's based on the premise that anxious thoughts about falling asleep make our brain scared of danger and our brain doesn't want to fall asleep when we could be in danger. So it has t…

Maybe thats why babies fall sleep easily when you hold/cuddle them... their brain sub-consciously may be telling them its safe.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#656

Post by qorrect »

dwild wrote: post #493
crescentfresh wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something deeper here that runs counter to the generally accepted idea that lights from screens at night disrupts the body's circadian rhythm and keeps us awake. Anecdotally I know that I can go from "can't sleep; thinking about everything I have to do tomorrow" to asleep in 10 mins opening my phone and browsing reddit - in dark mode no less, makes me feel better about doing it - and reading mindlessly. Empha…

In the past I read something interesting about falling asleep. We all know how smoking, looking at a screen, eating sugar, etc... are all pretty bad to fall asleep, but actually what's helping the most isn't not doing theses things, it's the routine that you have before sleeping. Someone that does theses things every night, will have a much harder time to go to sleep if he doesn't do theses. Ideally it would be to ju…

I like this idea a lot. I don't really struggle with sleep, I don't get enough, but it's because I'm desperate to enjoy the free time I'm left with after work and responsibilities and ended up getting to bed late.

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#657

Post by qorrect »

citruscomputing wrote: post #633
anon9001 wrote: post #360

I'm shocked at how many people seem to be doing OK or have minor complaints. For me, I've realized that if I have to do anything for 40+ hours a week on a schedule, after a couple of weeks, I'd prefer being dead. I could be a professional ice cream taste tester or race car driver, and after about 3 weeks of showing up at a fixed time and putting in 8 hours, I'd still be ready to off myself again. When I have week-lon…

The way you feel is normal. Please don't try to beat yourself into something you're not, or worse, feel guilty for not being able to. There's a line from a song I like that goes "This place is designed to kill us and make us think it's our fault." Remember that the 40 hour work week was considered a victory for unions. Not as an "I should feel grateful that I have this", but as a sign that progress is possible, and c…

|There's a line from a song I like that goes "This place is designed to kill us and make us think it's our fault."

What song ?

Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?

#659

Post by teppifk »

enraged_camel wrote: post #449
teppifk wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is confirmation bias. I don't think the stereotypes are as generally popular as you claim. My own observational bias is the countless "learn to code", "anyone can code" promotions targeted at youth that make no mention of social limitations. Depression and anxiety are common in the general population. Social maladaptation is also common, though less so. It is unsurprisingly true that these traits are a bit overr…

>>This is confirmation bias. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But you made the original claim, therefore the burden is on you to provide supporting evidence.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#demographics

There's nothing there that indicating mood disorders, waking hours, or screen time even are wildly outside the norm for the middle class working population.

Anyways, I don't care about this fact too much. I'm going to continue believing that the majority of software engineers have fairly typical social lives, and my own observations don't conflict with this.

I don't care much about this, because the point I was making was that categorizing oneself in buckets like "software engineer" to justify one's misery is counterproductive, and even if 95% of software engineers were miserable I still think it be worth working towards that 5% rather than worrying about stereotypes.

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