Motivation comes from three things, provided you're in a creative role and money's not an issue: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. You need to be able to decide how to get the job done, you need to be able to get better and better at your job, and you need to understand why your job matters in the scope of something larger than yourself. Figure out which is missing, decide if you can find it, and if not, go somewhere that can give it to you.
Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
171–180 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#172You remind me myself a few years ago: a talented, but bored slacker who didn't see any point in investing any energy into that project. Turns out I was right: the project didn't go anywhere after I left and investing any extra time would be a clueless thing to do. So what's changed since then? Have I found meaning in work? No! I've become a professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what bod…
> Talk to a lawyer and try to start your own company. And if you have success, grow and you need to hire, then be aware of employees who preach to "not put any effort into making riches richer and just do the minimum!"
I already have a team working for me and I don't understand why these people should exchange more time than necessary to make me financially independent.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#173Switch teams, ideally to something entirely different than what you’re doing now. Google makes it easy and painless (in most cases) for a reason. I stayed at my first team at Google for years longer than most people do, and though I started strong, by the end I found I was feeling similarly to what you describe. I took that as an impetuous to switch teams and moved to doing something very different, and now a year later I’ve got my fire back and I’m learning tons every day. I’m sure at some point I’ll get comfortable and complacent here again, but now I know to keep an eye out for it and take that as a signal that it’s time to move forward again.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#174It's sad and revealing to see the other comments here. Many of them say, don't seek fulfillment in your job, just keep on cruising. What a change from the exciting atmosphere of the 2000s. Seems like software engineering has become a safe, dull career nowadays. Don't listen to them. Your 20s are the time to learn, push yourself and discover who you are. Autopilot is for middle age.
Software engineering just isn't that hard. Tedious yes, but not remotely difficult. We've been fed the narrative of economic success that many folks have forgotten what personal success looks like. You can be successful in your career and still feel like a failure. Therapy is the answer here. You have to un-brainwash yourself from the notion that your job is your life and figure out what really matters to you. Then f…
> Software engineering just isn't that hard
1) I agree that this is often true! Code can be pretty boring. That doesn’t mean there are no interesting problems that you can tackle with programming. It just means most people work on incredibly boring stuff and think that’s all there is and totally fine. Find something that’s a better use of your time.
2) There is more and less difficult software engineering. If yours is really boring why wouldn’t you try something more challenging? It doesn’t always pay as well but it can be a lot less terrible to experience on a daily basis.
3) Most of the hardest problems in making interesting technology that touches the world isn’t in exactly how the code is written. Learning this is the first step towards starting to be equipped to tackle the actually hard problems in our field. Which you could work on directly, if you wanted.
None of this is to say that anyone has to do this. You don’t have to have fulfillment in your job. Though you and most others should frankly probably look around and make sure the code you’re writing is doing actually good things in the world rather than bad ones, that’s an ethical obligation but one that is pretty orthogonal whether or not you’re working on interesting problems. (If people optimize solely for money though, they bend towards writing code that makes that empowers companies over people and generally makes the world a worst place. People have a responsibility to evaluate this and try and avoid the ones that don’t.)
Mostly: it’s fine to make the choice to not work on something fulfilling. But stating that there’s nothing fulfilling to work on in this world is just nonsense, defeatist and mostly means you’ve resigned yourself and everyone who takes your advice to unfulfilling, boring and miserable work that doesn’t grow you worth a damn.
And that probably sucks. So why take that approach?
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software engineering just isn't that hard. Tedious yes, but not remotely difficult. We've been fed the narrative of economic success that many folks have forgotten what personal success looks like. You can be successful in your career and still feel like a failure. Therapy is the answer here. You have to un-brainwash yourself from the notion that your job is your life and figure out what really matters to you. Then f…
Software engineering just isn't that hard. Tedious yes, but not remotely difficult. Come back and say this after you’ve had to fix concurrency bugs or had to maintain some overseas contractor’s terrible codebase with no documentation.
Both of those sound tedious, neither of them sound particularly hard.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software engineering just isn't that hard. Tedious yes, but not remotely difficult. We've been fed the narrative of economic success that many folks have forgotten what personal success looks like. You can be successful in your career and still feel like a failure. Therapy is the answer here. You have to un-brainwash yourself from the notion that your job is your life and figure out what really matters to you. Then f…
> Therapy is the answer here. You have to un-brainwash yourself from the notion that your job is your life and figure out what really matters to you. Then focus on that, and use your job to fill the boring hours in between. You’re going to spend more time at work than doing almost anything else during those years of your life where you work. Why not do something meaningful with those hours if you can? And if OP can g…
What percentage of software engineers are doing "something meaningful"? That seems like a small number, no?
Contrast with teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, etc., almost all of whom I think would say they do something meaningful.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#177I’m in the same boat as you. I’ve been working at the same tech company for 6.5 years making around 500 (used to be 1.2 but my stock grant ran out). I only show up one day a week to have lunch with friends and do nothing. My advice is to keep the money flowing and do something else on the side.
This blows my mind. I make 120k as a young person in SWE, and I feel like a fraud often for making that money, and being able to work from basically anywhere I want in the world. How do you justify it to yourself? Do other things fulfill you? I’m already feeling pangs of doubt about my life, and I work more and earn less than you. I’m passing no judgement at all, I’m just curious about how that dynamic effects you an…
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Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#178I am not kidding: you are all set to be CTO or dev lead (mind: only if there’s actually a team so you don’t have to do much development) at some late-early stage funded startup, that wants a long-time Google alum on their staff, in leadership. Without even a change in your work ethic. Not even slightly a joke.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#179Here is my philosophy in life.
"Make it a ride and become a passenger."
I mean we are all going to the same place in the end. Nothing really matters.
Have a comfortable job. And positive outlook but never plan for anything. Its so much fun. Life happens all around you and you just observe.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software engineering just isn't that hard. Tedious yes, but not remotely difficult. Come back and say this after you’ve had to fix concurrency bugs or had to maintain some overseas contractor’s terrible codebase with no documentation.
I have; I was a software engineer for over a decade before I moved up through architecture and laterally into product. Those problems are tedious. Not difficult.
10 years ago everything was tedious but possible because you had full control. Now it's super easy until impossible/difficult.