Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started to agree with you, but this took a different direction. In general, it's smart, informed work that matters. Not grinding yourself down hard work. I feel Ive developed enough good intuition and judgment over the years that I'm capable of making well informed, strategic input to my organization that is infinitely more valuable than grinding away in PRs or tickets all day. I feel successful, it benefits my com…
My dude, I hope you realize that you're only one crappy and traitless newly hired manager or technical leader away from being extremely miserable at your job.
Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
421–430 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#422Hi there, I did the exact same thing as you (at Google Sydney), before eventually deciding that I must strike out into the wilderness. In the few years since I left; I worked as a solutions architect managing a team, a team lead, a remote dev, and now in a startup. Front-end, back-end, flip-side, all the ends. So I've been deliberately trying different angles of my career to see what suits. I'd describe this process…
> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…
here's your problem
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#423Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#424You 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…
This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for while in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year, no stock options, without any hope of early retirement or owning a decent home without a 30 year loan or financial…
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#425This is a very dangerous and destructive behavioral pattern, not unlike what happens with people when they are on government support and don't have to worry about earning a living. It's destructive for you and those around you.
Print this in a large font and place it on your monitor and wherever you spend the most time at home:
"Your focus determines your reality" (Star Wars, Phantom Menace).
There's a great deal of depth in that simple five word sentence.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for Don't feel too bad. As far as I know, only Google and Apple lets you get away with this kind of slacking. Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix certainly don't. Also, SWE out of college definitely aren't making enough to buy much more than a condo. That being said, you…
Be like a friend of mine in Argentina who works remote on U.S jobs. He's from the U.S and moved there, so he speaks perfect English, and Spanish but he make enough in a month to live for the whole year. He bought a house, has a nice smart girlfriend much younger than him. He's doing very well.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been away from the bay for a while, but it's amazing how bad the dating scene is, for exactly the reasons you described. I'm currently engaged to an amazing woman who has only ever lived in working-class suburbs and smaller cities. Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. She keeps telling me ho…
> Engineers in places like SFBA severely underestimate how attractive they would be anywhere else in the country/world. I agree completely. > Her exes and her friends' husbands are shockingly anti-intellectual, didn't attend college, have some substance abuse issues, and/or make well under 6 figures. Here's what happened: Guys who are intellectual, attended college, have good discipline, and stayed away from substanc…
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can expect some hundreds/thousands dollars per year This is not correct. A senior (meaning L5-L6+, nothing crazy) engineer at a big public tech co will get 6 figures yearly in stock compensation in addition to their salary.
Sorry, but this is urban legend to me. No saying it does not happen, but that is definitely a very special case. I manage a team of quantitative developers in a Hedge Fund and do between 50 and 100 interviews per year, at senior level. I have head hunter compensation report on the candidates. I see regularly candidates from Google, Amazon, and finance industry. I very rarely see 6 digit bonus for big techs. My experi…
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…
I guess I've only lived in the bay area 20 years, but this strikes me as quite dramatic. I know literally dozens of men in tech happily raising families in the Bay Area. It's true the male/female ratios are worse (although we should certainly adjust for the large gay male population). But when I talk to friends who are dating, it's the women who seem to be struggling to find anybody decent, not the men. Perhaps the p…
The fact that there are way more men than women in the Bay is a statistical reality, which you admit yourself.
Then you bring an opinion blog-post by a single woman as counter-evidence.
Ironically, all these complaints about "guys there that have a disgusting sense of entitlement" just go to show how picky she is, and can afford to be, in San Francisco.
Nothing in GP's post exhibits an arrogant attitude. He makes the simple observation, that the sort of guys who would be considered attractive and desirable in most other locations, are struggling to get dates in the Bay. This is easily explained by the high male/female ratio, which we already established as a fact.
Given this fact, no amount of hand-wringing will help: if there are far more single men then women, then the women would set a very high bar, and the men below that bar would have to remain single.
There are simply not enough women for all the single men in the Bay. No spectacular feats of mental gymnastics, nor nice-sounding dating tips, nor seeking to blame men for being "arrogant", will get around this reality.
As a final anecdote, I did know women who dated executives and VCs in the Bay. Some of these guys had mammoth egos. Curiously, that didn't prevent them from having far better dating lives than any engineer I knew.
Re: Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My advice would be work hard, save your money, travel when you can to better locales to improve your social life, but with the eventual goal of permanently moving out when you've saved enough. If you pick your destination within the USA well, dating prospects will improve greatly, and if you look worldwide (and can overcome the language and immigration issues), it could improve dramatically. The Bay Area will seem…
Move to South East Asia instead. Burgeoning tech scene, some incredible nature, dating is considerably easier, both with locals and other expats, health care is first-rate and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper ... "a rural state" sounds like all the worst bits of living in the US.