Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help • Hacker News Board

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#671

Post by fuball63 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

rabidrat wrote: post #639

fuball63 wrote: post #596

This is just my personal approach to being disillusioned with tech, but I think about it a lot so I thought I'd share. I think one of the most dangerous cliches we are taught when we are young is "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life". It sets up the expectation that your passion and your job should be tightly coupled, and if they aren't, there's something flawed with you. Having a job where you…

> spend the other 8-10 hours a day doing things you actually like to do How many hours are in your day? I don't even have kids and I don't even have 4 hours in a workday doing things I actually like to do.

I'm coming from the 8 hours sleep, 8 hours of work, 8 hours of other stuff. There will obviously be things like chores and eating in there, but I think there is meaning and purpose derived from those things as well.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#672

Post by eloff » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

tug0fwar wrote: post #611

eloff wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Job progression up the ladder is mostly inferior to lateral progression to a new company. That's partly why people stay such a short time in a role. You'll get no loyalty, humanity, or recognition from the company. Give them the minimum to keep them happy and keep your job and focus the rest of your energy on something that will benefit you.

If you are inclined to give your minimum at something you spend time on everyday, it essentially means you shouldn't have started it in the first place. Unless you are forced to do work you don't enjoy (work is what brings food to the table etc.), you should obviously find better work. Also, even if you are stuck, try to get out of it as soon as possible. Choosing to do work you don't care about is simply bad decisio…

You can take pride in your work, you can do a good job, you can even enjoy it (I don't usually). But when it's quitting time, unless it's an emergency, you're done. And if I overwork some days because of deadlines or emergencies, I will underwork when the dust settles. That's fair.

I'll spend my time after work contracting or working on my own projects. Both of which benefit me more than over achieving in my day job.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#673

Post by fuball63 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

pharke wrote: post #635

fuball63 wrote: post #596

This is just my personal approach to being disillusioned with tech, but I think about it a lot so I thought I'd share. I think one of the most dangerous cliches we are taught when we are young is "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life". It sets up the expectation that your passion and your job should be tightly coupled, and if they aren't, there's something flawed with you. Having a job where you…

I have a different take on this. "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life" isn't a dangerous cliche, it is in fact true (note that many cliches are cliches because they are obvious truisms). The problem is that it has a number of caveats. One of which is that it is impossible to "do what you love" while taking direction from other people unless their goals and ideals are 100% aligned with your own,…

This is a really thoughtful take, thank you. I completely agree about how the group dynamic and generally being aligned in goals makes the world of difference.

I feel this way in some of my social groups outside of work, for hobby or semi-professional endeavors I have. They're a lot of work but the people I do it with are all rowing in the same direction. In some ways, having those experiences makes the less-than-rosy realities of the day job more tolerable.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#674

Post by ak217 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

fuball63 wrote: post #596

This is just my personal approach to being disillusioned with tech, but I think about it a lot so I thought I'd share. I think one of the most dangerous cliches we are taught when we are young is "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life". It sets up the expectation that your passion and your job should be tightly coupled, and if they aren't, there's something flawed with you. Having a job where you…

It's often said that you should "Do what you love", but that's mostly bad advice. It encourages people to grind away their lives in pursuit of some mostly unattainable goal, such as being a movie star or a billionaire startup founder. And even if they do make it, often the reality is nothing like they imagined it would be, so they're still unhappy.

Do what you love is in the future. Love what you do is right now. As with the other patterns, it's meant to guide the small decisions that we make every moment of every day. It's less about changing what you do, and more about changing how you do it.

"Do what you love" treats "what you love" as a fixed thing, but it's not. I used to hate running. I would sometimes force myself to run a few miles because it's supposed to be healthy, but I never liked it. Then I read a book that said we are born to run, and that it can be fun. Inspired, I decided to try running just for fun, focus on the quality of every step, and forget about the goal completion aspect of it. Very quickly, I learned to enjoy running, and over time I've transformed my entire relationship with fitness and exercise to be oriented more toward enjoyment.

Naturally, this more intrinsic approach ultimately improves the quality of our efforts, which generally leads to greater extrinsic rewards as well. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are best when they are both pointed in the same direction. ...

Real work always seems to involve a certain amount of unpleasant, grinding effort though, and startups often have a lot of it. It's like having a baby. It's 5% cute, adorable moments, and 95% dirty diapers and vomit.

The key to loving these more unpleasant moments is meaning. If we genuinely care about and believe in our mission, then those difficult times begin to take on a more heroic quality.

https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-technology.htm...

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#675

Post by Veen » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

growlist wrote: post #663

eloff wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Job progression up the ladder is mostly inferior to lateral progression to a new company. That's partly why people stay such a short time in a role. You'll get no loyalty, humanity, or recognition from the company. Give them the minimum to keep them happy and keep your job and focus the rest of your energy on something that will benefit you.

> Give them the minimum to keep them happy and keep your job and focus the rest of your energy on something that will benefit you. In my experience this is the type of person in your team that - instead of consulting colleagues to arrange holidays cooperatively and ensure there's cover available, and that parents do ok given the extra encumbrances they're subject to etc. etc. - goes ahead and books out a whole year's…

You may think they are unpleasant, but they may be happier for it. Perhaps they prioritize their time with friends and family above their relationships at work. They're turning other people's loyalty to the company and solidarity with colleagues to their advantage. It's not an irrational strategy if it maximizes happiness.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#676

Post by shp0ngle » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

throwaway092835 wrote: post #529

shp0ngle wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting is that I got the opposite experience. As all the libre stuff I have been working on started to be used and contributed to by the very forces it tried to destroy. Why is it so great to work on free software when it ends up being used to sell more AWS subscriptions and by some Facebook library to sell more ads I realized libre movement is a mirage.... you cannot change the capitalist forces by writing a bu…

permissive licenses allowed turning a social movement into unpaid labor for FAANGs. Instead of providing libre computing all the way to the end users, many developers are writing unpaid applications and libraries that will be locked down into some devices or SaaS. > I realized libre movement is a mirage.... No, the mirage is to think that we either fix the whole world in two decades or the fight is lost. > you cannot…

> No, the mirage is to think that we either fix the whole world in two decades or the fight is lost.

Two decades? The "year of Linux desktop" meme is older than that. GNU was created 1984. It's 34 years old now.

Software in 1984 was wildly different than now. But while free software is now more available than back then, it's not really much help to the world at large, is it.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#677

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #334

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #85

You can't let work be your whole life or it's going to eat you up. Everyone should read how things are done at Joel's company. Joel spolsky knows how to create a responsible work environment that is sustainable that won't burn out engineers. Here is his key advice: 20 hours of your work week you spend on your SE studies + medition/rest/yoga + administrative stuff + meetings. the other 20 hours is on coding. If you're…

This seems like great advice if you're your own manager. The other 99% of us would be fired for following his advice unfortunately.

Not if everyone follows the advice.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#678

Post by fuball63 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

ak217 wrote: post #674

fuball63 wrote: post #596

This is just my personal approach to being disillusioned with tech, but I think about it a lot so I thought I'd share. I think one of the most dangerous cliches we are taught when we are young is "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life". It sets up the expectation that your passion and your job should be tightly coupled, and if they aren't, there's something flawed with you. Having a job where you…

It's often said that you should "Do what you love", but that's mostly bad advice. It encourages people to grind away their lives in pursuit of some mostly unattainable goal, such as being a movie star or a billionaire startup founder. And even if they do make it, often the reality is nothing like they imagined it would be, so they're still unhappy. Do what you love is in the future. Love what you do is right now. As…

Thank you for the quote, I like the part about the "what you love part" being fluid. I think that's why sometimes your career being "what you love" can be tough, because unless you're the boss, it's hard to steer the barge to align the group goals with your personal goals (another commenter had a good take on that aspect.)

For me personally, since I'm not the boss, I do what I can in my work to align the company goals with my goals, and vice versa, but also remember to fallback on what my real passions are on my own time. For me its a helpful way to cope when the goals really diverge and it's out of my hands.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#679

Post by otabdeveloper4 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

orestarod wrote: post #599

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> American Indians and Aboriginal Australians have been living like that well into historical times... They're not time travelers from the past. They're our contemporaries, who are every bit as 'modern' as us. They just made a different set of choices along their historical arc. > ...there's no real reason to suppose that humans at the most primitive state of society were living any differently. At the same time ther…

Larger number of humans were only made possible after we started farming. Primitives times refer to that old an age. If these people never went through the social evolutions the rest of the world underwent, they are indeed travelers from the past.

> If these people never went through the social evolutions the rest of the world underwent, they are indeed travelers from the past.

Logical error. That they didn't go through the same social evolutions that we went through doesn't mean they didn't go through any social evolutions at all.

(And indeed they must have; even keeping their societies static takes conscious effort, in the same vein that conservative reactionaries today aren't at all the same people, ethically and sociologically, as the simpler ancestors they try to emulate.)

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#680

Post by nicbou » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

neuronic wrote: post #602

mark_l_watson wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in this place. I have been working for months on an app that perhaps a few dozen people might want (in the semantic web space). If I have a few enthusiastic users who provide some feedback, I am good with that.

Enterprise software is often the epitome of being removed from the results and the fruits of your work, it's a prime example of what Marx was talking about. You can write unit tests and Spring components with 64 character names all day long but by the end of the day you are completely disassociated from your contribution. Rarely is anybody there to thank you, who is grateful you made their life better, or who has som…

That's a good point.

I have nothing to show for my 14 months at [redacted], but I still use the trivial little app I made years ago to redirect my search queries to different sites. It took all of 5 hours to write.