Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase' • Hacker News Board

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#41

Post by Apreche » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

It IS a strict trade-off. The very definition of work is time I spend doing something that someone else wants me to do instead of doing something I want to do. I only do this because our capitalist society demands it. The goal of capitalism is to escape capitalism by having enough money to spend 100% of your time on what you want to do, and I have not yet won at capitalism.

Jeff Bezos, who has won at capitalism, by definition, does not work at all. He spends all his time doing what he wants to do. He never spends one second of his time doing what someone else wants him to do, unless he also wants to do it.

The balance is that I always try to spend the absolute minimum time working and the maximum time not working. If Jeff Bezos wants to work, I'm happy to have him do things I want him to do, that he does not want to do, for 40 hours a week every week.

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#42

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

>"If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," Bezos said. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy."

I know Bezos has folded a lot of boxes himself when the company started out, but somehow I get the impression he can't really relate to people who've been pulling night shifts at his warehouse for years to maybe get a few dollars of a raise because after a few of those you don't come home with tremendous energy.

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#43

Post by comfyinnernet » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

Apparently Bezos is worried that someone out there might not know he's a dickhead yet.

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#44

Post by echoradio » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

tolbish wrote: post #17

> "If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," Bezos said. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy." Surely that same thinking goes the other way: if you are having a rough time at home and it's clearly affecting your work performance, Amazon understands and tries to improve your home situation since real life is intertwined with work, right? Right?

The answer is reflected in what ultimately happened in Bezos’ own personal life. He talks about work-life being a “circle,” but his divorce introduced a gap in his own. If such thinking didn’t work for the world’s richest man, why would the common folk think the same attitude can work for them?

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#45

Post by krapp » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #42

>"If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," Bezos said. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy." I know Bezos has folded a lot of boxes himself when the company started out, but somehow I get the impression he can't really relate to people who've been pulling night shifts at his warehouse for years to maybe get a few dollars of a raise because after a few of those…

Yeah, I'd come into the office with tremendous energy too if I were worth almost 200 billion dollars and my job didn't require any physical labor whatsoever. I bet when you can outspend the GDP of entire countries and make cities compete for the privilege of making you even richer at their expense, your work life balance is pretty awesome.

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#46

Post by User23 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

shmageggy wrote: post #36

deviledeggs wrote: post #12

It's easy to be 1000% dedicated to your job when you make over $9,000,000 an hour. But he wants the same dedication from people he pays $6. He's also vicious about crushing unions and is known for giving employees so little breaks they have to piss in bottles. Fuck Bezos. The US has a real problem with wealth worship. People lap up every drop that comes out of this asshole just because he's a million times richer tha…

> he's a million times richer than everyone else. So they think he's a million times smarter. The more I talk to people I disagree with and spend time outside of the US, the more I come to believe that this mental distortion is very near to a root cause for so much misery and suffering, particularly in the US. The way we worship the rich and let them get away with distorting our politics and laws to suit them to the…

Jeff is in fact is an exceptionally intelligent man. He’s easily at least three sigma above the mean. Anyone that’s worked with him can tell you that.

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#47

Post by krapp » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

birdyrooster wrote: post #3

Jeff Bezos is more insufferable than Larry Ellison. We should all be proud of his accomplishment.

He's going to fund a laser to carve his face into the moon, isn't he?

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#48

Post by deviledeggs » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #46

shmageggy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he's a million times richer than everyone else. So they think he's a million times smarter. The more I talk to people I disagree with and spend time outside of the US, the more I come to believe that this mental distortion is very near to a root cause for so much misery and suffering, particularly in the US. The way we worship the rich and let them get away with distorting our politics and laws to suit them to the…

Jeff is in fact is an exceptionally intelligent man. He’s easily at least three sigma above the mean. Anyone that’s worked with him can tell you that.

You can find a lot of people in academia just as smart with 2 Twitter followers.

My point is, everyone listens to Jeff and the other billionaires because they're rich. That's literally the only reason. They're modern day kings as rich as the robber barons of old.

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#49

Post by sunstone » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

tolbish wrote: post #17

> "If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," Bezos said. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy." Surely that same thinking goes the other way: if you are having a rough time at home and it's clearly affecting your work performance, Amazon understands and tries to improve your home situation since real life is intertwined with work, right? Right?

I think what he's trying to say here is that, "It's good to be king."

Re: Jeff Bezos: Work-Life Balance Is 'Debilitating Phrase'

#50

Post by rm445 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

Not to defend the tone-deaf comments, but in some circumstances there's maybe part of a point? When you're aligned with your work, when it's meaningful and aligned with your personal goals, hard separations between work and life matter a lot less. You can be in a flow kind of state for quite a while and be happy.

I believe that discounting finding meaning from work is too cynical. But it only exists for some people in some jobs, some of the time. I think the visceral reaction to Bezos' comments is because we know it definitely can't exist in so many Amazon jobs.