81–90 of 97 posts
A friend of mine who fell for the "work hard forever" idea just wrote a lengthy post venting about what this did to her: when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things. And you drift out of friend groups because of this. Your social skills atrophy, you have no idea how to try and make new friends on the rare occa…
Anything that suggests that work is the beginning, middle and end of life is utterly and completely misguided in my humble opinion. As the great sages tend to say, you're not going to be on your deathbed wishing you'd signed that extra deal, you're going to be lying there thinking of your family, your love, the time with your kids. Now that's not to say there aren't moments in your life when you're up for working har…
I think that only really applies if you're 'normal' though. I'm what you might call an incel, though it's not so much the lack of sex as it is the lack of being able to bond emotionally. So unlike most people I've never been able to make friends beyond superficial politeness. Combined with the fact that 'family' has no happy connections for me; growing up time 'love' meant getting hit across the face because that's h…
I do wonder if you may have prematurely foreclosed upon future possibilities ("it's all we will ever have") based on your current perspective; perhaps an effective therapist could help reframe some of your thoughts here.
If you find a good one, I think this is absolutely possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. Proper scaling means delegation and systems. Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’s a sign of a poorly run company.
40 hours is a completely arbitrary number. It wasn't true a hundred year ago. It isn't true for everyone. It isn't true for the same person during different phases of their life. What is true is that overworking will only have diminishing return, however it is up to each individual to find their own threshold. Grinding away may not be productive, and may be a sign of a poorly run company, but sometime a company has t…
> Grinding away may not be productive, and may be a sign of a poorly run company, but sometime a company has to do it anyway if it's the matter of survival. A dead company can't become a well run one.
I’d highly recommend quitting if you ever find yourself in a company like this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. Proper scaling means delegation and systems. Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’s a sign of a poorly run company.
>Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. This can be so true. In the 24/7 operation it's important to recognize how this can occur and do whatever it takes to work around it. OTOH making progress with unique electronics (which is not going to last forever anyway) can be done in an ordinary company if the ordinary company work can be accomplished in 35 hours instead of 40, and the resu…
Balance, or the lack thereof, is one of the most common pain points for the juniors I've worked with. New college grads can really struggle with finding balance after transitioning out of college. The undergrad environment has well defined start and end points for each class and everyone gets the same or similar workloads, so it's possible to calibrate off of peers and consult with advisors or mentors who have gone t…
> New college grads can really struggle with finding balance after transitioning out of college > Ambitious juniors often see this and decide to go all-in The most common issue I see with dedicated juniors is when work is, by a large margin, the biggest thing in their life. When work is your thing, it only takes one thing to go badly at work for it to impact your happiness. Given how much can go wrong in a career tha…
How could it not be, at 8 hours/day, 5 days/week?
The situation is much more complicated when you are working for someone else. Then you'll need to make a careful assessment of whether working harder is a net economic benefit for your (vs. doing other things in the time that would be freed up and the cost of any long term damage you might do to your health if you worked too hard.) For example it would entirely consistent for you to put in a 40 hr week for your employer, and spend all other discretionary time on your own project. It is also okay if you make the finding that your employer sponsored work is your primary long term goal and work on that even during weekends. E.g. this how many academics see their work. For most startups, as an employee, you need to be very careful with your calculation. Much of the value you create in a startup or a large tech company will not be captured by you! You need to make the calculation as to whether or working harder has a strategic benefit for you. It might or it might not. So the real issue is not 'working hard' but working hard on what?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that only really applies if you're 'normal' though. I'm what you might call an incel, though it's not so much the lack of sex as it is the lack of being able to bond emotionally. So unlike most people I've never been able to make friends beyond superficial politeness. Combined with the fact that 'family' has no happy connections for me; growing up time 'love' meant getting hit across the face because that's h…
I genuinely don't mean this in a dismissive way, but have you considered therapy? I do wonder if you may have prematurely foreclosed upon future possibilities ("it's all we will ever have") based on your current perspective; perhaps an effective therapist could help reframe some of your thoughts here. If you find a good one, I think this is absolutely possible.
Even then I'm not sure what it is the end result. I'm already a dangerously elevated risk of attacking an intimate partner, based on statistics. Maybe friends but I honestly don't know what being a friend is supposed to be like so... yeah.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I genuinely don't mean this in a dismissive way, but have you considered therapy? I do wonder if you may have prematurely foreclosed upon future possibilities ("it's all we will ever have") based on your current perspective; perhaps an effective therapist could help reframe some of your thoughts here. If you find a good one, I think this is absolutely possible.
A few times in the past, but the net result was usually little else other then anti depressant prescriptions. I kind of got the impression that they weren't interested beyond peddling whatever RX that they happened to find interesting, but my social skills are limited to saw the least. Granted the last time tried was over 10 years ago but, but experience hasn't shown a a good track record in finding a 'good' therapis…
Anything that suggests that work is the beginning, middle and end of life is utterly and completely misguided in my humble opinion. As the great sages tend to say, you're not going to be on your deathbed wishing you'd signed that extra deal, you're going to be lying there thinking of your family, your love, the time with your kids. Now that's not to say there aren't moments in your life when you're up for working har…
I think that only really applies if you're 'normal' though. I'm what you might call an incel, though it's not so much the lack of sex as it is the lack of being able to bond emotionally. So unlike most people I've never been able to make friends beyond superficial politeness. Combined with the fact that 'family' has no happy connections for me; growing up time 'love' meant getting hit across the face because that's h…
Although i am also pretty introverted and it has definitely affected my social life so far, i also try to make an effort to explore a variety of the things life can offer me and i'd urge most people to do the same, even if it means exiting your comfort zone for a bit. None of those necessarily need to be persistent hobbies, but i'd argue that it can also be a good way to find one that you like.
In the past month, i've:
- learnt Ruby on Rails for my personal homepage, outside of work; while this is still a technical pursuit, learning new technologies is pretty useful, to expand one's knowledge
- been listening to some episodes of the Complete Developer Podcast, just to hear others' experiences both in the industry and outside of it: https://completedeveloperpodcast.com/
- have practiced doing some 3D modelling and animation, since i'd like to either make video games at some point, or at least continue making interactive visualizations outside of work
- been blogging about some tech related topics, as well as writing fiction in private, to improve my skills in that regard
- decided to drop a bit of weight, so i've been tracking how many calories i eat and have kept exercising daily; while i can't say i've enjoyed the actual process, the health benefits are not to be underestimated
- have done a bit of DIY stuff outside, as well as just chores around the farm (like mowing the grass with a tractor and then promptly fixing it, once the belts came off)
- have smoked some meat outside, which also meant a healthy bit of chopping wood for it, seeing as we have a wood burning smokehouse
- have practiced some 3D printing stuff; i guess this could be a hobby, but in my case i made a VESA mount for my monitors out of PVC and some PLA, as well as monitor support stands
- have been reading some books, like the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown and will read the Neuromancer books by William Gibson next
- have also played the occasional video game (most recently Elite: Dangerous) for a bit of nice escapism
- have set up a Wi-Fi repeater in the home out of an old router with WDS
Not even trying to do that makes me feel like perhaps you're somewhat depressed, which i've gone through in my life as well. That would probably be the first thing to address, if you can. Of course, my apologies if i'm assuming too much, since i'm really not sure about your particular circumstances. Regardless, best of luck!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between working hard with balance and working hard to the point of excluding everything else in life. > when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things. If we consider a strict 40-hour maximum workweek on one end of the spectrum and what your friend is describing (100-120 hour workweek that le…
Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns. Proper scaling means delegation and systems. Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’s a sign of a poorly run company.