Just work hard • Hacker News Board

Re: Just work hard

#31

Post by wdewind » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

jjanzer wrote: post #29

wdewind wrote: post #22

As a millennial who actually works his ass off I always feel somewhat compelled to respond to these. Many of my friends who just graduated, especially non-developers, actually want nothing more than to put in hard work and get stuff done. Unfortunately the few jobs that are out there for young people rarely actually involve working hard if it is building towards a career. Sure, you can go off and work your ass of as…

I think the problem here is that not all employers will challenge you. In my mind, the key to finding enjoyment in your work if it's not challenging is to challenge yourself. Unless your job is oppressive to self direction there is nothing stopping you or anyone else from creating or doing something that is positive for the business and challenging for you. As a few examples you could find ways to optimize a system t…

This is a nice idea, but unfortunately in many cases getting the information and power you require to solve the problems is blocked by seniority. You have to keep in mind, outside of development many many industries are still essentially seniority not performance based. For instance, if I work in HR and there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we are recruiting, it's not as simple as whip up a prototype, in many cases you'll actually need for someone (ie: a superior) to be fired in order to really affect change. It's not easy to address important inefficiencies within the company without pointing out that someone is fucking up their job.

As for the inefficiencies you CAN fix, this seems like a standard part of any job (and life to be honest). If you see problems in your job that you actually can and know how to improve and you aren't improving them, that's an entirely different issue.

Re: Just work hard

#32

Post by gruseom » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

coryl wrote: post #14

I wonder if his observations about "millennials" is actually true. I'm always skeptical when people refer to (especially) younger generations and their flaws, it reminds me of a grumpy old man. "Kids were tougher back in my days! Knew the value of hard work and a dollar! Nowadays they got their MTV and their eyePhones, I'm telling ya this country's falling apart!". However, we live in a different world now. Means of…

Things have always been degenerating.

Re: Just work hard

#33

Post by rgraham » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 6:19 PM UTC

troels wrote: post #17

drats wrote: post #7

I just realised my generation is now old enough to be complaining about younger generations. I think the only "generational" debate worth having these days will be the funding of the pensions (promised to people but not always saved for) and medical procedures of the long-lived baby boomers whilst simultaneously dealing with the debt mountains in the West. The debt in the West is approaching, I think may have exceede…

Yes, it's funny how that makes you feel old, isn't it? Every friggin generation has people who complain about the younger ones lack of direction. I'm not worried though - They too will grow up.

Yeah, but the real problem is the younger younger generation. Those kids have no direction. You should see them...

Re: Just work hard

#34

Post by j_baker » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 6:35 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #22

As a millennial who actually works his ass off I always feel somewhat compelled to respond to these. Many of my friends who just graduated, especially non-developers, actually want nothing more than to put in hard work and get stuff done. Unfortunately the few jobs that are out there for young people rarely actually involve working hard if it is building towards a career. Sure, you can go off and work your ass of as…

I tend to agree with Daniel Pink's assessment[1]. The reality of the situation is that us millenials have grown up in an age of instant feedback.

Older generations tend to view this as emotional neediness, but the reality is that feedback is necessary for a healthy work environment. When we don't get that feedback, we tend to disengage and assume we're either not important enough to get feedback, or our workplace is ambivalent to our presence.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8113600/Think-Tank-F... - just posted it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2773834

Re: Just work hard

#35

Post by omouse » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 8:02 PM UTC

The rugged individualism of Americans is amusing sometimes.

Re: Just work hard

#36

Post by michaelochurch » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 8:20 PM UTC

I'm going to side-step the generational flame-war and point out a few things.

First of all, we don't live in a culture that values hard work. To be fair, maybe it shouldn't. Hard work at something pointless is just wasted effort. But we should toss the hypocrisy by which we claim to value "hard work" when what we really value (as a culture) in people is the resources they already have. The Randists and conservatives and big-business lapdogs dress corporate executives up as "society's most creative and productive individuals" but this isn't true. As a society-- we worship consumption, in the guise of jet-set executives who consume the earth's resources and in that of celebrities who consume others' attention-- and production and hard work really aren't major concerns.

Consider the celebrity cult (the hatred and envy included, because the baseless hatred of him is as execrable as the pointless veneration) around a rather bland executive-- neither deserving of much admiration nor dislike-- of a rather boring but important and successful upstart company, a cult existing mainly because he's a billionaire in his 20s. No one know or cares if he worked hard to achieve what he did (I think it's obvious that he did, although he had ridiculously lucky breaks) but because he's rich, he's important.

"Millennials" don't see people who are rewarded or even respected for working hard. They see a culture of rent-seekers, lucky bandits, and celebrity that is based on celebrity alone. And if people are going to pin our cultural degeneracy on the Baby Boomers (a reasonable contention) it should not be based on what they said as parents but what they did in the marketplace.

Re: Just work hard

#37

Post by viandante » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 8:35 PM UTC

This is totally missing the point. Everybody I know is working hard and is keen to work hard to achieve things. But today it's not easy. 30 years ago you could work hard and you had good chances to succede. Today you may end up working up to update a power point, or because the boss doesn't use vba and you have to do all things manually.

I mean, work hard is a really, really, bad metaphore. It is more about learning good and useful stuff. Which is also kind of diffucult having seen the total absurd that universities have become.

Re: Just work hard

#38

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 8:51 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #36

I'm going to side-step the generational flame-war and point out a few things. First of all, we don't live in a culture that values hard work. To be fair, maybe it shouldn't. Hard work at something pointless is just wasted effort. But we should toss the hypocrisy by which we claim to value "hard work" when what we really value (as a culture) in people is the resources they already have. The Randists and conservatives…

[deleted]

Re: Just work hard

#39

Post by pnathan » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 8:53 PM UTC

chegra wrote: post #10

I was going to ask HN yesterday how many unfinished app they currently have. This stems from the fact that a developer with a popular app told me currently he has 30+ unfinished apps in his IDE right now. Naturally, I started to feel good about the my 4-5 projects that are unfinished right now. But, the truth is this isn't school. School strives on following through, passing every test, rinse and repeat. In the world…

I have (1) MS thesis, (1) half-finished prototype for a desktop app, (1) idea of a ios app, (1) idea of a niche MUD.

But I also work at a BigCorp, so I'm perhaps atypical.

I gave up on having one zillion unfinished programs a year or two ago, when it became apparent nothing was getting meaningfully done.

Re: Just work hard

#40

Post by janesvilleseo » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 11:28 PM UTC

jjanzer wrote: post #29

wdewind wrote: post #22

As a millennial who actually works his ass off I always feel somewhat compelled to respond to these. Many of my friends who just graduated, especially non-developers, actually want nothing more than to put in hard work and get stuff done. Unfortunately the few jobs that are out there for young people rarely actually involve working hard if it is building towards a career. Sure, you can go off and work your ass of as…

I think the problem here is that not all employers will challenge you. In my mind, the key to finding enjoyment in your work if it's not challenging is to challenge yourself. Unless your job is oppressive to self direction there is nothing stopping you or anyone else from creating or doing something that is positive for the business and challenging for you. As a few examples you could find ways to optimize a system t…

I agree completely. I work at a company that is small about 25 people, but I engage in this quite often. The company is rather open about everything. I have access to just about everything I need except for the company bank accounts, which I do not want. This provides with a lot access to do a lot of this flow analysis. However the two greatest challenges I still have to overcome are 1)Buy-In from the higher ups to actually use the data/analysis and 2)the time to keep it up. I often feel, for multiple reasons, that I shouldn't be spending time on these endeavors. However, I still seem to always have a 'project'.