Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Work/life balance should be difficult

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 192 posts

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#31

Post by CountDrewku »

dvt wrote: post #4

> Withdrawing from either side is pure lose. Disagree. Withdrawing from family is a pure loss. Who cares about work. Maslow is a red herring here. You hunt for food for your family , you build shelter for your family , it all goes back to your local community. "Work" in the Silicon Valley (and more generally corporatist) sense, has nothing to do with community, with making a better life, or with family, just pure pro…

Yeah I think the problem here is that modern "work" is too separated from survival.

This seems to be why a lot people feel much more fulfilled when then venture out into nature for a decent amount of time. The things they do there directly impact their survival. I agree that people do need work in that sense.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#32

Post by ehutch79 »

amw-zero wrote: post #27
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…

Work is generally a proxy for survival. Do you agree that you need to eat in order to survive?

Filling out TPS reports is not a survival skill

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#33

Post by Ancapistani »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…

> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true.

Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here.

Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn’t be employment, but “work” is a fair way to describe it. I can spend two or three weeks idling most of the time, but after that I need something to direct my energy and concentration toward. I need a goal that stretches my abilities, or I find myself constantly battling a depressive spiral.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#34

Post by willcipriano »

> My father rushed over from his job at Philco (you can still see the building on 101 in Palo Alto). He took a couple of days to make the necessary arrangements, passed me off to my grandmother’s care, then went back to work. He had a deadline.

This story is a good reminder to me to continue to live within my means. In this situation, fuck deadlines! I'm taking my son to a ball game and helping him grieve the loss of his sister.

You deserved more OP, your father was a coward in this situation and failed to step up.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#35

Post by redis_mlc »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…

> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true.

Nonsense.

Most men derive purpose in life from work (ie. providing) - this is basic psychology. Even male millionaires start new companies so they have something to do with their time.

Women have entered the workplace, but they're mostly driven by insecurity, not purpose. As one woman programmer told me, "You want to be world-class. I want to sit in my garden patio."

Also, give the fruity prose a break, this is HN, not Lapham's Quarterly.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#36

Post by sgtnoodle »

mfer wrote: post #16
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #5

The sum total of your life at any period of time should be fulfilling and each part of your life should be rewarding. If you don't have that, then you probably need to be doing something else.

Our society needs people to haul garbage away. I would bet many of them don’t do it because it’s rewarding. It just gives them money to pay for things they care about. Should all those people leave hauling our garbage?

Hauling away garbage is a thankless but virtuous task that benefits society. I would bet that a fair number of workers in that space actually do find satisfaction in it. Likewise, my usual UPS delivery driver seems to take pride in his work and I've noticed and appreciate it. The longer I work in tech, the more I get the itch to quit and work as a handyman or something for a few years.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#38

Post by emaginniss »

ehutch79 wrote: post #32
amw-zero wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is generally a proxy for survival. Do you agree that you need to eat in order to survive?

Filling out TPS reports is not a survival skill

This is a function of specialization. You fill out TPS reports to generate value for a company which allows you to purchase food created by people who specialize in food generation.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#39

Post by Ancapistani »

goldcountry wrote: post #12

This is a stupid take. Work life balance could be easy if we didn't live in a system that forced you to sell your life to wealthy sociopaths in exchange for the right to exist.

I’ll argue this in good faith. Let’s take your preconditions as fact for the purposes of this discussion - employers are either “wealthy sociopaths” or agents of the same.

You may find the options they offer to be unacceptable, but what if they didn’t exist? What options available to you if that were the case are not available to you because they do exist?

As far as I can see our current system is beneficial, if only because it allows people additional choices of how to live their lives.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#40

Post by nostrademons »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…

I don't think that was the author's message at all.

Rather, I think that this post is about balance, and about being emotionally present. He's saying that it should be a constant struggle to balance off things that you care about, because that shows you care. The only way to avoid the struggle is to cease caring, and that means you push something out of your mind that you really should be paying attention to because it's uncomfortable.

I've got plenty of stories about a dad who went the other way - full time househusband, gave up his career entirely soon after my sister and I were born - but they're a bit too personal to share on HN. It's not all roses and sunshine on that side either, though.

Post reply on HN