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Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

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201–210 of 339 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#201
If you have not already done so, consider orienting your work and home location such that you can walk or bike to work, or have a very short commute.

There are several studies that suggest long commutes are terrible for your health and happiness.

> A Swedish study found that people who endure more than a 45-minute commute were 40% more likely to divorce.

> Stutzer and Frey found that a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40% more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/01/secrets-worl...

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#202
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the evolutionarily programmed rewards from parenting will typically outweigh the rewards from general altruism. Your child becomes the most important thing in the world by default, which can flip all sorts of joy and fulfillment triggers in your brain that are difficult to flip in that way via other means. Having children is your genetic purpose, so much of our biology is driven to that end, thus it would fig…

> pay the immense costs required I’m not trying in any way to change your mind but I want to say that this is only an opinion. If you are ready to have kids, those costs are pretty easy to support. As you said, you are biologically programmed to support them (the costs). I would die without a fear if my son’s life depended on it, and still I’m far from suicidal. It’s just that, your brain naturally accepts the costs.…

Right, the thing is before you have children you can weigh the costs/rewards dispassionately, but after you have a child the calculus changes because now this person exists who is now the most important thing in the world to you. As soon as that person exists your life is no longer yours, it is in service of that child (assuming everything goes according to plan, of course it doesn't always work out that way), so of course rationalizing any cost at that point is just part of the deal.

I want my life to be my own, thus the costs are not worth it to me. If I had a kid tomorrow of course that equation would change and it would be in my best interest to rationalize all costs in service of the child, and surely I would and suddenly they would be "worth it." I do not view this as an argument in favor of having children, rather I view it as a a specific detail of the biological programming working its magic.

I'm not a never-kid person either. I am open to the idea that one day I may decide the costs are indeed worth it and seek to have children. I think that seems unlikely, but part of the freedom of designing my own life is having the space for my preferences to change, and I could envision a world in which I would be happy as a parent. It would not be in a nuclear family as is common in the west, but that is perhaps for another discussion.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#203
post #200

We live in the post-modernism era. The common theme is the maximisation of hedonism, and through that we pursue "happiness". Happiness needs to be experienced. Explaining what it is or how it feels is of low value. The problem is that happiness is directly linked to unhappiness. It's like notes and pauses: if we remove pauses from a melody, the melody turns into a "sound" that doesn't give us any pleasure.. it's not…

Well said. How do we know what happiness feels like unless we have experienced unhappiness? This doesn't answer OPs question, but it is still worth thinking about.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My twenty-year-old self wasn't ready to hear this, but it's absolutely true. Fulfillment follows from meaning, and meaning flows from responsibilities we bear.

This idea is basically conservatism. It works for a lot of people, there must be something to it, but it's not some kind of objective truth or the only outlook on life.

Its more universal than that. You can find the sentiment in Eastern and Western traditions.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#206
post #111

For me, the special part is truly viewing any job as just that: a job. I no longer assess my worth as a person as a function of job title, salary, or anything else. I take contracting work primarily and expect absolutely nothing more than a paycheck. Work is a transaction and I deliver what I can and am not a jerk. Almost every disposable penny goes toward physical fitness. My spouse happens to be cut from the same c…

What are you spending fitness money on? Dumb bells and a gym membership don’t break the bank for most software engineers.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#207
post #194
post #111

For me, the special part is truly viewing any job as just that: a job. I no longer assess my worth as a person as a function of job title, salary, or anything else. I take contracting work primarily and expect absolutely nothing more than a paycheck. Work is a transaction and I deliver what I can and am not a jerk. Almost every disposable penny goes toward physical fitness. My spouse happens to be cut from the same c…

How do you mean you spend money on physical fitness? It does sound like a great investment.

We spend a lot of money on a personal trainer; and a coach specific to my poison (cycling). The personal training and coaching are the greatest expense and I will allow my lights to get turned off before I let that lapse - it's that important to me.

There has been a significant investment in a rowing machine, indoor smart trainers for cycling, and quite a bit of free weights. My wife runs, and she spends a healthy amount on running shoes.

There are monthly subscriptions for things like Trainerroad, Zwift, and "upscale" yoga. The yearly cost of all three might be $500.

I invest in a DEXA scan at least once a year for about $50. Workout clothes wear out and need refreshing, but we go cheap on that and the expense is minimal.

There are periodic expenses - a new Fitbit, or a heart rate strap needs to be replaced - but they are not frequent or costly.

There is a large upfront cost to all of this - I now mention the 2 pretty expensive road bikes we use, but they are years old and have more than paid for themselves by helping us attain better heart health - but it's not prohibitive.

I will also note that we have consciously chosen this route vs. maxing out 401(k) or similar. We are not wealthy (in the financial sense) nor are we sitting on a nest egg or in line to inherit a large sum of money.

Finally, we're not monomaniacal about fitness. We like good food, going to movies, socializing, and so on. We could do 3 nights in NYC for about $2500 - or we can skip that and use the money for new equipment or a trial run at, say, a new gym. We choose the later 9 times out of ten.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPL it. MIT/Apache/BSD it, IMO.

No thanks. Belonging to a community and helping it grow is important for happiness. Community building (and empowering users) is the main point of copyleft. Permissive licenses are equivalent to unpaid labor in the eyes of SaaS companies and other freeloaders.

GPL is part of why SaaS happened. It doesn’t prevent commercial use and it doesn’t require distributing source code if the user never gets an executable. SaaS is the textbook way to work around the GPL.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#209
A related question: what type of software engineering work is the most relaxed? So far I have only worked in live services and while I don't feel overworked, I often have background anxiety that I will break something and cause a huge impact. Are there any product areas found at FAANGs that don't cause this anxiety?

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#210
post #111

For me, the special part is truly viewing any job as just that: a job. I no longer assess my worth as a person as a function of job title, salary, or anything else. I take contracting work primarily and expect absolutely nothing more than a paycheck. Work is a transaction and I deliver what I can and am not a jerk. Almost every disposable penny goes toward physical fitness. My spouse happens to be cut from the same c…

What are you spending fitness money on? Dumb bells and a gym membership don’t break the bank for most software engineers.

See below - the biggest expense is personal training and coaching.

I am not a software engineer, and I have never commanded software engineer salaries. I am what they call a "data scientist" and I have an academic background in the sciences. My wife is a project manager at a big company that is nowhere near the FAANG level.

We have a bare-bones yearly burn rate of about $40K: that's mortgage, utilities, rice and beans. Given our combined take-home (post-tax) of about $100K, the $10-$15K we spend on physical fitness per year represents about 20% of our disposable income.

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