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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#311

Post by Kranar »

vletal wrote: post #79
xmprt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right but for the people who are confused, it's because of the semantics of the question. If you specify the question a little more and ask "What came first? The chicken or the chicken egg" then the question is how do you define a chicken egg. Is it the egg that comes from a chicken or the egg that a chicken hatches from. In the first case, the chicken came first and in the second case, the egg came first. I t…

Even if you put it like that, it is the egg that a chicken hatches from. The other option does not work at all.

Oh, so if a chicken doesn't hatch from the egg then it's not a chicken egg?

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#312

Post by datavirtue »

xwdv wrote: post #259
drra wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works if you don't have many responsibilities. I recently lost my only source of income and that became crippling to my overall performance when it comes to side projects that could eventually replace that source. It was really surprising since I expected to head full forward with my projects. It used to be the case when I was a student capable of living on a shoestring budget.

Throw a wife and two kids into that mix and let’s see what happens to your side projects.

Yeah, it goes from 16 hours a day to MAYBE 16 hours a week.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#313

Post by soheil »

> If you extrapolate our findings from the military study to a private sector context where 1,000 hires are going to be made, using well-being as a hiring criterion should lead to about 11 more exceptional performers than if the company simply hired personnel without considering well-being at all.

And if you extrapolate further, the rest of companies will end up with sad employees , with high turn over, 10x lower productivity thus lower pay and less happy. In fact this will be the common type of company to work for as the happy-employee companies will have very low turn over and won’t be looking for new hires as much.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#314

Post by datavirtue »

lupire wrote: post #240
whiddershins wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the word you want is humbled. Humiliated can almost never be positive, but people often conflate these two words.

The sad thing is 99% people mean "honored" of the the (opposite of humbled) when they say "humbled" ("I'm so humbled to be recognized by the best by so many people"), but here was a rare case that "humbled" fits.

I have always found recognition to be naturally humbling and have always thought the opposite to be a character flaw.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#315

Post by adwn »

jklinger410 wrote: post #289
adwn wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "social security net" we have in Europe isn't perfect, though. You're comparing the imperfect reality of an actual situation (unemployment benefits) against the utopian fantasy of an imagined best case scenario (UBI) – of course the imagined scenario will come out on top. The real result of a UBI will almost certainly look less rosy than the picture you paint, just like every other plan once it gets implemented…

None of what you posted is serious criticism of UBI. > Prices rise due to increased consumer spending capability, to the point where you have to work again to get above the poverty line. Governments will respond to economic factors that diminish purchasing power in order to maintain the effectiveness of UBI, as a part of UBI. > Any realistic UBI is too low for people with special needs Diminished support for disabled…

> Governments will respond to economic factors that diminish purchasing power in order to maintain the effectiveness of UBI, as a part of UBI.

How? Using which political, economic, and financial tools? And what will be the side effects of those policies? That's exactly the point I was making: UBI proponents assume a downright utopian best-case scenario where everything works as planned (even though those plans are vague at best, and wishful fantasies at worst), and politicians and voters behave perfectly rational.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#317

Post by sjostrom7 »

gashmol wrote: post #125

It reminds me of The Matrix. The machines tried at first to make humans always happy in the virtual world they've created. They did that not out of care for humans, but in order that they could peacefully harvest energy from the oblivious humans' bodies. As I remember it, it didn't go well in terms of production. So, the machines replicated the real not-always-so-happy world instead. I'm not trying to suggest anythin…

This article stinks of that feeling from the first sentence.

> The toll that working through the global pandemic has taken on employees’ job satisfaction and emotional well-being has focused business leaders on fostering workforce happiness as never before.

Yes, I'm sure it's that and not the record-high rates of resignation.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#318

Post by toto444 »

suction wrote: post #150
hyperman1 wrote: post #128

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

Your comment smells like resentment made into a social theory.

> Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy.

Not being secure for life is what 99% of the world experience their entire life and out of these 99% a lof them are happy. I know in the Silicon Valley microcosm the perspective of being secure for life is something everyone is after but most people are happy to live paycheck to paycheck, save a bit of their revenue every month and enjoy their life.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#319

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

istjohn wrote: post #290
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #280

Speaking only for myself (pure anecdata), I can say that the last four years or so, have been the happiest of my life, as well as the most productive. Five years ago, was when I left the company that I'd worked for, for 27 years. This was followed, almost immediately, by finding out that the tech industry really doesn't like older workers (which didn't make me happy). I floundered around, for a year or so, being insu…

I can absolutely believe that there is rampant ageism in tech, but if you don't mind my asking, is it possible part of the difficulty you faced in finding a new job just stemmed from your skills getting a little stale? I ask since you describe spending two years "leveling-up." Have you tried interviewing since?

Oh, it never even got that far. I think I only had two or three leetcode tests, and, of course, they were Binary Tree tests (which I would still be bad at). To be fair, I did have a couple of "take-home" tests, but they were looking for buzzword du jour solutions, as opposed to ones that worked, with half the code, much higher Quality, and twice the performance.

My skills were (and have been, since I wrote my first line of code) very relevant, as you can actually easily see, simply by viewing my rather extensive portfolio (which no one ever does). That covers over a decade, and my last checkin was about five minutes ago (in fact, just this second, I got a TestFlight notification that my next build is ready). I never actually stopped coding.

But no one ever bothered looking at it. I've mentioned that, here, before. By "leveling up," I was really talking about developing work habits that didn't rely on corporate infrastructure, worked for a standup desk at home, and in a much smaller scope (I used to run a C++ image processing shop, and I have switched to just working on apps in Swift). Once I realized that no one was going to hire me for the skills I used to get paid for, I decided to concentrate on the ones that I enjoyed.

Also, I wanted to become much more proficient at Swift. I've been writing it since the day it was announced (and releasing apps, written in it). This had been my "nights and weekends" work, and now, it was my full-time work. If I had been employed, doing this work, I would have had to go through the same adjustments, anyway -maybe. It's quite possible that most corporate stuff is still done in ObjC.

Also, I wanted to dedicate a bunch of time to writing stuff. I enjoy writing. It also helps me to be a better programmer and architect.

And, I guess the best part of "leveling up," was learning some essential self-respect. Employers don't want employees to have self-respect (well, I did, but, apparently, I'm an outlier. My employers certainly didn't want me to have any). Once I had that, the scales fell from my eyes, and I realized what I was missing.

And, no, I never want to work for anyone, ever again. I have become spoiled, by not having my work ignored, destroyed, and misused. That makes me very happy. I suspect that employers wouldn't be happy with my "uppity" attitude.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#320

Post by snek_case »

pyb wrote: post #153
suction wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

You make a good point. Are people successful because they are happy, or vice versa?

I think you're asking the right question. Very unpopular opinion, but I think some of it comes down to genetics. I know a guy who is just always happy, no matter what. I've just never seen him feeling down. He grew up in a somewhat challenging situation but it doesn't seem to matter. I really think some of it is just the way he's wired. He has a lot of energy, is physically active everyday and doesn't fall asleep easily. This dude has the personality of a friendly dog (in a good way). He's a very reliable friend and I would trust him with my life.

The complete answer is probably that it goes both ways. People have a natural tendency to be more anxious or more energetic or happy or sad, a baseline if you will. If you take care of your body, it helps. If you're exposed to stressful situations, especially in childhood, that can become a risk factor later. But, IMO, there's definitely people out there who are genetically lucky in this area, and others less so.

I'm going to note that just suggesting that there's a genetic component is controversial because it goes against the modern day idea that "you can do anything if you just try hard enough" a little bit. The fact is though, we're all genetically unique. I think it's a good idea to acknowledge that we all start in a different place. That doesn't mean you can't work on yourself. Even short people can run a marathon and develop a lot more endurance if they train as opposed to playing videogames all day.

It also comes down to knowing your strengths and weaknesses. I feel like I have a natural tendency to feel more down and tired than others. I've developed healthy coping strategies and structured my life in a way that I can minimize stress. Being aware of my own limitations makes me better able to cope with them. Pretending that I'm one of those always happy people would not.

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