Live data from Hacker News

I have quit my job

bitspook.in

61–70 of 176 posts

Re: I have quit my job

#61
post #8

This guy seems smart and ambitious but has a very romantic/naive mindset. A job is an exchange of services, never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".

> A job is an exchange of services, never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".

A job is also a significant portion of your time. Its hard to make it be both, but its also near impossible to both follow your dreams and work full time separately. Seems like making a job be both is a worthy goal if you can make it work.

Re: I have quit my job

#62

This is one of the most relatable blog post I have read in recent time. > precedence says I will fall into inaction and misery, and achieve nothing. Complete nothing Exactly what I am afraid of; and this fear is keeping me from quitting my job. At my current job I worked hard to deliver on a "innovative" solution, which would have removed a lot of manual work, but the project got re-prioritized when the manager was f…

If you want to take a break and financial runway is your only concern, move to a low-cost area of the world.

If you live in a high-cost country, I bet your base minimum spending is around 2500 if you're single, and 5000 for a family of four.

You can easily cut their by half in other areas of the world with a good quality of life. Instantly doubles your runway.

Re: I have quit my job

#63
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be burned on people, too. All it takes is one "bad" hire far enough up the food chain and some of the "good" people to quit.

Yes, but my point was to never choose a job based on the project you'll work on or on the product of the company. You WILL be disappointed. I guess the best way to work on a project you'll love is to be a founder. But as an employee, you'll need a looot of luck to work on an interesting project. I'm not saying that it doesn't exists, but rather that they are pretty rare, and you have very few opportunities to discove…

As a founder you'll need to deal with all expectations you see manifested here. It's not easy and probably not fun.

Re: I have quit my job

#64
post #8

This guy seems smart and ambitious but has a very romantic/naive mindset. A job is an exchange of services, never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".

I disagree heavily with this. Lots of people make a living doing what they love/building a better world. Just because we normalized selling our attention to the highest fiscal bidder, doesn’t mean that the highest fiscal bid is actually valuable in terms of life quality. Nobody looks back and says “eh, I wish I’d have worked more at [soulless job]”. I think your perspective is extreme dystopian, and it makes me sad t…

>Lots of people make a living doing what they love/building a better world.

Really? America must be a great place then. Don't know anyone like that where I live. My doctor friends would be closest but they certainly don't have a good quality of life and their lives are quite dystopian.

Re: I have quit my job

#65
post #8

This guy seems smart and ambitious but has a very romantic/naive mindset. A job is an exchange of services, never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".

The issue with the world view that "a job is an exchange of services" is that it is unsustainable. The sheer time magnitude of work - 40 hours a week + commute for many decades dictates that it is a very significant portion of your life. On top of that on a day-to-day basis the timeslot itself between 9/5 is the best part of the day for the vast majority of people.

Seems like in order to have a deeply fulfilling life you need to have a job that you like and find it deeply meaningful. There is just no way around it, it is too much.

Re: I have quit my job

#66
post #27
post #10

I left my job when covid started and I do not intend to return into the workforce ever. I run some small projects and make a bit of money on it, although it is much less than what I did with the 9-5 job I have more money now than before. That's because Working has a cost: - living in an expensive area with high rents - transportation to the company - Eating out (No time to cook) - Taxes! - Health (Sitting around so m…

> I do not intend to return into the workforce ever. the thing is, if you could already live off your own wealth and assets, then yea, this is great. But what of those who do not own enough assets to support themselves without a paying job?

Start a new venture. It takes literally pennies to serve a web app on something like AWS Lambda. You don't even need to pay a server. Invest some few hundred dollars on YouTube ads, targeting channels your audience watches. Learn how to craft effective ad videos with this course [1]. It's a lot of work, but I don't think we can excuse it on top of "I'm underprivileged". You can choose not to do this work. But it's your choice.

[1] https://www.udemy.com/course/youtube-google-ads-marketing-an...

Re: I have quit my job

#67
post #8

This guy seems smart and ambitious but has a very romantic/naive mindset. A job is an exchange of services, never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".

> never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".

I would hesitate to use the word “never,” there.

It’s kind of amazing, when a job becomes a vocation and a calling.

These days, that kind of describes where I’m at. I don’t get paid a dime, and work harder (and more productively) than I ever have. I’m doing work I never dared to dream of.

I had to be forced into this position. Long, sad story. Get your hanky. TL;DR, no one wants to play with someone over 50, that used to be a manager.

But the last few years have convinced me that you couldn’t drag me back into the rat race with a locomotive. I’m almost deliriously happy.

I’m extremely fortunate, in having built up enough to get to this point, and also, in learning to live humbly enough to have my needs met.

I wish the OP well.

Happiness is something that has no price tag, and is often found serendipitously. For some of us, we are only truly happy, when we are working.

Re: I have quit my job

#68
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future isn’t build by greed and hustle, but by ambition and dreams. I'm struggling to think of a significant example of where this has been true in the past. Large scale change that someone can attribute to their own effort only seems to happen when they monetize it.

Linux? You could argue that red hat did the monetization there, but torvalds didn't, not before it got bigger. Penicillin would also be one. It had to be forced on the industry because they couldn't monetize it, so you could argue that "more hustle would have helped".

> Penicillin would also be one.

Short term benefit, long term disaster. Penicillamine (metabolised penicillin) causes copper depletion reduces Interleukin-2 which increases the risk of some cancers and the effectiveness of the white blood cells.

To the OP: Find a problem you can fix, want to fix, monetise and try to stay legal.

I'm learning that govt legislation is sometimes a posterior covering position whilst trying to maintain some semblance of authority over the population. This can hold back innovation so where legislation controls your activities (food supplement legislation is a good example), and there will be, make sure you have the arguments figured out before hand because you might be calling upon them in court as one of your customers may be forcing you to court directly or indirectly whether you like it or not.

Re: I have quit my job

#69
post #8

This guy seems smart and ambitious but has a very romantic/naive mindset. A job is an exchange of services, never get it confused with your own mission or "dream".

I disagree heavily with this. Lots of people make a living doing what they love/building a better world. Just because we normalized selling our attention to the highest fiscal bidder, doesn’t mean that the highest fiscal bid is actually valuable in terms of life quality. Nobody looks back and says “eh, I wish I’d have worked more at [soulless job]”. I think your perspective is extreme dystopian, and it makes me sad t…

> Nobody looks back and says “eh, I wish I’d have worked more at [soulless job]”

There are a lot of people which quit their "soulless" job and to chase their dream just to ultimately be forced to give up on them after loosing years of savings. I very much doubt that none of them regret leaving their jobs

Re: I have quit my job

#70
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When your identity is linked to your hobby [...] > Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it... Isn't this the issue, though? If "you are what you do", because you link your identity to that, and what you do isn't "good", I can see how than can cause some issues. To take your example, if you're taking up jogging, so you c…

I’m curious to learn more about your ideas, but you’re more or less equating a person’s identity to their relationship with social media, it’s not a strong argument.

Not exactly. My point was that people may be equating their identity with certain activities in order to attain social media status.

As another commenter said, social validation is something sought after by people, and may be common enough to be considered "normal".

But my idea is that if you only take part in an activity because, for whatever reason, you want to be "a person who does X" and associate your identity with it ("I'm a runner"), you are unlikely to partake in that activity in a "leisurely fashion", because you have to conform to what "a person who does X" is expected to do by their audience. The comment to which I was initially replying was giving the example of running, so I was looking for an explanation of why many people won't just "cruise around the block" but instead try for a marathon, complete with selfies at the finish line.

While I definitely don't hold social media in high regard, my post was not intended to be a dig at it. But I understand that my position is likely to color my discourse to things related to it.

Post reply on HN