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

Forgotten Employee (2002)

sites.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 130 posts

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#101

Post by sirmarksalot »

woooooo wrote: post #97
sirmarksalot wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when that happened. "Sir" or "kind sir" had become a cliche, and the mods added a replacement filter to discourage people from using it. Understand that SA at the time lived by the edgelord ethos, "if I don't mean it literally, it's not offensive," so this kind of thing wasn't seen as homophobic, even though it totally was.

To be fair, (to be fairrrr), that was actually mainstream rather than edgelord in 2002. It was completely normal for straight bro friends to call each other the word as a gag even if they'd be horrified at using it as a slur against a gay person.

Yeah, there was that whole South Park episode where they argue that the slur should be repurposed to refer to people who ride motorcycles too loud and turn left on red, but unfortunately that's just not how slurs work.

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#102

Post by citizenpaul »

shubhamjain wrote: post #3

I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must have worked an arrangement like that for themselves—taking paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always these people don't use their free time to do something productive—like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his…

I used to work at a gov job where there was this one guy that literally just walked from dept to dept all day chatting. So one day this guy I worked with decided to just lay into him. Asking direct no BS WHAT DO YOU DO HERE questions. Not taking any deflections that the guy tried. He never gave us an answer. We also never saw the guy in our dept again.

I suspect that guy didn't do anything and probably still is getting paid to do nothing.

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#103

Post by bdowling »

bdowling wrote: post #98
stevage wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Severance = free cash. You earn more taking the severance and immediately getting another job.

Severance is usually given only in exchange for a waiver of all legal claims (e.g., harassment, discrimination, unpaid wages) you may have against the company.

My point here is that severance isn’t free money, it’s a transaction.

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#105

Post by m463 »

shubhamjain wrote: post #3

I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must have worked an arrangement like that for themselves—taking paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always these people don't use their free time to do something productive—like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his…

I've been thinking about how people do retirement and I think the ones that do it well make exercise a goal, and treat it as a job

also good nutrition and have commitments to do things

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#106

Post by puffoflogic »

filoleg wrote: post #59
shubhamjain wrote: post #3

I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must have worked an arrangement like that for themselves—taking paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always these people don't use their free time to do something productive—like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his…

I have been experiencing the same thing you are describing in terms of procrastination/free time being spent in the less productive ways than one wants to or imagines them, as well as productivity being inverse correlated with free time. I think it is definitely psychological. Probably something to do with subconsciously feeling guilt for not doing what one is "supposed to", so they feel too guilty to embark on somet…

> Probably something to do with subconsciously feeling guilt for not doing what one is "supposed to", so they feel too guilty to embark on something else that's productive

Absolutely. I have found myself in this exact loop (or is it a downward spiral). I cannot give myself "permission" to do what I want in times when I know there's no chance I'll do what I'm "supposed to" anyways. This only makes the guilt worse the next time.

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#107

Post by Dove »

shubhamjain wrote: post #3

I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must have worked an arrangement like that for themselves—taking paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always these people don't use their free time to do something productive—like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his…

Self-improvement takes change and effort. It requires an investment of energy larger than the one required to overcome life's usual busyness. If you really want to write a novel, you will write it, even if you have to burn sleep to do it, even if you have to get it done by spending your days daydreaming about the plot and your evenings furiously typing. Plenty of works of art were created in this way. If you really want to learn a new skill, you will learn it -- perhaps not as well as if you could focus on it, but bits and pieces here and there, a podcast on a drive, a few rounds of practice over lunch. Plenty of people have mastered life-changing skills while holding down the proverbial two jobs with three kids.

It is possible to be so busy that this is really what holds you back. But very few life situations outside of the gulags are really so grueling that work is really able to squeeze your free capacity down to nothing. It is like wanting to go to space, and being intimidated by having to drive over a hill. It is possible for a very high hill to be a practical problem, but if an ordinary one looks insurmountable to you, you very likely never had the energy to go to space.

That's not to say you never need to quit a job to give an extraordinary venture your full attention. It's more to say that if you are doing nothing right now, if you tell yourself work is the problem, work almost certainly isn't the problem. If you have the drive to do something once you have more free time, you'd be doing something with your free time right now. You wouldn't be able to not. Don't wait; start now. Can't? There's your problem.

I have noticed, with myself, this scales right down to tasks that literally take one minute to do, like loading the dishwasher. If my energy is high, I do it almost without thinking, while I'm waiting for water to boil, while I'm thawing hamburger. No big deal. If my energy is low, I don't do it at all, and I spend those same minutes staring at the floor. I tell myself I don't take care of the house because I don't have time, but as a lot of people found out during COVID, that was never the problem. I didn't have the drive. Free time turns out to matter, once I get going and want to do big things. But it matters little if I can't do little things that take no time.

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#108

Post by bawolff »

scarby2 wrote: post #30
colechristensen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s basically that a lifetime of being told what to do with your time atrophied your ability to direct your time when you had control. I have experienced similar things over shorter periods.

> I think it’s basically that a lifetime of being told what to do with your time atrophied your ability to direct your time when you had control. I also think humans need to do nothing occasionally and that it's actually extremely valuable. If you look at the entirety of human history this whole 5 days of work 48 weeks of the year is very new. For most of human history we would have had intense bursts of activity (hu…

I think its not only that but also the nature of the work.

Historically most labour was rote physical labour with bursts of problem solving thrown in. Now we spend all day doing problem solving with very little physical labour. I think the mind gets tired just like the body.

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#109

Post by thrtythreeforty »

kragen wrote: post #29

In Argentina the term is "ñoqui", which means "gnocchi". There's a tradition of eating gnocchi on the 29th of the month, and "ñoquis" traditionally showed up at the office only on the 29th of the month to receive their paycheck. Nowadays I assume most of them do direct deposit, but I don't know any ñoquis personally, so I can't ask. Normally ñoquis are a result of corruption, though, not bureaucratic mixups. The boss…

Is "ñoqui" also a little bit of a pun, "no aqui"? (I speak basically no Spanish, but couldn't help notice the resemblance.)

Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)

#110

Post by hamburglar »

scarby2 wrote: post #35
jvm___ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The water in your body is just visiting. It was a thunderstorm a week ago. It will be the ocean soon enough. Most of your cells come and go like morning dew. We are more weather pattern than stone monument. Sunlight on mist. Summer lightning. Your choices outweigh your substance." - The CryptoNaturalist We think ourselves as a stone monument "I'm productive" "I'm this or that", but the truth is what we do daily defi…

i do the same thing work or not. Think. Right now i think about how to re-define technical processes and patterns to reduce CFR, increase deploys etc. When i was off work for a while i think about cooking, video games, restoring a car, emerging tech, how i can help others, refining social patterns etc. There's not that long that I'm not thinking about something, just usually people pay me to think about something.

I do this too, and could exist indefinitely just thinking. But isn’t just thinking about restoring that car ultimately unsatisfying unless you actually get to doing?
Post reply on HN