291–300 of 382 posts
We need 4DWW - Four Day Work Week . This would give all of us the much-needed day to catch up on administrative stuff, so we can have our weekends back for relaxing. We will have time for side projects again. Fight for 4DWW !!!
How would you catch up? Administrative stuff like going to the post office, DMV, getting a haircut, would all be closed... due to 4 day work week.
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Go tell that to the single mom working two minimum-wage jobs just to feed and house her kids. Go tell that to the homeless person. To the recent grad barely paying off the interest on his student loan that he took because he "had to go to college". Come off it.
Are those all people described by the phrase "having a lot of money"? If not then you aren't contradicting their point at all.
> Servitude is thinking that you [need a lot of money to be free].
It's the old "money doesn't buy happiness" argument rehashed again -- plainly insulting to people who are actually in poverty.
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This is an interesting theory. My experience has been quite the opposite, in that typically jobs that people care about and connect with on an emotional level are those which pay relatively little. Teaching, social work, caring, and so on.
This has been my experience so far. It seems employers/supervisors can sniff out when you really care about something, so they use that as leverage to take advantage: heap on more responsibilities without accompanying pay increase, cut benefits, delay raises and promotions, etc. I really wish that weren’t the case, but as a person who’s passionate about my work, I’ve encountered it at every employer so far :( I’m not…
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If you are a good, productive engineer, your boss will bend over backwards to not lose you. Or they should be. Your negotiation power is a lot stronger than you think. Plenty of jobs out there and it never hurts to remind them that they are replacable. I've enjoyed the work conditions I mention throughout my career. I'm 48 now. But of course I work in a part of the world where this stuff was sorted out decades ago. 4…
> Being a wage slave is a choice. If you don't like your life, change it. It's incredibly unfortunate that instead of using a shred of empathy to see that your situation isn't the situation of nearly everyone else in the industry, or alive for that matter. "If you don't like your life, change it" screams "I have no idea what I am talking about" because you're failing to see that situations elsewhere are different. Ta…
I’ve worked at 3 companies in my career so far, and worked about 40 hours a week at each of them. i was not born into wealth…neither were (most) of my coworkers.
I won’t even ask about the $70k salary. I made that much at my first gig after college. Sounds like your employer is taking advantage of you.
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My spin would be: "This is how companies kneecap employees, by forcing them to think this way." "But how could this ever be possible, in a field with high salaries and a permanent shortage of skilled workers?", you ask. By constantly punishing us for caring. By continually providing shitty office space, and bullshit-driven work cultures and interview rituals. And just plain lying, toxic managers and co-workers to dea…
I’m telling you from experience as a manager that this is wrong. People who take ownership and initiative for the things they work on get quickly promoted. If they don’t, there is usually some other issue (difficultly to work with) explicitly holding them back. I have seen many otherwise great engineers take the mindset of “I’m paid to do X so I don’t care about making sure X is the right thing” and they just sit at…
So companies want you to have faith in them to recognize your value sooner or later, but they don't give you any faith back in return, it's never the case that some HR manager says "oh let's give this guy a quick promotion, let's have faith in him!".
Another point, if one is a professional is supposed to do his job for the agreed rate and nothing more, nothing less so i should be evaluated in what my regular 8 hours of work are, and within the boundaries of my job description, nothing more, nothing less.
When you go to the butcher and order a 1kg steak, you pay precisely it's weight, not more, not less. Let's stop normalizing this "go above and beyond thing", it's not working (most managers suck at their job, scientifically proven), just be fair with the employees and respect everybody's time.
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> Being a wage slave is a choice. If you don't like your life, change it. It's incredibly unfortunate that instead of using a shred of empathy to see that your situation isn't the situation of nearly everyone else in the industry, or alive for that matter. "If you don't like your life, change it" screams "I have no idea what I am talking about" because you're failing to see that situations elsewhere are different. Ta…
Sounds pretty miserable. Come to Europe and enjoy life. Plenty of work here in Germany or elsewhere in Europe and pretty easy to get a visa if you have skills. Berlin is absolutely crawling with smart people from the US living a great life here.
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where did you find your passion? just curious
On the advice of a commenter in a different HN thread I recently read Cal Newport’s book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” The main premise is that passion results from valuable skills built via hard work over years of deliberate practice. Only after you have those valuable skills, the book argues, do you have the leverage to dictate your life in a way many people find necessary for satisfaction. Passion follows from…
If that's the core idea of the entire book then I'm glad I'll save my money and time not to read it. Generalizations are dumb.
Honestly, I do feel somewhat similar. I work a normal 8-hour day and I am not obsessed with productivity nor I am some kind of anti-work activist, but it just feels like such a waste of time. The only reason I go to work is for money. I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?), nor the technologies used (each of which brings its own challenges and frustrations). If I didn't need to go t…
The main reason we all work for someone else is for money but there is something to be said about the things we build at work and not caring about them. This is something that took me a long time to realize but you need to stop thinking about software as a field and start thinking of it as a skill set. From there figure out what interests you. Wildlife, economics, vehicles, etc. or whatever, and then use your skill s…
I am beginning to think we need HN for non-privileged people. A lot of "insights" on this forum come off as extremely deluded and living in a very positive bubble.
Now tell me, how do I get a huge break from programming while never losing a penny from my income? "Live within my means" would be your response perhaps? I still want to buy a house though.
Like come on. Sometimes I also wonder if people didn't start using ChatGPT for commenting on HN for clout.
How about some new propaganda?
"Work maximum 5h a day and the other 3h you will donate to your employer if they are kind and give you good atmosphere and money"?
How about that one, eh?
Honestly, I do feel somewhat similar. I work a normal 8-hour day and I am not obsessed with productivity nor I am some kind of anti-work activist, but it just feels like such a waste of time. The only reason I go to work is for money. I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?), nor the technologies used (each of which brings its own challenges and frustrations). If I didn't need to go t…
I am a software engineer. I struggled to find meaning in my work for the first few years of my career. I used to lie (unknowingly) to myself "I love my job", "I am passionate about my job", "It's my passion" and I was always disappointed. That is until one day, after many years and barring many details, I decided to tell myself that "I push buttons on a company laptop in exchange for money and I happen to somewhat li…
Simple -- it doesn't.
Strange how you frame it: "the entire problem was that I was thinking wrongly about my job". No, that's not the problem at all for many people.