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Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

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Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#151

Post by thr0way120 »

The value proposition, honestly, has fallen off a cliff.

If "they" can dangle things you really want (money, better lifestyle, interesting work) in front of you, then there is reason to get excited.

Right now? Oh hell no.

Entire tech industry is in the mode of getting rid of people, lowering standards, lowering pay checks, the work is boring and tedious.

It is reasonable to simply not have any motivation to work on or do anything if there is legitimately no "line of site" to improving your situation.

Or working on terms which you can resonate with.

The idea of going into an office shudder to work for people like WebMD on ... creating search engine spam content in the age of AI? oh hell no.

There have been times in my career where I was intrinsically ultra motivated and willing to overlook a lot of the toxic overhead that comes with corporate jobs.

Now?

I am really not enthusiastic or excited at all. The stuff that is showing up is all a step down, less pay, less interesting work, boring companies. I can't even get myself interested.

I know that when something that excites me comes along I can get motivated again, but after exhausting myself the last few years chasing carrots dangling on sticks I just dont want to do it anymore.

I dont know what it will take for corporate // work to motivate me again. I am not seeing it out there.

Sooner or later, "That" opportunity always shows up and I can renegage. Lately, no.

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#152

Post by granshaw »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #37

Wow, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for posting this. I'm in a very similar boat. I was always very focused and goal-oriented in my younger days - a bit of a workaholic but generally enjoyed working hard. A number of changes since the pandemic have left me feeling very similar to you: 1. Like tons of other people, I re-evaluated my relationship with work during the pandemic. To be honest, it wasn't easy. I think a…

One question I’ve set out to answer is: what would I do if I were fired tomorrow?

Understood that not everyone is in the position to switch to lower paying careers, start over, etc - but if you have some leash, what WOULD you do if you were fired tomorrow?

(And I don’t mean short term like take a vacation then find another tech job - mean longer term like what kind of job will you be looking for next, or business to start, etc)

Curious to hear your thoughts and anyone else who cares to share

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#153

Post by brailsafe »

I am dabbling with a few code related things, but not very seriously. Mainly what I'm working on is trying to figure out how to approach the next few years. As in, I'm anticipating that I'll be entering what will be the second complete year with no work, and while I'm continuing to maintain the other personal systems that keep me going, I'll need to figure out how to proceed; does it mean fully committing to a new trade, fully committing to an attempt at contracting, fully committing to a general labor job, or whatever else. I don't know what that answer is, but I've been doing effectively nothing but learning and enjoying things on my own accord since being laid off 8 months ago, and that's great, but I don't really see what the next step is yet, and instead of burning myself out grinding through my own projects regardless of my enthusiasm, I'm just taking space to try and get there. Things have truly never looked worse for prospects in my career, and it might be time to quit, or maybe not, or maybe temporarily.

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#154

Post by the_only_law »

bradley13 wrote: post #110

Sometime in my late 40s I got really tired of learning the "next great thing" only to realize that some young developers had reinvented the wheel. Again. Since then, I have learned new things, but not because they were "relevant" or "important", bit just because they were fun. Python is a crappy language, and always has been. It's just a happy accident that the ML folks glommed in to it. Most frameworks suck, serious…

> Since then, I have learned new things, but not because they were "relevant" or "important", bit just because they were fun.

How do you maintain a career? I stopped caring about relevant and important and my career suffered for it. I stopped caring about fun because it was either a waste of time or inaccessible.

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#155

Post by granshaw »

qorrect wrote: post #124
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #37

Wow, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for posting this. I'm in a very similar boat. I was always very focused and goal-oriented in my younger days - a bit of a workaholic but generally enjoyed working hard. A number of changes since the pandemic have left me feeling very similar to you: 1. Like tons of other people, I re-evaluated my relationship with work during the pandemic. To be honest, it wasn't easy. I think a…

Thank you both - I'm feeling the same, and I had tied up so much of my personality and life with software development, I feel pretty lost now. I've had a side project to work on for as long as I can remember, now I'm just not interested in building at all. And honestly, I don't know where to go from here.

Are you in a high cost of living situation that’s hard to get out of? Do you have kids?

If NOT, I would start by thinking if there’s ways you could drastically cut down your cost off living, like moving somewhere cheaper or even looking at Southeast Asia etc if that’s your jam

That would give you more options on the financial side of things in case you wanted to start over or have a go at something with a long ramp up time

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#156

Post by granshaw »

tenpoundhammer wrote: post #31

I found in my mid thirties that my perspective on what was important and desirable shifted significantly. Which led me to become disengaged from my desire to build side projects and learn new programming languages. It was a time were ecclesiastes from the Bible resonated a lot. After a while I just found out that I wasn’t interested in nothing but I had to rediscover what was important to me and what I valued spendin…

Do you worry that you won’t be able to keep up with the industry and get obsoleted and forced out of work or a certain comp level before you want?

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#157

Post by Havoc »

Been working on a project that interests me but progress is surprisingly slow (think half hour a day baby steps). Almost like I’m procrastinating except as I said I do actually want to do it

Haven’t quite placed where that internal contradiction is coming from.

Normally one procrastinates unpleasant things

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#158

Post by granshaw »

brainless wrote: post #120
brainless wrote: post #117

This is such an interesting thread and I feel I should share my story since it's on the other end of the spectrum. I had a poor relationship with work about a decade ago. I struggled with very bad health, both physical and mental. I went through a slow journey of recovery that made me unplug from work a lot. I traveled quite a bit, cheap backpacking. I invested in friendships, good food, and very simple life. In the…

I'm sorry, as I'm typing on mobile, my reply isn't the most structured. I want to add an important thing: since I unplugged from the money expectations in the last few years, I have been able to simply do nothing whenever I wanted to. Like literally just sit and stare. Or maybe play DotA 2. Hours of games... I have a privilege, I don't have much financial liability so I can unplug easily. But this is what allowed me…

Bingo, exactly per my thoughts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38986460

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#159

Post by coolThingsFirst »

logiduck wrote: post #132

I'm not sure how this will resonate here, but this past year my interests in side projects sharply declined. For reference I am early 30s, married no kids. Up until now I used to work on 2-3 large side projects a year, diving deep into them obsessed with sleepless nights working. Now with LLMs it just feels kind of like whats the point? Either my work will be consumed by an LLM to train and get tossed aside or i shou…

> Even the highest level artists are not satisfied with their work.

Is this true, sad if true

> Its hard to work hundreds of hours on something knowing the end monetary value is going to be $0.

What else are you gonna do with your life, this is it. Fire up VSCode.

Re: Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

#160

Post by coolThingsFirst »

nprateem wrote: post #69

Basically nothing but yoga for the last 3 months. Seems like the only thing worth doing. Every book on proper yoga/enlightenment says it's the way to lasting fulfilment. So I'm prioritising myself at the moment. I even pulled out of a £350k job to do this. Time to get the big thing on my bucket list ticked off.

What role did you have lol?
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