131–140 of 200 posts
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Some people love their work. Work is as interesting to them as any hobby they might have. I count myself among those who love their work. My boss has a hard time getting me to take my vacation time. Anything more than 4 days away from work and I start to get fidgety. Sure, I have my other hobbies, but work is my favorite.
what is your job?
Curious what you mean by shady deals on the digital point forums. What kind of deals are these?
Just surf around... stuff like scraping and reposting blogs, domain parking, spam, affiliate marketing. Not always outright evil, but they do make the world a slightly worse place.
You, sir, are an Oxygen Thief.
Don't forget that for tens of thousands of years, all Man had to do to stay alive was whatever it took to stay alive. He never had to write a TPS report on his fishing trip or sell overpriced shares in manioc root or feel guilty because he wasn't completing his TODO list each day.
"The thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life more refined, with a bleak capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me. - Einstein I think most people on HN could relate to this quote. Like it or not, as professional developers, we rarely create, but simply refine. It was fun at the start of my career, but now my professional life seems rather unimaginative.
At some point though we start to create problems for ourselves. It depends on the job. Some jobs let your creativity go wild by pushing your limits and mental capabilities. Sometimes they don't and they feel stale and not moving anywhere. The stale jobs (and I see this) cause good thinkers to start thinking up big problems to solve. They don't like to be bored with monkey work (coding where no amazing creativity is n…
Remember: the relationship is you work for your employer, your employer pays you. Don't expect any more or less than that.
Here's what you do: 1. Work your ass off to have good savings if you don't already. This may take a few years. 2. Make sure that there are people in the US who would like to work with you as an independent contractor so that you know you can make a buck when necessary. 3. Move to a foreign country with an advantageous exchange rate (Argentina comes to mind). 4. Buy some property in a place you like and relax! Your mo…
i was a developer at a couple of big media companies for 4y. ended up leaving the last one to start my own company. left that 7m ago to travel because i was burned out. this summer i spent 4m consulting in vancouver, where i was able to spend time with a lot of great friends who i hadn't seen in years. that was amazingly recharging.
left vancouver in oct to come to buenos aires. i spent 4-5 weeks of hanging out in cafes, reading, visiting antarctica, hiking in nature, and experimenting with ideas in an inspiring city. being away from the distractions of everyday life was helpful to evaluate the best direction for pursuing my calling (not a job, or a career - more here: http://is.gd/b7h8). it has been friggin amazing and i'm totally recharged.
you know that fire in your belly that causes you to be obsessed with what you're building? i haven't had that feeling in ages, but i've got it now. i was lying awake in bed until 430a yesterday thinking about a feature, so i said screw it - i got up and implemented it and was up until 630a. can't even remember the last time i even considered that.
i guess my point is that you can definitely get that fire back. my first thought when reading your post was that you need to take time to chill and figure out what your calling is. it won't feel like work when you do.
As much as I sympathize with your sentiment, I'd just like to point out that the real benefit of a larger-than-necessary paycheque is being able to actually save money for when you are too old or technically outdated to continue working. It's certainly enjoyable to switch on and off from work and live off savings, but then you eventually get to the point where you can't find a job to switch back on to, and your savin…
Well, for all that matters, I could just die today and I'd be pretty damn unhappy if, before it's my time, I hadn't had a life that's true to myself. Saving for the future conflicts in part with the desire to live a full life today. Taking sensible care of your money is wise, spending a bit less than you make is wise. Trying to get lots and lots of money and giving way too much to your work now in hope that you can t…
Anyway, I like the fact money is really unimportant in my life. I can eat out and it does not break the bank yet I also don't care if I get laid off or fired. Next time I am unemployed I could eat out less spend and spend less money, but getting a job a little sooner is not that big a deal and people look at you funny when you have long stretches of unemployment plus I never really found much in the way of a mid day social life.
PS: If in a few years I have 50k of non retirement money sitting around I could take a year off, do a start up and not feel as cash strapped, or whatever but retiring mid 40's is also a reasonable goal based on my spending habits and and how much money I will probably make with a few more years in the field.
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Yeah, my current expenses are a little under 20k/y. It's how I affored the idleness between jobs, and I've stretched it as long as I can.
To make 20k/year safely for the next 60 years you need around 1/2 a million invested well which you skim off 4% and use the rest to keep up with inflation. (70% stocks 25% bonds, 5% cash or cash equivalents.) Saving 1/2 a million is hard but if your willing to live off of 20k/year then ~7+ years at 120k and you can reach that (tax is your major problem). Max out your 401k etc and dump the rest directly into savings.…
That might be the traditional wisdom from the last 20 years or so, but it might not be so wise now or for the next (possibly long) while.
+-Sure, you'll have to write code, but for me that's an enjoyable play/hobby activity that companies are all too happy to pay me all too much for. "Work" in the preceding PP is something that you don't like doing and would only do in exchange for money.
Find the right role in the right company, and you could easily have your "office hobby" that you use to pay the bills for your other hobbies and leisure time.
Over the years, I'd say that I've been paid on average 4x what it would actually have required to secure my services, and the minimum amount is really driven by what it would cost me to eat, drink, sleep and be merry. (It turns out however, that that "surplus" 3x has made my life considerably more comfortable and, in some areas, extravagant. I hope my boss doesn't read this until after he's decided on my raise and bonus for the year. ;) )
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Albert signed a letter urging for the creation of an atomic bomb. If you think someone that intelligent could not have realized that an atomic bomb would be used to actually kill people -- then you are sorely mistaken.
I think the idea of a German atomic bomb was an even greater concern for Einstein, and for others. The years leading up to WWII were very, very complicated. It's unrealistic to claim that your hindsight (or anyone's) is 20/20 with respect to what should have been done.
If the US Navy hadn't recovered so quickly after Pearl Harbor, and if the Enigma Code hadn't been cracked then we'd all be hailing the Emperor of Japan right now. I mean the first nuclear test wouldn't have been in the middle of a desert, it would have been over mainland China. The USSR would likely have never invaded Japan, keeping their neutrality pact alive would have meant the Japanese would have had free reign to attack anywhere they saw fit.
The whole of WWII is extremely complicated. I mean the reason for the whole delay in the Japanese surrender to the US after the atomic bombings was because they didn't plan to, until the USSR invaded Japanese territory, breaking a neutrality pact and covering almost as much land in days as the US had managed in months. The Japanese were afraid of being conquered by the USSR because of the atrocities they committed against Russians at the start of the war. So Japan didn't surrender to the allies, they surrendered ONLY to the USA so they would have to be protected from the Russians, incidentally because they knew the US had the A-Bomb they knew it would have to be used in their protection if Russia kept invading.
So just the simple 'the A-Bomb won the war' theory is a billion times more complicated than the lay person understands. Hindsight is 20/20, but you're still as blind as the point of view you're looking from. The American POV for the war is very blind of what truly happened during the war compared to the British POV; I'm British and when studying history we were taught that because the US was so late coming into the war it was solely the British Navy and RAF keeping the German Navy from expanding out into the Atlantic. If it wasn't for the British then it wouldn't have been Pearl Harbor, it would have been a full-out invasion by the Germans long before anyone even dreamed of D-Day.
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In the letter he suggested that it might be used to cause significant damage to a port. He had no idea that it would be (1) anywhere near as destructive as it was, or (2) small enough or light enough to drop from aircraft rather than only being used in either naval warfare (where death tolls would be much less) or as a fixed weapon acting as a disincentive to invasion (building them along some border so that an overl…
That's right. Have you seen Copenhagen (a movie produced for TV)? It shows Niels Bohr arguing with Heisenberg about the atomic bomb... it's a really good movie about a meeting between them that nobody knows what was it about.