I don't want to work very hard • Hacker News Board

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#161

Post by wingo » Fri, Dec 12, 2008, 10:41 PM UTC

zupatol wrote: post #27

Have you tried working part-time? I'm not sure this would help, because I don't really understand how you can love coding and hate working at the same time. Here is what I do: I have an arrangement with my employer that I will not work full-time for more than 9 months straight. After 9 months I have a 6 months break. The arrangement is tacit, it's not in a contract, but it has been working for the last 3 years. It to…

I also work something similar (three days a week). I recommend it highly. This year has been one of the most productive of my life.

This quote is nice:

"Perhaps I am more than usually jealous of my freedom. I feel that my connections with and obligations to society are at present very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which I am serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful, and only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, neglecting my peculiar calling, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage."

H. Thoreau 10 January, 1851

More here: http://wingolog.org/archives/2007/12/18/in-which-our-protago...

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#162

Post by cousin_it » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 1:26 AM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #157

cousin_it wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending more time at the office is a fairly reliable way of upping your odds when you're not at the office. American cultural assumption? Because I don't want women to be attracted to my money. Better ways to get women: learn to perform music, take up physical exercise, practice your confidence game.

If the goal is quantity of gorgeous women, and only to the point of sleeping with them, then who cares why they like you? :-)

Human beings are based on stimulus/response more than goal-seeking. My dealing with women has no clear-cut goal, it's an interplay of many different instincts some of which are frustrated at the thought of sex for money.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#163

Post by villageidiot » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 2:06 AM UTC

delackner wrote: post #93

davi wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of something I often forget: if I want something out of the ordinary, it's very unlikely anyone will give it to me unless I ask.

Ask and ye shall receive.

Or not. But it's usually better to ask anyway.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#164

Post by mhartl » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 2:37 AM UTC

jhancock wrote: post #116

mhartl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you are too old or technically outdated to continue working I'd be willing to bet that, for the current generation at least, that will never happen. (But I still max out my retirement account, just to be safe. :-)

I'm confused by that statement. Do you really mean that IT gurus won't get too old or burnt out on re-leanering new stuff every few years? I am 40 and have been programming since I was 12; almost always on the bleeding edge. I can assure you that there is a point of being "too old". Unless you are quite a different person that I, I highly suggest you keep maxing out that retirement account. ;)

IT gurus won't get too old or burnt out on re-learning new stuff every few years

I can't speak directly to the IT guru part, or to getting burnt out on new stuff. I can tell you that my dad is almost 70 and has never enjoyed his work more. I'm 35 and I'm still always itching to learn new things. And given the rapid advance of technology, I'd be surprised if the usual 'grow old and die' scenario remains 'usual' much longer. In the not-too-distant future I expect longer lives and continual renewal to be the norm, and I for one am looking forward to it.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#165

Post by eddycole » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 5:13 AM UTC

kareemm wrote: post #135

thomasmallen wrote: post #43

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 ended up following this model exactly, tho haven't bought property yet. i am writing this from buenos aires and am heading to cape town on sunday for 3w, then india. 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…

I had that fire for a couple years and it was one of the most exciting and rewarding times of my life. Working on getting it back right now and it's good to have that feeling in my gut again.

Thanks for the brief but highly motivating post, kareemm.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#166

Post by ghshephard » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 6:09 AM UTC

mickt wrote: post #110

ghshephard wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficult to tell. Our most highly respected individual contributor in our department comes in at 11:00, leaves at 5:00, and basically works on whatever catches his fancy whenever he pleases (Which, thankfully, usually results in a reduction in labor for our and other departments each time he releases some new code/product) When particular tasks are placed on his plate - he is so overwhelmingly competent, that he sim…

A laudable goal, but if you managed that do you really think your senior management (or at least the mgt in most companies) would agree? They'd think they're not getting value for money if your only "working" 2 hours a day.

Excellent point - thought somewhat distressing. Most companies place value on the number of hours that you put in at the office (though a good portion of them recognize your actual contribution with pay increases, stock compensation, and promotions).

My position on this (and, I'm actually in a position to sign off on contractor invoices) - wouldn't you rather your top people do the same amount of work in _fewer_ hours, presuming they maintain the same level of quality?

What's the value of doing something in 40 hours/week versus 8 hours/week?

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#167

Post by ardell » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 9:08 AM UTC

davi wrote: post #81

flaneur wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Somehow it had not occurred to me to try to make this cycle explicit. That's a really interesting idea, thank you.

This reminds me of something I often forget: if I want something out of the ordinary, it's very unlikely anyone will give it to me unless I ask.

My mother always said: You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#168

Post by fauigerzigerk » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 11:49 AM UTC

electromagnetic wrote: post #139

prospero wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed, the only reason there even was a US atomic bomb so early was because the US military intercepted multiple uranium shipments bound for Japan. When Germany fell they tried to get enough refined material for the Japanese to get the bomb first so the war would be won by their allies and not their enemies. Fortunately the US Navy had recovered enough by that point in the war to hunt down the U-Boats. If the US Nav…

I know WWII was the most complex story ever in terms of ethics. Members of my own family died in the nazi death camps, so how could I be against fighting that war? However, no amount of complexity and evil could make me drop an A-bomb on a city.

At some point I have to say, whatever the consequences, I'm just not going to do this. You don't torture. You don't kill indiscriminately. Otherwise there is nothing left worth fighting for anyway.

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#169

Post by mossplix » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 2:08 PM UTC

do what u love and u wont have to work a second of your life..

Re: I don't want to work very hard

#170

Post by bkovitz » Sat, Dec 13, 2008, 2:09 PM UTC

streblo wrote: post #86

I feel the same way about college. I'm just finishing up my second-to-last (baring a catastrophic fuck-up) finals week, and in looking back, what did I learn? Not much.

Funny thing: the word "school" is actually the ancient Greek word for leisure. The idea was, if you had the means to live a life of leisure, then of course you'd spend it learning and talking about cool stuff with other similarly well-off people.

Somewhere along the way, they turned school into just another form of work. Unlike regular work, it doesn't produce anything. It has all the stress and unpleasantness of regular work (more, even), except you can't use the most efficient method to get it done (that would be delegating the work to someone who likes it), and it consumes time and other resources without yielding benefits. The theory is that learning happens as a side-effect, but the reality is, it doesn't. Seriously, if you wanted to set up a business to help people learn subjects to a high level of mastery, you wouldn't do it anything like a (modern) college.

I wonder, though, if professors live (or at least can live) the kind of life we want: they are basically paid to indulge their curiosity, and their only measurable obligation is that they have to teach some classes. If you're a cool professor, you might even find a way to make the classes worthwhile.

This is the route I've just started on. I'm now in my first semester of grad school. I'm hoping to treat the experience as "school" in the ancient sense of the word. In six or seven years, I plan to get a tenure-track job, indulging my curiosity. I figure since that's play-time for me, I should be great at it and enjoy it.

Results so far: terrible. Taking three grad-level classes at once (and teaching one class) chewed up so much time, I had almost no time to think or learn or sleep. Complicating factor: I had a headache that lasted six weeks, and I started the semester exhausted. Mid-semester, I was so exhausted, I took a three-week break from homework. I got my ability to think back, but I spent the rest of the semester hustling to catch up.

Plan for next semester: Get a lot of rest over the break, and put all the creativity I can into finishing each day's "work" by 5:30 p.m. so I can follow my whims in the evening.

If that doesn't work, then I'll quit. Or maybe not. I just can't see getting a regular software job again. I've done that cycle of working hard and enjoying it the first several months or a year, and then getting sick of it and barely showing up. I think I am completely burnt out on just getting coding done. I am particularly sick of debugging. Oh, damn, that reminds me, I have to debug some Scheme code for one of those classes.