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How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

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Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#121

Post by 4gotunameagain »

profsummergig wrote: post #119
sour-taste wrote: post #38

This isn't at all a rebuttal of the post, more a different perspective. I started a new job while basically deeply depressed. It colored all my opinions of the company and my coworkers. As I'm coming out of that through a combination of medication and intensive CBT I'm realizing that a lot of the negativity I felt towards my job was the result of the depression. As things improve I'm realizing that the job is mostly…

Steve Jobs said it most profoundly: "love what you do". This is the opposite of "do what you love". I wish I understood where he learned this. It's very profound (and true).

Possibly his well known interest of Buddhism ?

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#122

Post by auggierose »

profsummergig wrote: post #119
sour-taste wrote: post #38

This isn't at all a rebuttal of the post, more a different perspective. I started a new job while basically deeply depressed. It colored all my opinions of the company and my coworkers. As I'm coming out of that through a combination of medication and intensive CBT I'm realizing that a lot of the negativity I felt towards my job was the result of the depression. As things improve I'm realizing that the job is mostly…

Steve Jobs said it most profoundly: "love what you do". This is the opposite of "do what you love". I wish I understood where he learned this. It's very profound (and true).

It is not the opposite. If you do what you love, you love what you do. So its more of, "love what you do" is what to aim for, and "do what you love" is one way to achieve this.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#123

Post by danaris »

throwanem wrote: post #25
danaris wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno; maybe I'm hopelessly naïve or out of touch, but I'd pay attention to the compensation, benefits, work environment, and colleagues to know whether this is a place I'd actually like working at long before I pay attention to whether this is a job that always uses the latest cutting-edge tech so I can make sure my resume has the best words in it for the next job I look for...

Unless desperate, why would I have accepted an offer or taken a contract if all of those didn't already seem in line? Why would you have? The thing is, people can lie about all of those, but whatever social problems exist in the environment will invariably be evident in the code. What's the old saw about how if you have four teams working on a compiler, you'll get a four-pass compiler? Conway's law [1], that's the on…

......and the tech stack is usually obvious in the job posting.

If it's that vitally important to you to only work at jobs with tech stacks that will "advance your career" beyond that job, why would you even apply to a job that doesn't show one you consider worthy?

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#124

Post by lazide »

auggierose wrote: post #122
profsummergig wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs said it most profoundly: "love what you do". This is the opposite of "do what you love". I wish I understood where he learned this. It's very profound (and true).

It is not the opposite. If you do what you love, you love what you do. So its more of, "love what you do" is what to aim for, and "do what you love" is one way to achieve this.

It’s a flip on the framing, and a non trivial one.

One is love what you do - which assumes regardless of what you’re doing, love it.

The other, do what you love - means choose things that make you love them.

They’re completely opposite in what choice they’re telling people to make.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#125

Post by lazide »

vermilingua wrote: post #85
moffkalast wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is to be positive about yourself and the people you can trust, but slightly negative about the world at large.

Unfortunately the one of the tricks of severe depression is to make you feel like that circle of people you can trust is ever-shrinking.

Sometimes, unfortunately, it also is true.

The issue with all of these is that if something is a problem, it’s probably because it’s maladaptive to the actual circumstances someone is in.

And for the same reason ‘no one can tell if you’re a dog’ online, no one can tell if what you’re feeling is actually useful/adaptive or not, especially if the common root to many of the actual disorders is various degrees of bias/delusion

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#126

Post by throwanem »

danaris wrote: post #123
throwanem wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless desperate, why would I have accepted an offer or taken a contract if all of those didn't already seem in line? Why would you have? The thing is, people can lie about all of those, but whatever social problems exist in the environment will invariably be evident in the code. What's the old saw about how if you have four teams working on a compiler, you'll get a four-pass compiler? Conway's law [1], that's the on…

......and the tech stack is usually obvious in the job posting . If it's that vitally important to you to only work at jobs with tech stacks that will "advance your career" beyond that job, why would you even apply to a job that doesn't show one you consider worthy?

Why indeed? Some of my very first quotably direct words in this thread were "I don't care about your stack:" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44253569

I made an exception for one specific technology that in my experience draws a particularly intolerable crowd, while offering peculiarly poor pay to make up for the unusual degree of tolerance for abuse that is required to navigate the social dysfunctions such people invariably create and foster. What gets so up your nose about that, anyway?

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#127

Post by mettamage »

auggierose wrote: post #122
profsummergig wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs said it most profoundly: "love what you do". This is the opposite of "do what you love". I wish I understood where he learned this. It's very profound (and true).

It is not the opposite. If you do what you love, you love what you do. So its more of, "love what you do" is what to aim for, and "do what you love" is one way to achieve this.

If you do what you love, then you love what you do.

If you love what you do, you didn't necessarily get there by doing what you love.

Reminds me of: a duck is a bird but a bird isn't necessarily a duck.

I agree it's not the opposite.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#128

Post by auggierose »

lazide wrote: post #124
auggierose wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the opposite. If you do what you love, you love what you do. So its more of, "love what you do" is what to aim for, and "do what you love" is one way to achieve this.

It’s a flip on the framing, and a non trivial one. One is love what you do - which assumes regardless of what you’re doing, love it. The other, do what you love - means choose things that make you love them. They’re completely opposite in what choice they’re telling people to make.

No, it doesn't tell you "regardless". It tells you, if you do something, you better love it. So if you start doing something, and it turns out you don't love it, you better stop doing it, and do something else instead. As an extreme example, take Nazis managing a concentration camp. If it turns out you are not a bad enough person to love it, you better stop doing it.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#129

Post by mettamage »

lazide wrote: post #124
auggierose wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the opposite. If you do what you love, you love what you do. So its more of, "love what you do" is what to aim for, and "do what you love" is one way to achieve this.

It’s a flip on the framing, and a non trivial one. One is love what you do - which assumes regardless of what you’re doing, love it. The other, do what you love - means choose things that make you love them. They’re completely opposite in what choice they’re telling people to make.

My ex-girlfriend [1] did this with us and household tasks, especially cooking. I've gone from hating household tasks to being slightly positive about it. I've gone from hating cooking to loving it.

I've tried this with programming. After 15 years, I'm only mildly positive about programming. That has more to do with the culture though, not the activity. I wish there was a business analyst/entrepreneurial programmer hybrid role. Spot opportunities from data, then build out a solution. Or if a solution doesn't need to be built out but it's more of a human/political thing, then do that.

I'm currently a data analyst and get some room (informally) to do just that. It's a really fun role, and I'm programming way cooler things than I ever did as a software engineer.

[1] Mentioning this detail because I don't think I could've learned this any other way. Well, parents maybe, but they didn't have this attitude.

Re: How long it takes to know if a job is right for you or not

#130

Post by mettamage »

bustling-noose wrote: post #73
Vespasian wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that is true, does a more negative way of viewing things actually benefit you (even if it would be slightly more "accurate")? If one has a choice (that means if there is no case of clinical depression): At least anecdotally a bit of optimism improves my life quality a lot and results in a higher productivity, proactive solution finding and a more pleasant work environment. Constantly looking at the negative…

I agree. While depression and negativity leads you to see things practically rather than in an optimistic and hopeful way, the quality of life and satisfaction in a little optimistic world is much better. I am yet to read Daniel Kahneman but he talks about optimism a lot.

I recommend Martin Seligman. I've read some of Kahneman's academic work. Martin Seligman changed my life with Learned Optimism.
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