211–220 of 246 posts
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Oh, I do love a false dichotomy between a zero-sum contest to the death and a hippie commune. Real Americans apparently love the sting and clash of battle, which is why you have most of the rest of the world pissed-off at you.
...Sayeth the pot unto the kettle...
This seems incredibly one sided to me and I'm surprised at the number of people who are in agreement. I guess if you make the assumption that the person is lazy or inefficient and that's the reason they're working hard then this would make sense. However, I'm 24; I work a day job from 8 to 5; I go to the gym and go home and work on a startup from ~7-12 and do it all over again. And yea, I'm proud of that. Not only th…
When I worked at a large corporation, I nearly automated all of my work and I was called lazy. I'd do about an hour work a day, customize an existing script to process new data, then read for the remaining 6 hours. Co-workers called me a lazy nerd and proceeded to copy paste words into excel for 8 hours. Now I get to wake up at 12, smoke a joint, have a beer, take a shower, go for a walk with my dog, and then work on…
I have a problem with the often-used word "recreation": it can be interpreted to mean that your job is your life, and anything you do to rest or unwind from work is just a way to come back to work more refreshed and productive.
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Or time to talk with the boss' boss and remind him that time is money, and you can save him money. The incompetence of the people around you isn't your moral responsibility.
That'd be the president of the company (we're a small mechanical engineering firm), and he's even worse. He vetoed the request from my boss to upgrade to MS Office 2013. We're on a mix of XP/2003 right now, and Excel+Word are the lifeblood of our work.
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It really depends on what you're reading on HN, if you're reading about acquisitions or gossip or meta commentary like this, then definitely HN != work if you're reading a technical article then definitely HN = work. And I believe they're both useful information, but one of them definitely isn't work.
I would split the hair even finer and say if you're researching how to accomplish a particular task and you serendipitously find an article on HN then you're doing work, but that's pure luck since normally you would be Googling rather than surfing HN. Reading HN "for the [tech] articles" is at best like going to university—you may be preparing for future work, but all this abstract preparation and self-betterment is…
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I've never worked in a very large corporate environment. > meeting requests Did you ever reject the request? I'm honestly curious to know what would happen? Did you ever speak up to your manager about this? His manager? I guess the real question is, what did you do to fix this?
I'd rather be as much as a ghost as possible in the environment lest I get more shit-work to do. Nothing, I set a world record in Temple Run from all the training I've received at these meetings.
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I would split the hair even finer and say if you're researching how to accomplish a particular task and you serendipitously find an article on HN then you're doing work, but that's pure luck since normally you would be Googling rather than surfing HN. Reading HN "for the [tech] articles" is at best like going to university—you may be preparing for future work, but all this abstract preparation and self-betterment is…
I actually disagree. I believe abstract self-betterment is as important as what you are calling "real work". There's certainly a balance to be kept between direct production and abstract self improvement but they aid each other in a big way. I would say they are both part of "real work" as long as you don't stray so far into theoretical improvement that you lose sight of getting stuff done.
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Fetishizing hard work is a purely American phenomenon. Like many other parts of American culture, it has to do with the country's Puritan roots. Back in England, the Puritans were entirely city people. Even those who lived on the countryside were not farmers. So when they came to America, they had to work extra hard to learn farming and adopt that lifestyle, which was made even more difficult by the fact that the soi…
There's theology behind it as well. Puritans believe in Calvinist predestination. In a nutshell, God has known you for eternity. God knows what's going to happen and what you're going to do. God decided whether you will be saved or not before you were born. Your salvation/damnation happens through God's grace, not through your good works. This presents a dilemma: Why be a good, hard-working citizen if you can't affec…
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I actually disagree. I believe abstract self-betterment is as important as what you are calling "real work". There's certainly a balance to be kept between direct production and abstract self improvement but they aid each other in a big way. I would say they are both part of "real work" as long as you don't stray so far into theoretical improvement that you lose sight of getting stuff done.
Eating and breathing is also necessary, but it's still not work.
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Not in a very large corporate environment. I have had so many meetings where I didn't say a word, didn't even know anyone there. Manager I talked to like once a month sent me meeting requests and I went. It was pointless. They weren't optional either.
I've never worked in a very large corporate environment. > meeting requests Did you ever reject the request? I'm honestly curious to know what would happen? Did you ever speak up to your manager about this? His manager? I guess the real question is, what did you do to fix this?
A lot of the time people who are booking meetings will request attendance from anyone and everyone who may have a remote link to the agenda, they don't put any thought into whether the meeting will actually be useful to everyone they invite. Another problem is that people, usually project managers, will book meetings at the drop of a hat when a quick two minute chat at someone's desk would suffice - a lot of middle-managers have nothing to do other than attend meetings and they suck everyone else in with them.