The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

I've cycled through "this isn't my passion" about 5 times in 15 years. And what I'm learning, very late, is that it can take about that long to understand the true nature of "passion," and years to develop enough facility, experience and comfort with a particular skill or vocation before you actually understand what it means to be truly at home in something that has become a part of you, probably through years of cycling through thoughts of "this isn't my passion."

"Passion," or the lack of, can be many things. It can be a deep-down intuitive feeling that you simply Don't Want To Do This Anymore. It's OK to feel that in your early 20s, or 5 months into your first gig. But, my 2c, don't give too much credence to it. Real passion happens most often with things that have beaten you down 4 or 5 times and finally have been overcome 'cause you kicked back. "Passion" happens most deeply with something that you love like a hometown, warts and all. Where people know you when you walk across the square, know which parts to avoid, and who has the best coffee. Programming, and really any vocation you chose is like a city. It's many things to many people, and rewards best those who practice a discipline of place.

So, I'd say, hold those things in tension: your gut feeling that this may not be for you, over and against the possibility that any new vocation you pursue will present the same roller-coaster of emotion: feelings of incompetence and boredom and futility, followed on by euphoric feelings of revelation, victory and at-homeness.

The trick is knowing whether you're just on the front end of that cycle, and when your gut is really telling you this isn't for you. For that -- talk to friends and coworkers. A lot, over long periods of time. But don't just go with a gut feeling.

No. Fuck that noise.

Has the author ever seen someone who's burnt out? It is not a pretty sight, it is though the person is but an empty shell of what he once was (I know this sounds incredibly corny, but it really is the shortest way in which I can describe "being burnt out").

But there's another side to this post that is a bit unfair to HN and generalizes us too much and the "these kids today" language ... I don't know, it's like he has a very good point and I agree with to such a large degree but he almost goes too far with the insults.

However, I do agree the initial blog post he is referencing raises so many flags for me. The first paragraph is like "I worked their two months" and then he got bored.

If I was the simpleprogrammer.com author, I would probably would have written this very same blog post in reaction to the other one. It is just outlandish crazy-talk ... But then I would have tried to calm down and not quite go after all of HN with such vitriol.

But I agree, the crazy he is responding to does kind of come out of an echo chamber in our community; down the whole "I'm going to make a publicity ploy by making a website dedicated to company X hiring me" stuff.

I think the language could be toned down a little but I think we can all learn from this as well. Perhaps if the language had been less acidic, we wouldn't have paid attention though.

That kind of talk is not only monumentally ignorant, but it is downright dangerous. If anything, it shows that you haven't ever really worked hard in your entire life.

Anyone who thinks burn out is some sort of myth should just go check the major universities' suicide rates among their overachieving students.