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Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#181

Post by failrate »

innguest wrote: post #133
chondos wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who says your job can't be something you enjoy This is unrealistic. Do you think an economy can survive with everyone doing what they enjoy? Do we have enough people who enjoy cleaning toilets, stocking shelves, and all the other menial, labor intensive jobs? This notion is a utopian, post currency (Star Trek Economy) fantasy.

I'll chime in because I always hear this argument and I don't see it as a particularly good one. Take cleaning toilets, for example. If no one wants to do it then it will become more expensive to find people to do it. That will drive others to come up with an automated solution to the problem that, while expensive, will be cheaper than paying someone to do it. Eventually someone will come up with a solution that mayb…

Cleaning toilets isn't that bad. At the very least, it is always meaningful.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#182

Post by tbergeron »

zeteo wrote: post #151
jblow wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are presuming a lot about what my early career looks like. Really I never worked any jobs as bad as what you describe. Well, maybe the time I did data entry during my first year of college. The longest I ever worked in a highly corporate environment was 7-8 months, but at least at that time I was doing something at least slightly cool (a port of Doom 2 back when that was a new game, and with which I had full auto…

Well yes, this is how corporations roll. It's nobody's fault - just human nature. But looking for a non-corporate job is not a solution for everyone, especially not for those of us who have bills to pay or personal commitments to hold on to. Plus, that's where the jobs are .

Non corporate job is not a solution? I've been freelancing for the last 3 years doing very good money and having great clients, doing everything I want, how I want them, convincing my clients to use cool tech and teaching them at the same time. There's a lot of other ways to get a nice resume other than having shitty jobs. All corporate jobs I had were total nightmares, I wouldn't go back for nothing in the world to be quite honest. Low salary, bottom feeding whores waiting for the next project to rapidly spit out to get more done faster every week with tons of never ending meetings, no thanks. I'll go back to my home office, with my coffee, music, cat and awesome living room to take breaks in.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#183

Post by jimmaswell »

rturben wrote: post #128
jblow wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are presuming a lot about what my early career looks like. Really I never worked any jobs as bad as what you describe. Well, maybe the time I did data entry during my first year of college. The longest I ever worked in a highly corporate environment was 7-8 months, but at least at that time I was doing something at least slightly cool (a port of Doom 2 back when that was a new game, and with which I had full auto…

I'm someone graduating from college in a few months, and this is one of the most striking things to me about a programmer's expected outlook on jobs. The career path of going and getting an internship, then becoming a junior developer, etc etc at some corporation is something that seems like it would suck the soul out of anyone that is even moderately creative. During my first internship at a "normal" corporation, I…

>The career path of going and getting an internship, then becoming a junior developer, etc etc at some corporation is something that seems like it would suck the soul out of anyone that is even moderately creative.

Maybe not exciting, but it never sounded "soul crushing". I never really expected to be having a blast at work; it's just a job. Should I be expecting more?

Starting a startup really sounds like more stress and annoyance than "fun" to me personally, after reading stories of them on this website. Are you sure the "more risk" one is worth it? Corporate programming work really doesn't seem that bad from what I've heard of it realistically, despite how derided it is here. Startups on the other hand sound like killing yourself by programming 13 hours straight every day for some company that's probably going to fail and getting below-market pay compared to the easier and better-paying corporate side.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#184

Post by neumann »

I stated a new job after living in Europe for 6 months for a change and immediately realised it is the same job I had back home, with the same destination. The mind numbing drain of the IT work juxtaposed with the non office lifestyle I had before taking the job and was literally destroying my soul. I hated it. I now joke that I became an alcoholic in 2 weeks, because I needed to be so blind drunk every night trying to justify how this will be good for my future. And the same as you, the worst part is that my new colleagues liked me and my managers lauded my on how fast I was, delivering great work. I spent the second weekend walking around trying to imagine other jobs, other people, the work culture. Eventually I decided that I could handle the work and push through it, but only if it guaranteed that I could hang out with interesting colleagues and work on interesting problems in the future. I went back my second week and tried to analyse what opportunities I would have given my current role and handed my resignation in after lunch. My boss was shocked, asked if I'd been poached or wanted to work on something else, but I had made up my mind and couldn't wait to try the next thing.

If that story doesn't bring any comfort because you have to stay, one approach is to be open about how you feel at a team meeting and see if anybody else is willing to timeshare the task. However, if this is the sort of task you will always face day-to-day, you will eventually have to decide if that's how you want to feel everyday.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#185

Post by [deleted] »

zeteo wrote: post #104
jblow wrote: post #46

I felt obliged to comment because I feel I know what you are talking about and I also worry that much of the advice posted so far is wrong at best, dangerous at worst. I am 42-year-old very successful programmer who has been through a lot of situations in my career so far, many of them highly demotivating. And the best advice I have for you is to get out of what you are doing. Really. Even though you state that you a…

> I am 42-year-old very successful programmer who has been through a lot of situations [...] Early on as a programmer, I was often in situations like you describe. [...] If I could go back to my early career I would mercilessly cut out all the shitty jobs I did You know, it's hard to believe it, but at some point parents forget what it felt like being a teenager, and senior developers being junior. I know I'm going h…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#186

Post by scotty79 »

What are you feeling doesn't have all that much to do with what you do and what perceived atrocities you are paid to commit.

I have same feelings and I notice that they stem more from being responsible (often self assumed internal responsibility) for the state of the system no one else cares about the state of.

You are just lonely with what you do. People love you for the effect of your work, but you see that they don't care about what you do. And it makes your work meaningless (or even detrimental) from your point of view.

You imagine you could take solace from the fact that you system would be architected beautifully without all this crap people who pay you make you put in there. But that's not true. Artists are generally unhappy. They get happy though appreciation, but not appreciation of common-folk that just don't get art. Only by appreciation of fellow artists.

Programming is a puzzle. It doesn't matter what puzzle you solve. Solving a puzzle of not increasing fragility of your system by adding crappy feature is also a (hard) puzzle that can be solved better or worse. Sometimes solving puzzle brings pleasure if your solution is especially good and programmers think that's the right and only way to get pleasure out of what they do. But that's rare. For each time solution itself brought you pleasure you should have at least 10 times where your solution brought you pleasure just because someone seen it, understood it and respected it.

tl;dr Make company hire more competent people that can share your burden.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#187

Post by SubuSS »

jblow wrote: post #79
Vekz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great answer, but what are the actionable takeaways form this? You say you had to "work on your own projects". Are you encouraging OP to go do their own thing and avoid working for others again? Is that what you did? Are you saying do your own projects on the side? I feel thats can be even more soul crushing.

Yes, I mean I have to be doing my own projects 'professionally' wherein I decide what is being made and how it is being made. Not working for someone else, because that someone else is not going to have the same kinds of goals that I would have. There may have been some jobs out there where I could happily and productively work, but I don't know, because I never encountered one.

So how do you handle the mundane / repetitive parts of your own job? Let's say you decide you want a decidedly western theme for your new project and want the assets switched over for a reason your employees/peers don't understand or see the full scope of?

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#188

Post by chipotle_coyote »

chondos wrote: post #125
danielsamuels wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says your job can't be something you enjoy? What if programming is what you'd be doing if you weren't at work? I know that's certainly the case for a lot of programmers I know.

> Who says your job can't be something you enjoy This is unrealistic. Do you think an economy can survive with everyone doing what they enjoy? Do we have enough people who enjoy cleaning toilets, stocking shelves, and all the other menial, labor intensive jobs? This notion is a utopian, post currency (Star Trek Economy) fantasy.

Nobody is saying that we should expect our jobs to fill us with orgasmic ecstasy every minute we're on the clock; we're saying that if every day you come home from your job and think about ramming an icepick up your nose, then this is just possibly a sign it's a time to get a resume together.

I'm tired of the argument made implicitly all the time -- and explicitly on occasion -- that even if a job fills you with suicidal misery every day, if you're making enough to cover all your living expenses plus pay for the alcohol and pills to numb the pain, then by God you should just count yourself lucky, sit down and shut up. A given percentage of the workforce may indeed always hate their job -- but no, in fact, I do not believe that the economy will collapse if that percentage decreases.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#189

Post by archagon »

jblow wrote: post #46

I felt obliged to comment because I feel I know what you are talking about and I also worry that much of the advice posted so far is wrong at best, dangerous at worst. I am 42-year-old very successful programmer who has been through a lot of situations in my career so far, many of them highly demotivating. And the best advice I have for you is to get out of what you are doing. Really. Even though you state that you a…

> I would be very depressed on projects, make slow progress, at times get into a mode where I was much of the time pretending progress simply because I could not bring myself to do the work. I just didn't have the spirit to do it. (I know many people here know what I am talking about.) Over time I got depressed about this: Do I have a terrible work ethic? Am I really just a bad programmer? A bad person?

I never thought about it that way, but this resonates with me. I recently ended a job at a pretty big company and I often felt like you describe. At the time, I kinda shrugged it off as normal; after all, weren't office jobs supposed to be soul-crushing? Plus, maybe I wasn't that good anyway. Maybe my team leads were right. Maybe this was just my role in the corporate ladder. I joked with my friends about how I was just mooching off the company, how a dog could do my work, but it felt kinda shitty and it was hard to care in that environment.

The difference between that and the passion project I'm working on now is striking. It doesn't feel like work. I can stay up coding until 4, 5, 6 in the morning if I really want to see the fruits of my labor. (And I often do.) I actually look forward to pulling out my laptop. I have enough good ideas to keep me busy for the next few years. And most importantly, I'm finally getting to the point where I can prove myself creatively.

(On the other hand, it was one year of great money for not too much spiritual trauma, and now I can travel the world and work on the good stuff for a couple of years without worry. So for me, definitely worth it.)

Re: Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand?

#190

Post by hownottowrite »

Like others, I would encourage you to take some time off before you burn out. However, I also understand what you mean about not being able to escape this job.

I've had numerous jobs where I felt I couldn't leave for certain reasons. I would stay usually a few years too long and later come to regard the decision with a mixture of regret and weird, sanctimonious pride.

Take a few hours today and read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It's a short book, written by a psychologist and concentration camp survivor. The book demonstrates that is possible to find meaning in the worst situations, especially those you "cannot" leave. It may also help you understand why you need to think about choosing a different path.

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