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What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

paulgraham.com

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Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#151

Post by peterjancelis »

sedachv wrote: post #134
phkahler wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and the person who started this thread seem to think that way. I find there is just as much to memorize in math. fields, rings, groups, and all sorts of things. Oh and those greek letters. I like math and physics and stuff but I never thought there was significantly less memorization in math. Calc 2 techniques of integration and then DiffEq seemed like a lot of special cases that had unique solutions we had to re…

> fields, rings, groups, and all sorts of things. Each of those is just a definition and a handful (literally like 5 or 6) of axioms. If I memorized the axioms and a few key theorems I could usually derive everything else in the homework and on the exams. Most mathematical objects have very similar structure and the rest is just maps (morphisms) between them. > Oh and those greek letters. That's actually a very valid…

> Most mathematical objects have very similar structure and the rest is just maps (morphisms) between them.

Is there a book covering this topic that you can recommend?

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#152

Post by robryan »

stegosaurus wrote: post #115
ashark wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime I read one of those "just do what you're passionate about!" posts, or job postings that read like "we're looking for people who are passionate about [thing that literally no-one has ever been passionate about]" I try to think whether there's anything whatsoever that I'd enjoy (let alone stay passionate about) doing (at least) 40 hours a week, 49ish weeks a year. I haven't thought of anything yet. Left to my o…

Indeed. For me it's not so much the absolute requirements (i.e. 8 hours a day, these specific hours, can't do anything else within that time) but rather the subordinate aspect of having no control over that. The way in which it's just the only option for seemingly _no reason_. It's totally arbitrary. I'd love to work a job where I could say, choose three days a week to work (or alternatively have 100 days holiday, re…

Yeah, it would be awesome if you could trade x% of your salary for x% extra holiday time. Just not possible in most jobs.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#154

Post by stegosaurus »

stegosaurus wrote: post #75

What if the idea of work itself is what you dislike? There are plenty of activities I can enjoy, and some, quite a few of them in fact, are profitable. Once you shoe-horn them into the power dynamic situation of a traditional job (with the bureaucracy that entails unless you're dealing with Actual People as opposed to corporations), suddenly a lot of the luster disappears. As a ridiculous example - I enjoy reading. I…

As an addition to this, I've struggled a lot with the concept of working for pay and only recently could I really begin to explain why.

Some people would probably call it 'entitlement', but I'm not really sure that's an accurate description.

As an employee, your role is essentially a permanent state of brown nosing. First of all you must convince a rich person/company that you are worthy. Then you must convince them that you want to work for them, that they're special, and so on. And then later, you must defer, every single day. Ill? According to policy document AED, page 5, section b, one of your eight sick days will be deducted, worker drone!

It's not enough to simply perform a valuable function for society. You need to be subservient and defer to authority - you are worth less than your betters (those with wealth) and must please them in order to eat, in order to shelter.

There are a few ways left in which you can directly serve other humans and profit via such - private entrepreneurial services such as window cleaning, antique dealing, etcetera - but these make up a small portion of the employment market today and are often subject to ridiculously overbearing regulation. The vast majority of 'jobs' in the Western world involve being directly, by rank, inferior to another human being.

Other people seem much more capable of dealing with this than I do. Often I find myself resenting others for putting up with the more ridiculous aspects - it feels like a betrayal, that if only people were better human beings and less likely to defer to authority we could all have a better experience.

This is the struggle I face, really. Physical trauma I find very simple - the emotional aspect of actively taking part in a system that I despise is much more difficult.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#156

Post by dreamdu5t »

You can get paid to do that kind of math. But what about stuff that doesn't pay? The things that don't seem like work to me aren't profitable or even monetizable. And please don't tell me something to the effect of "I'm not trying hard enough".

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#157

Post by erikig »

ferrari8608 wrote: post #14
abstractbill wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're supposed to come up with something that feels like work to other people .

I know plenty of people who consider reading, in any form, work.

My point exactly. I showed this to a couple of my non-tech friends and they couldn't quite understand why we'd spend hours looking at what seemed like "work stuff"

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#158

Post by dmourati »

blahedo wrote: post #72

I am surprised at how casually he dropped this in there: "When I was in college I used to write papers for my friends. It was quite interesting to write a paper for a class I wasn't taking. Plus they were always so relieved." Yikes. Really?

That jumped out at me to. I did the same a few times. Now, I realize, that runs afoul of the academic integrity most schools now require. Same is true for the writer (me) as the one who turned in the work.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#159

Post by paulvs »

I spent the first 12 years of my life living onboard a boat with my family, and then on and off throughout my teenage years. My father wanted to give us kids an environment conducive to learning, so I grew up surrounded by his Shaums Outlines, IC pinout reference manuals (thankfully the Internet age has replaced those), dos and qbasic books, etc. and lots of old computers running windows and dos. While I don't think he ever excelled at these subjects, they were his hobby and he was always trying to get us interested in them, too. I remember after some of us kids displayed an interest in tearing out the cardboard subscription forms from his vast collection of Scientific American, he actively encouraged us to do so in the hope that the articles would catch our eye and we might also develop an interest in science at a young age. My siblings and I were rushed through the high school curriculum in a home schooled environment and at around the age of 13 started taking some long distance first-year math courses from universities (Monash University, Australia). I, being the youngest, waded heavily through after my siblings, but never was particularly interested. The temptation to move to a normal home, go to a normal school and have friends was growing, so at the age of 13 I enrolled in ninth-grade at a public school. In the whole time I was at school I never had an interest in maths or science and the library was definitely a no-go zone for me (trying to fit in was a full time job). I applied for uni with a score of 16 out of 25 (1 best and 25 worst). I scraped into environmental engineering with a vague idea of changing to electronics or it (which my score hadn't let me directly into, but it was possible to change engineering majors once in). Uni seemed boring until about 3rd year of electronics and computer engineering. Ever since then I have begun developing a steadily growing interest in programming, science and maths, although I'm not good at the latter two. I'm now two years out of uni, working as an iOS developer. I hope that as my interest grows my learning keeps up. I think my father gave me the spark, but now it's up to me to keep nurturing the interest to get its full enjoyment.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#160

Post by dreamdu5t »

stegosaurus wrote: post #154
stegosaurus wrote: post #75

What if the idea of work itself is what you dislike? There are plenty of activities I can enjoy, and some, quite a few of them in fact, are profitable. Once you shoe-horn them into the power dynamic situation of a traditional job (with the bureaucracy that entails unless you're dealing with Actual People as opposed to corporations), suddenly a lot of the luster disappears. As a ridiculous example - I enjoy reading. I…

As an addition to this, I've struggled a lot with the concept of working for pay and only recently could I really begin to explain why. Some people would probably call it 'entitlement', but I'm not really sure that's an accurate description. As an employee, your role is essentially a permanent state of brown nosing. First of all you must convince a rich person/company that you are worthy. Then you must convince them…

I know exactly how you feel. Unfortunately, I don't have any solution or advice to offer. It's a burden I bear because I don't know what else to do.
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