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Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#151

Post by erikb »

pestaa wrote: post #88
erikb wrote: post #69

A few points I haven't seen while scrolling through the comments: 1. Impact of Achievements does not relate to time as much as we think. Someone can start with 50 and make more impact than the most talented programmer made in 30 years of hard work. Maybe you need 2-3 years to get up to speed, but for longer time periods there are too many other factors involved. So if you are really as good as you think (most program…

Would you mind shedding some light on your automation tool?

I can't talk about that tool in public, sorry. It's also not so impressive in itself. The only thing that makes it awesome is that enables me to speed up a taunting task and enables me to do something else while my program works in the background. It might not be helpful to anybody else, because they might not spend that much time on doing that task. The code is also not really designed in any fashion to be applied to even the same task with just a little detail changed.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#152

Post by visakanv »

jevgeni wrote: post #57
onion2k wrote: post #33

At my core, I am intensely ambitious. Are you sure about that? There seems to be a lot of evidence to the contrary. One of the most important lessons I've learned so far is that ambition is not wanting money and recognition; it's a desire for constant challenge, pressure and responsibility. A lot of people don't want those things, they just want the cash. It's actually possible to find niches where you can earn good…

In my opinion, I wouldn't call what you describe "ambition", but rather "need for self-validation". Ambition is desire and determination of achieving something, whereas challenge, pressure and responsibility just seem masochistic. Where's the end goal? The problem here, in my opinion, is that the "default" goals one sees in the "start-up culture" (or the banking culture, that I'm better familiar with) are bland, spoo…

^Yes. You don't describe yourself as ambitious, you reveal it through your actions. How you prioritize. How you manage your limited time and resources.

It's weird to say "I am ambitious and I waste time vegging out watching TV" in the same breath– chances are the "I am ambitious" statement is really identity performance.

OP wants to be seen as ambitious (not just by his others, but by himself as well). It's a comforting narrative to hold, but it's also damaging (kinda like a cigarette addiction– you enjoy the pleasure of the cigarettes but you start noticing that your health is going downhill).

The gnawing pain that OP feels in his chest– I'm sorry that there's no nice way to put it– is the realization that he's a fraud [1]. It's the dissonance between "I am ambitious" and "I am wasting my time". One of those things have to go.

And we're all frauds to some degree, because we all tell ourselves stories about ourselves that feel good. OP is working himself up into a brilliant, painful frenzy, and in a sense it's likely that he enjoys it in a twisted sense– just like how some groups of people enjoy the drama of social relations, and keep perpetuating it.

BTW, just for fun (but seriously, too)– the most accomplished people like this tend to be writers. Balzac, Proust, Dostoeyvsky– all of them did this whole agonizing woe-is-me thing, or represented it powerfully in their work. OP, you might just make a great novelist. Write a modern day Lost Illusions with yourself as the title character, and you might just achieve the success you were hoping for!

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#153

Post by websitescenes »

Dude. I didn't learn to program until I was 26. I learned HTML and CSS when I was 18 but didn't do anything with it until age 26. IF I had the same attitude as you when I was 26, I'd still be a mechanic and not the lead web developer at an award winning design studio. Now at 31, I am working on multiple startups outside of work. Why? Because I'm not old until I'm dead, or stop learning..

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#154

Post by ohitsdom »

> I've been working hard on my first big project, and I expect it's going to be a great one.

It's probably not going to be a great one (especially if it's your first). Don't build things for the success, you'll always be disappointed. Build them because you want to solve a problem and enjoy the actual work. If all you enjoy is potential future rewards of success, you probably won't be able to suffer through the long, thankless work it takes to get there.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#155

Post by tastyface »

vijucat wrote: post #64

> It's been getting better. It's not, it's getting worse. You are in a cycle of slave-driving yourself. You remind me of Jiddu Krishnamurthi's assertion that "Influence acts strongest when you don't realize that it is acting". I would venture that most of your accomplishments are a result of being told what you should do, what you should be. You will NEVER have the energy that the people whom you compare with have. B…

OP here.

Believe me when I say that there's nothing more I'd rather do than what I'm doing right now. Not even in question. I love programming, I love the project I'm working on, and I love the ideas that are waiting to be worked on in my future. My heart fills with joy when I think about holding those finished products in my hands. When I get into the flow, I can zone out for days and work on my projects with hardly a break for food and sleep.

However, I have a natural weakness towards idleness. Like any negative personality trait, I have faith that it can be worked on. (If you're depressed or socially anxious, you wouldn't just accept these as the way you are, would you?) Internally, when I run into this problem, it doesn't feel like swimming against the tide; it feels like a massive speed bump that needs to be overcome, but that I know from experience has a smooth road ahead of it. I think it is a mistake to believe that every ambitious person is naturally driven, from beginning to end, solely by their ambition. Sometimes it's not enough.

Were I to succumb to my personality, I would sit in front of the TV, depressed and unfulfilled, for literally decades. That is not an option.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#157

Post by spectrum1234 »

Happiness = Reality / Expectations.

Decrease your expectations and you will be much better off. Seriously. It sounds like you are probably in the top 1-2% in the world in wealth. Enjoy that and don't let the expectations that holds affect you.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#158

Post by mattmanser »

fit2rule wrote: post #75
monk_e_boy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 40. I had a nice open source project that went well (it's a bit dated now) ... but my regret is not having my kids younger. The work. projects, start ups and all those dreams still live on. But having kids is a lot of fun.

Yes, definitely this! If you're in your 20's and feeling like your "whole life" is wasted/lame/you're a loser .. well, have kids. It'll change your whole outlook, hopefully before you hit 30. Kids are awesome. They teach you that, at 20-something, you're not actually that experienced. You don't actually have a lot of time on the Earth. 20-something year olds - you're still kids. There's 3 or 4 more decades ahead of y…

What confuses me is how every person I know with kids complains their life is over, they don't do a lot, they have no control, they have no time for themselves and their life is basically over. And this is a mid-30s guy with a lot of friends with kids.

And yet having kids is wonderful.

I joked to my friend it is like Stockholm Syndrome. You have no choice. You made your bed and must now live in it. Of course you are going to enjoy your kids, it is biologically wired into you and you also have to do it, regardless of how overwhelmed every other part of your life has become because of that one decision.

It has also become very trendy in the last decade or two to devote your entire life to your kids and to never leave them alone, to invade every aspect of their day to the detriment of a parent living their own lives. Extreme detriment. Constant parental involvement. Vicariously living life through your children. It's actually fairly distressing to see adults so subservient to their children. A very modern malaise, this was not how parents acted 20 years ago.

Never trust a parent telling you having kids is great.

I am personally undecided, but I'm deadly serious, never trust a parent saying having kids is great. It's quite literally like they're some sort of possessed zombie, everything they say is basically "HELP! HELP! This is AWFUL! All joy apart from worshipping my child has been DESTROYED!". And yet they all say "Oh, it's wonderful!" in the next breath.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#159

Post by fluffheadsr »

Also, life isn't about a list of accomplishments.. Make sure whatever you do it affords you the lifestyle which you want to live. Rich and famous isn't necesarry and life style business' are complete awesome even though they seem to get a bad rap in the startup world. A business that simply provides jobs and pays your salary isn't good enough.. Everyone seems to need the billion dollar exit or its "not worth it."

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

#160

Post by personjerry »

vijucat wrote: post #130
personjerry wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College student here. I've read a lot into the "do your own thing" mentality, especially the "don't go to university just do stuff", such as at Thiel summits, startup events. I personally love the idea of founding a startup, so I've given it a lot of thought. It's important for me to work on my own terms and to do something I find meaningful, and so I enjoyed riding along with the crowd that follows the above mentali…

Great points! Yes, "critical thinking" a great phrase for it. I agree with a lot of your points. The "don't go to university" / "dropouts are successful" meme is particularly alarming to me. Unless your achievement are stupendous, most employers, even startups, judge you based on your level of education, your Uni's ranking, etc; Why discard that data?

Furthermore, university is a great place to grow socially and find friends, girl/boyfriends, and maybe even a future co-founder! (Sometimes I think our education system should have a social education aspect too. Networking, communicating, and even brown-nosing can all be very useful.)
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