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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?

#381

Post by Joeri »

mattmanser wrote: post #158
fit2rule wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Imagine your happiness as a graph of sin(x). You have ups and downs, 1 and -1, but they're relatively stable, and on the average your baseline happiness is about the same. Then you have kids. Now the graph becomes 1+3*sin(x). The highs are stupendously higher, but the lows are deeper, and the difference can be stark. On the average your life is improved, but when somebody asks you how things are going your answer can be very different depending on the day and time. It is not an easy thing to ride the parenting roller coaster, but it is personally enriching in a way I cannot properly describe.

Also, about not having control and not having any time after becoming a parent. I struggled a lot with this myself until I read a passage in a book which shifted my perspective:

"In the past I used to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. One part I reserved for Joey, another part was for Sue, another part to help with Ana, another part for household work. The time left over I considered my own. I could read, write, do research, go for walks. But now I try not to divide time into parts anymore. I consider my time with Joey and Sue as my own time. When I help Joey with his homework, I try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time. I go through his lesson with him, sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. The time for him becomes my own time. The remarkable thing is that now I have unlimited time for myself."

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

#383

Post by kamaal »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #378
kamaal wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will never come to love what you do to make a living, because that enslaves you. It doesn't free you. Which is why everyone must strive to have a side income/early retirement plan because you need to experience true freedom to enjoy things in life.

Really? I must be an exception then. I love what I do and wouldn't want to stop doing it. That said, I can imagine myself in a few other jobs too, so it might be my attitude towards work that makes me happy.

I'm not talking of happiness in that context. You are never truly free if as long as you have to work to make a living.

Once you have financial independence you can do anything you want, take unlimited vacations, learn music, go hiking, ride a motorcycle all day, heck you can even code all day and work on interesting projects without the fear of getting fired, denied a raise or whatever.

Work you like makes you happy, but not free.

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

#384

Post by kamaal »

Swizec wrote: post #339
kamaal wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The narrative of luck makes people feel less bad about their lack of fortitude. Contrary to whatever you think 'chance' plays a huge role in every one's success. When luck meets hard work, the returns compound. When hard work meets back luck, a person feels they were treated unfairly.But chance matters in a way far more than you realize. Heck, a Human is born out of sheer luck. People don't realize how important lu…

But the thing is that without hard work, you can have all the luck in the world and nothing is going to happen. And it also seems that the people who work harder have more luck for various reasons raging from having more opportunities come their way to seizing opportunities better. Ultimately, I think, the kind of luck that matters most is the lack of bad luck . You can be the hardest working person in the world, but…

You are completely right. Now think of an exact opposite case. You can do all the hard work and yet get treated unfairly.

Not all hardworking people are successful and not all successful people are hardworking.

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

#385

Post by yungchin »

thefivetoes wrote: post #300
yungchin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will NEVER have the energy that the people whom you compare with have. I do hope this is an extreme case of misdiagnosis: it's implying that the OP is not an achiever, and lacking ambition - just because there are a few small hurdles in the way of his getting things done! Here's an alternative diagnosis: if you focus too much on your peers, you're poisoning your own motivation. Of course you'll spend all day on…

> I do hope this is an extreme case of misdiagnosis: it's implying that the OP is not an achiever, and lacking ambition Taking the first part of quote out of context makes it seem harsh, but the second half of the quote provides justification. >> You will NEVER have the energy that the people whom you compare with have. Because they are being themselves, and are connected to the natural wellspring of motivation that…

I don't think the second part of that quote makes things any better at all. OP is basically saying "I want to be successful in my projects, please advise", and the off-the-cuff diagnosis offered is that he's "aping societal ideals and trying to be someone [he is] not", and that unlike his peers, he must be lacking "genuine interest" in his projects. Seriously?

> Seems very much in line with your diagnosis.

I think you gave the grandparent post a very charitable reading :)

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

#386

Post by jkoudys »

You might just be reading more articles or seeing more independent projects from young people, because those young people are less likely to work a full-time job (or if they do, they're not doing 12-16 hours a day in addition to open-source and articles). Plenty of people in their 30s (or even, gasp, their 40s) are still productive, high-earning professionals in the software world.

I started out quite young myself, writing software for gameboy advance at 15, and I did plenty of public-facing work: articles, coding competitions, etc. After uni I joined a big corporation, and while I was learning plenty and doing a lot of very influential work, there was much less personal credit for what I was doing.

While this is less related to age, don't be too impressed by how you see the work of others represented. I've seen plenty of fancy videos (and TED talks) for people who just had vapour. You're always going to view yourself with all your perceived shortcomings, but you'll see others as the public persona they have meticulously crafted.

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

#387

Post by elwell »

FourthProtocol wrote: post #16

I'm 45, and have about 60 unfinished side protects in my /Dev folder. I've also just reached the feature complete milestone on my first side project that will actually ship. After working on it, or a variation of it for SEVEN YEARS. Your question made me smile. Are you having fun? I'm having lots of fun, and have had throughout my career. There was a time in my 20's where I felt exactly the way you do. Don't sweat it…

> I'm 45, and have about 60 unfinished side protects in my /Dev folder

Random, but I think there's a correlation between "age > 30" and capitalization of folder names.

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

#388

Post by devnul3 »

kamaal wrote: post #296
JohnBooty wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't kindergarten where you can just show up and start scribbling. Even if the actual act of coding (or painting, or martial arts, or writing, or watering roadside plants) is effortless, there's a hell of a lot of effort that goes into just getting yourself in a position to do it. Example: perhaps painting is effortless for you, but putting yourself in a position to paint involves a lot of mundane things that r…

You will never come to love what you do to make a living, because that enslaves you. It doesn't free you. Which is why everyone must strive to have a side income/early retirement plan because you need to experience true freedom to enjoy things in life.

This is entirely untrue and extremely dangerous. It is very possible to love what you do for a living (I do). Some of us find "true freedom" in tricking people into paying us to do things we would gladly pay to be allowed to do.

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

#389

Post by devnul3 »

kamaal wrote: post #383
Drdrdrq wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I must be an exception then. I love what I do and wouldn't want to stop doing it. That said, I can imagine myself in a few other jobs too, so it might be my attitude towards work that makes me happy.

I'm not talking of happiness in that context. You are never truly free if as long as you have to work to make a living. Once you have financial independence you can do anything you want, take unlimited vacations, learn music, go hiking, ride a motorcycle all day, heck you can even code all day and work on interesting projects without the fear of getting fired, denied a raise or whatever. Work you like makes you happy…

Your statements carry with them the implicit assumption that "anything you want to do" and what you do to make a living aren't the same thing. For some they are.

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

#390

Post by adamnemecek »

sean_the_geek wrote: post #48

I was in the same boat when I was 26-27. I was passionate, better than most in programming and had a better job than most. However, I was not happy. There was this constant fear that somebody would overtake me or somebody is x-years younger than me but earns y times more or he is so young but achieved so much more than me blah blah blah. This eventually led to mild depression(or at least that's what I think it was).…

How long to you meditate for daily?
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