In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
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In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
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Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#2I've been in consulting for 2 years, and switching projects is like leaving a job and starting a new one. I've gone through exactly what was described, and by 9 months it was outright defeat.
I just quit that gig for a startup and couldn't be more happier with the move. This felt like reading what's deep within my subconscious.
Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#3One can probably have a good discussion whether one can force the muse to speak to oneself (see Steven Pressfield - The War of Art). Still, the author has quit several companies after working for them for just 6-12 months at best and still sees the companies as being the problem, not himself or his attitude. To each his own, but it makes you wonder if his advice is valid and not an excuse.
Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#4I've been in consulting for 2 years, and switching projects is like leaving a job and starting a new one. I've gone through exactly what was described, and by 9 months it was outright defeat. I just quit that gig for a startup and couldn't be more happier with the move. This felt like reading what's deep within my subconscious.
upvote!
Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#5One can probably have a good discussion whether one can force the muse to speak to oneself (see Steven Pressfield - The War of Art). Still, the author has quit several companies after working for them for just 6-12 months at best and still sees the companies as being the problem, not himself or his attitude. To each his own, but it makes you wonder if his advice is valid and not an excuse.
Depression isn't attitude
Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#6To an extent this is a reasonable way to put it, but in all honesty, there's much more to software engineers than whether their programming muse is satisfied or not.
For example, I'm happy whenever I can make users happy. Even if I'm just writing a data loader script, if the script is fast, gets the users' data loaded correctly, I'm happy and fulfilled.
Put in a situation, where I'm unable to make users happy, maybe through clashing with company objectives like making money on a badly written contract, or bad design, I'm miserable.
Deprived of feedback from users, or stuck writing designs, I'm miserable.
If you are always miserable after 9 months, you need to have a deep think about what sort of jobs you are applying for, or whether pursuing the work at all is worth it. There are decent companies out there, that are customer focussed, and that use new technologies and development methods that stress individual creativity. Go find them.
Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#7One can probably have a good discussion whether one can force the muse to speak to oneself (see Steven Pressfield - The War of Art). Still, the author has quit several companies after working for them for just 6-12 months at best and still sees the companies as being the problem, not himself or his attitude. To each his own, but it makes you wonder if his advice is valid and not an excuse.
The bad guy here was not meant to be the employer, though I can see where you'd get that impression. It's a statement against the lack of control that is inherent to most work environments, and a brief waxing on the effect that has on a person's ability to build great stuff.
I'm not a lazy person. I enjoy working, and I have at least a little bit to show for it. So the email was an exploration of why this ceases to be the case when I've spent a certain amount of time working for someone other than myself. The only feasible conclusion that I've come to is what I wrote.
Ideally not so much an excuse as a reason.
Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#8This piece struck me as very insightful. Not as advice per se, but as a window into the motivations of Creators. This part in particular: "Creation is a deeply personal and rewarding activity, which means that your Work should also be deeply personal and rewarding."
I think if you talk to founders who have left companies several years out from the company's inception, the loss of that sense of engagement and "ownership" in the creative sense is a major driver of departures. Some may stay for the financial aspects of "ownership", but once things devolve into board meetings and committees, the spark is gone.
Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#9Yes.
_Your muse can only be treated as the secretary of a subcommittee for so long before she decides to pack up and look for employment elsewhere. If you aren’t able to own the product and be creative, then you aren’t able to do your work, and if you’re not doing your work then you’re negating a very real part of your personality, which is no good for anyone. No good for you and certainly no good for your employer._
That is why I quit my jobs… and consulting, period, in the end. I couldn't stand to watch people wreck my work. My heart couldn't get excited about such a compromise. And sure, I could have spent a decade learning how to really work a committee -- but to what end, exactly?
Re: In Praise of Quitting Your Job, or The New Work Ethic.
#10One can probably have a good discussion whether one can force the muse to speak to oneself (see Steven Pressfield - The War of Art). Still, the author has quit several companies after working for them for just 6-12 months at best and still sees the companies as being the problem, not himself or his attitude. To each his own, but it makes you wonder if his advice is valid and not an excuse.
Depression isn't attitude
And "unhappy at work" isn't the same as "diagnosed as depressed by a professional". I have a feeling that the author wasn't using the word in the clinical sense.