Is it common for programmers to dislike debugging? I'm stunned. I never considered the possibility, it's always been something I enjoyed. I don't believe it impacts you either way in terms of capability but I imagine it impacts your desire to continue.
What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
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Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#12Reading HN never seems like work. I feel like I could do it all day.
You're supposed to come up with something that feels like work to other people.
Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#13Personally, I experienced this with programming. When I learned to program in high school, it never struck me as a chore; it was always just interesting and I enjoyed it. However, I think the only reason I was able to enjoy learning programming was because of how adept I already was with computers as a "power user", because it gave me the physical skills and conceptual underpinnings required to appreciate the field.…
Is it always intimidation, though? I find programming unimaginably boring.
Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#14Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#15If you do something and get that 'doesn't seem like work' feeling - great! Like all the best heuristics it seems obvious once you say it clearly. My question, though, is about the case where something does feel like work - does this imply you should not pursue it? Or are there cases where sticking with it and over time you find the vocation? For example I hated people management at first, but its a huge component of the 'doesn't seem like work' vocation I'm following now. Are there signals to look for that would indicate there is the prospect for this transition?
Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#16Reading HN never seems like work. I feel like I could do it all day.
I was thinking the same thing about socializing with tech people, then I remembered that the heuristic was an logical conjunction. It both has not seem like work to you AND seem like work to other people.
Of course, for a lot of people uninterested in tech and programming, reading HN would seem like work. And, for many tech people, socializing also seems like work. So I guess it's a matter of what group you're comparing against.
Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#17I'm very glad to see that PG's departure from YC has led to a significant uptick in his essay output.
Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#18This dichotomy, and the realization that it can fuel smart people to use their abilities to do amazing things in the world, is what upsets me most about the startup ecosystem. I'm a programmer. Writing weather software doesn't seem like work to me. However, since going through a startup accelerator, I'm supposed to all these things that are very much "work" - and it gets me down. Things that are important, for sure,…
I knew some folks at Google who were very content to stay an engineer at the bottom of the org chart and watch the people they mentored get promoted above them, because they understood that what made them happy was writing code and solving tough technical problems, not managing people or playing political games. I always respected them for that. Same reason that Steve Wozniak was always far more of a hero to me than Steve Jobs. It both takes more courage and provides more satisfaction to know what you like to do and figure out how to spend your life doing it than it does to become really good at what other people think they wish they were doing.
That said, I think startups will always be hard, for everybody, because no matter what you're good at, you will have to do a lot of other stuff to make them succeed. That's probably why the financial rewards for them are so high. Good partners can help at this, but maybe the sort of person who's naturally suited for a startup is simply "someone who likes to get good at a lot of different tasks".
Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#19Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
#20Sadly, I think this is perhaps the only (?) reason to stay in academia any more (albeit a very good one).