Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bored People Quit

randsinrepose.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 156 posts

Re: Bored People Quit

#101

Post by ggchappell »

edw519 wrote: post #5

Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…

> Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News.

> Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work.

I disagree[1] with your second axiom. HN, in limited quantities[2], counts as professional development, I would say. That means that limited HN usage is necessary, which certainly helps it "compete".

If I were interviewing someone for a programming job, and I learned that they never read HN or SO or Proggit or /. or anything like that, then I would have some serious reservations about them.

-----------------

[1] Okay, being a mathematician, I know that an axiom simply is; one doesn't agree or disagree with it. But this does mean that your theorem has limited applications.

[2] HN in large quantities, on the other hand ....

Re: Bored People Quit

#102

Post by peregrine »

Finally a thread I can share some of my limited(!) experiences!

A company I worked at once told me that I shouldn't be bored, but be happy that I had work and that doing more boring work leads to better less boring work.

I probably should have gone into overdrive mode to find new work but it happened anyways about 1.5 years late. Being boring is not an easy thing to bounce back from when you main retention policy is snacks, soda, and blind loyalty.

Re: Bored People Quit

#103

Post by DougBTX »

cema wrote: post #72
Lewisham wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a 30 person database consultancy for my first job out of uni. Their Intranet home page contained a large and prominent link to "Internet access by user", which listed the amount of bandwidth being consumed by each person through their HTTP proxy. I have no idea who instituted that policy, but I instantly disliked the company . You could download large binaries for only so long to cover your tracks, so I…

as a result of my departure, they would no longer hire graduates with A grades. They would look for B or C grades from now on. Wow! What an amazing... company. I am at a loss for words, really. They must be very -- what's the opposite of proud? -- of themselves.

The word you might be looking for is, "overqualified."

Re: Bored People Quit

#104

Post by dennisgorelik »

ggchappell wrote: post #101
edw519 wrote: post #5

Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. Theorem: The interestingness of my work is inversely related to my Hacker News participation. Supporting data: Today I'm regression testing. I'll be here all day, folks. Idea: Employers, monitor your logs for Hacker News. Occasional spikes probably indicate boring, but necessary tasks. Chronic use probab…

> Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. > Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. I disagree[1] with your second axiom. HN, in limited quantities[2], counts as professional development, I would say. That means that limited HN usage is necessary , which certainly helps it "compete". If I were interviewing someone for a programming job, and I learned that they never read HN or SO or…

Interesting work counts as professional development too. So there is no contradiction here.

If work is boring then HN reading is the must to compensate in professional development.

Re: Bored People Quit

#105

Post by jayx »

I am a college student who is currently doing my summer internship at a megacorp as a .NET MVC developer and I would not say the internship was what I was looking for. I am OK with the technologies they are using, it's just the boredom caused by endless waiting between each process that frustrates me. I got hired because I had spent a lot of my spare time working on my own RoR projects and my web development skills made me stand out. I also turned down another RoR startup internship as a result of better payment from the big company, which I regret a lot by now. Lesson learned: money is not the most important factor when it comes to job decision. The bright side of big corp job is that I have plenty of time to read hackernews and pick up technologies I want to learn, which gets me ready for the future startup environment. But nevertheless, I will never look back after this job.

Re: Bored People Quit

#106

Post by dennisgorelik »

1337p337 wrote: post #49

I had a boss that took the opposite approach. Whenever I started to lose productivity, he'd put me on work he knew I'd hate, telling me I'd get to do more interesting things when I showed him I could be productive. So I started working on side projects at the office just to keep my mind from going and became less and less productive until I quit. He was a talented engineer himself and a good friend. We ended up worki…

The moral of the story: be cautious about blaming yourself for your performance problems within organization.

If cannot figure it out - find another job.

Re: Bored People Quit

#107

Post by veb »

hahahahahhaahahahahahah!!

I sent this to a colleague for a read, who in then... sent it to the CIO. Whom replied, "this guy sums it up well, I'm going to distribute it and then we'll talk about it at the round table."

The outcome of this is going to be... hilarious!

Re: Bored People Quit

#108

Post by mulletbum »

dskhatri wrote: post #68

"I’m going to keep digging until you look me in the eye" Are you sure you want to do that to engineers? There's a joke that goes something like: How do you tell an introverted engineer from an extroverted one? The introverted engineer stares at his/her shoes when talking to you. The extroverted one stares at your shoes. I don't think it's a good idea to "keep digging until you look me in the eye".

I am not sure that applies. Introverts and extroverts tend to stand out in groups of people and with people they don't know. We are talking about a team that you should be very close to.

Re: Bored People Quit

#109

Post by dskhatri »

mulletbum wrote: post #108
dskhatri wrote: post #68

"I’m going to keep digging until you look me in the eye" Are you sure you want to do that to engineers? There's a joke that goes something like: How do you tell an introverted engineer from an extroverted one? The introverted engineer stares at his/her shoes when talking to you. The extroverted one stares at your shoes. I don't think it's a good idea to "keep digging until you look me in the eye".

I am not sure that applies. Introverts and extroverts tend to stand out in groups of people and with people they don't know. We are talking about a team that you should be very close to.

My point is that a lot of engineers I know (irrespective of being introverted or extroverted) would not be comfortable with such a harassing approach. Unless the author used 'look me in the eye' metaphorically as 'be frank with me'.
Post reply on HN