101–110 of 463 posts
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Hmm, wondering when do you go to sleep if you wake up at 6? 9? That kind of sucks.
Not OP, but I usually go to bed at 10 and wake up at 4:30 or 5. It only sucks if you are a night owl.
People will say "it's just the managers", "it's because you aren't working on interesting things", etc, but it is none of those things. I have worked on interesting projects, been my own boss, etc, and nothing changes.
In ancient times, you would perform physical activities that you often enjoyed to some degree, at least to the extent that they made you feel good at the end of the day and ready to rest. Most of the time, work and play were indistinguishable. Evolution makes it so that we enjoy the things we are supposed to do. Animals play hunt when they are younger (or even when they are older) because it is fun and that is how their genes make them get good at things they need to do. Their job is hunting for food, and they like doing it.
The further away your job is from your natural tendencies, the worse it gets. Sitting in front of a computer programming and doing other things is about as far away as you can get. Sure, we might like solving problems, etc, but not as a job 9-5 every day.
There are the people who say "stop complaining, you sit in an air-conditioned office! You don't have to toil away in a physical labour job", but that is just completely wrong. Sure, some physical labour jobs will mess up your body, but there is nothing healthy about sitting in air-conditioning staring at a computer. I used to work in a physical labour job when I was younger. I had to quit because they were making sure nobody would get full-time steady work. The difference in my mental and physical state going from outdoors physical (but not extreme, body breaking stuff) to office work was extremely noticeable.
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I work for a big company (F500), and one thing that always bothers me is the out of nowhere Slack messages that are three paragraphs long, by someone I have never met within the company. If I start helping them right away, they are happy to keep me online for the next hour while my flow is gone, god knows where. I am trying to find the nicest way to say: "This should be an e-mail conversation, please send email.", bu…
I actually prefer 3 para slack messages rather than 5 messages: "Hi", "you there", "needed to discuss something", "ping me when you are online", "talk to you soon" because I enable notifications and this junk keeps on notifying - only some people.
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I thought by the time you're 54 you could retire. I'm much younger and I could retire in a couple of years. What is your saving rate? - you can read more here https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ Your job starts at 7am? You could start later, like 10. Have your 2-3h lunch time. Finish at 6pm. Change jobs until you find a job like that. There are plenty, I can assure you.
>>I thought by the time you're 54 you could retire. I'm much younger and I could retire in a couple of years. What is your saving rate? That is not going to help him much now. Not everyone has or could have started saving early in life. Some did not due to ignorance, some did not due to life circumstances, some did but other life events could have taken that from them (i.e bad investments, divorce, medical issue, or…
It's very likely he could retire but he just didn't realized. Maybe looking into it, it's not a bad idea.
I worked on 3 continents, in more than 10 companies. No employer ever told me I'm coming in too late, my lunch time it's too long or I'm leaving too early (6pm).
> “No way I’m burned out. Look at all the women that are actually suffering. Who am I but a privileged white chic taking up space.” It’s sad that so many white people have been conditioned to think this way.
I think it’s pretty clear we have an epidemic of burnout on our hands. I think it’s a new phenomenon. And I think immersive online experiences are the underlying cause. I’ve lived much of my life for the past 30 years in virtual spaces of one form or another, from MUDs to IRC to MMORPGs to early and then fully evolved social media. As commercial virtual space showed up, I noticed the engagement hooks and potential fo…
A solution, in addition to interacting with real people in person more, is to push back hard and rigidly control when and how your work makes contact with the rest of your life.
Personally, I'm a zero contact after work hours kind of guy. When my end-of day hits, I will not answer a single thing that is work related. My colleagues have learned to accept it and the world has not ended or the company failed. People are hired and paid accordingly to respond to off hours emergencies. I am not one of those people.
Obviously, people will have different roles and relationships with their work, so this type of thing won't work for everyone. But the key is more that you take matters into your own hands and that your interactions with your work become the result of a decision you make.
As many company owners will tell you, they have no problem with a crazy busy life, because they are so motivated and fulfilled by their work.
For me, I was an engineering manager for 25 years. It was actually long periods of ennui, interrupted by short tornadoes of insanity and stress.
Frankly, I enjoyed the insanity and stress, more than the sitting around, waiting to be useful. I hated it so much, that I tasked myself with a great deal of extracurricular work; just to avoid going nuts (some would say it was not avoided successfully).
Nowadays, I’m basically “retired.”
Except I’m not. I work harder, every day (like, 7 days a week), than I did while I was getting paid.
I feel more relaxed than ever.
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>>I thought by the time you're 54 you could retire. I'm much younger and I could retire in a couple of years. What is your saving rate? That is not going to help him much now. Not everyone has or could have started saving early in life. Some did not due to ignorance, some did not due to life circumstances, some did but other life events could have taken that from them (i.e bad investments, divorce, medical issue, or…
I didn't say he should have retired, it's just my expectation for a software engineer to have the ability to retire by then. It's very likely he could retire but he just didn't realized. Maybe looking into it, it's not a bad idea. I worked on 3 continents, in more than 10 companies. No employer ever told me I'm coming in too late, my lunch time it's too long or I'm leaving too early (6pm).
That aside, like I said if your experience is true, which i have my doubts, it does not match mine. Most companies I know of even if they have flex time want their people to start before 9am, and generally do not allow 2-3hr lunches as normal course. Now if you only worked as a contractor this may be different but a salaried position employed directly for a company... Notta gonna happen every often.
At most of the companies I have worked for you would be put on performance review and then terminated.
It's almost heretical. But once you embrace this mindset, it does wonders. Or at least, it has for me so far.
I think a lot of us want to be proud of the work we do, and we feel that if we slack off, then we shouldn't be proud. But it's the other way around. I think the slackers have it right.
You're probably not going to get rich from working a day job. You're replaceable, and if you left your job tomorrow then you'll soon be forgotten. This is true for the majority of software engineers.
In that context, why do so many of us take on so many unnecessary responsibilities? It's tempting to say "Well, my employer assigned them." But how often do you tell them no, or try to present a different approach that just so happens not to involve you?
I know someone who is a chronic yes person. They will almost never say no, and they're pretty stressed day to day because of it. Whenever I point out that they're taking on too much, they say that they disagree and that it's their career.
That's true, but they won't get rich from that career, so I don't understand why they care so much about it.
Just remember to say 'no' for yourself from time to time. You often don't need to take on as many responsibilities as you have.
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I guess the problem is that the author has brought it up in the article. Race has no place in this article and yet it's there.
That’s my point, by bringing it up in the article you can deflect most of the comments that would _try_ to turn the discussion towards race. Whether the author genuinely feels like that or not... who knows.