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The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

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Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#111

Post by Ygg2 »

AJ007 wrote: post #90
enjo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on the burnout piece. It's a complicated thing. I'd liken it to depression. Lots and lots of people constantly fret about being "depressed". Over time it became easy to dismiss depression as a legitimate illness. Apparently every time you feel sad you're depressed, the whole thing just loses its meaning. It wasn't until I met someone who suffered from true clinical depression did I understand exactly the seriousne…

Whats the timeline for real burnout? I describe burnout is any time an individuals focus drops to the point that their work quality potentially becomes damaging rather than adding value.

That's not burnout. Real burnout is more closer to having to leave software development field for farming, because you can't function as a developer anymore.

Tbh for me the fear of burnout is enough to leave a job. I don't want to hate/ be unable to program anymore.

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#112

Post by shubb »

nervousvarun wrote: post #105
munificent wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was in June, so it's summer, and the father was supposed to drop the baby off at daycare, but forgot; don't know why... but came and left the baby in the car, and came into work. Several years ago, I almost did the same thing with my infant daughter. Put her car seat in the back seat. Got in. Started driving. On auto-pilot started heading towards the office. It was only when she happened to make a sound (she o…

Seems like an opportunity for an app (disclaimer: obviously did not do my due diligence and google if there was one first. T minus X seconds in counting until the first 'there already is one' post).

If you get your baby an android phone, at least you can use the Locate function to find out where you left them...

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#113

Post by goshx »

This is a complicated topic, in which I think there must be some kind of balance.

There are the lazy ones from the perspective that they are too lazy to put their heads down and do the hard/boring work, and there are the lazy ones from the perspective that they are too lazy to get out of their comfort zone, even though the work is hard/boring.

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#114

Post by nostrademons »

brianmcconnell wrote: post #88

I agree 100% with the author about the spoiled brat mentality of this generation of developers. I personally prefer to hire older developers because a) they tend to be steady producers, and b) they have the maturity to understand that sometimes work sucks and c) provided managers don't treat them like shit, they tend to stick around. The flip side of the deal is I am not going to work them to death or make unreasonab…

It's perfectly fine for you to hire older developers, particularly if you're writing reporting software for a utility grid monitoring company. A younger developer probably isn't going to want to do that job anyway. The reason we have a market economy in the first place is so that people can find the work the matches their interests and abilities best, and then get paid well for doing it to the best of their abilities.

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#115

Post by scott_s »

jsonmez wrote: post #81
Smudge wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

loren concluded his post with this: > I'm going to build whatever keeps me up at night. I have a long list, but there's one project that I'm particularly passionate about. It might turn into a startup. It might not. Who knows. So, sounds like it was exactly what he said in his post.

You are still missing it. Doing whatever you passionate about from a long list is not the same thing as committing to meaningful work over the long haul. You have to be able to make it through what I believe Seth Godin calls "the dip."

So why did you assume he was not going to do that?

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#116

Post by tesseractive »

aylons wrote: post #73
jbail wrote: post #60

I grow weary of people telling other people that they don't know what hard work is...especially as it contributes to the constant putting down of my generation. If you want to make a condescending, sweeping generalization about an entire generation of people, I have some advice: Don't. As an aside...I watched the author's "Why You Need People Skills" video on his website. At 3 minutes in he talks about how rubbing pe…

I was once freelancing reporting in a convention about "Y Generation"[1] and the best presentation I attended as themed on how much bullshit is said about this generation. The grand finale of this presentation was a quote just like this, saying something in the lines of "this generation is lazy, and arrogant, and think life is easy". Everything people say about Millenials, except this was taken from a 60's newspaper,…

> Funny thing, I take "Generation Y" as the way people who doesn't really care about generational studies talk about Millenials. I can't stop thinking they heard about the "Generation X", called this way at their time because they were unknown, and extrapolated the meaning without further thinking.

Indeed. Before the term "Generation X" stuck, lazy commentators who wanted to make sweeping generational statements often referred to "Baby Busters."

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#117

Post by rprospero »

StandardFuture wrote: post #26
RyanZAG wrote: post #18

I feel sorry for the author of this post - he actually believes hard, boring work is the only way to accomplish anything. I've done both hard, boring work, and easy, efficient and enjoyable work. The easy work was both more enjoyable, more profitable and far better for my life as a whole. Life is not fair, there are no points awarded for working harder or being more diligent - there are only 'points' awarded for acco…

>...there are only 'points' awarded for accomplishing things.Make sure you accomplish the right things in the right way. Exactly, and I find a complete bias towards hard work for the sake of "feeling good" about your hard work is actually ... lazy. Feeling good about tediously slaving away at manually inserting data into a database rather than coding a handler to automate that is actually working hard to avoid doing…

I largely agree with you and am usually the first to start automating things. However, I'll also say that sometimes doing it the boring, hard way really is the smart way to handle it. I've seen the pressure to work smarter used to spend weeks automating a system that could be performed by hand in hours. Using an hour to write a program that saves a month of work is smart. Using a month to write a program that saves a night of tedious manual labor is lazy.

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#118

Post by sliverstorm »

rturben wrote: post #53
Smudge wrote: post #41

Somehow this article manages to be both wise and presumptuous. The points he makes speak from experience. It's a perspective that is too often ignored by younger generations: You can't always quit a job when the work gets boring -- sometimes you just have to push through the tedium if you want to be the best at what you do. This is a widely applicable bit of advice. But the way this message is presented -- to chastis…

> "Maybe loren quit because he wasn't being fulfilled." This is the thing that strikes me the most. I'm fairly young still and have begun working at a company as a programmer. I've been there for about five months and can already say that this isn't where my passion lies. There's nothing wrong with trying to figure out where you really want to go in life and trying to achieve it. Not everyone gets it right on the fir…

Don't just look at your current work. Look to your superiors and/or your elders in the company; are they doing work you would like to be doing?

As a new-hire, you often don't get to do the most interesting work.

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#120

Post by trustfundbaby »

I really wanted to like this article ... but it seems to come from a place of emotion and it shows. The arguments are unsubstantiated and as a commenter below pointed out even the quote he used from Nietzsche is out of context

Its hard to read something like this ...

"It is really easy to sit at your desk when you are supposed to be working and browse hacker news, injecting in your sarcastic wit and sly comments, believing them to be of value, believing that somehow that in this false self-affirming reality that you are actually creating something of value, when indeed all you are doing is destroying and marring the work of others to your own detriment"

And not feel like this is a rant, but plenty of rants have a lot of hard truths in them, this one does not.

I take issue with this ...

"The big problem is that “kids today” don’t understand the value of hard, boring work"

This idea that you should be able to go to a job that bores you to tears, or even worse, actually hate just because it pays you money and thats just what people have to do really really upsets me. I've been a developer for 10 years now, and I can categorically tell you that your work can be challenging, your work can be tough but it should never be boring. Because I find that when I had autonomy at my job, whenever my opinion was respected by decision makers, and when I was surrounded by a team that I loved, I never had any boring moments.

And I think that goes for a lot of people too, because you see, it turns out that work is only really boring when you don't care. And if you don't care, you shouldn't be there.

PS: The part about burn out is abysmally wrong and doesn't even warrant comment.

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