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You are not your job

jry.io

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Re: You are not your job

#171

Post by TheRoque »

Meh, I feel the opposite. Even though I come from a culture that values separation of work and free time a lot (France), I still feel like it's copium. The fact is, if you spend most of your valuable brain time on a task, your brain starts to get shaped for such task, therefore I don't see why you can't identify yourself as your job. The stuff the author talks about, empathy, ability to joke etc. is also heavily influenced by your day-to-day activity, your job. Heck, there are even some people who claim they became aphantasic and lost all capacity for dreams and creativity after working too much with computers.

Anyways, I get the point of the post, capitalism sucks and makes most of our existence as worth as cattle, that is, if we don't value the stuff outside work.

Re: You are not your job

#172

Post by johnisgood »

abcde666777 wrote: post #122

Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we…

BTW YouTubers get paid for... generally themselves alone. I mean come on, many are getting paid for reacting to other people's videos. Wild.

Re: You are not your job

#174

Post by baq »

ainiriand wrote: post #162

Since the beginning of human history, people have always defined themselves by what they contribute to the group; a hunter, a farmer, a king... Today is no different. We may not be our job, but that is how others see us at first. They are not trying to get to know you; they just want to know where you fit, so they know how to deal with you. Only later, if things get personal, might they become interested in you as a…

I agree to an extent that you mostly worked with people you grown up with on those farms, some of which became lifelong friends. This has been replaced by making friends in high school and then parting ways forever, more or less.

I’ll add that if you see your colleagues as anything else than primarily working for money, you’re a bit delusional unless you know for a fact they could not work for the rest of their lives and be financially fine. Of course there are other reasons to work than money, but the way the system is set up you’re not supposed to care more about them than about cold hard cash.

Re: You are not your job

#175

Post by logicchains »

oytis wrote: post #49

People don't need self-help advise, they need a fair redistribution of increased productivity. We don't make a big deal of our jobs because we are stupid - it's the society that assigns this or that income to this or that job, and income determines lifestyle or in worst case the survival.

>People don't need self-help advise, they need a fair redistribution of increased productivity.

The increased productivity is pretty much entirely coming from AI researchers and the companies investing in huge amounts of GPUs, and they are the ones receiving most of the windfalls, how's that not fair?

Re: You are not your job

#176

Post by Tor3 »

The focus on "what you do" is very US-centric (or possibly North American). When you meet someone then one of the very first things asked is "what do you do" or something to that extent. What your job is. But it's not like that at all elsewhere in the world. It varies a lot. I myself never ask that question, unless it's for a very specific reason. And _never_ as part of an introduction.

I've known people for decades without knowing what their job is, or I only have a vague idea about their job. It's not important for people here. The person itself is important. There are other things than the job which define the person. I know this sounds very strange for Americans, but, in fact, the strangeness is the other way around.

I'm not sure that I can say "I am not my job" [mostly because I actually very much enjoy what I do there], but I can definitely say "you are not your job". Because I don't even know your job, nor do I much care.

Re: You are not your job

#177

Post by paganel »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #77
beastman82 wrote: post #12

I want to thank everyone who hates work, is mentally checked out of their jobs and quiet quitting etc. It makes it much easier for me to distinguish myself as a hard worker who cares about the business being successful. It also helps me keep my job during layoffs because I can assure you the managers have noticed. When you are old and have lots of formative experiences that are not work-based, we can shake hands and…

I mostly agree with the parent post. There certainly are roles where the entire scope of the job is to convert Jira tickets to code and nothing else and nobody will blame you for being a checked out 9-5er in such places but that isn't the audience of HN. Most here are software engineers who get fairly broad latitude to exercise judgment and expertise/education in furtherance of business goals and that's they get the…

You only care about “business goals” under a certain age, I’d say 35-ish, afterwards, if you hadn’t realized by that point that it’s just a paycheck and nothing more then no mindfulness trickery not any “let’s-experience-things”-consoomerism is going to fill the spiritual void inside of you.

Could be 35-ish of age, like in my case, could be later, could be earlier, but at some point that realization will have to come otherwise you’ll remain an empty corpse throughout the rest of it all.

Re: You are not your job

#178

Post by benhurmarcel »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #13

There’s an old aphorism: “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I worked in tech, because I love tech . No other reason, really. I accepted a job, making maybe half of what I could make, elsewhere, because of the personal satisfaction I got from it, and the relationships I made, there. When I retired, I have continued to develop software, and am currently “leaning into” AI-assisted development.…

I don't know if it's so universal. My opinion is rather that most jobs will make your passion become dull.

I knew some airline pilots who loved flying, but didn't feel so much like it after decades.

I got into aerospace engineering because I liked all aspects of it. A couple decades of end-to-end meetings and "TPS reports" later, I'm not as passionate anymore. Some time ago I was excited about solving a practical issue by coding some new tool myself, a year of exchanges with management and IT has made me look forward to move on.

By all measures my company is pretty good in my industry, but the corporate life just has a way of sucking away passion.

Re: You are not your job

#179

Post by Tor3 »

heikkilevanto wrote: post #19
tim-tday wrote: post #3

50% of your waking hours are spent at work. The person you are revolves around your working hours, the problems you solve the concerns you have, the money you make the persona you display at work. Saying you are not your work is wishful thinking. Try giving it up and check in on how much of you is still the same. Maybe you wish to be more than your working self. That’s honorable and desirable. Just declaring it isn’t…

> Saying you are not your work is wishful thinking. Try giving it up and check in on how much of you is still the same. I retired a few years ago, and I believe and insist that I am very much the same person. To see a person only as what they do at work seems awfully limiting. Even when I was working, I was also a sailor, musician, woodworker, home brewer, cat person, chess player, leather guy, and a good number of o…

Well said. I'm nearing retirement age and planning what I'll do, and yes, setting up my hobby room with computers and whatnot. And, as you, I've also been many other things, including some on your list, and more.

Re: You are not your job

#180

Post by pjmlp »

Great article from a place of privilege, now go tell that to the HR drone, nowadays most likely a LLM powered assistant, that my CV matters enough for a phone call.
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