Logic fail.
"We have it better than people who don't, therefore we shouldn't complain."
We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
171–180 of 312 posts
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#172Yes, working from home is great. It is a luxury. Working at your own pace is also nice. But working "on the Internet" means you're also comparing yourself to the best, brightest, and driven. Then it seems like you're achieving maybe 10% of what you seemingly could be, because you're setting your own goals based on what you see out there. It's like getting stuck in traffic. You can point out that I'm sitting in climat…
So what is the hack that keeps us from constantly taking our luxuries for granted? Just as with the traffic situation, how often do we find ourselves complaining about having to do the laundry or the dishes or vacuuming or even heating up something for dinner -- all fairly small and easy tasks thanks to the help of technology, which took much more time and labor in a previous generation? Yes, it's true that the compl…
Study Stoicism or Buddhism (if you don't like the religious aspect, it's easy enough to only focus on the philosophical - that's what I do).
There's a surprising amount of overlap between the two. I always liked Buddhism conceptually, but it never really clicked with me. Stoicism on the other hand feels quite natural. Maybe it's a anglo-centric thing.
At the root of both philosophies is the realization of impermanence of all things. Recognizing (and really feeling) this impermanence goes a long way to helping you to mindfully appreciate what you have.
To give you the flavour of what I mean, some Stoic practices include:
- negative visualisation: imagine what it will be like when thing/person X is no longer in your life (which is inevitable). This, somewhat counter-intuitively, brings you into the present and helps you enjoy what you have.
- periodic self deprivation: go a week without your smartphone, or hot showers. This does two things: it teaches you that you can survive without something you're attached to, and also lets you appreciate it. In some ways the essence of Buddhism and Stoicism is "appreciation without attachment".
Stoicism is very practical - Epictetus, Seneca etc basically set you homework. The foundational principle is that there are 2 classes of things: those completely within your control, and everything else. Happiness, freedom and living a good life come focusing your energy on the first class, and being indifferent to the second. The "homework" is about helping you practically interact with the world from that perspective.
edit: for further reading, I'd recommend Irvine's A Guide To The Good Life. Although I find reading Epictetus and Seneca much more enlightening, Irvine is a nice on-ramp.
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#173Most of those recruiters do not deserve to be employed in the first place. They lack basic empathy towards job seekers. They talk like they own you. I have not met any of them yet that does not meet this description unfortunately. I think having some power on other people's lives corrupt them.
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#174Yes, working from home is great. It is a luxury. Working at your own pace is also nice. But working "on the Internet" means you're also comparing yourself to the best, brightest, and driven. Then it seems like you're achieving maybe 10% of what you seemingly could be, because you're setting your own goals based on what you see out there. It's like getting stuck in traffic. You can point out that I'm sitting in climat…
So what is the hack that keeps us from constantly taking our luxuries for granted? Just as with the traffic situation, how often do we find ourselves complaining about having to do the laundry or the dishes or vacuuming or even heating up something for dinner -- all fairly small and easy tasks thanks to the help of technology, which took much more time and labor in a previous generation? Yes, it's true that the compl…
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. We enrich "business guys" with connections to billion dollar exits while we ourselves make middle-class or slightly upper-middle class wages. Meanwhile anyone willing to take out the loans to put themselves through Dental school will eventually make more than we do and if they have the motivation to open up their own practice, much more than we do.
97% of people want to work. Like to code. That's what they want to do. And they expect the other 3% to organize these jobs for them. Because they don't know/can't/aren't interested in organizing these jobs on their own. It really boils down to: do you want to be a craftsman or wealthy man. Because if you want to be in the 3% organizing jobs for others, you won't have any time to do coding. It's very easy to end up in…
97% of people like to code??? What??? Unless you mean 97% of developers - in which case, yeah, I should hope so. But even if you meant 97% of the tech industry? This industry is full of people who want to "design apps" or "manage developers" or some other such nonsense (obviously, those are real things - but there are plenty of people claiming they want to do them that have no idea what they actually entail)
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always wonder what people mean by "tough days."
The days you don't feel like getting out of bed. The days everything in your project goes wrong. The days you think your idea is actually worthless and you're a fraud. The days you dread your investors asking for a status update. The days Murphy's Law is a bitch. The days you have a bug that just makes no sense. The days your client is being an ass and you have no desire to deal with them. The days your boss is in a…
Oh yeah, I've had them - I wasn't being patronizing.
I just believe, due to the problem-solving behavior of engineers/techs/programmers, we tend to tunnel-vision instead of looking at the big picture.
If the big picture is going wrong, it's a problem. Now, a lot of bad days add up to a bad big picture, but if you're planning right, and you have a bit of luck, a few bad days will eventually get washed away, no matter the project.
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the sentiment, but I think your facts are a bit off and reflect HN insularity. The median 33% household income ("middle class") in the US is $30,000 to $62,500 ( household ). Even if you are the sole earner in your household, it is still unlikely that you make less than $62,500. If you do make less than that, ask for a raise. If you don't make less than that, or your combined household income is more tha…
Sorry, but splitting "classes" in thirds is just ridiculous. The way the economy works is by concentrating wealth, so any class definition based on clustering according to income/net-worth cannot be linear. A logarithmic scale would make much more sense, by example: Poor:= 0-50%, Middle class:= 51%-75%, Upper class:=76-100%??? This model is extremely rough and inaccurate, but is a step in the right direction. The mai…
> Still, the "upper class" category lumps together the merely wealthy (smallish business owners, the most successful professionals) with the extremely rich, and all possibilities in-between.
It also lumps in the high-income earners with the high-net worth people (the ones everyone thinks of when they say "rich").
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#178Yet another bullshit article. IT has zero entrance barrier, anyone can pick up tutorial from internet and start software development. Many people give up after they find out that software development is actually very hard. And work from home is not luxury. Even East Asia textile sweatshops offer work from home. It is just Californian startups who require total control over their minions.
> Even East Asia textile sweatshops offer work from home.
I'd like to learn more about this. Intuitively, it makes sense for something like this to be true; the "workers slaving away at assembly lines in factories 12 hours a day 7 days a week" meme seems a bit too ancient and well-established to be accurate and we definitely don't see that many sources of what the East Asia sweatshop lifestyle is actually like. Any links?
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#179There are definitely amazing, luxurious aspects of programming. Something came into view for me recently though, that I never realized before:
When I graduated from high school, I started my own little (tutoring) company, and did software from after that, so I never had the experience of a "normal", hourly job, like retail or coal mining or whatever.
Recently I had an opportunity to do a job like that and the mood struck me to try it out for like a month. I realized something huge about our jobs versus a lot of other jobs:
I make more than $100/hr sitting in my pajamas, and I'm totally blessed. But I work my fucking ass off. My brain is fully engaged, and when I charge you $125 for an hour of my time, you got more than that value, because I was working, firing on all cylinders.
What I realized in this other job was that even though I worked like 10 hours, it felt like I didn't do much because... I didn't. My coworkers and I, we did some stuff, chatted, laughed a bit, did another bit or piece, took lunch, etc. We spent a lot of time just socializing, having down time, not thinking too hard.
I also noticed that there wasn't really room to do "better". The nature of the job sort of set a cap on how productive you could be during a given time period, so the culture just grew around that. Think of a gas station attendant sitting around watching TV most of the day, the night audit at the hotel, or the guy flipping burgers when it's not lunch time.
That's when I really got the distinction between $10-20/hr work and $100+ -- we, collectively do difficult, mentally taxing work that requires long hours of intense focus, and a dedication to craftmanship that most other jobs just don't require. And we do that job under mostly under unreasonably tight deadlines, often for employers that don't understand what we're doing and therefore undermine us in many ways.
Yes, it's luxury in many ways. But it's also a coal mine of its own sort.
Re: We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but I think the problem with cut-and-paste recruiter spam is that it's not really an opportunity. Most of the "offers" I get don't match my skillset and would not result in a job even if I pursued them. They simply increase the noise in the channel and don't add any value to anyone.
the problem with going to bars is that everyone who hits on me is not really my type. most of the 'offers' i get are from fatties and uglies or losers, and would not result in a relationship even even if i decided to sleep with them. these people simply increase the noise at the bar and don't add value to anyone. oh my god it's just like, so annoying, you know? faux outrage
Ok, that's almost there. Now instead of sitting at a bar, sit at a public park while reading a book. And instead of being propositioned by ugly people, let's say that they are pimps, each trying to get you to stand on their street corner. Also, you have a big, fat wedding ring, and a huge sign around your neck saying "NO PIMPS". Also, you don't know this, since you ignore them as much as you can, but the pimps' customers all have herpaidsyphichlamorrhea. And they live in Antarctica. And they won't pay you market price.
But yeah, faux outrage.