Live data from Hacker News

The days are long but the decades are short

blog.samaltman.com

171–180 of 406 posts

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#171
our culture is so tone deaf to aging, you turn 30 and think life is behind you, old man before death's door ..

(anyone know the W.Blake drawing?)

in another decade 19yr olds will be drafting up long blog posts about recipes for success, how they made it, legacy concerns et al.

its like the old man's domain got poached, and now old people have nothing to say they are so far out there .. :]

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can absolutely see this at an investment bank, or at a job where physical presence is mandatory (such as a security guard, a teacher, or a bank teller). In a creative job like software, it's absurd. Especially when so many places say, "Come when you want".

Then why bother with an office at all? We have discussions here about remote work and private offices disrupting team communication, but if your team isn't all in the office at the same time I don't see how that is any better.

There's a lot of space between "Don't be 5 mins late" and anarchy. My firm is "10-5 is encouraged, but there's some flexibility, and be available early morning or late night to accommodate customers and employees in other locations."

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can absolutely see this at an investment bank, or at a job where physical presence is mandatory (such as a security guard, a teacher, or a bank teller). In a creative job like software, it's absurd. Especially when so many places say, "Come when you want".

A major reason for a lack of WFH is due to a manager's inability to manage WFH - these are people that have only been taught how to keep people on task, and have to physically view your body in order to know what you are thinking and doing. Many of us are well acquainted with the indirect communication from ticket systems, email, and other sources of social noise. We're used to managers who can take a collection of t…

This assumes that the managers know the details of the employee's jobs too. This gets less true when you become a general manager. But there's a big difference between "I'm managing your time" and "I'm managing your result" which the General Manager is on the hook for.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#174

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will b…

>> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about

And even when you do care about it, there's no way you know in advance how it's gonna go on the field. A friend is actually pretty sad about his job because of the company structure and workflow even though the domain is almost spot on what he loves.

Work and fulfillment seem unrelated to me.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#175
post #74

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will b…

Hmm I always default to not "do what you love" but "love what you do" in that most work has some interesting component, and what's really important to develop is the ability to isolate that aspect and motivate yourself with it. That's something I think everyone can use, regardless of their position in life

That's true, but still, it's advice that's a lot easier and more helpful for us the privileged.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#176
post #74

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will b…

Hmm I always default to not "do what you love" but "love what you do" in that most work has some interesting component, and what's really important to develop is the ability to isolate that aspect and motivate yourself with it. That's something I think everyone can use, regardless of their position in life

It's easy to say, but in practice it's difficult to go home satisfied with the concept of a dead end job.

Personally I found plenty of little things to love about otherwise horrible dead end jobs, but that wasn't really the reason to keep going back to work, I was there to get paid to live my life outside of work because the job itself was not really fun or fruitful.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#178
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I always default to not "do what you love" but "love what you do" in that most work has some interesting component, and what's really important to develop is the ability to isolate that aspect and motivate yourself with it. That's something I think everyone can use, regardless of their position in life

It's easy to say, but in practice it's difficult to go home satisfied with the concept of a dead end job. Personally I found plenty of little things to love about otherwise horrible dead end jobs, but that wasn't really the reason to keep going back to work, I was there to get paid to live my life outside of work because the job itself was not really fun or fruitful.

I don't think it's about individual jobs; more industries/verticals/skillsets. If you have e.g. plumbing knowledge and not much else, first, learn to love (something about) plumbing. Then, figure out a way to make money doing the specific part of plumbing you love.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#179
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a child relativizes everything else and makes life so much easier because you don't need to figure out the meaning of your life anymore and you don't even need to be successful, neither personally nor professionally. This does not mean you won't be or you can't be, it just does not matter that much anymore. And this is friggin' liberating.

Father of two here. It's true that having a child forces any responsible adult into revisiting their priorities, and some things that seemed important before parenthood suddenly aren't . I don't think it eliminates a desire to be successful: I think that it changes the parameters by which you determine success. And having a child throw up/mess on your nice clothes and shower the inside of your nice car with food and…

And you can easily become a parent without even reading the brochure. When the child is born you are not granted with any more wisdom that you had, it is the same you, only with a child in hands. How do you deal with it is another question.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#180

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will b…

>I just can help but feel sometimes that it's irresponsible to dump the "you can be/do anything!" sentiment on our youth when the reality is nowhere near that for most of them. This is my take as well. If prompted for advice, I tell people to find satisfation outside of work. Work is a rigged game. It simply will not make you happy outside of some truly edge cases and those cases are often temporary until things chan…

Yes it's strange how far our developments in efficiency have progressed yet somehow everyone is still working 60 hour work weeks..

Reminds me of that obscure Bill Murray movie "City of Ember" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkSFsbv6eUg

Post reply on HN