Are we really shaming having hobbies now?
No, the author actually says: Acknowledge that they are hobbies.
What does that even mean?
Why does the author care that much anyway? Seems like a person I would not enjoy talking with.
Vanity activities
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Re: Vanity activities
#22I enjoyed the article. Many comments here on HN seem to be missing the point. The author isn't bashing on "hobbies" and is not even bashing on "vanity activities". S/he is merely challenging us to acknowledge them for what they are. Stop kidding yourself. If you churn credit cards (for example) and are one of the 10% that can make it truly profitable, then good for you. The other 90% are probably kidding themselves.…
IMHO, churning is clearly profitable if you pay off your card every month, will hit the spend requirements organically and are organized enough to cancel to avoid annual fees in the second year. Some people dive into manufactured spending to hit the required spending, but then you really need to consider the time invested.
The question is more about if the rewards are meaningful. I think it's actually worth doing a bit of churning to get exposure to different banks and figure out which one you like... might as well get paid for that. But after a certain point, I value stability and routine more than $300 to jump through hoops... and I'm not going back to Chase no matter what they want to pay me.
Re: Vanity activities
#23“The number of pageviews on your website and the number of likes on your tweets are fun to look at and sound impressive, but optimizing for them completely misses the point if they don’t lead to something more important (e.g. profit).”
Profit is fun to look at and sounds impressive, but optimizing for it completely misses the point if it doesn't lead to something more important (e.g. human flourishing, or net societal gain)
Re: Vanity activities
#24To call reading the news “vanity” exposes the true vanity of this kind of post. What is the logic of assigning the word “vanity” to my interest to know what’s going on in the world? It’s vanity because I have no important decisions to make about the war in Ukraine, or the perfidy of my government? It’s not vanity, it’s a desire to understand my world and my place within it. What IS vanity is imagining that one’s own…
The given definition of vain is "if they don’t lead to something more important (e.g. profit)". I don't directly profit from reading the news, it's true. I'd have to make quite hand-wavy arguments about why it's beneficial. We can also list activities such as friendship, dreams, appreciating beauty, and feeling excited as non-profitable. Then there's having aspirations: what do we gain from that? Without goals, we co…
I like your comment.
I'm confused by how differently some otherwise smart people view the world than I do. My wife and family, by some definitions, are worthless. They have no economic value. But I look at them and feel that we lead lives of meaning and purpose every day. We know why we are alive and we are living up to it. If that's unproductive, then productivity itself is, I declare, vanity.
Re: Vanity activities
#25On a related note: I've run businesses for close to 20 years, most of those spent selling to other businesses, and I still fail to understand what the entirety of LinkedIn is for and if there is any of it that wouldn't fall under the author's definition of "Vanity activities". If anyone has a clue, please enlighten me.
>what the entirety of LinkedIn is for
Signalling allegiance.
Re: Vanity activities
#26There's something horribly broken about the styling on this site. Attempting to scale the page (Ctrl-+) doesn't change the font size. I have no idea how the page managed that, but whatever mechanism allowed that, browsers should kill it with fire.
Re: Vanity activities
#27Re: Vanity activities
#28Author really should have figured out a better word than "vanity."
Re: Vanity activities
#29To call reading the news “vanity” exposes the true vanity of this kind of post. What is the logic of assigning the word “vanity” to my interest to know what’s going on in the world? It’s vanity because I have no important decisions to make about the war in Ukraine, or the perfidy of my government? It’s not vanity, it’s a desire to understand my world and my place within it. What IS vanity is imagining that one’s own…
The given definition of vain is "if they don’t lead to something more important (e.g. profit)". I don't directly profit from reading the news, it's true. I'd have to make quite hand-wavy arguments about why it's beneficial. We can also list activities such as friendship, dreams, appreciating beauty, and feeling excited as non-profitable. Then there's having aspirations: what do we gain from that? Without goals, we co…
yeah that's just a bad definition. nobody would describe painting for fun as "vanity". vanity metrics make sense because in business the goal is to make money. in life that is not the goal.
Re: Vanity activities
#30Some good points in here, but with respect to networking, the author misses the forest for the trees. Sure, when you go to networking events, you aren't certain you are going to get a job from the folks you meet. What you are doing is increasing your luck surface area. Hiring is not an entirely rational process, but if someone doesn't know you exist, they won't hire you (how could they?). From there, it follows that…
> Hiring is not an entirely rational process
Agreed! I'd go so far as to say hiring is irrational in the aggregate.
The usual "rational" artifacts, if we can call them that (coding challenges, resumés, etc.) serve almost exclusively to eliminate candidates rather than boost good candidates. Firms are generally ok with false negatives from these artifacts as simply the cost of doing business.
> From there, it follows that meeting someone and letting them know you exist increases the chances (however small) that they can and will assist you on your career path.
I've seen this described as "people hire who they vibe with", and I've yet to see it play otherwise in my career. I'm not saying this is good, or fair, or desirable. It just is.
The folks who get offers are the ones who can meet people, tell stories (even true ones!), listen, and demonstrate that they can empathize with and contribute to messy, flawed organizations.
Humans have yet to invent a technology more powerful than social relationships, and I think technologists downplay this at their own peril.