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Fuck being productive

dostoynikov.bearblog.dev

221–230 of 382 posts

Re: Fuck being productive

#221

I'm incredibly lucky in that I live 5 minutes away from the office. I work 7.5 hours a day, Monday to Friday. Every day I got a ton of time to dedicate to things I like... and yet, many times I feel drained from crunching code every day... It's been like 8 months since I worked on a personal project... lately all I do is play Breath of the Wild... But I feel pretty good about it, I think I relate to this fuck-being-p…

If you don't already, try working out 30 mins a day!

You hit the nail in the head... I haven't don't a single thing in months... I really need to get out there and do something.

Re: Fuck being productive

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a good, productive engineer, your boss will bend over backwards to not lose you. Or they should be. Your negotiation power is a lot stronger than you think. Plenty of jobs out there and it never hurts to remind them that they are replacable. I've enjoyed the work conditions I mention throughout my career. I'm 48 now. But of course I work in a part of the world where this stuff was sorted out decades ago. 4…

> Being a wage slave is a choice. If you don't like your life, change it. It's incredibly unfortunate that instead of using a shred of empathy to see that your situation isn't the situation of nearly everyone else in the industry, or alive for that matter. "If you don't like your life, change it" screams "I have no idea what I am talking about" because you're failing to see that situations elsewhere are different. Ta…

Yes, all I suggested was that workers coordinate to demand conditions. Their reply was that individuals should talk to their bosses alone, or find a new boss. It's always mystified me why people will shoot down the idea of workers organizing, and meanwhile their managers, execs, investors, board and their industry connections routinely meet and coordinate over how to keep wages at a desired market position, in other words how to keep wages as suppressed as possible.

They're organized as hell over this, why should workers stay atomized? There's a reason employers don't want workers talking about wages with anyone except their boss.

Re: Fuck being productive

#223

Your week has 112 hours of waking time. If you spend 50% of that at work, you have spent 50% of it at work. Probably the most productive 50%. The entire point of working for someone else is to attain enough money that you don't need to any more and you can treat it as more of an optional thing. If you're not doing that then unless you really enjoy your job burnout is inevitable.

> The entire point of working for someone else is to attain enough money that you don't need to any more and you can treat it as more of an optional thing. If that were the singular goal/point, then most people should simply give up working entirely because they'll never reach it. They're working their own version of the sunk cost fallacy.

[deleted]

Re: Fuck being productive

#225
I have a hard-pressed belief that long commutes are extremely detrimental. Even if you work long hours, if the commute is no more than 15 minutes, it ain't so bad when you get home and you still have plenty of time for everything else. The commute here is the problem, not the work. No shit you're tired. You're working an entire day and traveling 3 hours.

Not saying you should be doing anymore, just saying it's okay to not be productive after traveling that much on top of a full work day. If it makes you feel better I work from home and recently had to travel for a customer. 2 hours each way, and I only worked 7 hours at the customer and it was the most exhausted I had been in months.

Re: Fuck being productive

#226
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent isnt a "hedonic treadmill". Neither is food or energy. These are the 3 areas seeing the most inflation right now. Rents in London are up 20% in a year, food almost the same, and energy ...well, everyone knows what has happened to energy. The average Londoner is paying almost 40% of their take home pay on rent, so saving 2/3rds is already impossible. Even as one of the lucky ones earning a top 1% salary, I _still…

Yeah. London is great when young and going out to do things all the time, sucks later on though. In London I definitely felt like I was living paycheck to paycheck, but moving to a European city with better services (but probably less culture), rent for our 3br flat in the city center was cheaper than our 1 bed in zone 6 - and taxes are much lower. Now 9% of my takehome goes on rent, and I have no idea how I could ev…

Where did you move? Just curious.

Re: Fuck being productive

#227
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?) This mindset is how you kneecap your career. You’ve pigeonholed yourself into the foot soldier category when it becomes immediately obvious to managers that you aren’t thinking about what’s actually good for the company. You may already know this, but it needs to be explicitly called out that taking that approach to your business relationship…

Caring about the product is not good for your career. You should care about your career, and most of the time, that means that progressing the product should be your goal. However, when the interests of yourself and your company diverge, don't get stuck holding the bag.

If you care about your work-product, and can find a way to be passionate about it, then everything else comes very easy. That includes being noticed, promoted, etc.

Passionate does not necessarily imply loving absolutely every aspect of the job, it just means you've found some aspect you really enjoy and are excited to spend some time on.

People who work solely to advance their careers are generally not awesome to work with, in my experience. The people who work passionately tend to have their careers advanced for them. YMMV...

Re: Fuck being productive

#228

Honestly, I do feel somewhat similar. I work a normal 8-hour day and I am not obsessed with productivity nor I am some kind of anti-work activist, but it just feels like such a waste of time. The only reason I go to work is for money. I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?), nor the technologies used (each of which brings its own challenges and frustrations). If I didn't need to go t…

The main reason we all work for someone else is for money but there is something to be said about the things we build at work and not caring about them. This is something that took me a long time to realize but you need to stop thinking about software as a field and start thinking of it as a skill set. From there figure out what interests you. Wildlife, economics, vehicles, etc. or whatever, and then use your skill s…

That's all fine and dandy, but more often than not you get into the field and you discover your whole interest that got you into the field isn't really how the field works in practice. There's an old saying about not making a job out of something you love, because having to do it for money versus out of your own interest will make you grow to hate it before long.

Re: Fuck being productive

#229

I have a hard-pressed belief that long commutes are extremely detrimental. Even if you work long hours, if the commute is no more than 15 minutes, it ain't so bad when you get home and you still have plenty of time for everything else. The commute here is the problem, not the work. No shit you're tired. You're working an entire day and traveling 3 hours. Not saying you should be doing anymore, just saying it's okay t…

> if the commute is no more than 15 minutes

If the commute is no more than 15 minutes, you are losing 30 minutes there and back every day, which is 10 hours every month, almost a waking day every month. Its still lost time. This is without counting the time lost in preparing for getting out of the house, settling in at work, and then doing the exact opposite when commuting back. Make each 10 minutes if you are someone who gets up and going very fast. You are now up to 1 hour lost every day, 20 hours every month. Almost and entire day or two waking days...

Re: Fuck being productive

#230
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in Canada, but Toronto has an average housing cost of $1.1 million dollars (USD)[1], which is almost as much as San Francisco (at $1.3 million dollars)[2]. Meanwhile the average salary in Toronto is $52k USD per year[3], versus San Francisco's average salary of $109k[4]. So that might give you some idea. [1]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-home-sales-1.... [2]: https://www.zillow.com/home…

I’m more interested in how this happened, not that it is happening.

Out of control immigration. 10x per capita what's allowed in the US, all going to three major cities.

Not only that, but when filing out immigration petitions, most firms will actually file in Canada and the US. Workers who can't meet the higher bar for US immigration will be sent to Canada.

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