See I like this but also the majority of software jobs these days are a net negative to humanity
I'm addicted to being useful
251–260 of 322 posts
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#252Nothing wrong on the surface with this, and the author explicitly acknowledges this risk, but it bears repeating: Corporate environments are almost always toxic places to fulfill your emotional needs. It is true that finding a job that "resonates" with your personality is key to living a fulfilling life, and that software engineering is the kind of profession that is really going to fit certain personality types extr…
I have similar reservations that this expresses, and it leaves me wondering as to what kind of person is suited for this kind of environment. Perhaps that's a pointless question, although I think that there is at least one useful answer to it: I'm not the kind of person who's suited to those environment. I'm not well-suited to take such a huge chunk of my life and basically throwing it away by creating a barrier betw…
Throughout the vast arc of human existence, you worked or you died. Nature does not hand you food, shelter, clothing, and flush toilets for free. Most of us, if dropped naked into the wilderness, will die within 24 hours.
Bone evidence from colonial America is the colonists worked like dogs and died young. Bone evidence from the Indians showed repeated famines.
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#253I find it kinda amazing how these vaporware equivalent nullprose keep on hitting the front page.
vagueprose = vagueposting
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
> confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion This is not emotional validation; nobody wants to be told something they can decide for themselves. Instead, they want to hear that it is okay to feel said emotion. When venting to someone, one doesn't want to hear "I understand that you feel that way", they want to hear "I understand why you feel that way". The former is a dismissal (taking the guise of a vali…
> Instead, they want to hear that it is okay to feel said emotion. That's not the definition the others are using, but this seems to be a game of whack-a-mole with everyone's different ideas about what it means. That said, I think your definition highlights the problem: By telling someone it's okay to feel the emotion, you've implicitly endorsed the response. The situations I'm speaking about involve people developin…
> That said, I think your definition highlights the problem: By telling someone it's okay to feel the emotion, you've implicitly endorsed the response.
This tells me that you've not understood my meaning. One is not condoning or endorsing any behavioral response when they say the emotional response (which motivated the behavior) is valid and natural. They are distinct things and one does not necessarily follow or precede the other.
> their reaction is not actually appropriate or okay
I suspect we are talking past each other here. If "their reaction" refers to their emotions, that is not your concern; to think otherwise is wildly antisocial. If it instead refers to their actions and/or behaviors, you simply are not bemoaning emotional validation.
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#255Ever since Lowtax killed himself and I felt a lot of undeserved guilt over it [1] [2] I have developed a sort of "savior complex". I always liked being helpful, but at this point I've sort of become "aggressively helpful", which ironically probably isn't helping. I feel a constant need to take care of people and help people, and I think it's in no small part because a tiny part of me is afraid they're going to do som…
It’s really sweet that you still think about him and bring it up. You’re a good one.
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#256I think my warning would be that prioritizing tasks you know you can do and do well may be satisfying, but may limit growth. I identify with the author's POV quite a bit, but sometimes I find that when I take a step back and put in less effort on the day-to-day tasks, the feedback on my performance goes _up_. Perhaps it's because completing those tasks elicits a dependency on you, and stepping back from them allows o…
I haven’t read them but there seemed to be some links to other articles about being wise about what you chose to work on, as you say.
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#257Ever since Lowtax killed himself and I felt a lot of undeserved guilt over it [1] [2] I have developed a sort of "savior complex". I always liked being helpful, but at this point I've sort of become "aggressively helpful", which ironically probably isn't helping. I feel a constant need to take care of people and help people, and I think it's in no small part because a tiny part of me is afraid they're going to do som…
What sillysaurusx said, good on you.
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#258The problem of doing this now is that no company will care, they will be happy that you are doing more for less, so no salary increase, no job tittle change. I used to love my job (DevOps, Platform, DevSecOps Engineer) but I learned the hard way to disappear after 4:59PM and never get online before 8:59 Also, no more e-mail, teams, slack, etc, on my personal phone. While working be in the office or WFH, I do my best…
1. Disagree. Plenty of companies still care about impact as a key metric in promotion processes so if working more increases impact, then it can increase rewards.
2. Not all this type of work is transactional. I’ve “worked” many extra hours for the pleasure of it, in which case it’s not working instead of living, it is living. This is the spirit of OPs article IMO.
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re making a reasonable point, but I think you’re arguing against a somewhat strawmanned version of emotional validation. You’re treating “validation” as synonymous with “agreeing the emotional response was proportionate and correct.” But that’s not really what validation means in a therapeutic or even colloquial sense. Validating someone’s emotions typically means acknowledging that the emotion is real and unders…
I disagree. I think the overly academic isolation of "validating emotions" into something that happens without endorsing the response isn't how real people communicate. Any time you're "validating emotions" in the real world, there is going to be some degree of implicit endorsement that the reaction was valid. The idea of "validating emotions" being synonymous with saying "I agree that you feel that way" is rather in…
You’re collapsing two distinct claims. The first, that real-world communication is messier than clinical frameworks, is obviously true but doesn’t do the work you need it to. The second, that acknowledging someone’s emotional experience is “infantile” because “nobody needs someone to agree that the emotion they experienced is the emotion they experienced,” is empirically false.
People frequently do need that. That’s basically what dismissive attachment styles and invalidating environments produce: people who aren’t sure their own internal states are real or legitimate. “I can see why that hurt” lands very differently than “that shouldn’t have hurt.” The former isn’t agreeing the other party was wrong or the reaction was proportionate. It’s communicating “your inner experience makes sense to me.”
The implicit endorsement concern is real but overstated. Skilled communicators navigate this constantly. “That sounds really frustrating. What do you think was actually going on there?” validates the frustration while opening space for reexamination. The failure mode you’re pointing at is when someone only validates and never probes, which is just conflict avoidance.
The “overly academic” framing is doing some rhetorical work here. These distinctions come from observing what actually helps people versus what entrenches them. Therapists, mediators, and anyone who’s gotten good at difficult conversations know the difference intuitively. It’s not academic. It’s practical.
Re: I'm addicted to being useful
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have similar reservations that this expresses, and it leaves me wondering as to what kind of person is suited for this kind of environment. Perhaps that's a pointless question, although I think that there is at least one useful answer to it: I'm not the kind of person who's suited to those environment. I'm not well-suited to take such a huge chunk of my life and basically throwing it away by creating a barrier betw…
Throughout the vast arc of human existence, you worked or you died. Nature does not hand you food, shelter, clothing, and flush toilets for free. Most of us, if dropped naked into the wilderness, will die within 24 hours. Bone evidence from colonial America is the colonists worked like dogs and died young. Bone evidence from the Indians showed repeated famines.
You've misunderstood what the person is saying.