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I'm addicted to being useful

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Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#261

Post by danielmarkbruce »

carlosjobim wrote: post #212
spicyusername wrote: post #198

Nothing 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…

> corporate culture can and will take advantage of you All jobs take advantage of you to some degree. The difference is that a corporate job pays much more, and the work load is a tiny fraction of other jobs. If you on top of this can work with something you enjoy, then you've gotten a very good deal.

And many people can and do take advantage of corporations.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#262

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

Aurornis wrote: post #238
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It took someone more level headed to start telling her when her reactions were not valid to certain situations to begin stabilizing the behavior. I guess at the risk of splitting hairs, I think it's more likely they stopped misappropriating more than they started invalidating. I see a difference between "you shouldn't feel that way" and "I disagree with that conclusion" such that one can logically say both (well, t…

So many people are trying to project onto this anecdote or substitute their own reality. The reality is simpler: It was basically "Yeah it sucks that happened at work, but sulking about it for 3 days is not a good way to handle that" Whereas the "validating emotions" guy would just jump in and be a sounding board for 3 days straight Feeling a little upset over minor annoyances is valid. Having your emotional state cr…

> So many people are trying to project onto this anecdote

For what it's worth, I imagined a scenario very similar to the one you described in this comment.

> Yeah it sucks that happened at work

This is emotional validation.

> sulking about it for 3 days is not a good way to handle that

This has nothing to do with emotional validation. It can be said before, after, or without said validation.

> Whereas the "validating emotions" guy would just jump in and be a sounding board for 3 days straight

It sounds like the "validating emotions" person was validating the sulking behaviors (whether in addition to validating the related emotions or not) and saying that they were only validating the emotions.

Anyway, the purpose for my replies is not to get you to agree with that person or to change your mind about the anecdote, but to offer a more meaningful distinction of what's being discussed.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#263

Post by shimman »

WalterBright wrote: post #252
pclalv wrote: post #209

Earlier 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.

Nature also doesn't hand out corporate welfare or export subsidies but some how that's perfectly natural.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#264

Post by danielmarkbruce »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #254
Aurornis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pre…

>> emotional response (which motivated the behavior) is valid and natural.

This is obviously nonsense. If an old woman falls over and breaks her knee, and one's emotional response is happiness - they have real problems - it's not natural or valid to feel that. If the idea of choking women to death makes one feel excited - no it's not natural or valid to feel that emotion, they have serious problems. One could go on.

Maybe you haven't met any really bad people in life - when you do you will often find they have very strange emotional responses to things.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#265

Post by Nevermark »

WalterBright wrote: post #252
pclalv wrote: post #209

Earlier 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.

Generally speaking, the clan you worked to survive with generally didn't cancel you because a seashell currency accountant saw some tangential benefit for a moment. Which might just be their own survival need to look busy or be a perforative hard ass, to avoid the same thing.

The loyalty you are dismissing as unnatural, was painstakingly discovered by our genes, precisely because it maximized survival in our natural environment.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#266

Post by muzani »

tombert wrote: post #232

Ever 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…

I think having friends suicide does that. It sucks because you also see the patterns repeat and it feels like something solvable with intervention.

A friend put it well - sometimes people are sick, and you can help them heal. And sometimes it's just terminal. First, do no harm.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#267

Post by boredemployee »

spicyusername wrote: post #198

Nothing 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…

>> Corporate environments are almost always toxic places to fulfill your emotional needs

Thats the reason I avoid big companies at all costs

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#268

Post by kovac »

spicyusername wrote: post #198

Nothing 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…

Also, Gogol's Chichikov is a better metaphor for the dysfunctional corpo software dev than Akakyevitch...

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#269

Post by WalterBright »

Nevermark wrote: post #265
WalterBright wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Generally speaking, the clan you worked to survive with generally didn't cancel you because a seashell currency accountant saw some tangential benefit for a moment. Which might just be their own survival need to look busy or be a perforative hard ass, to avoid the same thing. The loyalty you are dismissing as unnatural, was painstakingly discovered by our genes, precisely because it maximized survival in our natural…

If you didn't find your work in the clan to be emotionally fulfilling, and stopped working, the clan would not be likely to share the food with you.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#270

Post by WalterBright »

shimman wrote: post #263
WalterBright wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nature also doesn't hand out corporate welfare or export subsidies but some how that's perfectly natural.

I thought we were talking about capitalism, not the things government does.
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