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Fuck being productive

dostoynikov.bearblog.dev

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Re: Fuck being productive

#321

Post by mcv »

listenallyall wrote: post #309
mcv wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody should have a different 4 day work week, of course. Shops are still open in the weekend.

He stated "administrative stuff" -- not "shops". Stuff that's already open on the weekend isn't an issue. And are people willing to take a 20% pay cut? I would doubt many people could afford (or wish) to do so. The entire premise is absurd, which is what I was pointing out.

You already took that 20% pay cut. Our pay hasn't gone up with our productivity in decades. According to Keynes, we should have been working 15 hours per week by now. We're not, because we're not reaping the rewards of our work. It's all gone to the rich. That is the big thing we need to reverse.

I'm working 4 days a week, and that's working very well for me. So is my wife. So is my brother, and are several of my friends and coworkers. I strongly recommend it. We should be demanding better, and not discourage each other by saying it's absurd to want a better life.

Re: Fuck being productive

#322

Post by david-gpu »

mcv wrote: post #286
klabb3 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds awesome! > it did come with a pay cut > a quarter of the responsibilities […] and I write my own schedule […] it shortened my commute You should factor that into the pay calculation. It’s possible you didn’t get paid less per time-effort.

In the end, money is just a means of exchange by which we try to buy happiness. Well, food and shelter first, but once you've got those covered, it might be more efficient to work for happiness directly instead of trying to buy it with money made on a soul-sucking job.

> it might be more efficient to work for happiness directly instead of trying to buy it with money made on a soul-sucking job

I stuck with a stressful job I didn't enjoy because the pay was too good to ignore, with my sights set on achieving financial independence. After all was said and done, the money wasn't worth it; all I got was a bitter taste in my mouth from years of grinding myself down.

A better plan would have been to spend time figuring out what sorts of jobs would be better aligned with my life goals.

Re: Fuck being productive

#323

Post by notyourwork »

jacobr1 wrote: post #187
notyourwork wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big +1, work on something that bothers you in your personal life or something that interests you in your personal life. It will always undoubtedly be more fulfilling compared to simply "working for the man."

One risk I've heard of second hand. If you work on your personal-interests or hobbies ... then that might cease to be fun and just become "work." I've not had that experience (I've always found the projects in my career interesting even if they have non-fun overhead at times) but it is something my wife and others have reported.

Surely it's a risk, I think with all things balance is critical. However, I've personally found the grind that can come and go with delivery dates and peculiar debugging are far more satisfying and easy to commit to when the medium is a personal passion/interest.

Re: Fuck being productive

#324

Post by ZephyrBlu »

tuscen wrote: post #218
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I calculate the post-tax income for $240k USD in SF it comes out to $155k: https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#SLKSX... . $120k is also an underestimate given that the top tax bracket in the UK is only 45%. If you apply that, you get $132k (Still an underestimate). $132k is roughly in the same ballpark as $155k. It's not like the difference between the same income in the US and UK is 50%, and…

It's coming from housing prices in London and SF. Also energy prices in the UK the last few years grew considerably. I agree it's a lot of money, but given how much it costs to buy a house or an apartment in London and SF I'd say it's not that much if you want to retire early. I used London and SF in these examples because it's hard to find jobs with that much compensation outside them. And this is all without consid…

All I hear is "I earn a 1% income and want to live a 1% lifestyle". Yes, if that is what you do with your income of course it's "not that much".

Nice house in London/SF = $$$

Kids = $$$

"good education" (I.e. nice schools) = $$$

No student debt for your kids = $$$

Retire early = $$$

This seems like a classic "3 options, pick 2" kind of scenario. You can never have it all at the max level (Except maybe if you're a billionaire).

Re: Fuck being productive

#325

Post by bluefirebrand »

phone8675309 wrote: post #317
pdimitar wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very romantic, until you realize that nowadays working on what you like won't even pay your rent + utilities + food. I am beginning to think we need HN for non-privileged people. A lot of "insights" on this forum come off as extremely deluded and living in a very positive bubble. Now tell me, how do I get a huge break from programming while never losing a penny from my income? "Live within my means" would be your res…

Some people never watched Dirty Jobs and you can see it in posts like the grandparent. Having a job you clock into, giving your best effort at that job, stopping work at 5 PM, and then going home and do the things you're passionate about that don't pay the bills is the way that the vast majority of people live. It's only the rich and deluded that think that this isn't the reality for most people, and that's because t…

Honestly this is something I find working as a software developer in offices... Many of my peers have never worked shitty jobs.

I've worked fast food, I've worked retail (during the launch of the Wii, even, which was an insane time), I've detailed cars, I've worked in a call center.

That's just what I had to do to avoid being buried under student debt.

I think a lot of people working in offices never had this experience. If they worked at all during high school or university it was cushy office jobs wherever their parents worked.

This doesn't generally apply to immigrants, though. That's a whole other thing.

Re: Fuck being productive

#326

Post by alexfromapex »

What everyone is feeling is their wealth is being stolen by inflation. Ideally, the time you trade during working hours, in exchange for money, should make you wealthy but due to the insane inflation it doesn't.

Re: Fuck being productive

#327

Post by 908B64B197 »

curmudgeon22 wrote: post #258
908B64B197 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't have sufficient birth rates to maintain things and so both economic productivity but also the tax base will be significantly harmed without this immigration. With family reunification, it's not uncommon to see aging parents and relatives be sponsored. They add very little to the tax base but are a huge burden long term.

Fair point. I have no data, but assume that's a minority of immigrants. Also, there are some requirements to support those family members: "You will also sign a Sponsorship Agreement, obligating you to financially support your sponsored relatives if they cant provide for their own needs. The new permanent resident will not qualify for government assistance, even after the sponsored person becomes a permanent resident…

Does government assistance includes healthcare?

Re: Fuck being productive

#328

Post by wahnfrieden »

lurking_swe wrote: post #294
deprecative wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

you’re a SWE working 45 hours a week? You can do better, even in the US. I suggest focusing on company culture when interviewing if you care about this kind of stuff. I’ve worked at 3 companies in my career so far, and worked about 40 hours a week at each of them. i was not born into wealth…neither were (most) of my coworkers. I won’t even ask about the $70k salary. I made that much at my first gig after college. Sou…

Your logic is the same as the scab: others are foolish because I can personally enrich myself by doing something without care for how it ends up hurting myself in the long run

Re: Fuck being productive

#329

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

slt2021 wrote: post #120
cstrahan wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you assuming “money” isn’t also the answer to this implied question?

if money is the only reason, you can get money elsewhere. it ties back to theory of employee motivation, money being only external motivator. For high performance, employee needs also internal motivation (drive). employees with internal motivation are miles ahead and more productive than without one. this is why well paid and pampered Gogle engineers are less productive than some open-source enthusiasts

> if money is the only reason, you can get money elsewhere.

And they are all asking the same question. Will they accept an answer like "because you're only a 7 minute commute from my house", "I think the work will be easy in relation to the salary", or "I think I can get away with barely doing anything for an indefinitely long time period because your org is large and dysfunctional"?

You ask for a performance, you get a performance. Or maybe you're just asking for a rube?

Re: Fuck being productive

#330

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

nly wrote: post #303
dahwolf wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of your listed reasons make a dent in explaining the massive salary differences between the US and EU. There's a much simpler explanation: The EU simply doesn't have the capital. There are no pools of venture capitalists clustering hundreds of billions of dollars they can piss away on half-ass ideas. It's as simple as that. They funding money simply doesn't exist.

That doesn't explain salary discrepancies between the US and the UK at the same company A Facebook engineer in London is probably earning 70% of what a Facebook engineer in the US is earning, even after taking in to account taxes, benefits and any cost of living discrepancies.

This is driven by salary sharing companies, such that companies benchmark to each other, which tends to be lower.

For the specific case of London (and more specifically Facebook), this is driven by the fact that FB/Goog don't count tech people in finance as appropriate comparators. I suspect that this is not true in NY/USA.

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