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The days are long but the decades are short

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#371

Post by bambax »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #369
bambax wrote: post #83

> Ask for what you want. That advice will land you in jail.

> Be nice to strangers. Be nice even when it doesn’t matter. I guess you missed this.

I usually never comment when I'm downvoted; I was assuming it was because people found my comment too short and unfunny, but your comment makes me wonder if people actually think it's mean??

What I meant was, the things I actually want are mostly illegal and it's better to not ask for them out loud.

So if my comment is mean, it's mean to me.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#372

Post by vidarh »

chm wrote: post #161
astrocat wrote: post #68

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will b…

I absolutely agree. But even in the elite some take whatever job they can. Not everybody can be a Doctor, Lawyer, Pharmacist, Psychologist, etc. Getting an education doesn't mean you can cherry pick jobs. Edit to add a saying popular in my family: " Ubi amatur non laboratur, aut si laboratur, labor amatur. "

Working as a lawyer is actually increasingly a low paid job unless you graduate with top results from a top school. In the UK, the average solicitor earned about 10% less than the UK average as of a few years ago, and that is pulled up by a tiny elite at a small number of the top firms, where starting salaries are twice or more the national average for solicitors in general, and where equity partners can easily earn 100-200 times the average solicitor.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#373

Post by joshdick »

mycroft-holmes wrote: post #364
clay_to_n wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, not meaning to be a smartass or offend: why don't more people try the line "Can I kiss you?"

They don't want to come across as a creep.

The only people who will find that creepy are the people who will slap you if you try it without consent.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#374

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jacquesm wrote: post #210
stephengillie wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at what the owners call a "15-year old startup" and they're very strict about being on time for the office hours. And the reasons you cite (in the shower, while commuting) are among the reasons they pay us salary. We're expected to work a small amount in the evenings and weekends as well as our 40 hours during the week. Our management uses the excuse "Well, it's the tech industry, we all work extra."

Left unchecked employers will use all kinds of BS to extract more hours out of their employees. Being expected to 'work a small amount in the evenings and weekends' is ridiculous if you're not being compensated for that.

Hm. That's the difference between salaried and hourly.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#375

Post by JoeAltmaier »

federico3 wrote: post #353
danso wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. Empathy is important...I imagine that boss, if he's relatively young, has to deal with the pressure of seeming like an effective boss, and that includes setting some hard lines...because let's face it, the boss and employee can see eye-to-eye, but that understanding doesn't always communicate across all the other employees, leaving some resentful. It's not dysfunction, necessarily, it's just the nature and fri…

Age is not an excuse for being ineffective at your job.

Sure it is! Otherwise how do any young people ever get started?

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#376

Post by wooyi »

jkestner wrote: post #246
wooyi wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, I felt more pressure after kids to be successful. I had to prove to them that their father was not a mediocre person. I also need to show by example - that I did not want them to be mediocre and that they should strive to be the best at what they do.

Cool thing is, they take their metric for success from you. But you sound like you're measuring success by your role in the workplace. I'll bet they care a lot more about your role as a father.

Yes. And for me, to be successful is to be happy with what I do for a living, and to have the freedom to pursue my dreams. Selfishly, I rather be a mediocre father and successful/happy with my career/lifelong work vs a great father and a mediocre career. We all pick our own paths. No regrets so far.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#377

Post by kpennell »

ddingus wrote: post #302
quanticle wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I worked a regular job for many years while spending years of my free time and weekends to create a business where I can now choose what I work on. Then you did not have a regular job. You had a job that paid you enough to support yourself while retaining enough free time and mental energy to pursue your startup idea. For most people, this is not the case (esp. the mental energy bit).

Oh, I don't know about that. Seriously. Mental energy is impacted by a lot of things. And I've had to come up the hard way, just due to my circumstances early on. Doing this gets harder as we age. But under 30? It's there for an awful lot of people who want it. There is one's own drive, and there are the kinds of friends one makes and how time is used. For the longest time, I read one tech book a month. Just needed t…

I code on side projects, nights and weekends. I find that I can actually get more done on a long stretch on Saturday than little bits and bobs on weekdays. It takes a while to get into it and get momentum.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#378

Post by bonesmoses »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #170

A lot of the points can be boiled down to "work very hard". But what if you simply are the type of person who doesn't like working? Another point is do what makes you happy. For some lucky folks, work makes them happy, but there's a lot of us who don't like it. And no, it's not just a specific job. A lot of us are just kinda lazy to be perfectly honest. The things I enjoy most are running, eating fine meals, quality…

I'm a bit older than the author, and for me, it has come down to this:

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

The article contains a lot of good, sensible statements. But it was clearly written for, and by, someone with far more ambition than I'll ever have.

Maybe I'm just burned out from all the Work Hard rhetoric that got me here, but nobody on their death bed laments that they didn't spend enough time at the office.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#379

Post by JoeAltmaier »

CydeWeys wrote: post #256
kcovia wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want to work for someone who thinks getting to the office 5 minutes earlier is more important than your child?

There are many jobs (though largely not office jobs) where you HAVE to be on time, where not being on time seriously throws a lot of scheduled things out of whack. It is not unreasonable at all in these professions to expect someone to always be on time, and get rid of them and find someone more responsible if they cannot be. One good example would be all of the elementary school teachers I've ever known; they NEED t…

Did he do architecture? Design? Mentoring? Its not all about the hours. A manager, for instance, was probably paid higher than anyone in the group and didn't do any code.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#380

Post by MrZongle2 »

innguest wrote: post #365
MrZongle2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That's some gross generalization. Any childless bachelor could know what the "path" is like by staying over with a friend that has a child and helping out for some time." Uh, no . Having children isn't like having a dog or being a part-time nanny or live-in tutor. It is a multi-decade commitment to raising another human being from infancy to adulthood with all of the frustrations and joys -- yes, joys -- that come a…

The internet is full of forums for parents to discuss regretting having kids. Do your own research. Also I didn't say (live-in tutor) == (being a parent). I said it's a way one can know what the path is like. Just like you can tell what the ocean is like by watching a movie of the ocean.

Do your own research.

The onus is not on me. I have done my research: I am a parent, and that's the position I'm promoting.

If you can't defend your own position, don't expect somebody else to.

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