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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

#381

Post by afarrell »

simi_ wrote: post #94
georgemcbay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you were effective at your job, said boss needs to examine what is important to him, slavish respect-mah-authortai-style following of rather arbitrary rules, or having a "bird-in-the-hand" competent employee who gets shit done (perhaps 5 minutes later than the boss-man would like). It is kind of sad how many boss/manager types still fail miserably on this point, and then complain about not being able to hire…

I'm the counterexample - I like letting capable people as loose as possible, and more often than I'd like this backfires. I'd appreciate some effective pointers on how to deal with this issue.

When someone, especially a junior, is new to a project, make sure they get oriented to it. Don't just say "I'm always available if you have any questions." Because being able to take a codebase and a bunch of (even well-written, which it probably isn't) documentation and navigate it from the start without help is a skill that they don't really teach in school (at least not at MIT).

Without being oriented, they won't know what questions to ask and then after a week of slowly plodding through the code trying to piece things together, will be too embarrassed to ask.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#382

Post by ddingus »

kpennell wrote: post #377
ddingus wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me too. An hour sometimes won't cut it.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#383

Post by mathattack »

bonesmoses wrote: post #378
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…

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.

Perhaps, but a lot may have lamented not having more financial security.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#384

Post by npizzolato »

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…

> 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?

A slightly cynical person might point out that the CEO of a VC has much to gain by blogging about the virtues of "working very hard" to those who might form startups.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#386

Post by poikniok »

infinite8s wrote: post #366
poikniok wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is somewhat surprising. I work at hedge fund, what one might consider a fairly stogy industry, and nobody cares when I come in to work, which is 9 or 10 usually.

What time do you usually leave? In my experience people will come in at 9 or 10, but then work until 8 or 9 pm.

8pm would be a late night for me, I try to leave at 6pm but sometimes a bit later.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#387

Post by vonmoltke »

StavrosK wrote: post #207
vonmoltke wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Come when you want" sounds pretty close to anarchy to me.

You're assuming that people prioritize anything above work. I work at a "come when you want" company and I always aim to have at least four hours of overlap with my team, even though we have a seven hour time difference.

I think you mean "prioritize everything". I am not making that assumption. I am doubting the general ability of teams to self-organize as you describe, even though some teams can do it.

Teams certainly need the flexibility to adjust their organization in order to best accomplish their goals. Most of the problems with large corporate bureaucracy come because someone up the chain wants to impose control by dictating how every group organizes.

However, at some level there needs to be a team of people working together to accomplish goals, and that team needs a program to get with. Now, if all that is meant by "come when you want" is that each team is free to determine what their own program is, then I misunderstood the point being made and my original comment on it does not apply. There does need to be some sort of accountability, though, or the team dynamic collapses. In the context of a company, this has to be integrated with whatever policies the company as a whole has.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#388

Post by StavrosK »

vonmoltke wrote: post #387
StavrosK wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that people prioritize anything above work. I work at a "come when you want" company and I always aim to have at least four hours of overlap with my team, even though we have a seven hour time difference.

I think you mean "prioritize everything". I am not making that assumption. I am doubting the general ability of teams to self-organize as you describe, even though some teams can do it. Teams certainly need the flexibility to adjust their organization in order to best accomplish their goals. Most of the problems with large corporate bureaucracy come because someone up the chain wants to impose control by dictating ho…

In my experience, teams will figure their programs out very quickly by themselves, so this hasn't been as big a problem in practice for me as one would think.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#389

Post by johnward »

Balgair wrote: post #124
johnward wrote: post #97

" 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." How do you fix this? For the last 10 years of my life I've basically woken up each morning and wished I hadn't. I don't like what I do. I can't afford to not do it anymore. I don't even know what, if anything, I would actually enjoy waking up for.

Try a psychologist then, but before you start taking any drugs from them, just do a quick head count of the people around you. If more than 25% of them are total assholes, it's time to move. Really though, I don't know your situation, but it sounds like you gotta grab your huevos and change something. If there are financial issues, get rid of them as best you can. Explore other options for making money or getting out…

I've been to a counsellor but no psychologist is taking new patients in my area (that I've been able to find). I get up everyday at 6 and hit the gym before work. Usually 30-60 minutes of walking on an incline followed by an hour of lifting. I run maybe 1 or 2 times a week, still trying to get back into it. It's a little bit more difficult at 275lbs then I remember it being at <220lb but I still can make it 2 miles without stopping. I'm down 30lbs but I'm still up and down emotionally. I don't really have any reason my life seems pretty good relatively speaking. I'm much better now than I was a few years ago but still not good enough I guess.

Re: The days are long but the decades are short

#390

Post by johnward »

testingonprod wrote: post #186
johnward wrote: post #97

" 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." How do you fix this? For the last 10 years of my life I've basically woken up each morning and wished I hadn't. I don't like what I do. I can't afford to not do it anymore. I don't even know what, if anything, I would actually enjoy waking up for.

What do you do?

I'm a software consultant. I travel or work from my house depending on the project. I think I like doing front-end dev type work as far as technical work goes. At least I seem to enjoy it a little bit when I actually get to do it on my projects. I keep getting rejected so I'm guess it's because I'm not a "real developer". IE I don't have experience with TDD and I don't code most of my day so I am always rusty.

I thought about pulling a Peter Gibbons and getting in to construction or something a little bit physical. My family are all in construction and most of them make more than I do and spend a few months per year laid off (meaning time to do other things besides work).

Outside of work I like lifting. Am trying to get back into running and even some competitive sports (ice/roller hockey) but it's hard to make time for it. Especially with travel.

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