Does anyone have the “Bob code” story? Where some guy renamed PHP to BOB and proceeded to pretend that he was unfirable with much success?
I'm pretty sure it's on the Daily WTF, FWIW.
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Forgotten Employee (2002)
51–60 of 130 posts
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#52Does anyone have the “Bob code” story? Where some guy renamed PHP to BOB and proceeded to pretend that he was unfirable with much success?
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#53I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must have worked an arrangement like that for themselves—taking paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always these people don't use their free time to do something productive—like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his…
> But when we do get total freedom, we hardly remain as productive as we imagined ourselves to be.
Where does that imagination come from? Or in other words: why do you feel such a strong need to be productive?
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#54I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must have worked an arrangement like that for themselves—taking paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always these people don't use their free time to do something productive—like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his…
>probably fiction
it's literally a fictional story isn't it? Why the "probably"?
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#55I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must have worked an arrangement like that for themselves—taking paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always these people don't use their free time to do something productive—like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his…
Being productive all the time isn’t a goal shared by everyone. I’d honestly be surprised if it was even a majority view. Hedonism has been a goal of the financially independent since antiquity
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Lacking objective, or structure in the day, I found myself playing video games or surfing web pretty much all day. I think the key is to identify these timesinks and to eliminate them one-by-one. Often these are dopamine-hijacking activities. So, suppose you decided to yourself that you are not going to be surfing the web at all, or limit it to a strictly scheduled timeslot, or only use the web when you have a spec…
And what's the end goal?
Eudaimonia
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#57Does anyone have the “Bob code” story? Where some guy renamed PHP to BOB and proceeded to pretend that he was unfirable with much success?
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I noticed the same thing in myself. Free time, especially a long block of it can just be wasted. Sometimes that’s a sort of necessary mental reset but it made me think about what I’d do when i retired. I came to the conclusion, like you, that structure is good. Without structure it’s really hard to get started on things or feel a sense of progress. Now if i take a long break i treat it like i used to back in college…
Time enjoyed is not time wasted
I disagree. I might enjoy 2 months of sitting on my couch, smoking weed, and playing video games stoned out my gourd.
That time would still be very much wasted.
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#59I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must have worked an arrangement like that for themselves—taking paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always these people don't use their free time to do something productive—like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his…
I have been experiencing the same thing you are describing in terms of procrastination/free time being spent in the less productive ways than one wants to or imagines them, as well as productivity being inverse correlated with free time.
I think it is definitely psychological. Probably something to do with subconsciously feeling guilt for not doing what one is "supposed to", so they feel too guilty to embark on something else that's productive or educational (like reading that one textbook they planned for a while). And instead just go "ok, that one educational thing i wanted to do is gonna take a while, and i am already wasting a lot of my free time, so instead i will just check out a few cat videos and then get back to productive stuff". And then it just becomes a positive (aka self-reinforcing) feedback loop that keeps on feeding onto itself.
As for being productive with the least amount of tree time, I can confirm that my best GPA in college was during semesters when i had the heaviest workloads on top of a part-time job. Reminds me a lot of what many parents on HN say in the comments, how they became way more productive in their efforts and focus after having kids (as soon as they get to about 1-2 years old). No experience with that one myself, but seems very similar.
Re: Forgotten Employee (2002)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s basically that a lifetime of being told what to do with your time atrophied your ability to direct your time when you had control. I have experienced similar things over shorter periods.
> I think it’s basically that a lifetime of being told what to do with your time atrophied your ability to direct your time when you had control. I also think humans need to do nothing occasionally and that it's actually extremely valuable. If you look at the entirety of human history this whole 5 days of work 48 weeks of the year is very new. For most of human history we would have had intense bursts of activity (hu…
I had the good fortune of being able to work that schedule once, and there is a lot to be said for it.
I believe that a lot of our current employment arrangements revolve around the primitive data management and "ERP" technologies of 100-200 years ago. Anything but the simplest arrangement (everyone works 40 hours every week with very limited exceptions) was hard enough at scale.