Great advice provided all jobs and fields pay the same. They do not.
You are what you love
51–60 of 139 posts
Re: You are what you love
#52Consider love as a half-measure, therefore:
You are what you create
Re: You are what you love
#53> If you don’t know what you love, try playing with a couple of things. I have a theory that what you love is what you can experience bad versions of. If you're picky about something, you don't really like it. Connoisseurs and fanatics aren't picky, they're voracious. If you can only drink the very best wines, you don't like wine. I can eat very very bad, even stinky Chinese food, because I love all versions of it. I…
> I can eat very very bad, even stinky Chinese food Hi, I’m a Chinese person. WTF do you mean by this? Are you seriously saying you love Chinese food (also what do you mean, Chinese food? What provinces? What regions?) when it’s shit? You’ll happily eat stale bao, rotten meat dumplings, moldy rice? What is “stinky”: durian? Something else?
While I can understand the irritation, the tone of your response seems excessive for someone talking about food.
Re: You are what you love
#54Well. The paragraph below really comes at a good time,
>> Emotion cannot be separate from work. It has to be a part of it. When working, you’re expressing yourself. You express beliefs, opinions, and strategies, world views. You cannot detach yourself completely from work. I doubt that you ever should.
because 2 days ago I had a discussion with the owner of the company I work for (and, therefore, my boss), where I told him that we are going through a bizarre moment and that one of our colleagues was in pieces when talking to me.
He asked if that affected me, and I said that obviously it does, it's a person suffering, a person I like and who delivers a lot of value to the company.
He replied saying: "Well, it shouldn't, only our family should affect us in that aspect."
Then, finally, I understood what these people really think. They use us just to achieve their goals, the whole idea of team/squad is, in the end, a big fallacy.
Re: You are what you love
#55I used to be the same. Until I started a family. You suddenly realise how… unimportant coding is when you have people who depend on you and you them. I’m a different developer now than I was back then, but I think better for it.
I'd say that applies across the board. For most, that kid is more important than anything else.
Re: You are what you love
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically emptying the bins and picking fruits might be more directly meaningful for people then building the new generation ad platform/social media/saas tool.
Picking fruit would have been incredibly meaningful if you had spent the year doing the variety of agricultural activities leading up to it. There’s a reason so many cultures had harvest festivals. But now rather than a whole area getting together to literally pick the fruits of their year-long labour and celebrate we’ve optimised the process by just bringing in some seasonal workers.
I think GP means that picking fruit has a direct, meaningful impact on consumers--fresh food--whereas the positive impact of the next saas thing is indirect and often dubious.
But yeah, harvesting as a community sounds more meaningful to workers than mass fruit production does.
Re: You are what you love
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aye, you put your finger on something there. Reminds me of how common it is for menial jobs to be outsourced to immigrants or seasonal labour. Fruit picking in the UK to Eastern Europeans, agricultural work in Israel to Thais, etc. Someone has to empty the bins. I guess like anything emptying bins is a job you can enjoy more or less, depending on your inner attitude to doing it, and your ability to "make the best of…
Ironically emptying the bins and picking fruits might be more directly meaningful for people then building the new generation ad platform/social media/saas tool.
Some of my friends from Poland went to Western/Northern Europe to pick tomatoes, salad, cherries etc. None of them ever spoke about meaning of the job, only that it was long, hard, uncomfortable hours in sun, rain etc. and that it paid good money.
Re: You are what you love
#58>I find it really challenging to talk with people who have completely separated their work from their emotional being. For me, work is part of life and it should be a meaningful one. I like my work too but when I hear things like this it's so hard not to cringe because of how much of a place of privilege this comes from. Most jobs are things no one would want to do if they didn't need to survive, and that's fundament…
Isn't fixating on "privilege" a way of avoiding more troubling thoughts far beyond guilt? As if God made some people rich and some poor, and that's the way the world is. Let's all say a prayer for them? The Protestant work ethic once contained many good things like a sense of duty, efficiency, self-discipline and so on. Emancipation of others, and helping others out of poverty was always built into that! But under la…
I'm not sure many workers building cathedrals considered it a labor of love. Particularly those cathedrals that took many generations to build.
> Half of all the work done in the world is childcare and caring for the old.
This is a really profound statement, thanks for making me think slightly differently!
Re: You are what you love
#59> Firstly, let’s make clear that it’s unlikely that you’re good at something you don’t love. If you managed to do that, you’ve probably dedicated the hours to something that does not fulfill you. The goal is not happiness. It’s about fulfillment. After all, you have to do what you love. You are that, how can you be doing anything else? The author is not considering loving meta-skills. I don't love programming, I do l…
That's a great way to think about it, love the meta skill concept. I had the same realisation but never expressed it as well. I used to want to be an artist for my living. Eveventually I realised that what I really wanted was to be creative in some way. Didn't have to be art or music to earn money.
Ha! That’s a fun one. When it comes to music, I compulsively think of musical melodies. That’s not passion though but just compulsion :’)
I recognize the creativity part, well put!
Re: You are what you love
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Before the modern age, most humans worked in agriculture. Really, really hard work, day in day out, no vacations, no sick days, you had to be there no matter the weather (except extreme events where your live would be endangered too much, probably). It's amazing how today we can actually even think that "work should be a meaningful part of life" rather than just a means to keep you alive. Today, I would say most peop…
Not quite day in and day out. Agricultural work pre modern times was seasonal.
There was stuff to do outside the growing season still. There were farm animals to tend to, you fixed up your house and the farm buildings, made and mended clothes etc. Although, since the days were shorter, the work time was naturally shorter as well, as artificial light was expensive.