I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded. Or a terrible argument that plays to some emotional point so is accepted. It's all feelings. Rare is the opposite.
You Have to Feel It
51–60 of 165 posts
Re: You Have to Feel It
#52Smart move by Mitchell to omit (in his opinion) _why_ you have to feel it, as evidenced by the spread interpretation in the comments. In my opinion, you have to “feel it” in order to do your best work. However(!), and also in my opinion, you shouldn’t always strive to be in a position where you “feel it”. While it is important to spend most of one’s life feeling it / doing their best work in order to be fulfilled, th…
Feeling some moderate positive emotion as a result of your work is not incompatible with 9 to 5 work. The bigger problem is usually the opposite: nagging negative emotions, feeling annoyed, feeling contempt towards some parts of the work that one is bound to do. These emotions are unbecoming, so the psychological defenses hide them, as if there's no feeling at all. This is what "mind-numbing" work often is.
There's a related problem I see in academic review, but I think it applies far more broadly. The easy part of review is recognizing flaws. One should always acknowledge the flaws, but the authors tend to already be aware of them[0]. The difficult part is determining if the flaws undermine the research or if despite the limitations that the work pushes progress forward. (All but a few works are incremental)
I think this applies much more broadly because even in conversations people are quick to latch onto a subtle inconsequential detail and then dismiss the rest. Being able to read the words does not make one literate, it is the interpretation of them that does. I think this example is quite prolific with internet conversations, enough that we can circle back to sarreph's mention of this in their first sentence. But I think another great example was from this post from a week ago[1]. Most comments are responding to the headline, but many even looked at the post and missed the entire point (which isn't about work being interrupted).
[0] Authors may not acknowledge them in the work because the review process is too adversarial and such acknowledgements can be used as ammunition against them (thanks lazy reviewers ;), because solving those flaws is a good followup and they don't want to get scooped, or many other reasons.
Re: You Have to Feel It
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of people work at large corporations and enjoy their work.
“Enjoy their paycheck”, there - fixed it for you
When you do the math, it looks like most jobs have never actually had an enjoyable paycheck though, just the fortunate few.
In that case some peole are bound to find more enjoyment from something else, or why would the paycheck even be worth it?
Sometimes that can occur within the very work they do, maybe even their life's work, which can take long enough to proceed through phases of education, underemployment, business ownership, retirement and back again.
Surely there are other kinds of enjoyment continuity, which can function in parallel to a certain extent, that those concentrating on the paycheck alone may not come close to achieving.
Re: You Have to Feel It
#54I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. Yo…
You can analyze in different ways by choosing different frames of reference, etc., but choosing how to feel isn't the same. For most, "choosing to how feel" is difficult to attempt.
Re: You Have to Feel It
#55I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. Yo…
This distinction is an absurdity first written to provide a rational for why everything being done in the name of Reason felt so bad.
Re: You Have to Feel It
#56Oh, i thought it was a satirical critique of how arbitrary promotion criteria can be. Turns out someone is seriously claiming that someone else "doesn't not feel the right way" about the work they do, and THAT is their core problem. Ha. Well, at least the author feels that they are feeling the right way, good for them I guess.
Too bad he didn’t feel like Hashicorp anymore. F#ing IBM.
He left before IBM. Also, based on public filings, long before IBM was even a suitor.
Re: You Have to Feel It
#57Re: You Have to Feel It
#58Unfortunately, the tech industry has completely lost touch with anything resembling this. It's a cold machine now; I'd call it soulless but I think that gives it too much animation.
Re: You Have to Feel It
#59[deleted]
Re: You Have to Feel It
#60Good thought, but corporations don't care, and a whole lot of folks that play the corporate game won't, either. Money will still be made. Careers will still be advanced. It think it was Theodore Sturgeon that said "90% of everything is crap." For myself, I enjoy what I do. I write software that I want to use, in a way that makes me feel good. I have no illusions that I would be allowed to work like this, if I were st…
there are pockets even in the corporate world where people are able to feel what they are doing
in my experience, those times have been with the most talented and productive people. perhaps they don't need the crutch of process
it is rare, and does not last forever. as teams scale up, this is gradually lost. regression to the mean?
leading with feeling is vulnerable. it can be very rewarding when met with like or very damaging when crushed under the corporate wheel