Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boring work needs tension

iaziz786.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 77 posts

Re: Boring work needs tension

#51

Post by daxfohl »

In 2025, if you're bored at work then you're probably expendable, so there's your tension.

Boring work needs automation, not tension. Free up time to work on things more valuable and rewarding. Don't assume that just because you were hired to own service X that it means you can't peek out of your box. If you get it to the point where it's self-managing, look around at other people's needs before adding artificial requirements. You'll learn more, work with more people, get more recognition, and likely be more energized by the work.

Re: Boring work needs tension

#52

Post by Bolwin »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #41
truelson wrote: post #24

I disagree. Boring work needs meaning, not tension. Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. Tension is, imo, ephemeral. If you keep chasing it, you are chasing dopamine loops. Little good comes from this. But meaning is different. When you can remind yourself a truly great "why" you are doing something, can re-frame it, it can help. Most importantly, boredom, irritation, and a…

I think that "Boring work needs meaning, not tension" is a great explanation of bad bosses. Any work will go a little faster when your boss puts an arbitrary deadline on it and screams "We need this by Friday, we're gonna tell the VP that it's late and it's your fault!!" But it's hugely demoralizing and stressful. But if you say "this work will get the client's hospital equipment monitoring suite out sooner; if it wo…

Most people already aware of the meaning of their work though, it's not something you can deliver updates on.

Whereas tension is easy to manufacture

Re: Boring work needs tension

#53

Post by marcosdumay »

wavemode wrote: post #6
marcosdumay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a funny definition of "dysfunctional".

How so?

Wait, is your question serious, and people talking about it being in jest directed at my comment and not the one above it?

How often do you think the OP's "functional" team fixes small problems with their code before they become large problems? How often do you think they discover small features that lead to huge gains but need a developer's understanding of sized to discover it's small? And also, how often do you think they get stuck creating nearly impossible features that can be worked around with a small amount of work from the users that they would rather not do?

And none of those is the large issue anyway. The large issue is that teams working like that can barely create any software, for much more complex reasons than fits in a comment.

Re: Boring work needs tension

#54

Post by mhuffman »

Ah yes, what most jobs these days lack is tension! Too bored? Get yourself worked up over some other task! What an insight!!!

>If you can’t tackle these at work, do it in your personal projects.

Just gold analysis. Most people in SWE have plenty of personal projects supported by their work managers and encouraged to implement work tasks into personal projects.

Re: Boring work needs tension

#55

Post by jvanderbot »

truelson wrote: post #24

I disagree. Boring work needs meaning, not tension. Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. Tension is, imo, ephemeral. If you keep chasing it, you are chasing dopamine loops. Little good comes from this. But meaning is different. When you can remind yourself a truly great "why" you are doing something, can re-frame it, it can help. Most importantly, boredom, irritation, and a…

I disagree because I think boring work needs discipline. The expectation that everything should be exciting or fulfilling is also false. You can't expect meaning in everything, and your response of wading through discomfort is best.

Or perhaps we should all be taoists, and find find joy in the taste of vinegar because it is pure life that we are tasting, by being alive and breathing and choosing to take on a task that is always new, because even if the work hasn't changed we have.

Or maybe just to quote the dwarves in Majesty: Hard work is its own reward.

Or perhaps the omnissiah demands it and it is not ours to question his will, only ours to ensure the machine spirits thrive.

There's a million reasons to get out of bed and do the work. Maybe the most noble is Meditations-esque "we work because we are humans" and the work must be done.

Re: Boring work needs tension

#56

Post by incompatible »

"Watching [movies] is fun because you can imagine yourself resonating with a character."

Perhaps I'm just an unusual type of person, but there are very few movie characters that I "resonate" with. Far more common is thinking "why are you doing that, you idiot?" or "what a jerk! Just tell them the truth."

Re: Boring work needs tension

#58

Post by ytpete »

patates wrote: post #31
truelson wrote: post #24

I disagree. Boring work needs meaning, not tension. Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. Tension is, imo, ephemeral. If you keep chasing it, you are chasing dopamine loops. Little good comes from this. But meaning is different. When you can remind yourself a truly great "why" you are doing something, can re-frame it, it can help. Most importantly, boredom, irritation, and a…

> Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. I used to tell myself the same thing. Then one day, a customer misconfigured their NetScaler, and all hell broke loose. We had half-delivered CSS files, misfiring form handlers, random blank screens of death, and a buggy front-end library that would bombard the backend with requests if it received the wrong status code with no back-off…

There's a huge difference though between short bursts of intense activity – which are thrilling, and in my experience can forge longlasting team bonds – and an ongoing, constant sense of pressure. The latter you can't maintain excitement about indefinitely, and inevitably the continual stress just leads to burnout. Or apathy: after all, if everything's urgent then nothing feels urgent or special after a while.

Re: Boring work needs tension

#59

Post by neilv »

Bolwin wrote: post #52
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "Boring work needs meaning, not tension" is a great explanation of bad bosses. Any work will go a little faster when your boss puts an arbitrary deadline on it and screams "We need this by Friday, we're gonna tell the VP that it's late and it's your fault!!" But it's hugely demoralizing and stressful. But if you say "this work will get the client's hospital equipment monitoring suite out sooner; if it wo…

Most people already aware of the meaning of their work though, it's not something you can deliver updates on. Whereas tension is easy to manufacture

Regarding updates: at your all-hands meetings, show inside customer success stories, and the real impact it had, or how your product/service is being used for great things?

(Different than a marketing testimonial, big sales landed, or charts showing financial growth.)

I worked for awhile in flight safety, almost entirely in software that I only ever ran on my laptop, and on servers seen through my laptop. I found that even little, but relatively concrete, reminders that I fit into this larger system of aviation, where great things are done, by very dedicated people, were nice occasional refreshers of inspiration.

Re: Boring work needs tension

#60

Post by liquid_thyme »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #41
truelson wrote: post #24

I disagree. Boring work needs meaning, not tension. Some times boring, done consistently, is where the truly great things come from. Tension is, imo, ephemeral. If you keep chasing it, you are chasing dopamine loops. Little good comes from this. But meaning is different. When you can remind yourself a truly great "why" you are doing something, can re-frame it, it can help. Most importantly, boredom, irritation, and a…

I think that "Boring work needs meaning, not tension" is a great explanation of bad bosses. Any work will go a little faster when your boss puts an arbitrary deadline on it and screams "We need this by Friday, we're gonna tell the VP that it's late and it's your fault!!" But it's hugely demoralizing and stressful. But if you say "this work will get the client's hospital equipment monitoring suite out sooner; if it wo…

>But if you say "this work will get the client's hospital equipment monitoring suite out sooner; if it works reliably, they'll be able to deploy it sooner, and it'll save the lives of some sick kids," then that'll also get the work done a little faster, and it'll make you feel good about doing it.

The problem is that the smart ones will easily figure out that 'this next version will save lives' is a total lie. If your monitoring product doesn't work, it gets dumped and replaced. In developed countries, if your code has the potential of harming someone you're in a heavily regulated industry. The software in those industries is speced out in enormous detail to avoid this problem.

>Arbitrary tension is a patch that you put on work that has no meaning. "We want you to go faster because it will make our metrics go up which might raise the stock a few percentage which might make our investors a few extra millions" has no meaning, which is the root problem.

I disagree. Financial goals are the easiest to understand for people, and also easiest to communicate, and personally for me easiest to reason about how to achieve them. Just hit a number and you're done, collect your bonus and go do something you enjoy. As they say, the best way to ruin something you love doing is by making it your job. IMO people who chase some higher purpose and meaning are destined to be forever unhappy at their job.

Post reply on HN