Competition and Quarter-Life Crises • Hacker News Board

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#81

Post by bb611 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

lowiqengineer wrote: post #48

bb611 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd imagine for most of his peers from high school he's considered a disappointment for working at "only" AWS I went to school at about the same time at the other high school in town (technically 2 towns, 1 combined school district), my family mostly still lives there. A job across the country in a well known tech company is reasonably top 25% of the class or so. Not standout, but nothing to be embarrassed about, a…

If your parents don't talk about it (as mine don't, presumably because they're ashamed?) I don't know if it's "nothing to be embarrassed about". What did the top 1% do? What did your valedictorian(s) do?

Hilariously enough, my class' Valedictorian is now an ML Engineer on Amazon Echo.

I wasn't answering the question of "what will their parents think", I was just pointing out the reaction of our peers because I grew up in the same community. Parental reaction is typically much more about them as people than any other particular factor.

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#82

Post by xsmasher » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 12:58 AM UTC

hnracer wrote: post #75

Naval Ravikant has a healthy way of thinking about this. If you are envious or jealous of someone's accomplishments or wealth, you must realize that it's impossible to be in that individual's position without taking onboard all the baggage that comes with it. Sure, Warren Buffet is rich, but would you like to swap with him and be 90 years old? Sure, that engineer is getting promoted faster than you, but do you also w…

"Don't compare your insides with someone else's outsides" is a good maxim, but there's a sort of "just world" assumption in your post that everything balances out.

The world isn't that fair. Some people just have it better.

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#83

Post by wtroughton » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

curiousllama wrote: post #72

Having walked this same path, this blog resonates with me. To others reading, however, I would warn against the particular solution the author suggests. I can’t help but notice the author’s attempts to find new external benchmarks against which to measure himself. I did the exact same thing, literally down to “what if I ran a marathon?” It worked well temporarily, but it didnt get at the core issue for me: my listles…

I agree wholeheartedly of doing something that you believe is valuable.

The process of figuring out what's valuable is different from person to person. Some people know from a young age. Others figure it out in college or post-education. My values have been shaped and refined over the course of high school, college, and work. The high level picture may not be clear, but I believe it's beneficial to hone in on what you find valuable and see where it takes you.

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#84

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

pritovido wrote: post #26

I do not believe for a moment that this has anything to do with competition. I have lived in China and kids there are booked fully. Their parents sacrifice everything for their only child but at the same time they put a very high burden on them booking every space of their lives. Just letting the kids fool around, experience what interest them, play and make mistakes is inadmissible. Usually the parents work all day…

>They just had not the training to deal with freedom.

China is just more open about it, the phenomenon is universal. Nobody, China, West or anywhere else really has something approaching authentic freedom.

Over here we can argue we have freedom, but the freedom we have in our choices is like going to Westworld (relevant Bruno Macaes piece[1] from yesterday). We are encouraged to go backpack to Australia, participate in a protest, and then we are supposed to 'grow up', get a family, and so on. There's no point in that process in which you actually do something that amounts to more than simulating freedom, there's no point where you actually might get hurt.

In that sense if anything a lot of cultures like in China are just more honest, they tell you to sit your ass down and do rote memorization for 10 hours, whereas we get a ping pong table in the office and free smoothies and Disneyland, there's really no difference at the end of the day.

[1]https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/what-com...

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#85

Post by ctr_ctr » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

sweetcheekz wrote: post #51

pritovido wrote: post #26

I do not believe for a moment that this has anything to do with competition. I have lived in China and kids there are booked fully. Their parents sacrifice everything for their only child but at the same time they put a very high burden on them booking every space of their lives. Just letting the kids fool around, experience what interest them, play and make mistakes is inadmissible. Usually the parents work all day…

There are a lot of pretty grand overgeneralizations here. Black and white thinking at best, racist at worst.

Education in China works exactly like that. Buxiban until late night for _all_ kids (like wearing a cap in korea years ago)... 0 over-generalization. I'm really sick of this "chinese-cultural-relativism free pass" (with a little paimapi拍馬屁 included)

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#86

Post by pachavra » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 3:38 AM UTC

hnracer wrote: post #75

Naval Ravikant has a healthy way of thinking about this. If you are envious or jealous of someone's accomplishments or wealth, you must realize that it's impossible to be in that individual's position without taking onboard all the baggage that comes with it. Sure, Warren Buffet is rich, but would you like to swap with him and be 90 years old? Sure, that engineer is getting promoted faster than you, but do you also w…

There are people that have it orders of magnitude better than others in nearly all areas. With Warren Buffet it's an extreme example.

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#87

Post by aebtebeten » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

j4nt4b wrote: post #20

lowiqengineer wrote: post #10

I had my first quarter life crisis at 18, when I came to grips with the fact that I had accomplished nothing in my life so far, as evidenced by my lack of good college admissions - I graduated only 2nd in my class with just a 1500 SAT, which isn't good enough for top schools. Unlike OP, however, it was less of an aimless drift and more of an aggressive, angry depression. Had another one at 20, when I realized that no…

Please don't hate yourself. Do you think the lie-flat seats bring joy? Do you know the plane's destination? In this example, I'd rather be the guy who skipped the airport and went fishing. If anything, you have a head start on understanding this. The others may feel as you do when they're 30, 40, 50 or older, and feel tremendous heartache for wasted time. There is a ceiling everybody reaches in competition, and the b…

Even billionaires reach ceilings in competition, because the sorts of things they compete in are things money can't buy.

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#88

Post by 082349872349872 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

j4nt4b wrote: post #24

francisofascii wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still compare yourself to others in your age group. There needs to be a realization that there are always people better and worse.

Have you encountered mimetic theory? It's worth a read if you haven't yet. To boil it down: we measure ourselves by the people around us, and the more homogenous the peer group, the greater the pressure on each individual. We're all busy copying each other without consciously realizing it, but simultaneously we are mortally afraid of anybody thinking we are copying them. Here's a random overview: https://violenceandr…

Mimetic theory sounds like a very middle class (in the pejorative sense, as an ever-anxious externally-measuring person: in german we would say "spear-carrier", in french "tiny urbanite", etc.) approach to life.

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#89

Post by 082349872349872 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:48 AM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #4

blobbers wrote: post #2

There's not much here. He decided to compete against himself and made a list of self-improvement items? He complained about being directionless yet had some clear choices he could make. Cat? Grad School? Girlfriend? Sounds like this person needs a role-model and a mentor.

And that's ok. Like, he's in his early twenties. I upvoted this because the atmosphere of constant competition he describes is a relatively new thing (certainly I didn't experience it) and I'm interested to hear if other people of a similar age agree or have thoughts on this.

I went to university in the US last century, and don't recall an atmosphere of constant competition at all. At least at that time, townies seemed more competitive than gownies. My memories are mostly of us helping each other to drink from the firehose (of both the course load and of life).

Re: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises

#90

Post by hnracer » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

pachavra wrote: post #86

hnracer wrote: post #75

Naval Ravikant has a healthy way of thinking about this. If you are envious or jealous of someone's accomplishments or wealth, you must realize that it's impossible to be in that individual's position without taking onboard all the baggage that comes with it. Sure, Warren Buffet is rich, but would you like to swap with him and be 90 years old? Sure, that engineer is getting promoted faster than you, but do you also w…

There are people that have it orders of magnitude better than others in nearly all areas. With Warren Buffet it's an extreme example.

I agree, I see it as a useful psychological trick that can be applied sometimes but not always