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The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

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Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#81

Post by jsonmez »

Smudge wrote: post #70
jsonmez wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not what he said in his post, and I am excited to see him doing Penflip. I wish him the best. Glad that he did decide to commit to something meaningful after-all.

loren concluded his post with this: > I'm going to build whatever keeps me up at night. I have a long list, but there's one project that I'm particularly passionate about. It might turn into a startup. It might not. Who knows. So, sounds like it was exactly what he said in his post.

You are still missing it. Doing whatever you passionate about from a long list is not the same thing as committing to meaningful work over the long haul. You have to be able to make it through what I believe Seth Godin calls "the dip."

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#82

Post by StandardFuture »

mpeg wrote: post #76
Smudge wrote: post #41

Somehow this article manages to be both wise and presumptuous. The points he makes speak from experience. It's a perspective that is too often ignored by younger generations: You can't always quit a job when the work gets boring -- sometimes you just have to push through the tedium if you want to be the best at what you do. This is a widely applicable bit of advice. But the way this message is presented -- to chastis…

I find it incredibly presumptuous, people's circumstances are different, not every young person who quits his job is a spoiled brat who doesn't know hard work. I might be biased, because I quit my stable but unfulfilling corporate job a few weeks ago; but after reading his post I have cancelled my Pluralsight $49/mo subscription. Maybe a pointless little rebellion, but I feel like the same message he directed at Lore…

>but after reading his post I have cancelled my Pluralsight $49/mo subscription

Haha! :D ... Long live the free market!

That makes me wonder if he forgot about the whole 'hey, what I say is practically PR for my entire company' thing. Maybe he was 'working too hard' at writing his blog to see that it may not be the smartest thing to say?

Hmmm, maybe he should heed the advice of people like young, stupid, naive, lazy, little and incompetent me when I say to not work hard BUT rather work hard AT working smart. ;)

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#84

Post by scott_s »

mscarborough wrote: post #23

Yeah, at the start of the article I was already in disagreement after the equating of "grinding it out", "boring work", and "working hard". Sounds a little too self-justifying. I'm in my 30s but quit the startup and bigcorp stuff to work less and be happier. I put in plenty of time busting ass for people way over my pay grade for 8 years. Honestly, a lot of the higher-ups in technology really don't care about those e…

Hey, Mike. Whatcha up to these days? (Also: guess who I'm visiting at the moment.)

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

aaronem wrote: post #51
gboudrias wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is priceless. And then: It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster you exited the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every morning and direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring it may be, will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly travel. That's not how life works. You can direct all your efforts to bending cutlery, but yo…

> The author may be a great programmer Really? He reads like a motivational speaker. What's he shipped? Where's his repo?

I suggest you research the definition of the word "may", and consider the quoted phrase in the context of the sentence you extracted it from.

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#87

Post by BWStearns »

return0 wrote: post #56
skrebbel wrote: post #7

There might be a point here, but the whole "just suck it up and keep going for years and years" attitude that I'm getting from this post feels, well, misguided. If you think you can improve your life, work better, with more fun, with more meaning, with better challenges, then by all means go for it. There's no need to stay put at a place that sucks for you and that slowly boils your brain to pulp just because some ol…

> If you think you can improve your life, work better, with more fun, with more meaning, with better challenges, then by all means go for it. Sure, but what if that is to the expense of others? The widening wealth gap seems to suggest so.

Taking advantage of an opportunity while somewhere someone doesn't have as many opportunities as yesterday does not necessarily translate to "you took their opportunity". In what sense is getting yours "at the expense of others" unless you have achieved it by deceit, fraud, or force? If you're referring to general technologically driven unemployment, then yes in a very broad sense programmers do profit at the expense of others. Should companies ease off increasing market share if a competitor is on the verge of collapse in order to save the jobs of those at whom's expense they were profiting?

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#88

Post by brianmcconnell »

I agree 100% with the author about the spoiled brat mentality of this generation of developers. I personally prefer to hire older developers because a) they tend to be steady producers, and b) they have the maturity to understand that sometimes work sucks and c) provided managers don't treat them like shit, they tend to stick around. The flip side of the deal is I am not going to work them to death or make unreasonable demands unless we're in a do or die situation.

Guess what kids. Work can be boring. If you're writing reporting software for a utility grid monitoring company, it's probably not your "passion", but it'll pay for your mortgage, your kids school, and time off.

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#89

Post by Arjuna »

Phrases like, "The myth of burn out" and "Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early" give me great pause.

Burn out is real. It is dangerous, and even an overwhelming, driving passion for your work, your creation, can lead to disaster.

Ed Catmull recounted this story about the production of Toy Story 2 [1]:

"So we came back, John [Lasseter] told the story crew to take a good rest over the holidays, and come back on January 2nd... we were re-boarding the movie.

We had 8 months left.

We then started this incredibly intense effort to get this movie out. It was boarded quickly, it was pitched to the company, it was an electrifying pitch.

We had a lot of over-achieving people working for over-achieving managers to get the movie out.

We worked brutal hours with this. When I say "brutal", we had a number of people that were injured with RSI [2], one of them permanently left the field.

We had, actually, a married couple that worked there. This was in June, so it's summer, and the father was supposed to drop the baby off at daycare, but forgot; don't know why... but came and left the baby in the car, and came into work. Again, as the heat was rising, the mother asked... they realized and they rushed out: the baby was unconscious. The right thing was done, they put ice-water on the baby. The baby ended up being fine in the end, but it was one of those traumatic things, like, 'Why did this happen, are they working too hard?'

So when I say it was intense, it really was intense."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc&t=1064

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury

Re: The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

#90

Post by AJ007 »

enjo wrote: post #77
Smudge wrote: post #41

Somehow this article manages to be both wise and presumptuous. The points he makes speak from experience. It's a perspective that is too often ignored by younger generations: You can't always quit a job when the work gets boring -- sometimes you just have to push through the tedium if you want to be the best at what you do. This is a widely applicable bit of advice. But the way this message is presented -- to chastis…

+1 on the burnout piece. It's a complicated thing. I'd liken it to depression. Lots and lots of people constantly fret about being "depressed". Over time it became easy to dismiss depression as a legitimate illness. Apparently every time you feel sad you're depressed, the whole thing just loses its meaning. It wasn't until I met someone who suffered from true clinical depression did I understand exactly the seriousne…

Whats the timeline for real burnout?

I describe burnout is any time an individuals focus drops to the point that their work quality potentially becomes damaging rather than adding value.

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