8 ms·

I get the impression most of the people on this site are workaholics.

by WWLink 10y ago

andrewfromx 10y ago
sure, musk has 5 kids! how much time does he get with them vs. work I wonder.
- coldtea 10y ago
  When you have that kind of money you have 10 babysitters, nannies, assistants, cooks, cleaners, drivers etc. And you can get a day off almost whenever you want too.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    I love it when they show on TV how brave some superstar is who manages to raise children while having a busy career. They never show the nannies, cooks and cleaning personnel.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Then we try to sell that story to single moms with low-paying jobs, and tell them to suck it up when they're breaking down due to the stress and unattainability of it.
      - gedy 10y ago
        And or get yelled at if you suggest that intentionally walking into single parenthood without excellent circumstances is not a great idea.
    - lintiness 10y ago
      how about when said brave superstar LEANS IN and delivers a lecture to the planet via book (sheryl sandberg)?
  - andrewfromx 10y ago
    yeah right. I'm sure musk thinks, hmmm today instead of working all day on a fun project I think I'll parent! You can't have it both ways. I'm sure musk sacrificed father/kid relationships for work success in a major way. It's not possible to have it all.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >yeah right. I'm sure musk thinks, hmmm today instead of working all day on a fun project I think I'll parent! Many rich people do that all the time. If he doesn't think his kids is a "fun project" too, then that's his choice, not something born out of necessity. >You can't have it both ways. You can, if you have "fuck you money", which Musk has 10000 times over. It's the poor people who work 2 shifts and barely have the money to provide for their family that can't have both time and money at the same time. >I'm sure musk sacrificed father/kid relationships for work success in a major way. It's not possible to have it all. First of all, nobody mandates that you SHOULD have it all. You can make your own balance and opt to sacrifice maximum work success. Musk is not a slave. If he is a "slave to work success" that's his personal choice. There are rich people that have excellent in-person, relationships with their kids, and can shun work and meetings for their personal time, whether with kids, spouse, other interests, etc. Gates, for one, stepped down as CEO at 45 and went part-time with MS stuff at 50.
      - GuiA 10y ago
        > You can, if you have "fuck you money", which Musk has 10000 times over. You can have "fuck you money", but you can't have "fuck you time". Sure, the capitalist HN crowd will argue that money can buy you time (e.g. by having people do your chores for you, etc) but ultimately there is a finite amount of bedtime moments, meals, Sunday mornings, etc in your kid's lives. Try as you might, fuck you money won't change that.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >but ultimately there is a finite amount of bedtime moments, meals, Sunday mornings, etc in your kid's lives. Try as you might, fuck you money won't change that. I think you've misunderstood the concept of fuck you money, at least as it relates to time. They don't buy you more time -- they buy you the luxury to be you that decides what you do with your finite time. And bonding with your children is entirely up to you (or Musk's in this example) decision if you have those. Besides, nobody argued that there's not a "finite amount of bedtime moments, meals, Sunday mornings, etc in your kid's life" -- just that when you are rich it's upon you (and not, e.g. your boss or financial necessities, or drudgery work like cooking, and cleaning and such) to spend more of your time with your kid during those moments.
  - hourislate 10y ago
    Kids don't want babysitters, nannies, daycares,money, toys, rewards. They just want time with their parents. The more time you can spend with your child, the better. Hard to do in this day and age.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Yeah, but rich people can (have the option, not that they necessarily do it) have both ( babysitters, nannies, daycares, money, toys, rewards AND time with their children). For many poor working people time with their children is a luxury -- but they can't even give them all the other stuff, sometimes not even decent food and shelter, much less an education.
moron4hire 10y ago
Turns out most of our concept of being "busy" or "a workaholic" is an illusion. If you sit down and track how you use your time, you'll probably find you don't work anywhere near as much as you think and you use a lot of spare time very inefficiently. I have an infant. I spend a lot of time with him. During the week I probably take care of him more than my wife does, because she goes to work very early. I also work in a VR startup, scrambling to get projects done. Somehow, I still find time to cook dinner with my wife, watch the latest episode of whatever one TV show we are following, get a few house chores done, and waste time on HN and Twitter. The only times it feels like I'm too busy to get everything done is when I'm wasting too much time on HN and Twitter.
- taneq 10y ago
  It sounds like you are, in fact, not very busy (except with family stuff). Which is a good thing!
  - moron4hire 10y ago
    I'm the engineering lead for all of our VR projects (both software and hardware), I organize two different meetups, one bi-weekly, the other monthly. What I don't do is I don't watch very much television and I don't hang out in bars anymore. I'm married so I don't have to chase girls. I don't play video games anymore (hell, I don't even like non-VR games anymore, but we don't have room in our apartment for a Vive, which is the only VR system I would bother with for personal use). I don't go to the gym every day (only days I take the baby to swim class). I don't have any illusions that I'll be a rock-star, so I'm not in any bands. Every person I know who thinks they are busy are actually just split and confused on their purpose in life. I have a friend who has a boat and a giant home theater system and he has to stay at work for so much overtime to cover the cost of it all he never gets to enjoy either. If he'd admit that he liked watching TV more than he liked fishing, or vice versa, he'd be a lot happier and actually do more. But he doesn't actually do anything extra in that time at work, because overtime is a fallacy and actually anti-productive. So he'd even be getting more done at work if he wasn't... at work all the time! When you want to do a certain something, you necessarily have to choose to give up doing other things. I want to build a company and a happy family. You are right, I'm "not very busy". Because being busy is an illusion. It doesn't matter to how much you get done if your TODO list is 10 items long or 100 items long if you can only get through 9 items in a week (and you will definitely find enough items to replace those 9 in that week). Those 90 extra items don't get done whether or not they are on your list. But if they are on your list, you convince yourself you're "busy". If anything, the anxiety of not being able to make even a 10% dent in a gigantic pile of tasks might even hurt your productivity.

I get the impression most of the people on this site are workaholics.

by WWLink 10y ago

I get the impression most of the people on this site are workaholics.

andrewfromx 10y ago

sure, musk has 5 kids! how much time does he get with them vs. work I wonder.

coldtea 10y ago
When you have that kind of money you have 10 babysitters, nannies, assistants, cooks, cleaners, drivers etc. And you can get a day off almost whenever you want too.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I love it when they show on TV how brave some superstar is who manages to raise children while having a busy career. They never show the nannies, cooks and cleaning personnel.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Then we try to sell that story to single moms with low-paying jobs, and tell them to suck it up when they're breaking down due to the stress and unattainability of it.
    - gedy 10y ago
      And or get yelled at if you suggest that intentionally walking into single parenthood without excellent circumstances is not a great idea.
  - lintiness 10y ago
    how about when said brave superstar LEANS IN and delivers a lecture to the planet via book (sheryl sandberg)?
- andrewfromx 10y ago
  yeah right. I'm sure musk thinks, hmmm today instead of working all day on a fun project I think I'll parent! You can't have it both ways. I'm sure musk sacrificed father/kid relationships for work success in a major way. It's not possible to have it all.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >yeah right. I'm sure musk thinks, hmmm today instead of working all day on a fun project I think I'll parent! Many rich people do that all the time. If he doesn't think his kids is a "fun project" too, then that's his choice, not something born out of necessity. >You can't have it both ways. You can, if you have "fuck you money", which Musk has 10000 times over. It's the poor people who work 2 shifts and barely have the money to provide for their family that can't have both time and money at the same time. >I'm sure musk sacrificed father/kid relationships for work success in a major way. It's not possible to have it all. First of all, nobody mandates that you SHOULD have it all. You can make your own balance and opt to sacrifice maximum work success. Musk is not a slave. If he is a "slave to work success" that's his personal choice. There are rich people that have excellent in-person, relationships with their kids, and can shun work and meetings for their personal time, whether with kids, spouse, other interests, etc. Gates, for one, stepped down as CEO at 45 and went part-time with MS stuff at 50.
    - GuiA 10y ago
      > You can, if you have "fuck you money", which Musk has 10000 times over. You can have "fuck you money", but you can't have "fuck you time". Sure, the capitalist HN crowd will argue that money can buy you time (e.g. by having people do your chores for you, etc) but ultimately there is a finite amount of bedtime moments, meals, Sunday mornings, etc in your kid's lives. Try as you might, fuck you money won't change that.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >but ultimately there is a finite amount of bedtime moments, meals, Sunday mornings, etc in your kid's lives. Try as you might, fuck you money won't change that. I think you've misunderstood the concept of fuck you money, at least as it relates to time. They don't buy you more time -- they buy you the luxury to be you that decides what you do with your finite time. And bonding with your children is entirely up to you (or Musk's in this example) decision if you have those. Besides, nobody argued that there's not a "finite amount of bedtime moments, meals, Sunday mornings, etc in your kid's life" -- just that when you are rich it's upon you (and not, e.g. your boss or financial necessities, or drudgery work like cooking, and cleaning and such) to spend more of your time with your kid during those moments.
- hourislate 10y ago
  Kids don't want babysitters, nannies, daycares,money, toys, rewards. They just want time with their parents. The more time you can spend with your child, the better. Hard to do in this day and age.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Yeah, but rich people can (have the option, not that they necessarily do it) have both ( babysitters, nannies, daycares, money, toys, rewards AND time with their children). For many poor working people time with their children is a luxury -- but they can't even give them all the other stuff, sometimes not even decent food and shelter, much less an education.

moron4hire 10y ago

Turns out most of our concept of being "busy" or "a workaholic" is an illusion. If you sit down and track how you use your time, you'll probably find you don't work anywhere near as much as you think and you use a lot of spare time very inefficiently. I have an infant. I spend a lot of time with him. During the week I probably take care of him more than my wife does, because she goes to work very early. I also work in a VR startup, scrambling to get projects done. Somehow, I still find time to cook dinner with my wife, watch the latest episode of whatever one TV show we are following, get a few house chores done, and waste time on HN and Twitter. The only times it feels like I'm too busy to get everything done is when I'm wasting too much time on HN and Twitter.

taneq 10y ago
It sounds like you are, in fact, not very busy (except with family stuff). Which is a good thing!
- moron4hire 10y ago
  I'm the engineering lead for all of our VR projects (both software and hardware), I organize two different meetups, one bi-weekly, the other monthly. What I don't do is I don't watch very much television and I don't hang out in bars anymore. I'm married so I don't have to chase girls. I don't play video games anymore (hell, I don't even like non-VR games anymore, but we don't have room in our apartment for a Vive, which is the only VR system I would bother with for personal use). I don't go to the gym every day (only days I take the baby to swim class). I don't have any illusions that I'll be a rock-star, so I'm not in any bands. Every person I know who thinks they are busy are actually just split and confused on their purpose in life. I have a friend who has a boat and a giant home theater system and he has to stay at work for so much overtime to cover the cost of it all he never gets to enjoy either. If he'd admit that he liked watching TV more than he liked fishing, or vice versa, he'd be a lot happier and actually do more. But he doesn't actually do anything extra in that time at work, because overtime is a fallacy and actually anti-productive. So he'd even be getting more done at work if he wasn't... at work all the time! When you want to do a certain something, you necessarily have to choose to give up doing other things. I want to build a company and a happy family. You are right, I'm "not very busy". Because being busy is an illusion. It doesn't matter to how much you get done if your TODO list is 10 items long or 100 items long if you can only get through 9 items in a week (and you will definitely find enough items to replace those 9 in that week). Those 90 extra items don't get done whether or not they are on your list. But if they are on your list, you convince yourself you're "busy". If anything, the anxiety of not being able to make even a 10% dent in a gigantic pile of tasks might even hurt your productivity.