7 ms·

I wouldn't doubt overwork as a factor, but the elephant in the room is meaninglessness. Work, like God, is dead. Even for tech workers, the novelty has worn off

I wouldn't doubt overwork as a factor, but the elephant in the room is meaninglessness. Work, like God, is dead. Even for tech workers, the novelty has worn off, and people pretty much realize that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation. Burnout, like all pain, may be a feature.

pdelbarba 10y ago
tl;dr as it turns out, most people don't achieve self actualization by making money for other people
- mathgeek 10y ago
  I'd cut the "for other people" part out as well.
- dangle 10y ago
  I loled. What do you do for money?
norea-armozel 10y ago
Yeah I think I agree on the meaninglessness of work these days. And I don't mean that the individual task isn't perceptible as some part of a larger goal but I mean that much of the work I've done was utterly worthless or outright scrapped after the business decided it wanted to go the opposite direction. Not only is this frustrating from a personal point of view but it's also wasteful professionally. I'd rather have unpaid time off while the business finally figured out their strategy or goals for me before stepping into the office. At least then I would have time to do something else (paid or otherwise). Plus, it wouldn't be a waste of other resources such as purchasing licenses for third party software we'll never use in part or in whole or wages that could've been part of another budget for a viable product. All in all, it's this kind of wasteful nature that means the meaninglessness more painful to me since I can't point to a product or service with my fingerprints on it. I can't say "I helped make that possible" or "I helped that company add value to their client's experience."
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  >Yeah I think I agree on the meaninglessness of work these days. These days? In all of human history your likelihood of being a slave was pretty high. Talk about real meaningless. If anything we live in a rare break from slavery which is an outlier. Not to mention back-breaking farm work. Or working in a mine. Or being gang pressed on a ship or into warfare. How's that for meaning? I think punching out some code and rebooting the occasional server and leaving at 5 is slightly better than the above. I think people need to learn some real expectations of what work means and perhaps to read Studs Turkel's Working before they get to complain about their cush white collar jobs being these horrible things. I'm not trying to trivialize work stress, but phrases like 'these days' are highly loaded and non-historic. If anything, we have it easier than all of our ancestors and by a wide margin.
  - norea-armozel 10y ago
    >These days? In all of human history your likelihood of being a slave was pretty high. Talk about real meaningless. If anything we live in a rare break from slavery which is an outlier. Slavery and drudgery are not what make work meaningful or meaningless. >I think people need to learn some real expectations of what work means and perhaps to read Studs Turkel's Working before they get to complain about their cush white collar jobs being these horrible things. As someone who's work in factories, grain elevators, grocery, retail, and currently work in software development I can tell you the meaningless of modern work is the same regardless of the drudgery involved. The fact you equate drudgery with meaningless work shows you have no clue as to how the working classes operate (being that I come from the working class I have some insights to impart here so I'll try to be patient with you). What makes work meaningless for the vast majority of humans is the total lack of control or the inability to perceive the end goal (ex. a factory assembler who'll never see the final product or that they have no say what the product should be or even if it's worthwhile to produce it). The lack of goals or any kind of connection to our work is what drives many people to quit or change jobs regardless of whether it's in an office or in a kitchen or on a factory line. Churn happens because people are intentionally left to be nothing more than trained animal in their task. Punch in, make quota, punch out. And repeat, forever. So, I'm not exactly sure what part of the physical comfort matters when the psychological deprivation weighs as hard as a herniated disk does on a laborer (I know both have similar impact thanks to my mother). And I can say that both physical and psychological pains and deprivations are hell from my own experiences. It's not to say that gilded cages aren't pretty but they're still cages.
ashark 10y ago
> Even for tech workers, the novelty has worn off, Watching most of what you build—which often wasn't exciting or very important-seeming to begin with—be discarded in short order, having benefitted few (i.e. not enough to justify the effort) or no people, after all kinds of false or semi-real urgency to get it done, year after year after year, will do that. It's a testament to how much money is sloshing around that we get paid so much to spend huge amounts of time building soon-to-be digital garbage, I guess. It feels like there's an exceptionally stupid monkey smashing shapes against one of those children's shape-in-the-correct-hole puzzles, but larger, extending forever into the distance, trying to get some of them to fit, which they mostly don't because the monkey's so damn stupid. And we're the shapes.
- tzakrajs 10y ago
  This comment is so real. At the same time, those monkeys put the shape through the correct hole at a fast enough rate to keep the lights on and stay fed to starve another day.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Starve? The monkey is always growing. And the smartest monkey in town by a large margin. Yet, it's infuriating how dumb it is.
    - tzakrajs 10y ago
      If the monkey is the industry, then sure but I was thinking of the monkey as the company and the industry was a cacophony of failed block-thru-hole puzzlers. Either way, thanks again -- I shared this with my coworkers and they appreciated your sentiments.
- roymurdock 10y ago
  The monkey image is a great analogy for what economists are currently studying as the "productivity puzzle". Low to zero productivity growth is also why our unemployment rate in the US is amazingly low (seemingly a tight labor market), but why real median income is stagnant.
nibstwo 10y ago
Meaninglessness is a symptom. Resentment is the cause. Self advocate, complain, fuck shit up and walk away worst case.
bobbington 10y ago
God is NOT dead - some people just ignore him. As for you being exploited at work, I agree and it is terrible. I always thought of getting a job but never could for that very reason. Instead I freelance and am finishing up my own software to sell. I'm also careful about the contracts I sign. I turn down work if I don't like the contract. Interestingly Jesus will help you break free from the grind. Many people are in the system because they are afraid of what would happen if they left, I assume. Jesus explained "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink... Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you". When you believe Jesus it helps you be free and do your own thing because you are not worried about what you will do to live. I knew most people here are probably atheists, and if you are I still respect you 100%. But I have found Jesus teachings to be the most effective tool in transforming my life. George mueller is proof that God takes care of those who trust in him. He decided to believe Jesus' command and he started an orphanage, never asking for one single donation. There was a time they had no food for breakfast for the children. He stayed up late praying, and that night a man came by saying that he could not sleep, but felt that he must bring by bread to the orphanage. There are countless stories he has, reading his autobiography is amazing. His orphanage grew to one of the largest the world has ever seen, and he never asked for one donation. The key is that you only find God if you are looking for him, if you take a chance. But he has promised that if you seek out his kingdom, he will provide. So seek his kingdom and start freelancing! Build your own business, and you won't have to be exploited!
gdulli 10y ago
Unless you're born with all the resources you'll ever need, you have to put in one kind of effort or another to secure them. Work never had to have meaning beyond being a way to stay alive. One just needed to accept that life wasn't going to be all leisure. I have a pretty comfortable job/career. I have a hard time saying I'm being exploited just because my work makes someone else richer to a greater extent than it makes me richer. It's engaging (enough) and I live well. I'm not putting my own resources at risk or making personal sacrifices. 20 years into my career and I've never burned out, probably because I never told myself I needed to, or was going to, change the world. And I made it my goal from the start to just find a job/life I was happy with.
- betenoire 10y ago
  I tend to agree with you. Being exploited sounds negative, and I assume most of the people using the term mean it that way. But it's not a necessary condition of "exploitation". And why wouldn't my employer take full advantage of my services that they are paying for?
  - gdulli 10y ago
    Sure, if we're going by the clinical use of "exploit" without the negative connotations. I can more easily feel like I'm the one exploiting my employer. I get over $200K/year in salary and benefits to spend 40-50 hours/week doing what usually doesn't even feel much like work. I can work extra to get ahead when it would benefit me, or I can do the minimum at a given time. They have to give me free food and a top of the line computer and let me manage what time I come in and leave and what I wear. Because if they don't, I can find another company that will. I get a really nice bonus when the company does well but my comp doesn't go down if it's not doing well. I've spent more time at this job than I did in college, learning a lot here as well, and I can freely take that knowledge to another company whenever I want, I have no commitment here. Obviously it's not always like this. Not even within tech. But many of us can choose whether to see our jobs in a positive or negative light.
    - betenoire 10y ago
hamilyon2 10y ago
Fulfilling other's people dreams is not meaninless. We all should be slaves of wishes of others. It is called contribution and serving needs of other poeople
- astrange 10y ago
  I like this reply the best.
kirse 10y ago
the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation. Ugh, I know, being "economically exploited" is so rough -- making six figs in a top-tier profession with low single-digit unemployment that provides for a home/apt, family, regular health insurance, a warm bed and heating for the winter, cooling for the summer, multiple cars and a motorcycle (and maybe even a home for those too), an entire closet full of clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, regular healthy meals, spontaneous travel and vacations, hobbies, movies, TV, games, and entertainment nearly to our hearts' desire. Worse, at work I have to deal with shiny new gadgets, laptops, desktops, servers, giant monitors, a desk and chair to my liking, HVAC, plumbing, and free filtered water. And wait a second, did you say you get paid while taking a bathroom break!? Life really does suck being exploited like this. What's dead is not God, nor work, and the elephant might just be painted on the mirror on your wall.
- Asooka 10y ago
  But you have literally zero time to enjoy any of those things. You live in the office 80% of the time, your entire life is sitting pretending to be busy, then going "home", where you spend less time than you do at the office, getting a few hours of sleep and eating whatever you can get delivered, which is never really good, then trying to get a few hours of sleep and entering another day of meaningless toil. Your entire life is subjugated. You're practically a serf, with no real control of your own life, owned by a huge corporation that will discard you like wet tissue paper the moment you ask for the privilege of having a human life.
  - rfrank 10y ago
    Nobody is holding a gun to your head and making you do the job or live in the bay area, move and do something else if you don't like it. Trust me, the service worker who commutes on public transit for three hours a day and makes 1/5th a tech salary would love to swap spots with the tech "serfs" if they had a chance.
    - kmicklas 10y ago
      Of course, but that doesn't mean both aren't being economically exploited.
ryandvm 10y ago
I can't speak for everyone, but as someone who has definitely burned out several times, for me it's never the work - it's always the workplace. After going through the whole process a few times, I've come to the conclusion that my own burnout is mostly attributable to the following factors: * Lack of voice in the direction of the company. * No personal investment in the success of the company. People respond to incentives. If someone has no say in where the company is going and doesn't share in the companies successes (or failures), it's only a matter of time before any rational individual is going to just stop caring. Fortunately, these problems have solutions. Several hundred year old solutions, no less: https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate-code-1aa1b2e02bf6 https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate-code-1aa1b... [Disclaimer: That's my own blog post.]
- pascalxus 10y ago
  I've never really understood this viewpoint. Why would I care what the company was doing or where it was going? We're just wage earners, earning a living. It's simple: they give me money, I give them time. What they choose to do with my output is their concern. Why care? You don't own the company, not even a tiny fraction (stock options aren't ownership until you excercise, which for most people is never). Your only going to be there a few years, and they'll drop you the first chance they can get where they don't need you. It's like selling an orange. If you're a fruit stand, do you care what your customers will do with the fruits of your labor? What matters to me, is my own working conditions: work/life balance, salary and specifics of the project I am working on: ratio of coding vs fixing other people's messes, dev environment, ease of development and being empowered to write lots of code and functionality, as well as positive feedback from managers and co-workers.
  - ryandvm 10y ago
    I think we are in agreement. If you don't own a meaningful amount of the company, you aren't going to be very interested in the company's success and frankly the company is demonstrably uninterested in your success. By all rights you should feel perfectly comfortable moving on when a better offer comes your way.
- 10y ago
mjolk 10y ago
> I wouldn't doubt overwork as a factor, but the elephant in the room is meaninglessness... people pretty much realize that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation...Burnout, like all pain, may be a feature. Oh god, if you're feeling theatrically unhappy with your job, it's seriously time to make a move. The core feature of my team is making something we think is awesome and missing from the world, where my role as the head of the startup is to do what needs to get done and make sure my team feels like their work and lives are fulfilling. If any member on my team felt like their work is meaningless or a source of emotional pain, I would not be able to sleep at night.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>Work, like God, is dead. Maybe being forced a "life is a meaningless accident and determism means you're just a flesh robot" message since birth is the problem? I follow a basic spritual path of my own doing and its very fulfilling. Its buddhism-lite with a fair bit of meditation and more estoric stuff like lucid dream practice and engage in my own form of 'right speech' and 'right action.' I'm so much more alive than I was before when I just bought into the typical young man's nihilism game. >that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation. The core feature of my job is to make money for me, and the guys above me doing better don't diminish from my salary. The same way my salary isn't diminishing from the guys below me. We tried forced equality recently in human history and it didn't work, so here we are doing the only thing that does. I think if you just see employment as this bitter zero-sum game you're destined to be unhappy. I'm not happy with work, nor unhappy. I understand what it is, its a compromise like much of life. I see lots of extremist messages passed on to young people about how awful things are but almost never a message about compromise, being realistic, moderation, and finding a path that works for you. Its always "the man is out to get me, so I can't win" stuff that's fairly dramatic and completely demoralizing. It ignores the massive middle-road open to those of us in the wealthy west. Perhaps your life lacks moderation, chance taking, and criticism of what you've been taught by authorities who don't deserve your trust because they're just winging it with desperation just like you. Maybe your attitude is the sum total of decades of the blind leading the blind in our culture. Having a 'I might as well kill myself because everything is so meaningless' attitude is absolutely not normal regardless of how hard you try to normalize it.
- wry_discontent 10y ago
  > Maybe being forced a "life is a meaningless accident and determism means you're just a flesh robot" message since birth is the problem? And more than that, we're never given education on how to combat the feelings of meaninglessness that this message gives us. I've read a fair amount of existentialist philosophy myself to deal with it, but most people don't and it makes them miserable.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >Maybe being forced a "life is a meaningless accident and determism means you're just a flesh robot" message since birth is the problem? I follow a basic spritual path of my own doing and its very fulfilling. Its buddhism-lite with a fair bit of meditation and more estoric stuff like lucid dream practice and engage in my own form of 'right speech' and 'right action.' I'm so much more alive than I was before when I just bought into the typical young man's nihilism game. Firstly, nobody said anything about life. We were talking about Work with a capital W. Secondly, most of us don't need ghosts and spiritual dreams to have meaningful lives. >I see lots of extremist messages passed on to young people about how awful things are but almost never a message about compromise, being realistic, moderation, and finding a path that works for you. Its always "the man is out to get me, so I can't win" stuff that's fairly dramatic and completely demoralizing. It ignores the massive middle-road open to those of us in the wealthy west. Are you European? I think what you're hearing is coming from Americans because, well, the way American society treats people is actually quite extreme itself. "Head leftward towards the middle!" is going to sound extreme to someone who's idea of normal is to the far-right.
jdietrich 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
JDiculous 10y ago
It's a shame that as a society we have so many of our brightest minds devoted to relatively meaningless work when they could be working on things that they not only want to work on, but are better for humanity. I don't have trouble focusing on my work when I'm in a good company. The problem is that if I take a look at the grand scheme of things and think about the that I'm devoting the majority of my waking hours to coding apps that would get done regardless of whether or not I existed (this space is largely zero sum in that there are more than enough developers to go around), it's kind of depressing. I'd rather be devoting my life to solving the meaningful problems in the world that not enough people are working on (eg. like what Elon Musk is doing). On another note, it surprises me that long breaks from work (eg. sabbaticals) aren't more common. Doing the same thing every weekday gets repetitive and draining.

pdelbarba 10y ago

tl;dr as it turns out, most people don't achieve self actualization by making money for other people

mathgeek 10y ago
I'd cut the "for other people" part out as well.
dangle 10y ago
I loled. What do you do for money?

norea-armozel 10y ago

Yeah I think I agree on the meaninglessness of work these days. And I don't mean that the individual task isn't perceptible as some part of a larger goal but I mean that much of the work I've done was utterly worthless or outright scrapped after the business decided it wanted to go the opposite direction. Not only is this frustrating from a personal point of view but it's also wasteful professionally. I'd rather have unpaid time off while the business finally figured out their strategy or goals for me before stepping into the office. At least then I would have time to do something else (paid or otherwise). Plus, it wouldn't be a waste of other resources such as purchasing licenses for third party software we'll never use in part or in whole or wages that could've been part of another budget for a viable product. All in all, it's this kind of wasteful nature that means the meaninglessness more painful to me since I can't point to a product or service with my fingerprints on it. I can't say "I helped make that possible" or "I helped that company add value to their client's experience."

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>Yeah I think I agree on the meaninglessness of work these days. These days? In all of human history your likelihood of being a slave was pretty high. Talk about real meaningless. If anything we live in a rare break from slavery which is an outlier. Not to mention back-breaking farm work. Or working in a mine. Or being gang pressed on a ship or into warfare. How's that for meaning? I think punching out some code and rebooting the occasional server and leaving at 5 is slightly better than the above. I think people need to learn some real expectations of what work means and perhaps to read Studs Turkel's Working before they get to complain about their cush white collar jobs being these horrible things. I'm not trying to trivialize work stress, but phrases like 'these days' are highly loaded and non-historic. If anything, we have it easier than all of our ancestors and by a wide margin.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  >These days? In all of human history your likelihood of being a slave was pretty high. Talk about real meaningless. If anything we live in a rare break from slavery which is an outlier. Slavery and drudgery are not what make work meaningful or meaningless. >I think people need to learn some real expectations of what work means and perhaps to read Studs Turkel's Working before they get to complain about their cush white collar jobs being these horrible things. As someone who's work in factories, grain elevators, grocery, retail, and currently work in software development I can tell you the meaningless of modern work is the same regardless of the drudgery involved. The fact you equate drudgery with meaningless work shows you have no clue as to how the working classes operate (being that I come from the working class I have some insights to impart here so I'll try to be patient with you). What makes work meaningless for the vast majority of humans is the total lack of control or the inability to perceive the end goal (ex. a factory assembler who'll never see the final product or that they have no say what the product should be or even if it's worthwhile to produce it). The lack of goals or any kind of connection to our work is what drives many people to quit or change jobs regardless of whether it's in an office or in a kitchen or on a factory line. Churn happens because people are intentionally left to be nothing more than trained animal in their task. Punch in, make quota, punch out. And repeat, forever. So, I'm not exactly sure what part of the physical comfort matters when the psychological deprivation weighs as hard as a herniated disk does on a laborer (I know both have similar impact thanks to my mother). And I can say that both physical and psychological pains and deprivations are hell from my own experiences. It's not to say that gilded cages aren't pretty but they're still cages.

ashark 10y ago

> Even for tech workers, the novelty has worn off, Watching most of what you build—which often wasn't exciting or very important-seeming to begin with—be discarded in short order, having benefitted few (i.e. not enough to justify the effort) or no people, after all kinds of false or semi-real urgency to get it done, year after year after year, will do that. It's a testament to how much money is sloshing around that we get paid so much to spend huge amounts of time building soon-to-be digital garbage, I guess. It feels like there's an exceptionally stupid monkey smashing shapes against one of those children's shape-in-the-correct-hole puzzles, but larger, extending forever into the distance, trying to get some of them to fit, which they mostly don't because the monkey's so damn stupid. And we're the shapes.

tzakrajs 10y ago
This comment is so real. At the same time, those monkeys put the shape through the correct hole at a fast enough rate to keep the lights on and stay fed to starve another day.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  Starve? The monkey is always growing. And the smartest monkey in town by a large margin. Yet, it's infuriating how dumb it is.
  - tzakrajs 10y ago
    If the monkey is the industry, then sure but I was thinking of the monkey as the company and the industry was a cacophony of failed block-thru-hole puzzlers. Either way, thanks again -- I shared this with my coworkers and they appreciated your sentiments.
roymurdock 10y ago
The monkey image is a great analogy for what economists are currently studying as the "productivity puzzle". Low to zero productivity growth is also why our unemployment rate in the US is amazingly low (seemingly a tight labor market), but why real median income is stagnant.

nibstwo 10y ago

Meaninglessness is a symptom. Resentment is the cause. Self advocate, complain, fuck shit up and walk away worst case.

bobbington 10y ago

God is NOT dead - some people just ignore him. As for you being exploited at work, I agree and it is terrible. I always thought of getting a job but never could for that very reason. Instead I freelance and am finishing up my own software to sell. I'm also careful about the contracts I sign. I turn down work if I don't like the contract. Interestingly Jesus will help you break free from the grind. Many people are in the system because they are afraid of what would happen if they left, I assume. Jesus explained "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink... Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you". When you believe Jesus it helps you be free and do your own thing because you are not worried about what you will do to live. I knew most people here are probably atheists, and if you are I still respect you 100%. But I have found Jesus teachings to be the most effective tool in transforming my life. George mueller is proof that God takes care of those who trust in him. He decided to believe Jesus' command and he started an orphanage, never asking for one single donation. There was a time they had no food for breakfast for the children. He stayed up late praying, and that night a man came by saying that he could not sleep, but felt that he must bring by bread to the orphanage. There are countless stories he has, reading his autobiography is amazing. His orphanage grew to one of the largest the world has ever seen, and he never asked for one donation. The key is that you only find God if you are looking for him, if you take a chance. But he has promised that if you seek out his kingdom, he will provide. So seek his kingdom and start freelancing! Build your own business, and you won't have to be exploited!

gdulli 10y ago

Unless you're born with all the resources you'll ever need, you have to put in one kind of effort or another to secure them. Work never had to have meaning beyond being a way to stay alive. One just needed to accept that life wasn't going to be all leisure. I have a pretty comfortable job/career. I have a hard time saying I'm being exploited just because my work makes someone else richer to a greater extent than it makes me richer. It's engaging (enough) and I live well. I'm not putting my own resources at risk or making personal sacrifices. 20 years into my career and I've never burned out, probably because I never told myself I needed to, or was going to, change the world. And I made it my goal from the start to just find a job/life I was happy with.

betenoire 10y ago
I tend to agree with you. Being exploited sounds negative, and I assume most of the people using the term mean it that way. But it's not a necessary condition of "exploitation". And why wouldn't my employer take full advantage of my services that they are paying for?
- gdulli 10y ago
  Sure, if we're going by the clinical use of "exploit" without the negative connotations. I can more easily feel like I'm the one exploiting my employer. I get over $200K/year in salary and benefits to spend 40-50 hours/week doing what usually doesn't even feel much like work. I can work extra to get ahead when it would benefit me, or I can do the minimum at a given time. They have to give me free food and a top of the line computer and let me manage what time I come in and leave and what I wear. Because if they don't, I can find another company that will. I get a really nice bonus when the company does well but my comp doesn't go down if it's not doing well. I've spent more time at this job than I did in college, learning a lot here as well, and I can freely take that knowledge to another company whenever I want, I have no commitment here. Obviously it's not always like this. Not even within tech. But many of us can choose whether to see our jobs in a positive or negative light.
  - betenoire 10y ago

hamilyon2 10y ago

Fulfilling other's people dreams is not meaninless. We all should be slaves of wishes of others. It is called contribution and serving needs of other poeople

astrange 10y ago
I like this reply the best.

kirse 10y ago

the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation. Ugh, I know, being "economically exploited" is so rough -- making six figs in a top-tier profession with low single-digit unemployment that provides for a home/apt, family, regular health insurance, a warm bed and heating for the winter, cooling for the summer, multiple cars and a motorcycle (and maybe even a home for those too), an entire closet full of clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, regular healthy meals, spontaneous travel and vacations, hobbies, movies, TV, games, and entertainment nearly to our hearts' desire. Worse, at work I have to deal with shiny new gadgets, laptops, desktops, servers, giant monitors, a desk and chair to my liking, HVAC, plumbing, and free filtered water. And wait a second, did you say you get paid while taking a bathroom break!? Life really does suck being exploited like this. What's dead is not God, nor work, and the elephant might just be painted on the mirror on your wall.

Asooka 10y ago
But you have literally zero time to enjoy any of those things. You live in the office 80% of the time, your entire life is sitting pretending to be busy, then going "home", where you spend less time than you do at the office, getting a few hours of sleep and eating whatever you can get delivered, which is never really good, then trying to get a few hours of sleep and entering another day of meaningless toil. Your entire life is subjugated. You're practically a serf, with no real control of your own life, owned by a huge corporation that will discard you like wet tissue paper the moment you ask for the privilege of having a human life.
- rfrank 10y ago
  Nobody is holding a gun to your head and making you do the job or live in the bay area, move and do something else if you don't like it. Trust me, the service worker who commutes on public transit for three hours a day and makes 1/5th a tech salary would love to swap spots with the tech "serfs" if they had a chance.
  - kmicklas 10y ago
    Of course, but that doesn't mean both aren't being economically exploited.

ryandvm 10y ago

I can't speak for everyone, but as someone who has definitely burned out several times, for me it's never the work - it's always the workplace. After going through the whole process a few times, I've come to the conclusion that my own burnout is mostly attributable to the following factors: * Lack of voice in the direction of the company. * No personal investment in the success of the company. People respond to incentives. If someone has no say in where the company is going and doesn't share in the companies successes (or failures), it's only a matter of time before any rational individual is going to just stop caring. Fortunately, these problems have solutions. Several hundred year old solutions, no less: https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate-code-1aa1b2e02bf6 https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate-code-1aa1b... [Disclaimer: That's my own blog post.]

pascalxus 10y ago
I've never really understood this viewpoint. Why would I care what the company was doing or where it was going? We're just wage earners, earning a living. It's simple: they give me money, I give them time. What they choose to do with my output is their concern. Why care? You don't own the company, not even a tiny fraction (stock options aren't ownership until you excercise, which for most people is never). Your only going to be there a few years, and they'll drop you the first chance they can get where they don't need you. It's like selling an orange. If you're a fruit stand, do you care what your customers will do with the fruits of your labor? What matters to me, is my own working conditions: work/life balance, salary and specifics of the project I am working on: ratio of coding vs fixing other people's messes, dev environment, ease of development and being empowered to write lots of code and functionality, as well as positive feedback from managers and co-workers.
- ryandvm 10y ago
  I think we are in agreement. If you don't own a meaningful amount of the company, you aren't going to be very interested in the company's success and frankly the company is demonstrably uninterested in your success. By all rights you should feel perfectly comfortable moving on when a better offer comes your way.
10y ago

mjolk 10y ago

> I wouldn't doubt overwork as a factor, but the elephant in the room is meaninglessness... people pretty much realize that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation...Burnout, like all pain, may be a feature. Oh god, if you're feeling theatrically unhappy with your job, it's seriously time to make a move. The core feature of my team is making something we think is awesome and missing from the world, where my role as the head of the startup is to do what needs to get done and make sure my team feels like their work and lives are fulfilling. If any member on my team felt like their work is meaningless or a source of emotional pain, I would not be able to sleep at night.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

>Work, like God, is dead. Maybe being forced a "life is a meaningless accident and determism means you're just a flesh robot" message since birth is the problem? I follow a basic spritual path of my own doing and its very fulfilling. Its buddhism-lite with a fair bit of meditation and more estoric stuff like lucid dream practice and engage in my own form of 'right speech' and 'right action.' I'm so much more alive than I was before when I just bought into the typical young man's nihilism game. >that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation. The core feature of my job is to make money for me, and the guys above me doing better don't diminish from my salary. The same way my salary isn't diminishing from the guys below me. We tried forced equality recently in human history and it didn't work, so here we are doing the only thing that does. I think if you just see employment as this bitter zero-sum game you're destined to be unhappy. I'm not happy with work, nor unhappy. I understand what it is, its a compromise like much of life. I see lots of extremist messages passed on to young people about how awful things are but almost never a message about compromise, being realistic, moderation, and finding a path that works for you. Its always "the man is out to get me, so I can't win" stuff that's fairly dramatic and completely demoralizing. It ignores the massive middle-road open to those of us in the wealthy west. Perhaps your life lacks moderation, chance taking, and criticism of what you've been taught by authorities who don't deserve your trust because they're just winging it with desperation just like you. Maybe your attitude is the sum total of decades of the blind leading the blind in our culture. Having a 'I might as well kill myself because everything is so meaningless' attitude is absolutely not normal regardless of how hard you try to normalize it.

wry_discontent 10y ago
> Maybe being forced a "life is a meaningless accident and determism means you're just a flesh robot" message since birth is the problem? And more than that, we're never given education on how to combat the feelings of meaninglessness that this message gives us. I've read a fair amount of existentialist philosophy myself to deal with it, but most people don't and it makes them miserable.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>Maybe being forced a "life is a meaningless accident and determism means you're just a flesh robot" message since birth is the problem? I follow a basic spritual path of my own doing and its very fulfilling. Its buddhism-lite with a fair bit of meditation and more estoric stuff like lucid dream practice and engage in my own form of 'right speech' and 'right action.' I'm so much more alive than I was before when I just bought into the typical young man's nihilism game. Firstly, nobody said anything about life. We were talking about Work with a capital W. Secondly, most of us don't need ghosts and spiritual dreams to have meaningful lives. >I see lots of extremist messages passed on to young people about how awful things are but almost never a message about compromise, being realistic, moderation, and finding a path that works for you. Its always "the man is out to get me, so I can't win" stuff that's fairly dramatic and completely demoralizing. It ignores the massive middle-road open to those of us in the wealthy west. Are you European? I think what you're hearing is coming from Americans because, well, the way American society treats people is actually quite extreme itself. "Head leftward towards the middle!" is going to sound extreme to someone who's idea of normal is to the far-right.

jdietrich 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

JDiculous 10y ago

It's a shame that as a society we have so many of our brightest minds devoted to relatively meaningless work when they could be working on things that they not only want to work on, but are better for humanity. I don't have trouble focusing on my work when I'm in a good company. The problem is that if I take a look at the grand scheme of things and think about the that I'm devoting the majority of my waking hours to coding apps that would get done regardless of whether or not I existed (this space is largely zero sum in that there are more than enough developers to go around), it's kind of depressing. I'd rather be devoting my life to solving the meaningful problems in the world that not enough people are working on (eg. like what Elon Musk is doing). On another note, it surprises me that long breaks from work (eg. sabbaticals) aren't more common. Doing the same thing every weekday gets repetitive and draining.