12 ms·

Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

225 points by madjackwalker 8y ago

bargl 8y ago
This is an awesome way to quantify the happiness you feel as a order of time. I wish I did this on a daily basis so that I could see the things that contribute and take away from my personal happiness. I tend to be a pretty introspective guy so I think about this kind of stuff on a regular basis, but I'd be curious to see if analyzing when I'm working out, vs playing videogames has an affect on my real happiness VS the blah feeling that you get when you are able to turn your brain off for a bit. Kudos on this, and I assume there's a link to how you track your happiness in there somewhere. I've got to dive deeper.
- mrmikes 8y ago
  Yeah, agreed, it seems valuable to track your happiness and the factors that contributed to (or detracted from) it. Looks like there are a few apps for this like: https://www.trackyourhappiness.org/ https://www.trackyourhappiness.org/
- madjackwalker 8y ago
  Sounds like this could be interesting for you then! :) I describe my method here (it's really simple): https://www.trackinghappiness.com/about/method https://www.trackinghappiness.com/about/method There are other apps out there that do the same, but approach it differently. You have to find what works for you. No method is wrong in my opinion, it's just that you have to find the method that works best for you. ;-)
zeus_hammer 8y ago
This is great! I wish I'd started doing something like this long ago. The closest thing I've found to this that I'm able to at least remind myself to use regularly is this, https://daylio.webflow.io/ https://daylio.webflow.io/ It'd be interesting to leverage something like this to decide when I should take vacation... If my happiness is slowly decreasing and visualized like this, it'd serve as a nice reminder to schedule some vacation. I'd also be interested to see how long after vacations the "high" wears off
- ben_jones 8y ago
  I've always wanted to make a CLI with the same functionality, will definitely check daylio out. Data export is a big deal for me when it comes to using journaling type apps, because who knows if the developer is going to support iOS 13,14,15.. in the future.
- thomasahle 8y ago
  I just tried this one, (and another one, Journal which both seems to be Google 'editors choice'), but I found that both only had 5 possible moods (basically: exstatic, good, meh, bad, terrible) , and I fear me data will just be 90% "good". Do you know if it can be configured to have more levels? Or if other apps have more specificity?
  - no1ever 8y ago
    Try MoodDiary[1], it has a scale of 10 but also allows tracking multiple metrics (e.g. I track 4 metrics: sleep, mood, energy level and overwhelmed vs. undercontrol) [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.jonathansautter.stimmungstagebuch https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.jonathansau...
  - lightstalker 8y ago
    Daylio can be configured to have multiple mood levels, and multiple activities. There's a limit before you have to pay for the unlocked version.
- defined 8y ago
  It's a bit late for me, with approximately 8500 < N <= 10000 working days. I can't even remember how I felt last week :)
- madjackwalker 8y ago
  That's a nice idea, yes. If the happiness on non-work days is getting increasingly bigger compared to work days, at some point you should receive a bleep with "hey take some vacation will you?"
Joller 8y ago
asd
- bnchrch 8y ago
  You seem like you're in a rough and bitter mindset. You may actually benefit from tracking happiness or perhaps some other outlet.
- brandoncordell 8y ago
  > Haha, when someone calls themselves an engineer without being more specific, it's almost always either a civil engineer or software developer. You went on to assume that he's a software engineer when in fact his is a civil engineer. Also because you didn't like software development it's weird that someone else might?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- vinylkey 8y ago
  I don't think licensure is part of the definition of "engineer"
  - diminoten 8y ago
    I didn't get a chance to see the comment before he edited it out, but in some countries (Canada I think?) "engineer" is actually a protected title, requiring licensure. I don't know what his point was, but as a "software engineer", I sometimes wonder if I should be called a "developer" and let my PE friend keep the "engineer" title, just for clarity's sake.
    - cbanek 8y ago
      This, also there was that kerfuffle in Oregon about someone saying they were an engineer, but not licensed, and how that was apparently illegal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/08/criticizing-red-light-cameras-is-not-a-punishable-offense-oregon-concedes/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.10388ee7b64d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/0...
patorjk 8y ago
In principle it's an interesting idea, however, I'm not sure how meaningful this kind of tracking is. Even the author seems to wonder about this - rating a work day as an 8, but realizing it was the relaxing he did that day that effected his happiness. And unless you're reflecting back weeks when making your rating, this kind of tracking could be susceptible to the idea of "boiling the frog".
- projektfu 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmAOk04-dQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmAOk04-dQg
- eswat 8y ago
  Maybe compartmentalizing happiness scores to how one felt during work time, during personal time and overall for the day would help mitigate this.
guhcampos 8y ago
I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on my CI after a long and challenging git push - but after so many years and a couple companies it's just work. There are some real cool places and projects to work though, you just need to dig through the "look we're cool let us enslave you" crap.
- akudha 8y ago
  Some days, I am just like a zombie - I still get work done, but just don't enjoy it. That said, my colleagues are nice and I have some freedom in my work (though the work itself is boring) which is more than what most people say. So I feel guilty complaining about it (I can't easily change jobs). After working so long, I've come to the conclusion that the best way (and maybe the only way for most people) to enjoy work is just work for self. This is easier said than done. Those "real cool places" you mention, there are very few of those.
  - supernovae 8y ago
    lots of places can appear to be "Real cool places" but I find no matter how cool the place is - the stuff you don't like about working in corporate companies - is almost universal - especially if you're not particularly fond of playing the career ladder/dog eat dog games.
- pvarangot 8y ago
  I was there at about 10 years, now after 12 years I'm happy again because I realized that when I was happy it was because I was ignoring the corporate politics, the unfair promotions and the bad work ethics. Now I learned to be vocal about it when it impacts me and delegate the responsibility of fixing it or giving feedback, and ignore it when it doesn't affect me... maybe give a heads up there, like, "hey maybe they are just spewing bullshit to keep you busy and really need to solve some issue between them! be careful!" and then get back to what I need to do. Yes my work now as senior whatever or whatever whatever manager is not as easy as Jr. Sysadmin, but it's rewarding if the organization is functional, once I learn the ins and outs and after figuring out what to worry about and what to not worry about.
bsmithers 8y ago
Really interesting. It must take such discipline to collect this data for 3.5 years. Trying to answer the question of "does work make me happy?" is much more complex than comparing happiness levels between work and non-work days - they are not independent. How much of your happiness of a non-work day is precisely because it is a day off? An imperfect analogy would be the feeling of enjoying a holiday but also being glad to be home at the end of it.
- madjackwalker 8y ago
  You're right. It's much more complex. Comparing happiness levels between work and non-work days was one way of trying to answer it. This method is still distorted by a lot of things, like you mention. I'm open for any different methods! If you have any ideas, I'd love to know :) It takes me about 3 minutes every day to track happiness, and the advantages go much further than just the collection of data. It's also a moment of self-reflection and meditation in a way. It puts my mind at rest.
golemiprague 8y ago
The right question for most people is not am I happy at work but rather "can I tolerate work", same as marriage.
fallingfrog 8y ago
They wouldn't call it work/life balance if work was really part of your life. It's dead time, lost time. I've always felt that way anyhow. You can convince yourself otherwise maybe, if you're a musician or something. For most people though that's the truth of it.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  I think you have it the other way around. People for whom work is dead, lost time really need to get their work/life balance sorted out. If you view work as part of your life, then it's a much less binary view of prioritisation. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't prioritise. It just means that the prioritisation is more nuanced than: do what I don't like for 8 hours and then do what I do like for the rest of the day. In my way of thinking, there are a lot of things you have to do in your day that you may not really want to do. For example, you've got to brush your teeth. I don't have a "brush my teeth"/life balance. I brush my teeth because I want my teeth brushed. Sometimes I enjoy brushing my teeth. Spending some time to look after myself can be very rewarding. Most of the time, I'm thinking about my other priorities. The same goes for cleaning the house, doing your dishes, doing your laundry, cooking, doing yard work, visiting your family, washing your car, fixing things around the house, etc, etc. At various times, those tasks are the highest priority even though you might not want to do them. You still have to do them. But people who find a way to enjoy at least some of those tasks are going to be a lot happier overall than people who don't. I think you are right that for most people that the binary point of view is the truth of it, but to be perfectly frank, for most people their only free time is being taken up by watching people being nasty to each other on reality TV shows. Just because it is common, doesn't mean it's a good idea. You've got 8 hours of your day being taken up by work. You've got lunch at work. You've got your commute. You've got getting ready for work. You've got unwinding from the stress of work. That's a crap load of your life! You can waste it being miserable if you like, but I really don't recommend it. In any job there is something you can find to enjoy. You may not enjoy it every single day, but the more you succeed in getting into the enjoyment zone, the better your life is going to be. Or at least, that's the way I look at it.
  - fallingfrog 8y ago
plankers 8y ago
In my (relatively short) life, I've always been far more happy in my periods of unemployment than when I was "gainfully employed." Don't expect a single person on HN to share this view, but there it is.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nomel 8y ago
  With unemployment, happiness is very directly related to your your bank account balance, or the willingness for others to provide for you. With employment, there's usually a lower limit since there's a reasonable change you're able to eat and stay out of the rain.
  - projektir 8y ago
    Which shows that happiness is not contingent on employment, but on bank account balance, which is not the philosophy a lot of people push when they say lack of work will ruin people.
    - plankers 8y ago
      Replace bank account balance with bitcoin wallet balance, but sure.
    - YinglingLight 8y ago
      If you're not feeling productive in a some facet of your life, the Netflix binge-ing goes numb reeeeeeal quick.
      - projektir 8y ago
        I can be productive by contributing to OSS or writing guides for a favorite video game or something, doesn't have to be work. :)
- erobbins 8y ago
kinkora 8y ago
Ctrl-f + "fire" in comments... Nothing?? The author mentioned FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early) which, IMHO, a big factor in your happiness at work based on my own experience being on both ends of having money and nothing. Some background context - worked for a decade+, quit job to go travel for 6 months with sizable savings in bank account, came back almost broke, now back in the workforce. So I am one of the lucky ones in the world to absolutely love the industry I am in hence never hated "work". Colleagues, office politics, etc is another matter but "work" itself was always interesting thus I was happy in the sense that I never hated doing my actual "work". What I noticed that contributed to my happiness at "work" was how correlated it was to the savings in my bank account. The more my bank account grew, the less I worried about the "other things" (crazy bosses, stifling politics, strange colleagues, etc) and the more I could relish enjoying the challenges of doing my actual "work".[1] Fast forward a decade, I then quit my job to travel and it was absolute bliss of happiness! Kind of a taste of retirement life. HOWEVER, while I had a huge chunk of savings, it wasn't exactly FU forever money so as the bank account started dwindling while traveling, I noticed my happiness was correlated again and I started enjoying traveling less. Once my bank account was down to an unacceptable level (for my own standards), I made the decision to go back to work to replenish it and work again towards my FIRE goal. I managed to get another job in an industry that I enjoyed doing the "work" but I wasn't exactly feeling happy this time round due to the constant worry about being laid off, having to pander to colleagues and/or bosses, dealing with politics, etc. Doing the work was fine but a lot of my unhappiness came from worrying about "everything else" at work due to me depending on the paycheck. Fast forward to today, my savings are back to healthy levels and once again, I'm happy at "work" even though nothing has changed in terms of "everything else". Makes me realise that anecdotally for me at least, having FU money in my bank account contributes A LOT to my happiness at work - assuming of course with a caveat that you love doing what you are doing at work. [1] I put apostrophes (") around the word work because I defined work in this context as not the job/position as a whole but the actual thing that I do. I.e. If work is Software Engineer at Google, I defined "work" as doing code related stuff.
- mancerayder 8y ago
  I can relate but it's a treacherous, rocky path to follow the pot of gold. Sometimes it's a compass. And if you live in a very expensive part of the world, it can quickly land you in a pressure cooker environment. Now, the issue is that as you get older, you start to explore other paths. Ideally, rather than travel for six months like you do, laudable in itself, I try to use that money to invest in stuff for the future. One hopes then to have even more relaxing six month adventures, if I still have the energy.
scarface74 8y ago
I was very unhappy with my job for the first 12 years between two jobs. Except for one brief period of a year. I had been a hobbyist hacker for 10 years, since 6th grade, including four years in college. I then got my first job that I was greatly over qualified for as a computer operator. But that was my best opportunity to get to a big city because I had been an intern at the company the prior year. I changed jobs 3 years later, got a nice 20K bump and another 10K bump over the next year, learned a lot and I thought I was doing well. That year and the next year was great. Over the next 7 years, no growth in skills and only making $7K more over that time with measly raises and bonuses being cut, I hated my job but I felt so unqualified that I didn’t make a move and I was just miserable. I finally woke up and changed companies and started back gaining new skills and seeing a salary increase. Over the next 10 years, I can honestly say I never hated my job for more than a month. Once I started hating my job and I learned all I could, I had the skill set and the optionally to jump ship. Even if I didn’t leave immediately, I never felt “stuck”. I guess that’s just a long winded way of saying that I only hate my job when I don’t feel like I’m growing and/or have any optionality. I also realized that I work next in small companies with little red tape.
- projektir 8y ago
  > Over the next 10 years, I can honestly say I never hated my job for more than a month. Once I started hating my job and I learned all I could, I had the skill set and the optionally to jump ship. Even if I didn’t leave immediately, I never felt “stuck”. How often did this happen? Did you have problems with being perceived as a job hopper?
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Four. It’s about having a story to tell and yes you do have to be able to have a good explanation without sounding negative. It also helps that I have the CTO of the first company as a reference and the hiring manager of the third company as a reference who had the same issues I had. 1. The company went out of business - that was an easy one. 2. Large company hired fast to develop a new .net project but two years in all of the business was on their legacy PHP product, no one wanted to do PHP. There is no money in saying “I developed a PHP app” 3. Cant go into details without doxing myself but it was highly political and we working in a remote office away from the seats of power. 4. It was a contract to perm and when they gave me a permanent offer they told me up front that they didn’t want to be a software development shop but they wanted me to lead two initiatives. I saw the writing on the wall. There were other reasons for leaving the 2-4 one but that’s the story I tell which are all true.
systematical 8y ago
I enjoy my day when I am allowed to work uninterrupted. The task doesn't generally matter, but some are not as "cool" as others. However, I can find joy in reducing cyclomatic complexity of code, improving readability etc. of whatever dumb fuck feature marketing thinks is important. Today I changed how our promotions work. Do I think its a wise use of resources? Nope. It was probably a waste of 2 hours of my time. Marketing will probably ask me to switch it back in a few months because they have no idea what they are doing. After stepping away from the task for 5 minutes and ending the arguments in my head against the task. I hopped into the code. I began enjoying figuring how to organize the code in a way that creating unit tests would be easy. I refactored some small things here and there and checked off the task. I was pleased with what I created despite being displeased with the task. I then moved on to a more interesting and useful task. What kills me. Is a bug that interrupts my flow. Each day I create a list of a few work items I will accomplish. There may be a meeting, a few small tasks, and then a piece of a larger project I am working on. When that gets thrown off by some asshole trying to hijack the sprint or a critical bug it pretty much shatters my day. I feel so unproductive. Resolving a must-fix-now bug is both handling debt and incurring debt (through loss of time). It really fucking kills me.
- xab9 8y ago
  Heads up mate, last time I had been building an "intelligent banner system" for two months, adding a one megabyte payload to the initial site load, "because marketing". When I feel grumpy because of popup bugs, asap tasks and really stupid marketing/seo requests I usually tell my self that hey, I still get my paycheck so if this is what makes them happy, then let's make them happy.
inertial 8y ago
What's the trick to be happy & joyous (without any strings attached) ? How does one train the mind to not be achievement driven (especially if you are on HN everyday) ? Can anyone recommend a course or a book to achieve that ? Something that makes you happy naturally (not forced).
nathan_f77 8y ago
I think I'd be happy in a job if I could have self-direction and work on whatever I find interesting or important. That's a lot more important to me than working remotely or having a flexible schedule. I really don't like being told exactly what to work on and having all my ideas shot down. I'm a solo founder of a small startup, and I really enjoy the freedom to work on whatever I want. I'm making lots of mistakes and not growing as fast as I could be, but I'm learning a lot and I enjoy almost everything that I'm working on. I'm even enjoying the marketing, sales, and support, because it's fun to talk to people and personally solve their problems. I'm not sure if I ever want to bring on a co-founder or hire some people, but I think it could be interesting to work with a small group of generalists where everyone just works on whatever they think is important. There's a famous quote from Steve Jobs: "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." I don't think it's a very radical idea, but I don't know if many companies actually put it into practice. I think that kind of decision-making is usually reserved for cofounders or C-level executives, and it probably breaks down after 10+ employees. But would be fun to try with a small team.
corpMaverick 8y ago
Let me change the word "happy" to "satisfied". I don't believe I can feel happy all the time or even most of the time. But the feeling that I want to have at the end of the day is that I am being productive and that I feel satisfied at the end of every day.
foobiekr 8y ago
He’s still very young. When I was his age and even for many years prior I loved working, genuinely enjoyed it and was eager to be there, in the milieu, in the flow, killing problems, etc. Come back to me when you’ve been at it for 30 years. At year 5 or 6 of working FT professionally, which came after ten years of working through college, I started getting jaded, same thing, same stupid “mistakes” (choices really), etc. Towards the end of my sixth year, I ended up getting a full, unfiltered view of inequity and the brutal sausage making that is all sizable organizations. 30 years in you realize that sitting all day and killing it to 2am takes a huge toll on your body and even 8 hour stunts may not be all that good, standing desk or no. By the time you lose your youthful bliss, it’s too late to start saving. You need to take it on faith that future you has seen more of the operational realities of the world and this has not improved their existence. The whole FIRE thing is a way to package and sell stuff; the dominant bloggers In the community who are “retired” are doing between 40k and 500k a year in web ad revenue. They mostly do not actually live the life they are suggesting: they have not retired, they’ve changed to a higher risk career. (Exception: earlyretirementnow.com ). That said, like sites dedicated to exercise or eating well, the basic message is a good one and not a new one (see The Richest Man In Babylon, Your Mobey Or Your Life, etc.). So in that sense, anything that sells the mindset is a net good.
jcadam 8y ago
Nope. Not happy. I make enough money now that salary is no longer a major consideration when it comes to my job satisfaction. I move around every couple of years, hoping to get more challenging assignments, more responsibility, etc., which never materialize. It really is the same crap everywhere I go. Office politics, PHBs, incompetent coworkers, etc. I've decided I'm not a "cultural fit" for corporate environments. But I've been working in corporate environments so long, everybody assumes I wouldn't be fit for anything else.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

225 points by madjackwalker 8y ago

This is an awesome way to quantify the happiness you feel as a order of time. I wish I did this on a daily basis so that I could see the things that contribute and take away from my personal happiness. I tend to be a pretty introspective guy so I think about this kind of stuff on a regular basis, but I'd be curious to see if analyzing when I'm working out, vs playing videogames has an affect on my real happiness VS the blah feeling that you get when you are able to turn your brain off for a bit. Kudos on this, and I assume there's a link to how you track your happiness in there somewhere. I've got to dive deeper.

mrmikes 8y ago
Yeah, agreed, it seems valuable to track your happiness and the factors that contributed to (or detracted from) it. Looks like there are a few apps for this like: https://www.trackyourhappiness.org/ https://www.trackyourhappiness.org/
madjackwalker 8y ago
Sounds like this could be interesting for you then! :) I describe my method here (it's really simple): https://www.trackinghappiness.com/about/method https://www.trackinghappiness.com/about/method There are other apps out there that do the same, but approach it differently. You have to find what works for you. No method is wrong in my opinion, it's just that you have to find the method that works best for you. ;-)

zeus_hammer 8y ago

This is great! I wish I'd started doing something like this long ago. The closest thing I've found to this that I'm able to at least remind myself to use regularly is this, https://daylio.webflow.io/ https://daylio.webflow.io/ It'd be interesting to leverage something like this to decide when I should take vacation... If my happiness is slowly decreasing and visualized like this, it'd serve as a nice reminder to schedule some vacation. I'd also be interested to see how long after vacations the "high" wears off

ben_jones 8y ago
I've always wanted to make a CLI with the same functionality, will definitely check daylio out. Data export is a big deal for me when it comes to using journaling type apps, because who knows if the developer is going to support iOS 13,14,15.. in the future.
thomasahle 8y ago
I just tried this one, (and another one, Journal which both seems to be Google 'editors choice'), but I found that both only had 5 possible moods (basically: exstatic, good, meh, bad, terrible) , and I fear me data will just be 90% "good". Do you know if it can be configured to have more levels? Or if other apps have more specificity?
- no1ever 8y ago
  Try MoodDiary[1], it has a scale of 10 but also allows tracking multiple metrics (e.g. I track 4 metrics: sleep, mood, energy level and overwhelmed vs. undercontrol) [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.jonathansautter.stimmungstagebuch https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.jonathansau...
- lightstalker 8y ago
  Daylio can be configured to have multiple mood levels, and multiple activities. There's a limit before you have to pay for the unlocked version.
defined 8y ago
It's a bit late for me, with approximately 8500 < N <= 10000 working days. I can't even remember how I felt last week :)
madjackwalker 8y ago
That's a nice idea, yes. If the happiness on non-work days is getting increasingly bigger compared to work days, at some point you should receive a bleep with "hey take some vacation will you?"

Joller 8y ago

asd

bnchrch 8y ago
You seem like you're in a rough and bitter mindset. You may actually benefit from tracking happiness or perhaps some other outlet.
brandoncordell 8y ago
> Haha, when someone calls themselves an engineer without being more specific, it's almost always either a civil engineer or software developer. You went on to assume that he's a software engineer when in fact his is a civil engineer. Also because you didn't like software development it's weird that someone else might?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
vinylkey 8y ago
I don't think licensure is part of the definition of "engineer"
- diminoten 8y ago
  I didn't get a chance to see the comment before he edited it out, but in some countries (Canada I think?) "engineer" is actually a protected title, requiring licensure. I don't know what his point was, but as a "software engineer", I sometimes wonder if I should be called a "developer" and let my PE friend keep the "engineer" title, just for clarity's sake.
  - cbanek 8y ago
    This, also there was that kerfuffle in Oregon about someone saying they were an engineer, but not licensed, and how that was apparently illegal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/08/criticizing-red-light-cameras-is-not-a-punishable-offense-oregon-concedes/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.10388ee7b64d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/0...

patorjk 8y ago

In principle it's an interesting idea, however, I'm not sure how meaningful this kind of tracking is. Even the author seems to wonder about this - rating a work day as an 8, but realizing it was the relaxing he did that day that effected his happiness. And unless you're reflecting back weeks when making your rating, this kind of tracking could be susceptible to the idea of "boiling the frog".

projektfu 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmAOk04-dQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmAOk04-dQg
eswat 8y ago
Maybe compartmentalizing happiness scores to how one felt during work time, during personal time and overall for the day would help mitigate this.

guhcampos 8y ago

I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on my CI after a long and challenging git push - but after so many years and a couple companies it's just work. There are some real cool places and projects to work though, you just need to dig through the "look we're cool let us enslave you" crap.

akudha 8y ago
Some days, I am just like a zombie - I still get work done, but just don't enjoy it. That said, my colleagues are nice and I have some freedom in my work (though the work itself is boring) which is more than what most people say. So I feel guilty complaining about it (I can't easily change jobs). After working so long, I've come to the conclusion that the best way (and maybe the only way for most people) to enjoy work is just work for self. This is easier said than done. Those "real cool places" you mention, there are very few of those.
- supernovae 8y ago
  lots of places can appear to be "Real cool places" but I find no matter how cool the place is - the stuff you don't like about working in corporate companies - is almost universal - especially if you're not particularly fond of playing the career ladder/dog eat dog games.
pvarangot 8y ago
I was there at about 10 years, now after 12 years I'm happy again because I realized that when I was happy it was because I was ignoring the corporate politics, the unfair promotions and the bad work ethics. Now I learned to be vocal about it when it impacts me and delegate the responsibility of fixing it or giving feedback, and ignore it when it doesn't affect me... maybe give a heads up there, like, "hey maybe they are just spewing bullshit to keep you busy and really need to solve some issue between them! be careful!" and then get back to what I need to do. Yes my work now as senior whatever or whatever whatever manager is not as easy as Jr. Sysadmin, but it's rewarding if the organization is functional, once I learn the ins and outs and after figuring out what to worry about and what to not worry about.

bsmithers 8y ago

Really interesting. It must take such discipline to collect this data for 3.5 years. Trying to answer the question of "does work make me happy?" is much more complex than comparing happiness levels between work and non-work days - they are not independent. How much of your happiness of a non-work day is precisely because it is a day off? An imperfect analogy would be the feeling of enjoying a holiday but also being glad to be home at the end of it.

madjackwalker 8y ago
You're right. It's much more complex. Comparing happiness levels between work and non-work days was one way of trying to answer it. This method is still distorted by a lot of things, like you mention. I'm open for any different methods! If you have any ideas, I'd love to know :) It takes me about 3 minutes every day to track happiness, and the advantages go much further than just the collection of data. It's also a moment of self-reflection and meditation in a way. It puts my mind at rest.

golemiprague 8y ago

The right question for most people is not am I happy at work but rather "can I tolerate work", same as marriage.

fallingfrog 8y ago

They wouldn't call it work/life balance if work was really part of your life. It's dead time, lost time. I've always felt that way anyhow. You can convince yourself otherwise maybe, if you're a musician or something. For most people though that's the truth of it.

mikekchar 8y ago
I think you have it the other way around. People for whom work is dead, lost time really need to get their work/life balance sorted out. If you view work as part of your life, then it's a much less binary view of prioritisation. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't prioritise. It just means that the prioritisation is more nuanced than: do what I don't like for 8 hours and then do what I do like for the rest of the day. In my way of thinking, there are a lot of things you have to do in your day that you may not really want to do. For example, you've got to brush your teeth. I don't have a "brush my teeth"/life balance. I brush my teeth because I want my teeth brushed. Sometimes I enjoy brushing my teeth. Spending some time to look after myself can be very rewarding. Most of the time, I'm thinking about my other priorities. The same goes for cleaning the house, doing your dishes, doing your laundry, cooking, doing yard work, visiting your family, washing your car, fixing things around the house, etc, etc. At various times, those tasks are the highest priority even though you might not want to do them. You still have to do them. But people who find a way to enjoy at least some of those tasks are going to be a lot happier overall than people who don't. I think you are right that for most people that the binary point of view is the truth of it, but to be perfectly frank, for most people their only free time is being taken up by watching people being nasty to each other on reality TV shows. Just because it is common, doesn't mean it's a good idea. You've got 8 hours of your day being taken up by work. You've got lunch at work. You've got your commute. You've got getting ready for work. You've got unwinding from the stress of work. That's a crap load of your life! You can waste it being miserable if you like, but I really don't recommend it. In any job there is something you can find to enjoy. You may not enjoy it every single day, but the more you succeed in getting into the enjoyment zone, the better your life is going to be. Or at least, that's the way I look at it.
- fallingfrog 8y ago

plankers 8y ago

In my (relatively short) life, I've always been far more happy in my periods of unemployment than when I was "gainfully employed." Don't expect a single person on HN to share this view, but there it is.

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nomel 8y ago
With unemployment, happiness is very directly related to your your bank account balance, or the willingness for others to provide for you. With employment, there's usually a lower limit since there's a reasonable change you're able to eat and stay out of the rain.
- projektir 8y ago
  Which shows that happiness is not contingent on employment, but on bank account balance, which is not the philosophy a lot of people push when they say lack of work will ruin people.
  - plankers 8y ago
    Replace bank account balance with bitcoin wallet balance, but sure.
  - YinglingLight 8y ago
    If you're not feeling productive in a some facet of your life, the Netflix binge-ing goes numb reeeeeeal quick.
    - projektir 8y ago
      I can be productive by contributing to OSS or writing guides for a favorite video game or something, doesn't have to be work. :)
erobbins 8y ago

kinkora 8y ago

Ctrl-f + "fire" in comments... Nothing?? The author mentioned FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early) which, IMHO, a big factor in your happiness at work based on my own experience being on both ends of having money and nothing. Some background context - worked for a decade+, quit job to go travel for 6 months with sizable savings in bank account, came back almost broke, now back in the workforce. So I am one of the lucky ones in the world to absolutely love the industry I am in hence never hated "work". Colleagues, office politics, etc is another matter but "work" itself was always interesting thus I was happy in the sense that I never hated doing my actual "work". What I noticed that contributed to my happiness at "work" was how correlated it was to the savings in my bank account. The more my bank account grew, the less I worried about the "other things" (crazy bosses, stifling politics, strange colleagues, etc) and the more I could relish enjoying the challenges of doing my actual "work".[1] Fast forward a decade, I then quit my job to travel and it was absolute bliss of happiness! Kind of a taste of retirement life. HOWEVER, while I had a huge chunk of savings, it wasn't exactly FU forever money so as the bank account started dwindling while traveling, I noticed my happiness was correlated again and I started enjoying traveling less. Once my bank account was down to an unacceptable level (for my own standards), I made the decision to go back to work to replenish it and work again towards my FIRE goal. I managed to get another job in an industry that I enjoyed doing the "work" but I wasn't exactly feeling happy this time round due to the constant worry about being laid off, having to pander to colleagues and/or bosses, dealing with politics, etc. Doing the work was fine but a lot of my unhappiness came from worrying about "everything else" at work due to me depending on the paycheck. Fast forward to today, my savings are back to healthy levels and once again, I'm happy at "work" even though nothing has changed in terms of "everything else". Makes me realise that anecdotally for me at least, having FU money in my bank account contributes A LOT to my happiness at work - assuming of course with a caveat that you love doing what you are doing at work. [1] I put apostrophes (") around the word work because I defined work in this context as not the job/position as a whole but the actual thing that I do. I.e. If work is Software Engineer at Google, I defined "work" as doing code related stuff.

mancerayder 8y ago
I can relate but it's a treacherous, rocky path to follow the pot of gold. Sometimes it's a compass. And if you live in a very expensive part of the world, it can quickly land you in a pressure cooker environment. Now, the issue is that as you get older, you start to explore other paths. Ideally, rather than travel for six months like you do, laudable in itself, I try to use that money to invest in stuff for the future. One hopes then to have even more relaxing six month adventures, if I still have the energy.

scarface74 8y ago

I was very unhappy with my job for the first 12 years between two jobs. Except for one brief period of a year. I had been a hobbyist hacker for 10 years, since 6th grade, including four years in college. I then got my first job that I was greatly over qualified for as a computer operator. But that was my best opportunity to get to a big city because I had been an intern at the company the prior year. I changed jobs 3 years later, got a nice 20K bump and another 10K bump over the next year, learned a lot and I thought I was doing well. That year and the next year was great. Over the next 7 years, no growth in skills and only making $7K more over that time with measly raises and bonuses being cut, I hated my job but I felt so unqualified that I didn’t make a move and I was just miserable. I finally woke up and changed companies and started back gaining new skills and seeing a salary increase. Over the next 10 years, I can honestly say I never hated my job for more than a month. Once I started hating my job and I learned all I could, I had the skill set and the optionally to jump ship. Even if I didn’t leave immediately, I never felt “stuck”. I guess that’s just a long winded way of saying that I only hate my job when I don’t feel like I’m growing and/or have any optionality. I also realized that I work next in small companies with little red tape.

projektir 8y ago
> Over the next 10 years, I can honestly say I never hated my job for more than a month. Once I started hating my job and I learned all I could, I had the skill set and the optionally to jump ship. Even if I didn’t leave immediately, I never felt “stuck”. How often did this happen? Did you have problems with being perceived as a job hopper?
- scarface74 8y ago
  Four. It’s about having a story to tell and yes you do have to be able to have a good explanation without sounding negative. It also helps that I have the CTO of the first company as a reference and the hiring manager of the third company as a reference who had the same issues I had. 1. The company went out of business - that was an easy one. 2. Large company hired fast to develop a new .net project but two years in all of the business was on their legacy PHP product, no one wanted to do PHP. There is no money in saying “I developed a PHP app” 3. Cant go into details without doxing myself but it was highly political and we working in a remote office away from the seats of power. 4. It was a contract to perm and when they gave me a permanent offer they told me up front that they didn’t want to be a software development shop but they wanted me to lead two initiatives. I saw the writing on the wall. There were other reasons for leaving the 2-4 one but that’s the story I tell which are all true.

systematical 8y ago

I enjoy my day when I am allowed to work uninterrupted. The task doesn't generally matter, but some are not as "cool" as others. However, I can find joy in reducing cyclomatic complexity of code, improving readability etc. of whatever dumb fuck feature marketing thinks is important. Today I changed how our promotions work. Do I think its a wise use of resources? Nope. It was probably a waste of 2 hours of my time. Marketing will probably ask me to switch it back in a few months because they have no idea what they are doing. After stepping away from the task for 5 minutes and ending the arguments in my head against the task. I hopped into the code. I began enjoying figuring how to organize the code in a way that creating unit tests would be easy. I refactored some small things here and there and checked off the task. I was pleased with what I created despite being displeased with the task. I then moved on to a more interesting and useful task. What kills me. Is a bug that interrupts my flow. Each day I create a list of a few work items I will accomplish. There may be a meeting, a few small tasks, and then a piece of a larger project I am working on. When that gets thrown off by some asshole trying to hijack the sprint or a critical bug it pretty much shatters my day. I feel so unproductive. Resolving a must-fix-now bug is both handling debt and incurring debt (through loss of time). It really fucking kills me.

xab9 8y ago
Heads up mate, last time I had been building an "intelligent banner system" for two months, adding a one megabyte payload to the initial site load, "because marketing". When I feel grumpy because of popup bugs, asap tasks and really stupid marketing/seo requests I usually tell my self that hey, I still get my paycheck so if this is what makes them happy, then let's make them happy.

inertial 8y ago

What's the trick to be happy & joyous (without any strings attached) ? How does one train the mind to not be achievement driven (especially if you are on HN everyday) ? Can anyone recommend a course or a book to achieve that ? Something that makes you happy naturally (not forced).

nathan_f77 8y ago

I think I'd be happy in a job if I could have self-direction and work on whatever I find interesting or important. That's a lot more important to me than working remotely or having a flexible schedule. I really don't like being told exactly what to work on and having all my ideas shot down. I'm a solo founder of a small startup, and I really enjoy the freedom to work on whatever I want. I'm making lots of mistakes and not growing as fast as I could be, but I'm learning a lot and I enjoy almost everything that I'm working on. I'm even enjoying the marketing, sales, and support, because it's fun to talk to people and personally solve their problems. I'm not sure if I ever want to bring on a co-founder or hire some people, but I think it could be interesting to work with a small group of generalists where everyone just works on whatever they think is important. There's a famous quote from Steve Jobs: "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." I don't think it's a very radical idea, but I don't know if many companies actually put it into practice. I think that kind of decision-making is usually reserved for cofounders or C-level executives, and it probably breaks down after 10+ employees. But would be fun to try with a small team.

corpMaverick 8y ago

Let me change the word "happy" to "satisfied". I don't believe I can feel happy all the time or even most of the time. But the feeling that I want to have at the end of the day is that I am being productive and that I feel satisfied at the end of every day.

foobiekr 8y ago

He’s still very young. When I was his age and even for many years prior I loved working, genuinely enjoyed it and was eager to be there, in the milieu, in the flow, killing problems, etc. Come back to me when you’ve been at it for 30 years. At year 5 or 6 of working FT professionally, which came after ten years of working through college, I started getting jaded, same thing, same stupid “mistakes” (choices really), etc. Towards the end of my sixth year, I ended up getting a full, unfiltered view of inequity and the brutal sausage making that is all sizable organizations. 30 years in you realize that sitting all day and killing it to 2am takes a huge toll on your body and even 8 hour stunts may not be all that good, standing desk or no. By the time you lose your youthful bliss, it’s too late to start saving. You need to take it on faith that future you has seen more of the operational realities of the world and this has not improved their existence. The whole FIRE thing is a way to package and sell stuff; the dominant bloggers In the community who are “retired” are doing between 40k and 500k a year in web ad revenue. They mostly do not actually live the life they are suggesting: they have not retired, they’ve changed to a higher risk career. (Exception: earlyretirementnow.com ). That said, like sites dedicated to exercise or eating well, the basic message is a good one and not a new one (see The Richest Man In Babylon, Your Mobey Or Your Life, etc.). So in that sense, anything that sells the mindset is a net good.

jcadam 8y ago

Nope. Not happy. I make enough money now that salary is no longer a major consideration when it comes to my job satisfaction. I move around every couple of years, hoping to get more challenging assignments, more responsibility, etc., which never materialize. It really is the same crap everywhere I go. Office politics, PHBs, incompetent coworkers, etc. I've decided I'm not a "cultural fit" for corporate environments. But I've been working in corporate environments so long, everybody assumes I wouldn't be fit for anything else.

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