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And the inverse: have a business which is worthy of shit-giving. It’s extremely hard to give a shit about Yet Another Middleware CRUD CRM Layer Corp. There’s

And the inverse: have a business which is worthy of shit-giving. It’s extremely hard to give a shit about Yet Another Middleware CRUD CRM Layer Corp. There’s a fine balancing point between working a bullshit job (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) and recognizing that no, the B-Ark (https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_... ) is a bad idea, we really do need telephone handset sanitizers. Don’t fall for the trap that says that only the sexiest sounding jobs are OK—for one, what that means varies by the talents and interests and skills of the workforce. For another, it’s going to bias you towards treating, e.g., janitors as subhuman, and that way is the path to a very bad place. What makes work satisfying is, to a large but not total extent, a function of the mutual respect the employer and employee have for the humanity of the employee. Some jobs are just bullshit. Some aren’t. All jobs have a certain amount of toil. You’ll get people who give a shit about the work when your work isn’t bullshit, and about the job when the culture at work respects them.

pgcj_poster 6y ago
> And the inverse: have a business which is worthy of shit-giving. This is a corollary. The inverse would be "hire people who don't give a shit."
- mistersquid 6y ago
  > The inverse would be "hire people who don't give a shit." That’s the complement. The inverse would be “Fire (or don’t hire) people who give a shit”. Also what you identified as a corollary is more accurately identified as the converse.
jfengel 6y ago
One way to have a business worth giving a shit about is to care about what your customers do. To you, the programmers, it's Yet Another Middleware CRUD CRM Layer, but to your users, it's how they make their living or enjoy themselves in their time off. They care about what your software does for them. We programmers tend to prize the code that we write for other programmers: the compilers, the kernels, the libraries. But most of us will work for customers who do real-world things, whether that's watching a movie or checking in patients at the dentist office or tuning their guitar. So our software is usually incredibly dull to us as programmers, but of crucial interest to our users. This doesn't have to be management consultant BS. You can't just fake caring about customers. Be sincerely interested in making their lives better, even though what they do isn't what you as a programmer have devoted your life to.
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  this is a tangent, but every single time i have ever watched an end user use "my" code i have learned an incredible amount. Often, related to how to make a CRUD app that isn't horrible to use! Decoupling devs from exposure to these sorts of experiences is a huge disservice. Just sitting and watching someone use your product for a few hours is incredibly illuminating.
  - cercatrova 6y ago
    That's why the number one tip for startups is to talk to users, including demoing your product. Turns out, it's not just a good idea for only startups but also any product at all.
jhap 6y ago
> For another, it’s going to bias you towards treating, e.g., janitors as subhuman, and that way is the path to a very bad place. Do you have any more thoughts about this point? In my own life I’ve seen some of my friends with hotshot jobs develop this sort of mentality, and I sort of don’t know what to make of it. I want to be like “this is a toxic attitude to have!” but at the same time I can’t make a better argument than it’s immoral and without janitors we’d all be dead.
- zests 6y ago
  A person's job is largely dependent on their own value system. The worth of a person does not correspond to how much that person values career prestige. It is easy to believe the opposite when you value career prestige highly.
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  I only have moral arguments for moral questions. Certainly the idea that humans, because they are human and for that reason alone, have inherent worth is not exactly new. It is seductively easy to start thinking you're above other people because of what you have, or what you know, or what you can do. It's not true, but a relatively dirty part of ourselves certainly wants it to be. "The basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done but the fact that the one who is doing it is a person." [0] “And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” [1] [0] http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/do... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpe_Jugulum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpe_Jugulum

pgcj_poster 6y ago

> And the inverse: have a business which is worthy of shit-giving. This is a corollary. The inverse would be "hire people who don't give a shit."

mistersquid 6y ago
> The inverse would be "hire people who don't give a shit." That’s the complement. The inverse would be “Fire (or don’t hire) people who give a shit”. Also what you identified as a corollary is more accurately identified as the converse.

jfengel 6y ago

One way to have a business worth giving a shit about is to care about what your customers do. To you, the programmers, it's Yet Another Middleware CRUD CRM Layer, but to your users, it's how they make their living or enjoy themselves in their time off. They care about what your software does for them. We programmers tend to prize the code that we write for other programmers: the compilers, the kernels, the libraries. But most of us will work for customers who do real-world things, whether that's watching a movie or checking in patients at the dentist office or tuning their guitar. So our software is usually incredibly dull to us as programmers, but of crucial interest to our users. This doesn't have to be management consultant BS. You can't just fake caring about customers. Be sincerely interested in making their lives better, even though what they do isn't what you as a programmer have devoted your life to.

hprotagonist 6y ago
this is a tangent, but every single time i have ever watched an end user use "my" code i have learned an incredible amount. Often, related to how to make a CRUD app that isn't horrible to use! Decoupling devs from exposure to these sorts of experiences is a huge disservice. Just sitting and watching someone use your product for a few hours is incredibly illuminating.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  That's why the number one tip for startups is to talk to users, including demoing your product. Turns out, it's not just a good idea for only startups but also any product at all.

jhap 6y ago

> For another, it’s going to bias you towards treating, e.g., janitors as subhuman, and that way is the path to a very bad place. Do you have any more thoughts about this point? In my own life I’ve seen some of my friends with hotshot jobs develop this sort of mentality, and I sort of don’t know what to make of it. I want to be like “this is a toxic attitude to have!” but at the same time I can’t make a better argument than it’s immoral and without janitors we’d all be dead.

zests 6y ago
A person's job is largely dependent on their own value system. The worth of a person does not correspond to how much that person values career prestige. It is easy to believe the opposite when you value career prestige highly.
hprotagonist 6y ago
I only have moral arguments for moral questions. Certainly the idea that humans, because they are human and for that reason alone, have inherent worth is not exactly new. It is seductively easy to start thinking you're above other people because of what you have, or what you know, or what you can do. It's not true, but a relatively dirty part of ourselves certainly wants it to be. "The basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done but the fact that the one who is doing it is a person." [0] “And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” [1] [0] http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/do... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpe_Jugulum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpe_Jugulum