3 ms·

"Thinking about how we are building stupid games for stupid people made me so uninterested in doing work." This is not depression. This is reality. Most peop

by gnosis 15y ago

"Thinking about how we are building stupid games for stupid people made me so uninterested in doing work." This is not depression. This is reality. Most people work at making things they don't care about, and serving people they don't care for. And yet they're expected to put on a cheery face at work and at all the disgustingly fake work parties and cheerleading sessions, kiss up to the boss, and give a shit that their company is making x% more or less widgets this month. I suppose it's good that he's found a way to put up with the cognitive dissonance a bit longer before he suffers a full-fledged nervous breakdown, but from another prespective it's pretty sad. Ideally, of course, we should all find work that's fulfilling and meaningful for us. But that's easier said than done.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago
If you really feel that way about where you work, you need to get out. I've only worked one place where I truly didn't care and that was for one week (end of 2008 after being laid off...still couldn't stomach it). It's not hard to care if you really look at your users as people who you can help be more successful in their lives (even if just providing a pleasant distraction for a busy nursing student/MA/mom like ZombieFarm does for my wife). The vast majority of people I've met who chronically hate what they are producing (and please understand I'm not saying this is true in your case, but it is worth introspecting) believe they are better than the people using their software. These engineers tend to be brilliant but difficult to keep focused on the user. Personally, if you (generic, not gnosis :) aren't passionate about my users, you don't work for me. My users are too important to me to allow just anybody to write code for them, no matter how much of an artist that developer is. That differs from the micro-burnout mentioned in TFA. I have experienced that and the best way I've found to deal with that is by communicating with my users. For me, that's what makes the pre-release startup days the most difficult: no users to talk to yet.
- gnosis 15y ago
  In 90% of the jobs I've held, I don't even know the customers (as friends or even acquaintances), and have never even met them. How much caring do you really expect me to muster up for this faceless horde of people I'm supposed to be serving? And even when I have met the people I'm serving, they very rarely even make it to the level of acquaintance. They're just a face, someone I talked business with, someone who wants to make money off me, or get me to fix their problem and nothing more. I'm just an expensive tool for them. Why should I really care whether whether their stupid website is down or their connection to the stock exchange is broken and they're losing millions every hour? Of course, if I get paid for it, I might stick around. And might even pretend that I love fixing their worthless crap or making their inane widgets. But if you really think that beyond this mask I'm putting up on for you, deep in my heart I really give a shit, you are deluded. With the exception of a handful of very lucky individuals who actually enjoy their work and care about what they do, I think the work world is full of fake people, and to make it there you have to be fake as well (unless you really are soul-dead and don't mind that you are wasting your life doing meaningless crap). Actually, thinking back on it, I did used to enjoy what I was doing, when I was young and the entire work world was new to me and the places I was going to and the things I did seemed glamorous and exciting. But that quickly wore off, and it became just another day at the office, for which I had to drag myself out of bed for, despite getting paid very well for the trouble.
- mikey_p 15y ago
  "If you really feel that way about where you work, you need to get out." This along with the parent immediately brought to mind one of my favorites of Demming's 14 key points:* "12a: Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality." While that was meant more for line workers than knowledge workers, the basic concept is pretty much the same: if you can't take pride in what you're doing, you won't do it as well as you could. As somewhat of a perfectionist I struggle with overdoing this, but it drives me to depression when I have to work with apathetic folks who don't care how the end product turns out. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principle...
lionheart 15y ago
Well that's his point I think. The same exact job can be fulfilling and meaningful one day and annoying drudgery the next. You have a good day at a gaming company and you feel like "I did something very fun today and at the same time made the lives of a bunch of people more fun. This is great." You have a bad day and you feel like "Stupid games. Stupid gamers. I'm wasting my life." Both feelings are legitimate interpertations of the exact same work situation. What he's trying to teach us is how he attempts to turn one of those into the other. I, for one, have the same issue all the time and I really liked his advice on how to deal with it.

by gnosis 15y ago

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

If you really feel that way about where you work, you need to get out. I've only worked one place where I truly didn't care and that was for one week (end of 2008 after being laid off...still couldn't stomach it). It's not hard to care if you really look at your users as people who you can help be more successful in their lives (even if just providing a pleasant distraction for a busy nursing student/MA/mom like ZombieFarm does for my wife). The vast majority of people I've met who chronically hate what they are producing (and please understand I'm not saying this is true in your case, but it is worth introspecting) believe they are better than the people using their software. These engineers tend to be brilliant but difficult to keep focused on the user. Personally, if you (generic, not gnosis :) aren't passionate about my users, you don't work for me. My users are too important to me to allow just anybody to write code for them, no matter how much of an artist that developer is. That differs from the micro-burnout mentioned in TFA. I have experienced that and the best way I've found to deal with that is by communicating with my users. For me, that's what makes the pre-release startup days the most difficult: no users to talk to yet.

gnosis 15y ago
In 90% of the jobs I've held, I don't even know the customers (as friends or even acquaintances), and have never even met them. How much caring do you really expect me to muster up for this faceless horde of people I'm supposed to be serving? And even when I have met the people I'm serving, they very rarely even make it to the level of acquaintance. They're just a face, someone I talked business with, someone who wants to make money off me, or get me to fix their problem and nothing more. I'm just an expensive tool for them. Why should I really care whether whether their stupid website is down or their connection to the stock exchange is broken and they're losing millions every hour? Of course, if I get paid for it, I might stick around. And might even pretend that I love fixing their worthless crap or making their inane widgets. But if you really think that beyond this mask I'm putting up on for you, deep in my heart I really give a shit, you are deluded. With the exception of a handful of very lucky individuals who actually enjoy their work and care about what they do, I think the work world is full of fake people, and to make it there you have to be fake as well (unless you really are soul-dead and don't mind that you are wasting your life doing meaningless crap). Actually, thinking back on it, I did used to enjoy what I was doing, when I was young and the entire work world was new to me and the places I was going to and the things I did seemed glamorous and exciting. But that quickly wore off, and it became just another day at the office, for which I had to drag myself out of bed for, despite getting paid very well for the trouble.
mikey_p 15y ago
"If you really feel that way about where you work, you need to get out." This along with the parent immediately brought to mind one of my favorites of Demming's 14 key points:* "12a: Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality." While that was meant more for line workers than knowledge workers, the basic concept is pretty much the same: if you can't take pride in what you're doing, you won't do it as well as you could. As somewhat of a perfectionist I struggle with overdoing this, but it drives me to depression when I have to work with apathetic folks who don't care how the end product turns out. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principle...

lionheart 15y ago

Well that's his point I think. The same exact job can be fulfilling and meaningful one day and annoying drudgery the next. You have a good day at a gaming company and you feel like "I did something very fun today and at the same time made the lives of a bunch of people more fun. This is great." You have a bad day and you feel like "Stupid games. Stupid gamers. I'm wasting my life." Both feelings are legitimate interpertations of the exact same work situation. What he's trying to teach us is how he attempts to turn one of those into the other. I, for one, have the same issue all the time and I really liked his advice on how to deal with it.