5 ms·

Not once in my life have I ever felt a need or desire to work. I don't assign value or meaning to "work", I don't need work to find personal fulfillment, I don

Not once in my life have I ever felt a need or desire to work. I don't assign value or meaning to "work", I don't need work to find personal fulfillment, I don't need work to get social interaction and meet people, and I don't need work to learn new skills and grow. I took a month off between jobs once and it was amazing: I woke up at 4am, worked out a ton, studied my personal interests, and spent a ton of time socializing and enjoying my hobbies. I can't relate at all to the people who say you'll get bored of retirement or that life has no meaning without work. So my goal is to retire ASAP because I know retirement is the life I'll thrive under. You should aim for that in the long term and in the short term, find a new job. FAANG companies have horrible work cultures. There are plenty of software jobs that are laid back and easy-going, and finding a new job is also a chance at a better manager.

giantg2 5y ago
"There are plenty of software jobs that are laid back and easy-going" Please tell me where I can find one of these. I've never seen it. Every place wants you to work extra hours and squeeze as much as they can out of you.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  Sadly there's no live database (or maybe that's good because otherwise the jobs would get snatched up before you could blink). All I can say is look for jobs that value work-life balance. It's worked well for me so far.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    My company says that sort of stuff. When you dig deeper, it's kind of a lie. They constantly want things faster, meaning more hours the workers have to put in during a shorter time.
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      Well, I didn't say "look for companies that say they value work life balance", I said "look for companies that value work life balance". Of course anybody can say anything to sucker us in. The key is to learn how to identify a company that will lie to keep you interested (e.g. Amazon, based on personal experience when a recruiter assured me that people usually work 40h weeks) and how to identify a company that actually values your personal time.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        But how do you identify the difference? I mean, we can't rely on what they say, nor on the Computerworld ranks, etc. Where is the source?
        0x008 5y ago
        Get to know the employees.
        giantg2 5y ago
        Isn't that close to impossible if they aren't local and stuff? Also, if the company is only screwing over 10% of the employees, you might not find out.
        0x008 5y ago
        I think it is the only way. What alternative is there?
- sadfgawdsg 5y ago
  A few ways to find these jobs is to look for older and maturer companies. But that is not all, if you manage your management and your teammates right, you can create a good WLB anywhere. Here are a few pointers: 1. Slowdown!!! You would think you are impressing your boss and teammates by getting it done fast but opposite is happening. They think they assigned you an easy task. At the same time, they will expect you to perform at the same speed going forward. 2. Don't ever send any email after 5pm. Never answer Slack messages when on lunch. Learn to reject meetings at odd times. Manager wants to have a meeting at 5PM, tell them you got plans. No need to explain what those plans are. Once I met this guy, he would just say I have plans and nothing more. He never ever had to work on weekends, or after 5pm. One time, in a meeting, our manager asked each of us which Saturdays in upcoming quarter are good for working. Everyone volunteered a few Saturdays. When this guy's turn came, he simply said he got plans. The manager's mouth dropped, he asked every single Saturday of next 12 weeks, this guy replied just yes. The manager was so red, it was amazing. Since then I have learned to say I got plans. 3. Don't kill yourself over on-call. The management makes it seems like that if production breaks, then we should drop everything and fix production. No don't fall for it. Oncall makes sense for doctors where people will literally die. But most of IT infrastructure is not that crucial. Even if it is, it is on management to allocate enough resources to build a resilient infrastructure. If they cannot do that, then your personal life comes first. I learned from my older co-workers who would take hours to fix some small quick jobs after hours. If they got an alert that something is broken, they will finish what they were doing, dinner, playing with kids, out shopping, etc. Sometimes they waited long enough for page to escalate to their manager before starting work. And if it was something that breaks all the time but management was not allocating time to fix it, they would drag it forever until boss's boss is getting paged. Things would get fixed pretty quickly when CTO had to wake up in the middle of night. 4. Don't let anyone in your team get abused. A lot of young programmers and passive people get abused in our industry, they are afraid to say no, work long hours, and sometimes even think that it is normal. The problem is that the management will start getting braver and abusing more people. So if you see your teammate getting abused, find out what's going on. Teach them how to deal with the management abuse. But there are certain people who actually enjoy working all the time. If that's the case then explain to them how their actions are actually encouraging bad behavior from the management. Tell them they should be working on personal projects after work. This may not work always, but that is why I avoid joining a team with too many young people.
slmjkdbtl 5y ago
In my one week PTO right now and made tremendous progress on personal projects, 100% relate to what you said! Job is just for financial support unless you have a team and goal you truely love. Currently looking for jobs that's chill but sustainable, or quick way to get a lot of money so I can stop worry about money for life and start making cool stuff!

giantg2 5y ago

"There are plenty of software jobs that are laid back and easy-going" Please tell me where I can find one of these. I've never seen it. Every place wants you to work extra hours and squeeze as much as they can out of you.

silicon2401 5y ago
Sadly there's no live database (or maybe that's good because otherwise the jobs would get snatched up before you could blink). All I can say is look for jobs that value work-life balance. It's worked well for me so far.
- giantg2 5y ago
  My company says that sort of stuff. When you dig deeper, it's kind of a lie. They constantly want things faster, meaning more hours the workers have to put in during a shorter time.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    Well, I didn't say "look for companies that say they value work life balance", I said "look for companies that value work life balance". Of course anybody can say anything to sucker us in. The key is to learn how to identify a company that will lie to keep you interested (e.g. Amazon, based on personal experience when a recruiter assured me that people usually work 40h weeks) and how to identify a company that actually values your personal time.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      But how do you identify the difference? I mean, we can't rely on what they say, nor on the Computerworld ranks, etc. Where is the source?
      - 0x008 5y ago
        Get to know the employees.
        giantg2 5y ago
        Isn't that close to impossible if they aren't local and stuff? Also, if the company is only screwing over 10% of the employees, you might not find out.
        0x008 5y ago
        I think it is the only way. What alternative is there?
sadfgawdsg 5y ago
A few ways to find these jobs is to look for older and maturer companies. But that is not all, if you manage your management and your teammates right, you can create a good WLB anywhere. Here are a few pointers: 1. Slowdown!!! You would think you are impressing your boss and teammates by getting it done fast but opposite is happening. They think they assigned you an easy task. At the same time, they will expect you to perform at the same speed going forward. 2. Don't ever send any email after 5pm. Never answer Slack messages when on lunch. Learn to reject meetings at odd times. Manager wants to have a meeting at 5PM, tell them you got plans. No need to explain what those plans are. Once I met this guy, he would just say I have plans and nothing more. He never ever had to work on weekends, or after 5pm. One time, in a meeting, our manager asked each of us which Saturdays in upcoming quarter are good for working. Everyone volunteered a few Saturdays. When this guy's turn came, he simply said he got plans. The manager's mouth dropped, he asked every single Saturday of next 12 weeks, this guy replied just yes. The manager was so red, it was amazing. Since then I have learned to say I got plans. 3. Don't kill yourself over on-call. The management makes it seems like that if production breaks, then we should drop everything and fix production. No don't fall for it. Oncall makes sense for doctors where people will literally die. But most of IT infrastructure is not that crucial. Even if it is, it is on management to allocate enough resources to build a resilient infrastructure. If they cannot do that, then your personal life comes first. I learned from my older co-workers who would take hours to fix some small quick jobs after hours. If they got an alert that something is broken, they will finish what they were doing, dinner, playing with kids, out shopping, etc. Sometimes they waited long enough for page to escalate to their manager before starting work. And if it was something that breaks all the time but management was not allocating time to fix it, they would drag it forever until boss's boss is getting paged. Things would get fixed pretty quickly when CTO had to wake up in the middle of night. 4. Don't let anyone in your team get abused. A lot of young programmers and passive people get abused in our industry, they are afraid to say no, work long hours, and sometimes even think that it is normal. The problem is that the management will start getting braver and abusing more people. So if you see your teammate getting abused, find out what's going on. Teach them how to deal with the management abuse. But there are certain people who actually enjoy working all the time. If that's the case then explain to them how their actions are actually encouraging bad behavior from the management. Tell them they should be working on personal projects after work. This may not work always, but that is why I avoid joining a team with too many young people.

slmjkdbtl 5y ago

In my one week PTO right now and made tremendous progress on personal projects, 100% relate to what you said! Job is just for financial support unless you have a team and goal you truely love. Currently looking for jobs that's chill but sustainable, or quick way to get a lot of money so I can stop worry about money for life and start making cool stuff!