5 ms·

I really don't understand the author's points. The main point is "work-life balance", but these don't seem to make sense: + enough salary to pay my bills + I

by sdo72 4y ago

I really don't understand the author's points. The main point is "work-life balance", but these don't seem to make sense: + enough salary to pay my bills + I work more hours" and even "on the weekend now" + enough equity All of these are actually worse or much lower chance of being better compared to a job at Google.

adra 4y ago
Agreed, author seems deluded and kool-aid enduced. I'm all for change when it makes sense to you. Sticking with a company you're not charged up for often feels like torture, but any semblance of what they said in the article and "work-life balance" feels way off the mark.
pradn 4y ago
His main point is that he feels like he's making more progress and being more productive at ReplIt than at Google, which leads to higher satisfaction. He considers satisfaction more important than just pure hours / compensation. I'm inclined to agree. Working uphill in a complexity jungle (organization or technical) can drain the soul.
- chii 4y ago
  working at a lower-paying job (and doing more hours) is a poor way to satisfy the upper end of the Maslow pyramid of needs (ala, self actualization). The most important metric is consistent and passive income from wealth. Once you have "enough" of such passive income, you can spend your time on self actualization. Most people don't reach the level of passive income required for their chosen lifestyle quality, and so cannot expend time for self actualization. So instead, they double up their career and make that the mode for self actualization (after all, two birds one stone and all that). But i do believe that it mostly does not work, unless the job is somehow a 1:1 mapping to that particular person's method of self actualization. Unfortunately, a lot of people kid themselves and pretend that it does match.
  - pradn 4y ago
    It looks like he just prioritizes and is satisfied by different things than you.
  - jhatemyjob 4y ago
    Couldn't have put it better. I worked remotely at Google and I worked remotely at a startup. I worked 1/8 the hours at Google and was paid 3x the amount of money. Don't get me wrong, the work was boring as shit compared to the startup, but I had the coveted "4 hour workweek" Tim Ferriss became famous for. It was like being retired. In fact, it was better, because I still had my youth. I could sympathize with OP if this "loss of productivity" meant sitting in a physical office twiddling your thumbs, but Covid changed the game. I cooked during meetings. I sat in the sauna, did yoga, played videogames, or hung out with my friends when I was blocked. When I was waiting for blaze to build/run my code, or was waiting for presubmit checks to pass (shit took forever), I would switch tabs in iTerm and would work on my side project. I never touched my corp laptop after I figured out how to VNC/SSH in from my personal computer. If it weren't for mandatory RTO I would still be at Google and I probably would be for the rest of my career, or till my side hustle was bringing in serious cash. We'll see how remote Facebook compares. If it's at all similar to remote Google, I am never going back to being an employee at a startup. In a post-covid world, having a "meaningful" corporate job is for suckers. It's all about minimizing hours and maximizing pay.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - KerryJones 4y ago
    Spending your time constantly fighting other members of your own company to protect your team is exhausting. Work-life balance usually has a much bigger factor than just "time spent working" and it's the result and morale that goes with it. If you are working overtime but you're getting results it's often very rewarding and doesn't lead to burnout. He clearly was working on projects at google that were exhausting for his scope of mind, the specific hours were less relevant than the fact that he was spending 30-40 hours a week could be "wasted" hours, even if he's now doing 60 hours a week, they're all more gratifying.
  - 4y ago
constantlm 4y ago
Work life balance not in hours spent, but rather in the sense of satisfaction and energy to do things (including the work itself)
- boardwaalk 4y ago
  One could just call that work satisfaction or some such thing. No need to overload words.

by sdo72 4y ago

adra 4y ago

Agreed, author seems deluded and kool-aid enduced. I'm all for change when it makes sense to you. Sticking with a company you're not charged up for often feels like torture, but any semblance of what they said in the article and "work-life balance" feels way off the mark.

pradn 4y ago

His main point is that he feels like he's making more progress and being more productive at ReplIt than at Google, which leads to higher satisfaction. He considers satisfaction more important than just pure hours / compensation. I'm inclined to agree. Working uphill in a complexity jungle (organization or technical) can drain the soul.

chii 4y ago
working at a lower-paying job (and doing more hours) is a poor way to satisfy the upper end of the Maslow pyramid of needs (ala, self actualization). The most important metric is consistent and passive income from wealth. Once you have "enough" of such passive income, you can spend your time on self actualization. Most people don't reach the level of passive income required for their chosen lifestyle quality, and so cannot expend time for self actualization. So instead, they double up their career and make that the mode for self actualization (after all, two birds one stone and all that). But i do believe that it mostly does not work, unless the job is somehow a 1:1 mapping to that particular person's method of self actualization. Unfortunately, a lot of people kid themselves and pretend that it does match.
- pradn 4y ago
  It looks like he just prioritizes and is satisfied by different things than you.
- jhatemyjob 4y ago
  Couldn't have put it better. I worked remotely at Google and I worked remotely at a startup. I worked 1/8 the hours at Google and was paid 3x the amount of money. Don't get me wrong, the work was boring as shit compared to the startup, but I had the coveted "4 hour workweek" Tim Ferriss became famous for. It was like being retired. In fact, it was better, because I still had my youth. I could sympathize with OP if this "loss of productivity" meant sitting in a physical office twiddling your thumbs, but Covid changed the game. I cooked during meetings. I sat in the sauna, did yoga, played videogames, or hung out with my friends when I was blocked. When I was waiting for blaze to build/run my code, or was waiting for presubmit checks to pass (shit took forever), I would switch tabs in iTerm and would work on my side project. I never touched my corp laptop after I figured out how to VNC/SSH in from my personal computer. If it weren't for mandatory RTO I would still be at Google and I probably would be for the rest of my career, or till my side hustle was bringing in serious cash. We'll see how remote Facebook compares. If it's at all similar to remote Google, I am never going back to being an employee at a startup. In a post-covid world, having a "meaningful" corporate job is for suckers. It's all about minimizing hours and maximizing pay.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- KerryJones 4y ago
  Spending your time constantly fighting other members of your own company to protect your team is exhausting. Work-life balance usually has a much bigger factor than just "time spent working" and it's the result and morale that goes with it. If you are working overtime but you're getting results it's often very rewarding and doesn't lead to burnout. He clearly was working on projects at google that were exhausting for his scope of mind, the specific hours were less relevant than the fact that he was spending 30-40 hours a week could be "wasted" hours, even if he's now doing 60 hours a week, they're all more gratifying.
- 4y ago

constantlm 4y ago

Work life balance not in hours spent, but rather in the sense of satisfaction and energy to do things (including the work itself)

boardwaalk 4y ago
One could just call that work satisfaction or some such thing. No need to overload words.