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I’ve met a lot of “this is my job” people, and I’ve met a lot of “this is my life” people. I’ve personally done both. I was once well-paid to discern the diffe

I’ve met a lot of “this is my job” people, and I’ve met a lot of “this is my life” people. I’ve personally done both. I was once well-paid to discern the difference from afar. It’s unfortunate but true that the ICM, adderall-abusing, 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. Being a monster in technology isn’t everything, but being the best in anything is inherently extreme. Olympians don’t have a “healthy body image”. They’ll do anything to win.

codingdave 4y ago
> 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. I think the point is to let go of that measuring stick. If you measure them by how satisfied they are with their lives, kayakers are the ones crushing it. Being the best at something and the extreme work that requires does not necessarily make a better life than just walking your own path at a pace that works for you. Neither should that diminish anyone who truly does want a life where they push to the extreme to be the best. If that works for them, great. But that is not for everyone.
- benreesman 4y ago
  I said nothing demeaning about life satisfaction or mental health or work/life balance as goals. People who emphasize life satisfaction are almost definitionally living a “better” life in some sense. I am rather impatient, as you can likely tell, with people’s endless efforts to conflate that with elite technical ability, either individually or in a team. I ground it out over decades with no education and for at least one of those decades, no mentorship. I’m not advising anyone to take that path, but I’ll always get grumpy if someone triple equals that with learning some scripting language and being good at GitHub.
robjan 4y ago
Most Olympians train less than 40 hours per week. Yes, they make some sacrifices, such as not having that ice cream or drinking water at the bar but it's very possible (and normal) to have a life outside training. Besides, nobody's gonna sponsor a boring Olympian.
- h2odragon 4y ago
  The Olympic level athlete I knew trained most every moment she had that wasn't committed to other things, like school and sleep. Her life from about age 5 to 17 or so was about her sport. I dunno what sports might require "sacrificing ice cream" but AFAIK Olympians are nuts and have very little life after their events.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    Yeah, the elite coders I’ve known don’t do anything else. Sometimes a light gym routine to keep their posture in place for the high-G burn.
brianmcc 4y ago
>> It’s unfortunate but true that the ICM, adderall-abusing, 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. Not at kayaking. And I'm only being slightly facetious. "Winning at coding/tech career" is just one dimension of many, many alternatives.
- bumby 4y ago
  Very true, but it can be difficult to manage in team environment. It's frustrating when a "this is my life" person relies on a "this is my job" person and the latter is too busy planning their next kayak trip to carry their pack. It would be the equivalent of the former constantly poking holes in the latter's kayak.
  - brianmcc 4y ago
    Don't mix up "enjoys work life balance and has evening and weekend plans" with "slacks off at work and drops the ball" though, they really are not the same. The latter can and should be challenged. I 100% agree someone not really engaging at work can have a highly negative impact. IMO we should aim for "highly engaged 9 to 5 - but then enjoy life"!
    - bumby 4y ago
      >IMO we should aim for "highly engaged 9 to 5 - but then enjoy life"! I agree, but that perspective doesn't reconcile with the point higher up in the thread from somebody who works in the field of identifying high performers. I believe their point was that the "work is a job" people can't really compete with the "work is my life" group. Naturally then, the latter group would then be constantly outpacing the others.
      - brianmcc 4y ago
        That's a fair point. The challenge is to decide what you want from life - to be a Top 1% Career Winner or someone who spreads their resources more evenly, with the compromises that really does force. You can crush it and give your all in your 20s, and take a difference pace later on at the right time for you, and that can work very well for people, it often does! The original article is cautioning against an all-in-one-basket approach that - rather than launch you into the career achievement place you expect - ends up taking more than you can give and burning you out. It's also not all-or-nothing. Consider a Normal Distribution of achievement, it's entirely OK to be in the top 25% or 10% rather than top 1%. None of us I'm sure wants to be in the bottom percentiles, but it's fine to not even aim for the very very top. That's my view anyway, others will definitely disagree!
vsareto 4y ago
>It’s unfortunate but true that the ICM, adderall-abusing, 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. Not sure what ICM means, but if it's coding on adderall, 20hrs/day is not going to make great code. And this is assuming all of the requirements are perfectly written and understood. Especially if you're not taking adderall therapeutically.
- jnordwick 4y ago
  Tell this to Paul Erdos.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
softcactus 4y ago
Maybe I have a holistic view but I think the adderall-popping hypothetical person is only good at churning out lines of code. The Kayaker is building experiences and growing as a person, and probably allowing their subconscious to solve the difficult problems while they are consciously enjoying nature. I think that having a diverse set of experiences ultimately makes you a better problem-solver since you can apply abstract concepts from one domain to another. From an entrepreneurial perspective, you can see a need within one of your hobbies that needs to be fulfilled, and apply your technical skills to it. Meanwhile the adderall person has churned out 1000 lines of business logic for their employer. There is obviously more nuance to it than that, but the most intelligent people I have met were all incredibly well-rounded. I have also met people who probably had the potential to be equally as intelligent, but their laser focus on a single subject stunted their growth and they can only talk about/entertain ideas within their super specific niche. They become boring and unable to work with others.
- jenny91 4y ago
  There are certainly a lot of single-minded individuals who think just churning out lines of business logic will get them ahead, and I think most would agree that doesn't work in the long run. But there is also that crowd of people who know that a more holistic set of experiences helps them get ahead in their career. > Kayaker is ... allowing their subconscious to solve the difficult problems while they are consciously enjoying nature To an extent taking your mind off a problem and mulling over it helps. But there's no subconscious doing the work, in the end spending the weekend thinking about a problem with a few breaks will definitely make more progress than a weekend Kayaking and not thinking about work.
  - softcactus 4y ago
    When I was in school I had epiphanies or "click" moments on several occasions either while I slept or while I was at the gym staring off into space and lifting weights with no other thoughts in my head. So from my personal experiences I do think that our unconscious mind works at some level solving problems.
daniel_reetz 4y ago
At BigCorp, I was a "this is my life" IC. But minus the Adderall. It took nearly two years to understand that my coworkers were using stimulants to keep up their level of effort. It was a revelation, but one that strongly contributed to my departure.
macNchz 4y ago
How do we define being "the best at technology"? In software there are some types of tasks that truly benefit from any additional hour worked, but plenty of others for which that is actively counterproductive. I'd say I've done some of the worst work of my career during the weeks of deepest crunch time. Many of the people I've known closely who've worked like that long term have had stress-induced medical problems. It's also interesting to point to Olympians here...elite athletes follow carefully planned training programs to balance training and rest to avoid overtraining, and while the best of the best can work up to massive training loads, there is a point for every human where additional training hours start to negatively impact your performance. To my understanding, recent research actually suggests elite athletes should sleep a couple of hours per night more than most people, so in some way a key piece of "doing anything to win" involves scheduling time to do nothing at all.
- benreesman 4y ago
  The absence of a strict metric yielding a total ordering (if you want to get all math pissy about it) over all people who write code does not in fact create any confusion about where Carmack or Dean sit relative to the average shmuck (e.g. me) who knows what a branch table buffer is and knows what it is on Golden Cove and Xen 3, and the fucking JavaScript-only people. I hate that knowing your craft and not being embarrassed about it is a faux pas around here. When did people who haven’t put in the time become a protected class? It’s not borderline racist to know why Electron apps suck ass in excruciating detail.
deleted 4y ago
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kubanczyk 4y ago
It's all about the framing. So, is it that "people just fucking crush [some other people]"? I'd say with that framing you can go kayaking and you'll be constantly vigilant about kayakers around you, building your status, watching their speed, noting their achievements, etc. On the other hand, take me, I go to work and, miraculously, I don't feel being "crushed" by any adderall-abusers. I know many people who commit a lot more than me, I know many CEOs or managers decade younger than me, my old roommates are now tenured professors at respectable universities, and you got me wonder just now, maybe I just have a blind spot and they are "crushing" me day by day somehow, going in circles while firing their machine guns at me. Who knows? I sure don't feel it in any way, they all seem really decent folks, so maybe it turns that ignorance is bliss after all, no? I struggle to even image how would that be done, but I have some ideas. Maybe if I cared about certifications, or went extensively to every meetup, or tried to lead a community, or bragged about my salary, maybe then I would have opened a hatch to get signals from those people. I don't, so I won't. Maybe it has something to do with me keeping all too many hobbies (I'm thinking about dropping two or three of them actually, and that includes hn) plus my kids?
tomjakubowski 4y ago
> It’s unfortunate but true that the ICM, adderall-abusing, 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. Maybe, but at some point - hopefully before they burn out - they'll realize they are drug addicts without any meaningful life outside of work, and then they take up kayaking on the weekends.
- ajhurliman 4y ago
  Non-facetious question: will kayaking bring them meaning in life? I’m a little burnt out on these articles that talk about work life balance, 4 day work weeks, UBI. Not working isn’t going to bring you meaning in life, it’ll probably make you more sedentary and feel more isolated from the world (or at least it does for me).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Physical activity outdoors is more sedentary and more isolating than working in an office?
    - ajhurliman 4y ago
      Not physically sedentary, but for velocity of life, yes. How is life any different after you go kayaking? You haven't learned any new ideas, or built anything, or improved some skill. That's not to say that kayaking has zero value, but I find it hard to imagine someone saying "I was in a really hard spot in life, but then I went kayaking and it changed everything". I find it a lot easier to imagine someone saying "I built a chrome extension as a side project and there's a small community that loves it. It brings me a lot of pride to hear from them in the Discord that it's really helping them"
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        People do that all of the time. They get wrapped up in their workaday lives and go on vacation or into the wilderness and suddenly see a bigger picture view of the world and that changes things. Kayaking is one venue for that. Nature is not something to be avoided in favor of even more technology.

codingdave 4y ago

> 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. I think the point is to let go of that measuring stick. If you measure them by how satisfied they are with their lives, kayakers are the ones crushing it. Being the best at something and the extreme work that requires does not necessarily make a better life than just walking your own path at a pace that works for you. Neither should that diminish anyone who truly does want a life where they push to the extreme to be the best. If that works for them, great. But that is not for everyone.

benreesman 4y ago
I said nothing demeaning about life satisfaction or mental health or work/life balance as goals. People who emphasize life satisfaction are almost definitionally living a “better” life in some sense. I am rather impatient, as you can likely tell, with people’s endless efforts to conflate that with elite technical ability, either individually or in a team. I ground it out over decades with no education and for at least one of those decades, no mentorship. I’m not advising anyone to take that path, but I’ll always get grumpy if someone triple equals that with learning some scripting language and being good at GitHub.

robjan 4y ago

Most Olympians train less than 40 hours per week. Yes, they make some sacrifices, such as not having that ice cream or drinking water at the bar but it's very possible (and normal) to have a life outside training. Besides, nobody's gonna sponsor a boring Olympian.

h2odragon 4y ago
The Olympic level athlete I knew trained most every moment she had that wasn't committed to other things, like school and sleep. Her life from about age 5 to 17 or so was about her sport. I dunno what sports might require "sacrificing ice cream" but AFAIK Olympians are nuts and have very little life after their events.
- benreesman 4y ago
  Yeah, the elite coders I’ve known don’t do anything else. Sometimes a light gym routine to keep their posture in place for the high-G burn.

brianmcc 4y ago

>> It’s unfortunate but true that the ICM, adderall-abusing, 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. Not at kayaking. And I'm only being slightly facetious. "Winning at coding/tech career" is just one dimension of many, many alternatives.

bumby 4y ago
Very true, but it can be difficult to manage in team environment. It's frustrating when a "this is my life" person relies on a "this is my job" person and the latter is too busy planning their next kayak trip to carry their pack. It would be the equivalent of the former constantly poking holes in the latter's kayak.
- brianmcc 4y ago
  Don't mix up "enjoys work life balance and has evening and weekend plans" with "slacks off at work and drops the ball" though, they really are not the same. The latter can and should be challenged. I 100% agree someone not really engaging at work can have a highly negative impact. IMO we should aim for "highly engaged 9 to 5 - but then enjoy life"!
  - bumby 4y ago
    >IMO we should aim for "highly engaged 9 to 5 - but then enjoy life"! I agree, but that perspective doesn't reconcile with the point higher up in the thread from somebody who works in the field of identifying high performers. I believe their point was that the "work is a job" people can't really compete with the "work is my life" group. Naturally then, the latter group would then be constantly outpacing the others.
    - brianmcc 4y ago
      That's a fair point. The challenge is to decide what you want from life - to be a Top 1% Career Winner or someone who spreads their resources more evenly, with the compromises that really does force. You can crush it and give your all in your 20s, and take a difference pace later on at the right time for you, and that can work very well for people, it often does! The original article is cautioning against an all-in-one-basket approach that - rather than launch you into the career achievement place you expect - ends up taking more than you can give and burning you out. It's also not all-or-nothing. Consider a Normal Distribution of achievement, it's entirely OK to be in the top 25% or 10% rather than top 1%. None of us I'm sure wants to be in the bottom percentiles, but it's fine to not even aim for the very very top. That's my view anyway, others will definitely disagree!

vsareto 4y ago

>It’s unfortunate but true that the ICM, adderall-abusing, 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. Not sure what ICM means, but if it's coding on adderall, 20hrs/day is not going to make great code. And this is assuming all of the requirements are perfectly written and understood. Especially if you're not taking adderall therapeutically.

jnordwick 4y ago
Tell this to Paul Erdos.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

softcactus 4y ago

Maybe I have a holistic view but I think the adderall-popping hypothetical person is only good at churning out lines of code. The Kayaker is building experiences and growing as a person, and probably allowing their subconscious to solve the difficult problems while they are consciously enjoying nature. I think that having a diverse set of experiences ultimately makes you a better problem-solver since you can apply abstract concepts from one domain to another. From an entrepreneurial perspective, you can see a need within one of your hobbies that needs to be fulfilled, and apply your technical skills to it. Meanwhile the adderall person has churned out 1000 lines of business logic for their employer. There is obviously more nuance to it than that, but the most intelligent people I have met were all incredibly well-rounded. I have also met people who probably had the potential to be equally as intelligent, but their laser focus on a single subject stunted their growth and they can only talk about/entertain ideas within their super specific niche. They become boring and unable to work with others.

jenny91 4y ago
There are certainly a lot of single-minded individuals who think just churning out lines of business logic will get them ahead, and I think most would agree that doesn't work in the long run. But there is also that crowd of people who know that a more holistic set of experiences helps them get ahead in their career. > Kayaker is ... allowing their subconscious to solve the difficult problems while they are consciously enjoying nature To an extent taking your mind off a problem and mulling over it helps. But there's no subconscious doing the work, in the end spending the weekend thinking about a problem with a few breaks will definitely make more progress than a weekend Kayaking and not thinking about work.
- softcactus 4y ago
  When I was in school I had epiphanies or "click" moments on several occasions either while I slept or while I was at the gym staring off into space and lifting weights with no other thoughts in my head. So from my personal experiences I do think that our unconscious mind works at some level solving problems.

daniel_reetz 4y ago

At BigCorp, I was a "this is my life" IC. But minus the Adderall. It took nearly two years to understand that my coworkers were using stimulants to keep up their level of effort. It was a revelation, but one that strongly contributed to my departure.

macNchz 4y ago

How do we define being "the best at technology"? In software there are some types of tasks that truly benefit from any additional hour worked, but plenty of others for which that is actively counterproductive. I'd say I've done some of the worst work of my career during the weeks of deepest crunch time. Many of the people I've known closely who've worked like that long term have had stress-induced medical problems. It's also interesting to point to Olympians here...elite athletes follow carefully planned training programs to balance training and rest to avoid overtraining, and while the best of the best can work up to massive training loads, there is a point for every human where additional training hours start to negatively impact your performance. To my understanding, recent research actually suggests elite athletes should sleep a couple of hours per night more than most people, so in some way a key piece of "doing anything to win" involves scheduling time to do nothing at all.

benreesman 4y ago
The absence of a strict metric yielding a total ordering (if you want to get all math pissy about it) over all people who write code does not in fact create any confusion about where Carmack or Dean sit relative to the average shmuck (e.g. me) who knows what a branch table buffer is and knows what it is on Golden Cove and Xen 3, and the fucking JavaScript-only people. I hate that knowing your craft and not being embarrassed about it is a faux pas around here. When did people who haven’t put in the time become a protected class? It’s not borderline racist to know why Electron apps suck ass in excruciating detail.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kubanczyk 4y ago

It's all about the framing. So, is it that "people just fucking crush [some other people]"? I'd say with that framing you can go kayaking and you'll be constantly vigilant about kayakers around you, building your status, watching their speed, noting their achievements, etc. On the other hand, take me, I go to work and, miraculously, I don't feel being "crushed" by any adderall-abusers. I know many people who commit a lot more than me, I know many CEOs or managers decade younger than me, my old roommates are now tenured professors at respectable universities, and you got me wonder just now, maybe I just have a blind spot and they are "crushing" me day by day somehow, going in circles while firing their machine guns at me. Who knows? I sure don't feel it in any way, they all seem really decent folks, so maybe it turns that ignorance is bliss after all, no? I struggle to even image how would that be done, but I have some ideas. Maybe if I cared about certifications, or went extensively to every meetup, or tried to lead a community, or bragged about my salary, maybe then I would have opened a hatch to get signals from those people. I don't, so I won't. Maybe it has something to do with me keeping all too many hobbies (I'm thinking about dropping two or three of them actually, and that includes hn) plus my kids?

tomjakubowski 4y ago

> It’s unfortunate but true that the ICM, adderall-abusing, 20hrs/day people just fucking crush the folks who kayak on the weekend. Maybe, but at some point - hopefully before they burn out - they'll realize they are drug addicts without any meaningful life outside of work, and then they take up kayaking on the weekends.

ajhurliman 4y ago
Non-facetious question: will kayaking bring them meaning in life? I’m a little burnt out on these articles that talk about work life balance, 4 day work weeks, UBI. Not working isn’t going to bring you meaning in life, it’ll probably make you more sedentary and feel more isolated from the world (or at least it does for me).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Physical activity outdoors is more sedentary and more isolating than working in an office?
  - ajhurliman 4y ago
    Not physically sedentary, but for velocity of life, yes. How is life any different after you go kayaking? You haven't learned any new ideas, or built anything, or improved some skill. That's not to say that kayaking has zero value, but I find it hard to imagine someone saying "I was in a really hard spot in life, but then I went kayaking and it changed everything". I find it a lot easier to imagine someone saying "I built a chrome extension as a side project and there's a small community that loves it. It brings me a lot of pride to hear from them in the Discord that it's really helping them"
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      People do that all of the time. They get wrapped up in their workaday lives and go on vacation or into the wilderness and suddenly see a bigger picture view of the world and that changes things. Kayaking is one venue for that. Nature is not something to be avoided in favor of even more technology.