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I am a bit older and have worked in IT now for almost 2 decades. (44 years old) I honestly think the general premise here holds true and perhaps applies to ma

I am a bit older and have worked in IT now for almost 2 decades. (44 years old) I honestly think the general premise here holds true and perhaps applies to many of us here in computed related occupations. It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets … for what? What is important ? Our job… buying gadgets… traveling.. I don’t have any answer but it’s worth pondering. How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… how many of us ponder what is important to us and why we act the way we do? Just My two cent

scotty79 4y ago
Either nihilism or absurdism has very nice answers for your conundrum.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  ”Dammit, Jack, we got another one.” ”Another awakening?” ”Yeah.” ”Just do what we always do, make their argument look nihilist or absurdist. Remember to avoid mentioning capitalism and neoconservatism!”
  - toombowoombo 4y ago
    Is this a part of a bigger story or a made-up dialogue created specifically for this post?
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      The latter, but I’m now seriously considering a career in writing. ;)
kstenerud 4y ago
> How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets … for what? What is important ? Our job… buying gadgets… traveling.. This would loosely describe the general form of most middle class peoples' jobs, technical or not. You work a lot so as not to slip down to a lower class (and build up a buffer that will last into your twilight years), and try to massage more meaning into the small amount of remaining time using gadgets, fashion, and travel. Security in the future would leave your brain free to do more meaningful things, but few have such luxury. > How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… how many of us ponder what is important to us and why we act the way we do? Once again, this is generally the domain of the affluent. Most great philosophers were affluent.
- russelldjimmy 4y ago
  If you read OP’s post carefully, you might notice that they are not being dismissive of working for money, but it seems to me your response to the post treats it as though it is (a strawman). To me, the OP’s post is an inquiry into “why” we do what we do. It is a useful inquiry that may be followed up with personal introspection, which might lead to a better understanding of ourselves if done with integrity. For example - we work to earn money. Why do we earn money? So we can live comfortably (your answer might vary). Why do we want to live comfortably? And so on… The line of reasoning you seem to have chosen ends at “to earn money” and then pivots to philosophers being affluent while seemingly (to me) proceeding to dismiss all the learnings procured by affluent people as though that makes them inherently different to the learnings procured by others (a conclusion that seems to have no solid basis).
  - kstenerud 4y ago
    The "why" we do what we do is mostly governed by circumstance. And in modern times (the past 5000 or so years), circumstance is almost completely governed by money and politics. The meritocratic ideal is what keeps our minds enslaved. When you have enough security that you have no worries for the medium term, you gain the luxury of time and brain energy to contemplate these things rather than having to focus your thoughts on such base things as eating, shelter, health, and maintaining your position. The majority of us focus on our jobs, buy gadgets and take vacations because we don't have the luxuries of time and peace of mind (since our focus is by necessity on the near term), but we'd like to have them. And even a short-term feeling of luxury is better than none.
phs318u 4y ago
I used to worry about being "successful" until I had an epiphany triggered by my father's death. Do you want to know what success is? Visualise the day of your funeral. Who is there? Are they sad, devastated, in tears? Are they looking at their watch or relieved you're finally gone? What does it say on your headstone? "Here lies roody15. Beloved father, husband, son. Forever in our hearts" Or will it say, "Here lies roody15. He was a good employee". Will anyone from your work be talking about your 60-hour weeks and the weekends you put in when the business really needed it? Or will your kids be talking through tears about how they'll miss you reading them bedtime stories? For me, I define personal success by the impact I have on other people's lives and the imprint I leave on their hearts. Everything else is filler. Undeniably useful - but filler.
- emmelaich 4y ago
  Whoa, I thought > Beloved father, husband, son. Forever in our hearts" was brutally generic but then ... > He was a good employee Which is worse than "he was a decent man" [0]. Oof. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Stone_(character) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Stone_(character)
  - zupatol 4y ago
    "He was a decent man" sounds like a worthy ambition. I'd be proud of "He wasn't a dick".
    - sn9 4y ago
      I'd rather be defined by my virtues than by the absence of flaws. A hermit in a cave could similarly be described, but I think any life that makes a positive impact, however small or large, requires something more.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- verisimi 4y ago
  You'd like a Christmas Carol then.
amelius 4y ago
Yes, beside bringing in some money, having spent your life as a programmer will not make you a better person than if you had spent your career solving crossword puzzles.
- yakak 4y ago
  I guess it depends what you mean by better person. How would being a plumber or electrician make you a better person? Given jobs in a "healthy" economic system, I don't think anyone should do anything if their only goal is to show they improved society through their work. What do we know about the nuns that would have filled mother Teresa roles if she had not displaced them? When you are done working for income, if you have more useful skills than a crossword puzzle player they can be used in a ~volunteer role that might not otherwise be filled.
  - amelius 4y ago
    > I guess it depends what you mean by better person. How would being a plumber or electrician make you a better person? I don't know about those professions. But the job of manager or marketing/salesperson at least gives you interpersonal skills.
  - scns 4y ago
    Can we please stop usin Mother Theresa as an example of a good person? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa?wpr...
    - downboots 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
barrysteve 4y ago
>It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. ... How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets … for what? What is important ? Our job… buying gadgets… traveling.. Steve Jobs always wanted to hire people who had a liberal arts education. He knew there was more to making tech objects than stem.
- paganel 4y ago
  Unfortunately it's a losing game, by now, the future Steve Jobs-es will have to dig even harder in order to find people with liberal arts education who might also be valuable in some STEM field. The latest example (and the one that also made me think along those same lines as your post) is this otherwise really interesting Economist article [1] about gender quotas among Finland's teacher corps (like I said, really interesting article). At some point the authors of the study the article is all about define as "more success" when it comes to the pupils involved in said study those kids that later turned out to study "STEM or medicine" (as it shows up in one of the charts, STEM as a "object of desire" is also explicitly mentioned in the article itself). So, in a way, it looks like we have already conditioned ourselves (and probably our kids) to look at STEM as inherently more "valuable" than a liberal arts education, which will probably mean even less kids choosing that arts education way. [1] https://archive.ph/IY9BQ https://archive.ph/IY9BQ
  - barrysteve 4y ago
    Most schools and universities aim their curriculum at getting jobs in industry. It's been a long time since we could rely on the university system to guide students toward genius or virtue and away from money making rabbit holes.
jacquesm 4y ago
> How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets … for what? What is important ? Our job… buying gadgets… traveling.. This isn't limited to STEM and computers. It goes for almost everybody.
- Swenrekcah 4y ago
  True but STEM still usually lends itself to less social interaction than many other jobs such as education, nursing, arts, etc.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Education and nursing are the outliers, most jobs don't do much in terms of interaction and with wfh becoming the norm for office jobs this is dropping rapidly. The arts are not really a profession, they are a calling more than a means to sustain yourself.
    - Swenrekcah 4y ago
      That depends on how you classify arts. I meant it as a catch all for the entire entertainment industry. Related to that are other “creatives” such as advertising. Then a good chunk of people are either politicians, political operatives or lawyers, those are all heavily people oriented jobs. Edit: Forgot sports and the entire industry around that.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Ah good point. To me arts = artists, not entertainers, but you are totally right they should probably be included. When I think art I think paintings, statues, not movies or books but that's a shortcoming on my end.
        Swenrekcah 4y ago
        Totally understandable, it was poorly worded on my part.
verisimi 4y ago
> It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. 100%. Worse than that, I think we are even encouraged to be computer-like. We are told that AI can be conscious - that we are just a machine. As if emotions/intuition/spirituality are non-existent. The core problem for me is that the principles that drive most us are not our own - they are installed in us by school, society, etc. You can take the time to work out what they really should be. Eg is trying to be based in truth a valuable principle? What am I assuming and have not verified? Is the 'golden rule' a principle that I should follow (don't do unto other as I wouldn't have done to me)? What happens when I follow this? The way I think about it is that when we die, we judge ourselves. You can bullshit your boss, neighbour, partner even - but you can't bullshit yourself. You know why you choose what you choose, and whether this accords with the principles you purport to hold. If you choose according to your heart, whether you believe in life after death or not, there is a value to it in the here and now. No, money/jobs/[some other provided external goal] isn't everything; being yourself and living authentically according to your heart is.
- Swenrekcah 4y ago
  I agree that intuition and spirituality is completely discounted in western/scientific culture. It is entirely possible to be a secular spiritualist. Make it a habit to feel one with nature and the world around you, without any supernaturals entering into the picture. And funnily enough, for all people dunk on experts and say they can rely on themselves instead, it is pretty much the definition of an expert to be a person that has so much experience with something that they have developed good intuition for it. That’s also why everybody is useless as an expert just coming out of school, they may know all the theory but none of the practicalities. Anyway I just wanted to say that none of this is incompatible with the premise that we’re basically meat based automata that accidentally developed consciousness. I don’t think we’re anywhere near developing general AI but in principle I don’t see why it couldn’t be done.
  - burrows 4y ago
    You are not conscious, stop pretending.
guiriduro 4y ago
> How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… And there you have Marxist Alienation in a nutshell, and a new thematic thread to read though, if you're interested.
- thrown321 4y ago
  It’s been really interesting to watch Hacker News grow up. We spent a long time in adolescent Randianism and have slowly been moving towards a more nuanced understanding of life.
- nic_wilson 4y ago
  It’s been a over a decade since I read any Marx but I thought alienation of labor was about the worker being alienated from the value of their labor (e.g. I get paid $10/hr to produce widgets that the employers sells for 10x the input costs and I receive none of that value) - I don’t think it was about the emotional connection the laborer had to the (non-economic) value of what was produced.
  - Nomentatus 4y ago
    The greater point is alienation from other people - i.e. that such production destroys communal life, seperating us and preventing previously normal social relations (harking back to nomad days.) Now, this interpretation presumes no massive distinction between "early Marx" and "late Marx," but academics now reject a brief French-birthed academic fad decades ago that imagined two Marx's, early and late, with different views. Whether it's easy to get back to that communal (community/communist) life of the very old days "after the revolution" is a whole 'nother question, of course. The history of self-identified communist societies suggests that it's no cakewalk. So yes, exploitation is a huge part of the problem, but ending that is a means to an end, to community and a more human life. Marx seemed to want to restrict production (to prevent "overproduction" (recessions) not to keep going towards more and more material wealth.
  - guiriduro 4y ago
    My understanding is that (amongst other things) Marxist alienation meant that the fruits of your labour are used against you / your interest / your class (as appropriate.) So the company you work for having a mission you oppose is exactly that. A capitalist who greatly marks up your product to resell would obliquely perhaps also meet that description, because paying you little keeps you dependent and stuck on a low wage (and class), while the capitalist maintains themselves in their class advantage. And with the profit from your labour can pay the gendarmes to beat you if you object in a not-well-organised way to that working relationship.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
>> How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with I did that for many years both as a factory worker and as a software developer. I don't need to spend much time pondering why I act the way I do.

scotty79 4y ago

Either nihilism or absurdism has very nice answers for your conundrum.

eurasiantiger 4y ago
”Dammit, Jack, we got another one.” ”Another awakening?” ”Yeah.” ”Just do what we always do, make their argument look nihilist or absurdist. Remember to avoid mentioning capitalism and neoconservatism!”
- toombowoombo 4y ago
  Is this a part of a bigger story or a made-up dialogue created specifically for this post?
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    The latter, but I’m now seriously considering a career in writing. ;)

kstenerud 4y ago

> How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets … for what? What is important ? Our job… buying gadgets… traveling.. This would loosely describe the general form of most middle class peoples' jobs, technical or not. You work a lot so as not to slip down to a lower class (and build up a buffer that will last into your twilight years), and try to massage more meaning into the small amount of remaining time using gadgets, fashion, and travel. Security in the future would leave your brain free to do more meaningful things, but few have such luxury. > How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… how many of us ponder what is important to us and why we act the way we do? Once again, this is generally the domain of the affluent. Most great philosophers were affluent.

russelldjimmy 4y ago
If you read OP’s post carefully, you might notice that they are not being dismissive of working for money, but it seems to me your response to the post treats it as though it is (a strawman). To me, the OP’s post is an inquiry into “why” we do what we do. It is a useful inquiry that may be followed up with personal introspection, which might lead to a better understanding of ourselves if done with integrity. For example - we work to earn money. Why do we earn money? So we can live comfortably (your answer might vary). Why do we want to live comfortably? And so on… The line of reasoning you seem to have chosen ends at “to earn money” and then pivots to philosophers being affluent while seemingly (to me) proceeding to dismiss all the learnings procured by affluent people as though that makes them inherently different to the learnings procured by others (a conclusion that seems to have no solid basis).
- kstenerud 4y ago
  The "why" we do what we do is mostly governed by circumstance. And in modern times (the past 5000 or so years), circumstance is almost completely governed by money and politics. The meritocratic ideal is what keeps our minds enslaved. When you have enough security that you have no worries for the medium term, you gain the luxury of time and brain energy to contemplate these things rather than having to focus your thoughts on such base things as eating, shelter, health, and maintaining your position. The majority of us focus on our jobs, buy gadgets and take vacations because we don't have the luxuries of time and peace of mind (since our focus is by necessity on the near term), but we'd like to have them. And even a short-term feeling of luxury is better than none.

phs318u 4y ago

I used to worry about being "successful" until I had an epiphany triggered by my father's death. Do you want to know what success is? Visualise the day of your funeral. Who is there? Are they sad, devastated, in tears? Are they looking at their watch or relieved you're finally gone? What does it say on your headstone? "Here lies roody15. Beloved father, husband, son. Forever in our hearts" Or will it say, "Here lies roody15. He was a good employee". Will anyone from your work be talking about your 60-hour weeks and the weekends you put in when the business really needed it? Or will your kids be talking through tears about how they'll miss you reading them bedtime stories? For me, I define personal success by the impact I have on other people's lives and the imprint I leave on their hearts. Everything else is filler. Undeniably useful - but filler.

emmelaich 4y ago
Whoa, I thought > Beloved father, husband, son. Forever in our hearts" was brutally generic but then ... > He was a good employee Which is worse than "he was a decent man" [0]. Oof. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Stone_(character) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Stone_(character)
- zupatol 4y ago
  "He was a decent man" sounds like a worthy ambition. I'd be proud of "He wasn't a dick".
  - sn9 4y ago
    I'd rather be defined by my virtues than by the absence of flaws. A hermit in a cave could similarly be described, but I think any life that makes a positive impact, however small or large, requires something more.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
verisimi 4y ago
You'd like a Christmas Carol then.

amelius 4y ago

Yes, beside bringing in some money, having spent your life as a programmer will not make you a better person than if you had spent your career solving crossword puzzles.

yakak 4y ago
I guess it depends what you mean by better person. How would being a plumber or electrician make you a better person? Given jobs in a "healthy" economic system, I don't think anyone should do anything if their only goal is to show they improved society through their work. What do we know about the nuns that would have filled mother Teresa roles if she had not displaced them? When you are done working for income, if you have more useful skills than a crossword puzzle player they can be used in a ~volunteer role that might not otherwise be filled.
- amelius 4y ago
  > I guess it depends what you mean by better person. How would being a plumber or electrician make you a better person? I don't know about those professions. But the job of manager or marketing/salesperson at least gives you interpersonal skills.
- scns 4y ago
  Can we please stop usin Mother Theresa as an example of a good person? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa?wpr...
  - downboots 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

barrysteve 4y ago

>It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. ... How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets … for what? What is important ? Our job… buying gadgets… traveling.. Steve Jobs always wanted to hire people who had a liberal arts education. He knew there was more to making tech objects than stem.

paganel 4y ago
Unfortunately it's a losing game, by now, the future Steve Jobs-es will have to dig even harder in order to find people with liberal arts education who might also be valuable in some STEM field. The latest example (and the one that also made me think along those same lines as your post) is this otherwise really interesting Economist article [1] about gender quotas among Finland's teacher corps (like I said, really interesting article). At some point the authors of the study the article is all about define as "more success" when it comes to the pupils involved in said study those kids that later turned out to study "STEM or medicine" (as it shows up in one of the charts, STEM as a "object of desire" is also explicitly mentioned in the article itself). So, in a way, it looks like we have already conditioned ourselves (and probably our kids) to look at STEM as inherently more "valuable" than a liberal arts education, which will probably mean even less kids choosing that arts education way. [1] https://archive.ph/IY9BQ https://archive.ph/IY9BQ
- barrysteve 4y ago
  Most schools and universities aim their curriculum at getting jobs in industry. It's been a long time since we could rely on the university system to guide students toward genius or virtue and away from money making rabbit holes.

jacquesm 4y ago

> How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets … for what? What is important ? Our job… buying gadgets… traveling.. This isn't limited to STEM and computers. It goes for almost everybody.

Swenrekcah 4y ago
True but STEM still usually lends itself to less social interaction than many other jobs such as education, nursing, arts, etc.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Education and nursing are the outliers, most jobs don't do much in terms of interaction and with wfh becoming the norm for office jobs this is dropping rapidly. The arts are not really a profession, they are a calling more than a means to sustain yourself.
  - Swenrekcah 4y ago
    That depends on how you classify arts. I meant it as a catch all for the entire entertainment industry. Related to that are other “creatives” such as advertising. Then a good chunk of people are either politicians, political operatives or lawyers, those are all heavily people oriented jobs. Edit: Forgot sports and the entire industry around that.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Ah good point. To me arts = artists, not entertainers, but you are totally right they should probably be included. When I think art I think paintings, statues, not movies or books but that's a shortcoming on my end.
      - Swenrekcah 4y ago
        Totally understandable, it was poorly worded on my part.

verisimi 4y ago

> It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. 100%. Worse than that, I think we are even encouraged to be computer-like. We are told that AI can be conscious - that we are just a machine. As if emotions/intuition/spirituality are non-existent. The core problem for me is that the principles that drive most us are not our own - they are installed in us by school, society, etc. You can take the time to work out what they really should be. Eg is trying to be based in truth a valuable principle? What am I assuming and have not verified? Is the 'golden rule' a principle that I should follow (don't do unto other as I wouldn't have done to me)? What happens when I follow this? The way I think about it is that when we die, we judge ourselves. You can bullshit your boss, neighbour, partner even - but you can't bullshit yourself. You know why you choose what you choose, and whether this accords with the principles you purport to hold. If you choose according to your heart, whether you believe in life after death or not, there is a value to it in the here and now. No, money/jobs/[some other provided external goal] isn't everything; being yourself and living authentically according to your heart is.

Swenrekcah 4y ago
I agree that intuition and spirituality is completely discounted in western/scientific culture. It is entirely possible to be a secular spiritualist. Make it a habit to feel one with nature and the world around you, without any supernaturals entering into the picture. And funnily enough, for all people dunk on experts and say they can rely on themselves instead, it is pretty much the definition of an expert to be a person that has so much experience with something that they have developed good intuition for it. That’s also why everybody is useless as an expert just coming out of school, they may know all the theory but none of the practicalities. Anyway I just wanted to say that none of this is incompatible with the premise that we’re basically meat based automata that accidentally developed consciousness. I don’t think we’re anywhere near developing general AI but in principle I don’t see why it couldn’t be done.
- burrows 4y ago
  You are not conscious, stop pretending.

guiriduro 4y ago

> How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… And there you have Marxist Alienation in a nutshell, and a new thematic thread to read though, if you're interested.

thrown321 4y ago
It’s been really interesting to watch Hacker News grow up. We spent a long time in adolescent Randianism and have slowly been moving towards a more nuanced understanding of life.
nic_wilson 4y ago
It’s been a over a decade since I read any Marx but I thought alienation of labor was about the worker being alienated from the value of their labor (e.g. I get paid $10/hr to produce widgets that the employers sells for 10x the input costs and I receive none of that value) - I don’t think it was about the emotional connection the laborer had to the (non-economic) value of what was produced.
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  The greater point is alienation from other people - i.e. that such production destroys communal life, seperating us and preventing previously normal social relations (harking back to nomad days.) Now, this interpretation presumes no massive distinction between "early Marx" and "late Marx," but academics now reject a brief French-birthed academic fad decades ago that imagined two Marx's, early and late, with different views. Whether it's easy to get back to that communal (community/communist) life of the very old days "after the revolution" is a whole 'nother question, of course. The history of self-identified communist societies suggests that it's no cakewalk. So yes, exploitation is a huge part of the problem, but ending that is a means to an end, to community and a more human life. Marx seemed to want to restrict production (to prevent "overproduction" (recessions) not to keep going towards more and more material wealth.
- guiriduro 4y ago
  My understanding is that (amongst other things) Marxist alienation meant that the fruits of your labour are used against you / your interest / your class (as appropriate.) So the company you work for having a mission you oppose is exactly that. A capitalist who greatly marks up your product to resell would obliquely perhaps also meet that description, because paying you little keeps you dependent and stuck on a low wage (and class), while the capitalist maintains themselves in their class advantage. And with the profit from your labour can pay the gendarmes to beat you if you object in a not-well-organised way to that working relationship.

rufus_foreman 4y ago

>> How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with I did that for many years both as a factory worker and as a software developer. I don't need to spend much time pondering why I act the way I do.