4 ms·

Is it really condescending on it's own? It's not exactly a big secret many of us choose to work on relatively boring and useless things for the sake of comfort.

Is it really condescending on it's own? It's not exactly a big secret many of us choose to work on relatively boring and useless things for the sake of comfort. That's more on society for aligning the benefits that way.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Instead of blog posts, people who are advocating for others to work on "more important work" should be spending their time improving various systems to enable people to work on more important work. Universal healthcare, improved child care accessibility, affordable housing, anything you can think of that is an enabler of talent to do more than survive vs thrive (in some quantified effectiveness to cost sequencing). People are just trying to get by because there is no alternative considering resourcing. Otherwise, these come off as "your risk appetite and budget is too low try harder." The cost of failure is simply too damn high unless you're young and have zero responsibility and obligations or wealthy family/connections to fall back on [1]. (imho it is condescending on its own; treat the root cause, not the symptom, but that's hard and takes years to accomplish with little payoff to the person pontificating, so it's easier to complain on social/public media instead) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 (credit to u/notacoward)
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  I mean I'm just reading this and thinking of the "I got a PhD in math, now I earn fat cash by.. increasing advertisement clickrates by 0.001%" meme. Wouldn't call consumption increase a net positive in today's society, but you bet I'm not going to fight an uphill battle for lower rewards out of some good will. It's only placing it in the context (first sentence) where it becomes condescending to me. Like, dude, you joking? Of course I'm thinking of what I'm doing with my life writing boring CRUD code. But it's lucrative.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    You are acting rationally, I don't blame you. My comment is an indictment of the concept as a whole of the post, in the same way people tell younger cohorts to skip the coffee and avocado toast to afford a house. If you want people to work on more meaningful work, fix the socioeconomics to make that work enticing (which I think we agree on?).
    - rapjr9 4y ago
      I agree. There needs to be a new mode of work that pays for people to solve all the really difficult problems in the world instead of building widgets. Everyone in the world getting a college degree and working on it would probably still take thousands of years to fix the world. Get started!
- em-bee 4y ago
  should be spending their time improving various systems to enable people to work on more important work. Universal healthcare, improved child care accessibility, affordable housing, anything you can think of that is an enabler of talent to do more than survive vs thrive exactly that. when i see a call for people to do more important work, this is the kind of stuff i think of. things that society actually needs.
  - wnolens 4y ago
    And unfortunately in North America teachers and nurses are leaving their professions. I don't see any migration of "apparent altruists" like OP filling in those vacancies!
    - em-bee 4y ago
      one of the important areas of work is education, and i don't mean STEM, but teaching people how to talk to each other and learn what their community needs, so that they are going to be willing to invest in that area and enable these jobs with actually sufficient pay and acceptable working conditions.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

Instead of blog posts, people who are advocating for others to work on "more important work" should be spending their time improving various systems to enable people to work on more important work. Universal healthcare, improved child care accessibility, affordable housing, anything you can think of that is an enabler of talent to do more than survive vs thrive (in some quantified effectiveness to cost sequencing). People are just trying to get by because there is no alternative considering resourcing. Otherwise, these come off as "your risk appetite and budget is too low try harder." The cost of failure is simply too damn high unless you're young and have zero responsibility and obligations or wealthy family/connections to fall back on [1]. (imho it is condescending on its own; treat the root cause, not the symptom, but that's hard and takes years to accomplish with little payoff to the person pontificating, so it's easier to complain on social/public media instead) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 (credit to u/notacoward)

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
I mean I'm just reading this and thinking of the "I got a PhD in math, now I earn fat cash by.. increasing advertisement clickrates by 0.001%" meme. Wouldn't call consumption increase a net positive in today's society, but you bet I'm not going to fight an uphill battle for lower rewards out of some good will. It's only placing it in the context (first sentence) where it becomes condescending to me. Like, dude, you joking? Of course I'm thinking of what I'm doing with my life writing boring CRUD code. But it's lucrative.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  You are acting rationally, I don't blame you. My comment is an indictment of the concept as a whole of the post, in the same way people tell younger cohorts to skip the coffee and avocado toast to afford a house. If you want people to work on more meaningful work, fix the socioeconomics to make that work enticing (which I think we agree on?).
  - rapjr9 4y ago
    I agree. There needs to be a new mode of work that pays for people to solve all the really difficult problems in the world instead of building widgets. Everyone in the world getting a college degree and working on it would probably still take thousands of years to fix the world. Get started!
em-bee 4y ago
should be spending their time improving various systems to enable people to work on more important work. Universal healthcare, improved child care accessibility, affordable housing, anything you can think of that is an enabler of talent to do more than survive vs thrive exactly that. when i see a call for people to do more important work, this is the kind of stuff i think of. things that society actually needs.
- wnolens 4y ago
  And unfortunately in North America teachers and nurses are leaving their professions. I don't see any migration of "apparent altruists" like OP filling in those vacancies!
  - em-bee 4y ago
    one of the important areas of work is education, and i don't mean STEM, but teaching people how to talk to each other and learn what their community needs, so that they are going to be willing to invest in that area and enable these jobs with actually sufficient pay and acceptable working conditions.