6 ms·

My dream was always to be hired into obscure government bureaucracy and automate the data entry job away, while hiding it. After that, you basically exist in a

My dream was always to be hired into obscure government bureaucracy and automate the data entry job away, while hiding it. After that, you basically exist in a free incubator. Imagine the software you can write, if freed from societies expectations of sweat, tears and busy work. Not to be rich, just to be technical excellent, productive and at peace. I wonder why this has not yet happened with open source. If a sufficient enough part of the public uses your software, the state offers you a maintainer role. Nothing big, but enough to life on and do work.

enriquto 4y ago
Have you ever heard about the entire concept of academia? It is more or less like that.
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  Maybe used to be like that (or maybe it's just prejudice against researchers), but from what I'm hearing it's pretty far from the truth today. Before you get a tenured position, you're basically stuck in the publish-or-perish rat race and when you eventually get a tenure, you now have an enormous responsibility towards the younger non-tenured reseachers of your department, who will eventually lose their job if the department isn't “productive” enough, so unless you're a complete insensitive assh*le, you'll still be under pressure.
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    It sounds like you’ve been heavily influenced by the tone regarding academia here on HN. It’s one of the nuances of HN that people “hate academia” here. (Admittedly CS has a strange relationship with academia in that the pay discrepancy is so outrageous between industry.) Some people love academia. My PhD mentor is as happy as a pig in mud in his academic role. He only has to teach every other semester, and his course/lecture plans are solidified such that all he has to do is recite his notes beside slides and answer questions. He has to schlep to the classroom two days out of the week in these semesters, but his classes are back-to-back so that even those days are spent mostly where he likes. All of the rest of his time is spent happily “doing research” in a domain in which he’s a world expert. Publishing is a specialized sausage-production manufacturing domain, but if you enjoy the subject matter like he does (and I do) it can be a low-effort byproduct of effectively playing with code and ideas.
    - goodcanadian 4y ago
      It sounds like your PhD mentor is one of the lucky ones. My understanding is that academia used to be like that, but it is unusual to get away with such a light teaching load these days. Academics also tend to get loaded up with other bureaucratic "service" tasks that heavily take away from the available research time. Finally, getting the job in the first place is next to impossible (though that might start to change as the people who have been holding the positions for decades are literally starting to die).
      - enriquto 4y ago
        Fwiw, an entry-level tenured professor in France has to teach about 200 hours/year. This is a bit daunting the first year, but as you gain experience it's not that hard. Notice that this also includes hours for mentoring undergrad interns, masters students, etc. So if you are active in research, it's quite easy to cover nearly half of this teaching load for "free", thanks to students that want to work with you in your little projects. It's an awesome environment to be honest!
      - comfypotato 4y ago
        Your point about bureaucratic service positions rings particularly true I think. It’s part of the job description and actually why I’ve decided the career path is not for me. The academics I’ve seen thrive all seem to enjoy that part of the job (my mentor, for example, goes out of his way to get involved in standards organizations and other international/academia-related groupings of bureaucratic process). At my research university, even associate professors (not sure about the details of what’s tenure track) don’t have to teach that much. There are actually “teaching professors” here who’s sole responsibility is teaching without research pressure, and they still only teach two classes per semester (admittedly, those classes might have 300 students).
abyssin 4y ago
I’ve met at least two developers living that life. One worked for a big German corporation. Sometimes he wouldn’t have any work to do for weeks. He got the authorization to work on a hospitality exchange network while in the office. Another one knew how to live on little money. He lived in squatted houses and was an adept dumpster diver. His lifestyle cost him one day of paid work per month. The rest of the time was spent volunteering code, among other activities. I was deeply inspired by these lifestyles, but it turns out not working for a boss doesn’t fit my personality. I’m too much in need for social validation. Work and suffering are a religion where I live. Programming makes me mostly anxious and I need to be surrounded with colleagues to get comforted. Consumerism is also a religion. I have a hard time being surrounded with people who are able to indulge in consumption while I’m not.
- cko 4y ago
  Hey, do either of them have a blog? I'm interested in these lifestyles, especially the dumpster diving dude. My wife wouldn't let me squat or dumpster dive but I could always live vicariously through him.
  - abyssin 4y ago
    He used to have a blog but no longer writes on it. There was quite an active community around Trashwiki but I haven’t had a look at it in a while. There’s also a dumpster diving subreddit, but it’s centered around finds rather than lifestyle. I can relate to the vicariously living through reading part of your message, I love coming across people who share their alternative lifestyle!
ArekDymalski 4y ago
> free incubator (...) freed from societies expectations of sweat, tears and busy work The fact that the most successful ideas&products weren't born in such places might cast a shadow on the attractiveness of this perspective. I think that without a challenege the mind is at risk of atrophy.
- namaria 4y ago
  Einstein was a patent office clerk. Gregor Mendel was a monk. Sergei Brin had a scholarship. The myth that struggle breeds success is just a narrative intended to keep working class folks grinding.
  - Aleksdev 4y ago
    You do realize Einstein was always studying? Sergei Brin worked like a maniac. Struggle breeds success. Not everyone successfully picks the right thing to struggle on.
    - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
      Struggle & synthetic stress prevents large scale strategy pivots though. You need to be able to let the subconcious do its thing, for which it needs peace, quiet and freedom from stress. Difficult to do the step back otherwise. The stress returns, when things then get traction, so i guess the truth is - alternation between stress free "creative" periods and stressy "realization" periods? No idea what the optimal sinus is.
    - what-the-grump 4y ago
      Africa should be delivering ground breaking work all the time right? This idea that x person worked a little harder than the rest and therefore he is successful is laughable. There is a range, say 5% or 15% or even 50% ‘worked more than the rest’, ok so what? Do you think you are within 5% or 50% of working x hours more per day before you become the next tech billionaire? You are not. It’s not that easy. Oh and then there are the struggling artists of the renaissance which all came from the illiterate peasantry struggling to feed themselves. And the media common folk of today, who come up because they struggle therefore they act, and everyone we see in TV was a nobody before their first big role and just worked really hard right? Or the government families which somehow if you are the son of a governor your chance of being in government and a high ranking official far outweighs any other factor. Or if your parents are rich chances of you being rich far outweigh anything else… But no, alas I’ll let everyone know we gotta push just a little harder and we’ll all be rich. Struggle breeds stress, which intern breeds health issues. If we didn’t struggle the world would not end, innovation would not stop, WALL-E is just a cartoon.
eloox 4y ago
That's how I became a software developer. I was working for a big tech firm as a data entry "specialist". Everything (except some pricing calculations) was done manually. I was hired as the 7th member of the team. It started with copy/pasting some simple VBA scripts to automate small tasks. In a year I managed to automate most of the tasks. More notably: A monthly task that took 2 days(and quite prone to human errors) of the entire team into a less than an hour job for a single person. And automated discrepancy checks between the data sources. It was quite satisfying and made me realize that I should be doing this for a living. I quit that company for way better pay as a software developer. I don't know if I'll be able to find such a job again, but I really enjoyed it.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  You quit your series A? Why? You talked about your scripts?
  - eloox 4y ago
    What do you mean by "series A"? :) I never hid the scripts. The automation was out in the open and everybody in the team was making use of them. I quit because I didn't receive pay raise and wouldn't have in that position(EDIT: They wanted to promote me to team lead(people management), but it is something I'm not interested in). Plus with the skills I've gained I managed to get a better paying job.
nicbou 4y ago
That's roughly my current situation. My humble business does well enough to let me focus on what feels right. I haven't thought about the income-generating bits for a while now. It's nice to do good work and not pollute it with the usual growth strategies, to tell advertisers to sod off, and to obsess over details of your choosing. This completely changed how I work. If it's sunny outside, I'll forget about work and go ride my bike. But I'll also take a day during my vacation to implement an idea because it's just can't wait. I don't know how other people work, but I found my perfect way of working. I've never been so productive before.
- abyssin 4y ago
  Did you write anywhere about the journey that got you where you are today? I’d love to know more.
badpun 4y ago
> I wonder why this has not yet happened with open source. If a sufficient enough part of the public uses your software, the state offers you a maintainer role. Nothing big, but enough to life on and do work. It didn't happen because people already do it for free, so why overpay?
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Because softwares ability to change are a living thing and it becomes stagnant and brittle once its left with no humans to keep it alive in symbiosis?
  - badpun 4y ago
    Is there any crucial project left without any maintainers though?

enriquto 4y ago

Have you ever heard about the entire concept of academia? It is more or less like that.

littlestymaar 4y ago
Maybe used to be like that (or maybe it's just prejudice against researchers), but from what I'm hearing it's pretty far from the truth today. Before you get a tenured position, you're basically stuck in the publish-or-perish rat race and when you eventually get a tenure, you now have an enormous responsibility towards the younger non-tenured reseachers of your department, who will eventually lose their job if the department isn't “productive” enough, so unless you're a complete insensitive assh*le, you'll still be under pressure.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  It sounds like you’ve been heavily influenced by the tone regarding academia here on HN. It’s one of the nuances of HN that people “hate academia” here. (Admittedly CS has a strange relationship with academia in that the pay discrepancy is so outrageous between industry.) Some people love academia. My PhD mentor is as happy as a pig in mud in his academic role. He only has to teach every other semester, and his course/lecture plans are solidified such that all he has to do is recite his notes beside slides and answer questions. He has to schlep to the classroom two days out of the week in these semesters, but his classes are back-to-back so that even those days are spent mostly where he likes. All of the rest of his time is spent happily “doing research” in a domain in which he’s a world expert. Publishing is a specialized sausage-production manufacturing domain, but if you enjoy the subject matter like he does (and I do) it can be a low-effort byproduct of effectively playing with code and ideas.
  - goodcanadian 4y ago
    It sounds like your PhD mentor is one of the lucky ones. My understanding is that academia used to be like that, but it is unusual to get away with such a light teaching load these days. Academics also tend to get loaded up with other bureaucratic "service" tasks that heavily take away from the available research time. Finally, getting the job in the first place is next to impossible (though that might start to change as the people who have been holding the positions for decades are literally starting to die).
    - enriquto 4y ago
      Fwiw, an entry-level tenured professor in France has to teach about 200 hours/year. This is a bit daunting the first year, but as you gain experience it's not that hard. Notice that this also includes hours for mentoring undergrad interns, masters students, etc. So if you are active in research, it's quite easy to cover nearly half of this teaching load for "free", thanks to students that want to work with you in your little projects. It's an awesome environment to be honest!
    - comfypotato 4y ago
      Your point about bureaucratic service positions rings particularly true I think. It’s part of the job description and actually why I’ve decided the career path is not for me. The academics I’ve seen thrive all seem to enjoy that part of the job (my mentor, for example, goes out of his way to get involved in standards organizations and other international/academia-related groupings of bureaucratic process). At my research university, even associate professors (not sure about the details of what’s tenure track) don’t have to teach that much. There are actually “teaching professors” here who’s sole responsibility is teaching without research pressure, and they still only teach two classes per semester (admittedly, those classes might have 300 students).

abyssin 4y ago

I’ve met at least two developers living that life. One worked for a big German corporation. Sometimes he wouldn’t have any work to do for weeks. He got the authorization to work on a hospitality exchange network while in the office. Another one knew how to live on little money. He lived in squatted houses and was an adept dumpster diver. His lifestyle cost him one day of paid work per month. The rest of the time was spent volunteering code, among other activities. I was deeply inspired by these lifestyles, but it turns out not working for a boss doesn’t fit my personality. I’m too much in need for social validation. Work and suffering are a religion where I live. Programming makes me mostly anxious and I need to be surrounded with colleagues to get comforted. Consumerism is also a religion. I have a hard time being surrounded with people who are able to indulge in consumption while I’m not.

cko 4y ago
Hey, do either of them have a blog? I'm interested in these lifestyles, especially the dumpster diving dude. My wife wouldn't let me squat or dumpster dive but I could always live vicariously through him.
- abyssin 4y ago
  He used to have a blog but no longer writes on it. There was quite an active community around Trashwiki but I haven’t had a look at it in a while. There’s also a dumpster diving subreddit, but it’s centered around finds rather than lifestyle. I can relate to the vicariously living through reading part of your message, I love coming across people who share their alternative lifestyle!

ArekDymalski 4y ago

> free incubator (...) freed from societies expectations of sweat, tears and busy work The fact that the most successful ideas&products weren't born in such places might cast a shadow on the attractiveness of this perspective. I think that without a challenege the mind is at risk of atrophy.

namaria 4y ago
Einstein was a patent office clerk. Gregor Mendel was a monk. Sergei Brin had a scholarship. The myth that struggle breeds success is just a narrative intended to keep working class folks grinding.
- Aleksdev 4y ago
  You do realize Einstein was always studying? Sergei Brin worked like a maniac. Struggle breeds success. Not everyone successfully picks the right thing to struggle on.
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    Struggle & synthetic stress prevents large scale strategy pivots though. You need to be able to let the subconcious do its thing, for which it needs peace, quiet and freedom from stress. Difficult to do the step back otherwise. The stress returns, when things then get traction, so i guess the truth is - alternation between stress free "creative" periods and stressy "realization" periods? No idea what the optimal sinus is.
  - what-the-grump 4y ago
    Africa should be delivering ground breaking work all the time right? This idea that x person worked a little harder than the rest and therefore he is successful is laughable. There is a range, say 5% or 15% or even 50% ‘worked more than the rest’, ok so what? Do you think you are within 5% or 50% of working x hours more per day before you become the next tech billionaire? You are not. It’s not that easy. Oh and then there are the struggling artists of the renaissance which all came from the illiterate peasantry struggling to feed themselves. And the media common folk of today, who come up because they struggle therefore they act, and everyone we see in TV was a nobody before their first big role and just worked really hard right? Or the government families which somehow if you are the son of a governor your chance of being in government and a high ranking official far outweighs any other factor. Or if your parents are rich chances of you being rich far outweigh anything else… But no, alas I’ll let everyone know we gotta push just a little harder and we’ll all be rich. Struggle breeds stress, which intern breeds health issues. If we didn’t struggle the world would not end, innovation would not stop, WALL-E is just a cartoon.

eloox 4y ago

That's how I became a software developer. I was working for a big tech firm as a data entry "specialist". Everything (except some pricing calculations) was done manually. I was hired as the 7th member of the team. It started with copy/pasting some simple VBA scripts to automate small tasks. In a year I managed to automate most of the tasks. More notably: A monthly task that took 2 days(and quite prone to human errors) of the entire team into a less than an hour job for a single person. And automated discrepancy checks between the data sources. It was quite satisfying and made me realize that I should be doing this for a living. I quit that company for way better pay as a software developer. I don't know if I'll be able to find such a job again, but I really enjoyed it.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
You quit your series A? Why? You talked about your scripts?
- eloox 4y ago
  What do you mean by "series A"? :) I never hid the scripts. The automation was out in the open and everybody in the team was making use of them. I quit because I didn't receive pay raise and wouldn't have in that position(EDIT: They wanted to promote me to team lead(people management), but it is something I'm not interested in). Plus with the skills I've gained I managed to get a better paying job.

nicbou 4y ago

That's roughly my current situation. My humble business does well enough to let me focus on what feels right. I haven't thought about the income-generating bits for a while now. It's nice to do good work and not pollute it with the usual growth strategies, to tell advertisers to sod off, and to obsess over details of your choosing. This completely changed how I work. If it's sunny outside, I'll forget about work and go ride my bike. But I'll also take a day during my vacation to implement an idea because it's just can't wait. I don't know how other people work, but I found my perfect way of working. I've never been so productive before.

abyssin 4y ago
Did you write anywhere about the journey that got you where you are today? I’d love to know more.

badpun 4y ago

> I wonder why this has not yet happened with open source. If a sufficient enough part of the public uses your software, the state offers you a maintainer role. Nothing big, but enough to life on and do work. It didn't happen because people already do it for free, so why overpay?

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
Because softwares ability to change are a living thing and it becomes stagnant and brittle once its left with no humans to keep it alive in symbiosis?
- badpun 4y ago
  Is there any crucial project left without any maintainers though?