5 ms·

I tend to consider bullshit any point that finds somehow acceptable thinking that people is lazy, in this society, in this world, on this planet, ffs we have to

I tend to consider bullshit any point that finds somehow acceptable thinking that people is lazy, in this society, in this world, on this planet, ffs we have to work 40 hrs per week per decades and rest after reincarnation, and you want to talk about laziness? Let's talk about how any bit of mental energy is extracted to built other's wealth and then when you are too old to do nothing other than watching work in progress they just spit you out when I am supposed to fix tech debt? if every week there is another functionality going out that needs to be done yesterday? Do you think that I have to do it in my free time? Why should I even bother existing

qup 3y ago
Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours.
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  No, this is absolutely not true. Laziness is not working hard. What you're talking about is something else. Sloppy or Careless work maybe? But not lazy. If you're working 40+ hours a week you're definitely not lazy.
  - Proziam 3y ago
    Most people consider low-effort to be lazy. You can absolutely put in a lot of hours, but be putting in near-zero effort. This results in sloppy or careless work, but the root cause is the laziness of the person.
    - winwang 3y ago
      I agree. I see it all the time. Huge amounts of hours being wasted "working hard", and running away from answering the real questions which would double the (positive) output in half the time. That said, I think "laziness" is only a small part of the answer. It seems to me that it's usually about an emotional response. Kind of like procrastination. The hard questions hit hard. There's a real good-feeling self-satisfaction from putting in hours of sweat.
      - ryandrake 3y ago
        > I agree. I see it all the time. Huge amounts of hours being wasted "working hard", and running away from answering the real questions which would double the (positive) output in half the time. I think a lot of times we are put in boxes, and our roles are pretty heavily constrained, such that we do not have the power to "answer the real questions." Raise your hand anyone who's had this conversation with their manager: Manager: "Dev, I'd like you to take more responsibility, be transformational, be a 'force multiplier' for the team!" Dev: "OK, let me make major architectural decisions without having to get approval from three levels of managers." Manager: "Uh, wait..." Dev: "Let me hire and fire, and build up a team of direct reports." Manager: "Hold up..." Dev: "Give me a budget to spend on tools, training, contractors, and so on." Manager: "Whoa, whoa, whoa.. I didn't mean that transformational..."
        johnnyanmac 3y ago
        Not quite that extreme but yea. I've had those conversations. > Working on X but Y is a blocker > Okay, I can do some work with Y to help get unblocked > No we'll let A (on a different team, maybe a different contracted studio) deal with it, here's tiny widget Z to work on in the meantime Sometimes it means well, sometimes it feels like they don't value your expertise nor care about fostering growth. And sometimes it's just politics (especially when working with multiple different companies and contractors and all that).
      - Proziam 3y ago
        Lazy is a convenient catch all for "This person lacks the emotional fortitude to do the work when the option of not doing the work presents itself." There are a million reasons/excuses for people to be lazy depending on perspective. Personally, I view people with this trait to be productivity vampires that I avoid like the plague regardless of their reasons (which in my experience are 99% excuses and 1% genuine hardships).
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      > This results in sloppy or careless work, but the root cause is the laziness of the person. If someone is producing a high volume of low effort work, they are not lazy. What they are is not disciplined, or not skilled. If someone is producing low volumes of high effort work, they are similarly not lazy, they are highly skilled and maybe a perfectionist If someone is producing high volumes of high effort work they are a either a one of a kind savant or they are lying about the volume or effort. If someone is producing low volumes of low effort work, then maybe we can call them lazy.
      - Proziam 3y ago
        You forgot the most common case: Someone skilled produces low volumes of medium-to-high effort work because they are the sort of person who would rather browse social media, or engage in office gossip, or play "call a meeting to discuss" games to avoid having to do the boring work. If someone is "undisciplined," more often they are just lazy and are engaging in avoidance behaviors. Humans with serious executive function issues are a tiny (super tiny) minority of the workforce.
        ferbivore 3y ago
        What's the difference between "lazy" and "serious executive function issues"?
        Proziam 3y ago
        Emotional vs Medical. A person struggling with narcolepsy doesn't fall into the same bucket as the person who just wastes time at work so they don't have to do work.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        johnnyanmac 3y ago
        >Someone skilled produces low volumes of medium-to-high effort work So based on the table they are skilled, right? Are you suggesting that they are a savant in disguise and that they can produce high volumes of high effort work if they weren't "lazy"? if the work is considered medium-to-high effort by the organization, your opinion on if it's avoiding "boring" work (which can still be low or high effort) is irrelevant. >If someone is "undisciplined," more often they are just lazy and are engaging in avoidance behaviors. IME it's because the employers don't trust nor want them to work on the high effort work. So either the business's most profitable software is the most boring, or the candidate is too junior (alternatively, the position and responsibility is simply filled or not valued) >Humans with serious executive function issues are a tiny (super tiny) minority of the workforce. Likewise, humans who can do "productive" creative work for 80 hours a week consistently, for years, is also a super tiny minority. At the end of the day, "lazy" is relative and we haven't even established a baseline for what is/isn't lazy. So this conversation won't go anywhere. All we established in your lens is that taking breaks or doing non-technical work (meetings, even gossip depending on the line of work) is not productive in your eyes.
  - hightrix 3y ago
    Some people consider themselves to be "working" while browsing HN or reddit while they are "on the clock". That is being lazy while working.
    - shaneoh 3y ago
      I wonder how you measure balance between being lazy vs. not lazy by this definition? I agree with you, but it's not like it's feasible to remain full-on focused on coding or meetings or documenting for 8 hours straight each day.
      - hightrix 3y ago
        Really good point. There's a big difference in checking HN in the 10 minutes between meetings vs spending 4 hours after noon reading and replying to threads.
- rewmie 3y ago
  > Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours. You've just provides your personal assertion on a non-definition. Do you actually have an alternative definition that does not imply working lots of hours?
  - adrianmonk 3y ago
    Yes, work a normal, reasonable number of hours (let's say 40), but while you're there, give it your best. The point is that hard work doesn't imply excessive hours. If it did, that would mean anyone who doesn't put in excessive hours is lazy, which isn't true.
  - default-kramer 3y ago
    From the article > I routinely come across developers who are the real deal: they’re conscientious and judicious in an unwavering way. They set a standard for themselves and do not compromise on it. Whether that’s a deliberate thing or whether they’re just built that way, it’s humbling to witness. If there’s a flaky test, they investigate it and fix it. If there’s a bug they spot in the wild, they make a ticket, and maybe even fix it then-and-there. If a new feature doesn’t gel well with the existing code, they refactor the code first rather than hacking the feature in. They’ll dive as far down the stack as necessary to get to the bottom of something. None of these things are necessary but great developers know that if they don’t address a problem early, and properly, it will only cost them more time in the long run. [... and more.] This sounds like a great definition of not-lazy, and it does not mention long hours anywhere. My anecdotal experience is that I usually only have 20-35 not-lazy hours to give per week; any further hours per week are much less potent. Right now I'm working 24 hours per week and I think my employer is getting a great bargain: they don't have to pay me for hours that would likely be lazy.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      Yeah, but that diligence takes time, and now you have to work on extra hours to keep up performance metrics with the rest of the team.
yetihehe 3y ago
> when I am supposed to fix tech debt? Try to lie about how long will it take. Just today I finished* 1-month almost total rewrite of firmware for one of devices at my work. It started as a 1-week small rewrite of part of communication module for a small bug and was scheduled as that. But I've got chill PM and coworkers who will appreciate that now we can actually fix some 8yr old bugs in legacy parts of that code. * well, now some testing of edge cases and another round of fixes but at least remote code updating works so we can ship those devices... Edit: "Lie" is call to action here, there were some misunderstanding in comments. Previous start of my comment was "Lie. ..."
- Chabsff 3y ago
  > But I've got chill PM ... Have you considered that perhaps your personal perspective is not exactly representative of large swathes of the industry and that many (if not most) workers do not have the agency and/or leeway to place place themselves in a comparable situation? I wouldn't be so cut-and-dry with your assertion that the parent post is "lying".
  - Jtsummers 3y ago
    > I wouldn't be so cut-and-dry with your assertion that the parent post is "lying". yetihehe is not accusing the parent poster of lying, they're telling them to lie. To claim the work will be X (just the feature, perhaps), and then slip in the extra work (tackling tech debt and other issues), and letting the work schedule "slip" (which they can do because they have a "chill PM").
    - yetihehe 3y ago
      Exactly, thanks for putting it so clearly.
  - yetihehe 3y ago
    I didn't call him a liar, I told him that he should lie about what he does. Sometimes you need a little lie about how long will it take and ship good code a little later than bad code on time. > Have you considered that perhaps your personal perspective is not exactly representative of large swathes of the industry Yes. HN is place for ALL kinds of people, sometimes they are not even programmers. Many tips are not applicable to everyone here.
hombre_fatal 3y ago
That's how I burned out of software. On a mature project in a small team, the only tickets left were hard bugs that nobody wanted. The kind of bugs where you can invest days and have nothing really to show for it except crossing out some suspicions. Or maybe incorrectly crossing one out and then going on a wild goose chase until you circle back to it in a week, flustered. You're expected to commit all of your mental energy to these tickets day after day, and then once you finally triumph and solve the bug after coffee or amphetamine binges, you turn in the code, close the ticket, and you're expected to immediately work on the next ticket. You don't get a real break. But you can mentally rest at the start of the next ticket since nobody expects instant results. But now it's been a couple days and people are asking you what you've been doing so far—you must be blocked, right?—but you've barely started and you're pressured to invent small lies and excuses about why you're behind, each one risking yet another slip of the mask. And when you need some time off the most, it's when you're the most behind of all and people have begun to notice, so taking the time off doesn't even seem like an option.
- vegetablepotpie 3y ago
  Agile solves a lot of these problems.
  - danwee 3y ago
    How so? If there are boring bugs to be fixed, someone will need to fix them regardless of the methodology used.
  - Humdeee 3y ago
    Eureka! If only it was this easy...
  - reflectiv 3y ago
    What kind of stupid statement is this...no it certainly does not. But humor me with an explanation, please...
    - vegetablepotpie 3y ago
swatcoder 3y ago
Some of us really are lazy, though. But we set ourselves up in contracting or solodev where our time isn't being managed by a JIRA jockey between meetings. Clients and customers see us as efficient, but it's really just a matter of being so lazy that we don't let technical debt pile up on us and make us have to actually work hard later on. You can get away with it in corpo-coding too, but you need to earn some freedom and have the right team members around you.
sad_robot 3y ago
But what would the world be if you didn't produce more surplus value for the stakeholders and investors?! I would never understand people who go the extra mile like OPs heroes for some random corpo. You go the extra mile to develop your skills and leverage this new expertise into higher salaries or escape the rat race altogether.
mvdtnz 3y ago
Developers are paid handsomely for those 40 hours. Much more than most other professions. I for one am tiring of the laziness of some developers I work with, and I don't even consider myself particularly diligent.
- Trasmatta 3y ago
  The funny thing is that burnout can still happen regardless of how much compensation somebody gets.
layer8 3y ago
You seem to be working at the wrong company.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
I did a startup for five years that absolutely ruined me. Burnout on top of burnout for years on end. Now I work for an engineering non profit and I work 20-30 hours a week, sometimes less, and money is real tight but I’ll tell you - there’s just no way I can work more hours. I actually have a little time for side projects, and bike rides, and I never ever work weekends. Hell I don’t work Tuesdays either except on rare occasions. I absolutely love my job. It’s my dream job. But it’s not worth killing myself over. We have one life to live and I’m going to fucking love it.
- sokka_h2otribe 3y ago
  I think I might be a couple years behind you but I found your msg inspirational
  - sokka_h2otribe 3y ago
    That wakeup from 6 years of stress to <<one life, don't want to be driven this way [burnout way] anymore>>
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      It takes time to find the right fit. Biggest thing is, when looking for a new job instead of negotiating the best salary, negotiate the right hours. 9/10 places will say “no thank you” if you say you must be allowed to typically work 25-30 hours a week. The place that says okay is a place that won’t push you. Consider the open source world. They will appreciate paying a lower annual salary and still having a dev focused on their work, and they don’t need all the extra overhead (meetings, etc) of a 40 hour week. Also working in open source (as I do) feels really good. You’re not making some rich asshole richer, you’re focused on helping the users.
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        >9/10 places will say “no thank you” if you say you must be allowed to typically work 25-30 hours a week. The place that says okay is a place that won’t push you. How do you find such places? I've been very curious about part time software work but knowledge online seems to suggest that freelancing is the only route there. Funnily enough, I wanted to find such a job precisely so I could make my own stuff on the side, which will inevitably involve some signifigant open source contributions due to my tech stack. I've thought about simply being a paid member and essentially double dipping, but that route seems even rarer.
marmaduke 3y ago
I multiply every estimate by at least 3x and often add an order of magnitude, especially when I haven't done it before. when it takes less than I guessed, I use the time to resolve tech debt (or maybe leave early to enjoy the big blue room).
marmaduke 3y ago
> Why should I even bother existing? you should bother existing to push back against economic forces that push us to work too much and feel bad that we aren't working more. you should exist to teach your colleagues that taking the time to consider the broader implications of your work is important. you should exist to contribute your opinions to communities like this one. you should exist to eat chocolate and walk your dog (if applicable). you should exist to listen to Alan Watts lectures on YouTube. You should </ran out of tokens>
- infinitezest 3y ago
  This comment inspired me, then made me laugh, then made me very, very sad about the trajectory of human civilization.
lr4444lr 3y ago
Have kids. It'll put things in a different perspective what it means to work 40 hrs./week.
robocat 3y ago
> is extracted to built other's wealth You are blaming the system S. However we have counter-examples where the problem P occurs outside of the system. If P occurs without S then possibly S is not the cause. Admittedly untangling causation, sufficient and necessary is difficult. The article itself appears to be a counter-example that is non-commercial: where problem P occurs without system S. I think it is worthwhile investing time to work out for yourself when to honestly blame commercial constraints, and when to recognise other root causes. Blaming the system by default is unhealthy IMHO.
onthecanposting 3y ago
I suppose you can move to Venice Beach sleep outside and just queue up for the soup kitchen a couple times and shoot up all afternoon.

qup 3y ago

Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours.

bluefirebrand 3y ago
No, this is absolutely not true. Laziness is not working hard. What you're talking about is something else. Sloppy or Careless work maybe? But not lazy. If you're working 40+ hours a week you're definitely not lazy.
- Proziam 3y ago
  Most people consider low-effort to be lazy. You can absolutely put in a lot of hours, but be putting in near-zero effort. This results in sloppy or careless work, but the root cause is the laziness of the person.
  - winwang 3y ago
    I agree. I see it all the time. Huge amounts of hours being wasted "working hard", and running away from answering the real questions which would double the (positive) output in half the time. That said, I think "laziness" is only a small part of the answer. It seems to me that it's usually about an emotional response. Kind of like procrastination. The hard questions hit hard. There's a real good-feeling self-satisfaction from putting in hours of sweat.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      > I agree. I see it all the time. Huge amounts of hours being wasted "working hard", and running away from answering the real questions which would double the (positive) output in half the time. I think a lot of times we are put in boxes, and our roles are pretty heavily constrained, such that we do not have the power to "answer the real questions." Raise your hand anyone who's had this conversation with their manager: Manager: "Dev, I'd like you to take more responsibility, be transformational, be a 'force multiplier' for the team!" Dev: "OK, let me make major architectural decisions without having to get approval from three levels of managers." Manager: "Uh, wait..." Dev: "Let me hire and fire, and build up a team of direct reports." Manager: "Hold up..." Dev: "Give me a budget to spend on tools, training, contractors, and so on." Manager: "Whoa, whoa, whoa.. I didn't mean that transformational..."
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        Not quite that extreme but yea. I've had those conversations. > Working on X but Y is a blocker > Okay, I can do some work with Y to help get unblocked > No we'll let A (on a different team, maybe a different contracted studio) deal with it, here's tiny widget Z to work on in the meantime Sometimes it means well, sometimes it feels like they don't value your expertise nor care about fostering growth. And sometimes it's just politics (especially when working with multiple different companies and contractors and all that).
    - Proziam 3y ago
      Lazy is a convenient catch all for "This person lacks the emotional fortitude to do the work when the option of not doing the work presents itself." There are a million reasons/excuses for people to be lazy depending on perspective. Personally, I view people with this trait to be productivity vampires that I avoid like the plague regardless of their reasons (which in my experience are 99% excuses and 1% genuine hardships).
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    > This results in sloppy or careless work, but the root cause is the laziness of the person. If someone is producing a high volume of low effort work, they are not lazy. What they are is not disciplined, or not skilled. If someone is producing low volumes of high effort work, they are similarly not lazy, they are highly skilled and maybe a perfectionist If someone is producing high volumes of high effort work they are a either a one of a kind savant or they are lying about the volume or effort. If someone is producing low volumes of low effort work, then maybe we can call them lazy.
    - Proziam 3y ago
      You forgot the most common case: Someone skilled produces low volumes of medium-to-high effort work because they are the sort of person who would rather browse social media, or engage in office gossip, or play "call a meeting to discuss" games to avoid having to do the boring work. If someone is "undisciplined," more often they are just lazy and are engaging in avoidance behaviors. Humans with serious executive function issues are a tiny (super tiny) minority of the workforce.
      - ferbivore 3y ago
        What's the difference between "lazy" and "serious executive function issues"?
        Proziam 3y ago
        Emotional vs Medical. A person struggling with narcolepsy doesn't fall into the same bucket as the person who just wastes time at work so they don't have to do work.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        >Someone skilled produces low volumes of medium-to-high effort work So based on the table they are skilled, right? Are you suggesting that they are a savant in disguise and that they can produce high volumes of high effort work if they weren't "lazy"? if the work is considered medium-to-high effort by the organization, your opinion on if it's avoiding "boring" work (which can still be low or high effort) is irrelevant. >If someone is "undisciplined," more often they are just lazy and are engaging in avoidance behaviors. IME it's because the employers don't trust nor want them to work on the high effort work. So either the business's most profitable software is the most boring, or the candidate is too junior (alternatively, the position and responsibility is simply filled or not valued) >Humans with serious executive function issues are a tiny (super tiny) minority of the workforce. Likewise, humans who can do "productive" creative work for 80 hours a week consistently, for years, is also a super tiny minority. At the end of the day, "lazy" is relative and we haven't even established a baseline for what is/isn't lazy. So this conversation won't go anywhere. All we established in your lens is that taking breaks or doing non-technical work (meetings, even gossip depending on the line of work) is not productive in your eyes.
- hightrix 3y ago
  Some people consider themselves to be "working" while browsing HN or reddit while they are "on the clock". That is being lazy while working.
  - shaneoh 3y ago
    I wonder how you measure balance between being lazy vs. not lazy by this definition? I agree with you, but it's not like it's feasible to remain full-on focused on coding or meetings or documenting for 8 hours straight each day.
    - hightrix 3y ago
      Really good point. There's a big difference in checking HN in the 10 minutes between meetings vs spending 4 hours after noon reading and replying to threads.
rewmie 3y ago
> Being not-lazy in your work is not the same as working lots of hours. You've just provides your personal assertion on a non-definition. Do you actually have an alternative definition that does not imply working lots of hours?
- adrianmonk 3y ago
  Yes, work a normal, reasonable number of hours (let's say 40), but while you're there, give it your best. The point is that hard work doesn't imply excessive hours. If it did, that would mean anyone who doesn't put in excessive hours is lazy, which isn't true.
- default-kramer 3y ago
  From the article > I routinely come across developers who are the real deal: they’re conscientious and judicious in an unwavering way. They set a standard for themselves and do not compromise on it. Whether that’s a deliberate thing or whether they’re just built that way, it’s humbling to witness. If there’s a flaky test, they investigate it and fix it. If there’s a bug they spot in the wild, they make a ticket, and maybe even fix it then-and-there. If a new feature doesn’t gel well with the existing code, they refactor the code first rather than hacking the feature in. They’ll dive as far down the stack as necessary to get to the bottom of something. None of these things are necessary but great developers know that if they don’t address a problem early, and properly, it will only cost them more time in the long run. [... and more.] This sounds like a great definition of not-lazy, and it does not mention long hours anywhere. My anecdotal experience is that I usually only have 20-35 not-lazy hours to give per week; any further hours per week are much less potent. Right now I'm working 24 hours per week and I think my employer is getting a great bargain: they don't have to pay me for hours that would likely be lazy.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    Yeah, but that diligence takes time, and now you have to work on extra hours to keep up performance metrics with the rest of the team.

yetihehe 3y ago

> when I am supposed to fix tech debt? Try to lie about how long will it take. Just today I finished* 1-month almost total rewrite of firmware for one of devices at my work. It started as a 1-week small rewrite of part of communication module for a small bug and was scheduled as that. But I've got chill PM and coworkers who will appreciate that now we can actually fix some 8yr old bugs in legacy parts of that code. * well, now some testing of edge cases and another round of fixes but at least remote code updating works so we can ship those devices... Edit: "Lie" is call to action here, there were some misunderstanding in comments. Previous start of my comment was "Lie. ..."

Chabsff 3y ago
> But I've got chill PM ... Have you considered that perhaps your personal perspective is not exactly representative of large swathes of the industry and that many (if not most) workers do not have the agency and/or leeway to place place themselves in a comparable situation? I wouldn't be so cut-and-dry with your assertion that the parent post is "lying".
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  > I wouldn't be so cut-and-dry with your assertion that the parent post is "lying". yetihehe is not accusing the parent poster of lying, they're telling them to lie. To claim the work will be X (just the feature, perhaps), and then slip in the extra work (tackling tech debt and other issues), and letting the work schedule "slip" (which they can do because they have a "chill PM").
  - yetihehe 3y ago
    Exactly, thanks for putting it so clearly.
- yetihehe 3y ago
  I didn't call him a liar, I told him that he should lie about what he does. Sometimes you need a little lie about how long will it take and ship good code a little later than bad code on time. > Have you considered that perhaps your personal perspective is not exactly representative of large swathes of the industry Yes. HN is place for ALL kinds of people, sometimes they are not even programmers. Many tips are not applicable to everyone here.

hombre_fatal 3y ago

That's how I burned out of software. On a mature project in a small team, the only tickets left were hard bugs that nobody wanted. The kind of bugs where you can invest days and have nothing really to show for it except crossing out some suspicions. Or maybe incorrectly crossing one out and then going on a wild goose chase until you circle back to it in a week, flustered. You're expected to commit all of your mental energy to these tickets day after day, and then once you finally triumph and solve the bug after coffee or amphetamine binges, you turn in the code, close the ticket, and you're expected to immediately work on the next ticket. You don't get a real break. But you can mentally rest at the start of the next ticket since nobody expects instant results. But now it's been a couple days and people are asking you what you've been doing so far—you must be blocked, right?—but you've barely started and you're pressured to invent small lies and excuses about why you're behind, each one risking yet another slip of the mask. And when you need some time off the most, it's when you're the most behind of all and people have begun to notice, so taking the time off doesn't even seem like an option.

vegetablepotpie 3y ago
Agile solves a lot of these problems.
- danwee 3y ago
  How so? If there are boring bugs to be fixed, someone will need to fix them regardless of the methodology used.
- Humdeee 3y ago
  Eureka! If only it was this easy...
- reflectiv 3y ago
  What kind of stupid statement is this...no it certainly does not. But humor me with an explanation, please...
  - vegetablepotpie 3y ago

swatcoder 3y ago

Some of us really are lazy, though. But we set ourselves up in contracting or solodev where our time isn't being managed by a JIRA jockey between meetings. Clients and customers see us as efficient, but it's really just a matter of being so lazy that we don't let technical debt pile up on us and make us have to actually work hard later on. You can get away with it in corpo-coding too, but you need to earn some freedom and have the right team members around you.

sad_robot 3y ago

But what would the world be if you didn't produce more surplus value for the stakeholders and investors?! I would never understand people who go the extra mile like OPs heroes for some random corpo. You go the extra mile to develop your skills and leverage this new expertise into higher salaries or escape the rat race altogether.

mvdtnz 3y ago

Developers are paid handsomely for those 40 hours. Much more than most other professions. I for one am tiring of the laziness of some developers I work with, and I don't even consider myself particularly diligent.

Trasmatta 3y ago
The funny thing is that burnout can still happen regardless of how much compensation somebody gets.

layer8 3y ago

You seem to be working at the wrong company.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

I did a startup for five years that absolutely ruined me. Burnout on top of burnout for years on end. Now I work for an engineering non profit and I work 20-30 hours a week, sometimes less, and money is real tight but I’ll tell you - there’s just no way I can work more hours. I actually have a little time for side projects, and bike rides, and I never ever work weekends. Hell I don’t work Tuesdays either except on rare occasions. I absolutely love my job. It’s my dream job. But it’s not worth killing myself over. We have one life to live and I’m going to fucking love it.

sokka_h2otribe 3y ago
I think I might be a couple years behind you but I found your msg inspirational
- sokka_h2otribe 3y ago
  That wakeup from 6 years of stress to <<one life, don't want to be driven this way [burnout way] anymore>>
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    It takes time to find the right fit. Biggest thing is, when looking for a new job instead of negotiating the best salary, negotiate the right hours. 9/10 places will say “no thank you” if you say you must be allowed to typically work 25-30 hours a week. The place that says okay is a place that won’t push you. Consider the open source world. They will appreciate paying a lower annual salary and still having a dev focused on their work, and they don’t need all the extra overhead (meetings, etc) of a 40 hour week. Also working in open source (as I do) feels really good. You’re not making some rich asshole richer, you’re focused on helping the users.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      >9/10 places will say “no thank you” if you say you must be allowed to typically work 25-30 hours a week. The place that says okay is a place that won’t push you. How do you find such places? I've been very curious about part time software work but knowledge online seems to suggest that freelancing is the only route there. Funnily enough, I wanted to find such a job precisely so I could make my own stuff on the side, which will inevitably involve some signifigant open source contributions due to my tech stack. I've thought about simply being a paid member and essentially double dipping, but that route seems even rarer.

marmaduke 3y ago

I multiply every estimate by at least 3x and often add an order of magnitude, especially when I haven't done it before. when it takes less than I guessed, I use the time to resolve tech debt (or maybe leave early to enjoy the big blue room).

marmaduke 3y ago

> Why should I even bother existing? you should bother existing to push back against economic forces that push us to work too much and feel bad that we aren't working more. you should exist to teach your colleagues that taking the time to consider the broader implications of your work is important. you should exist to contribute your opinions to communities like this one. you should exist to eat chocolate and walk your dog (if applicable). you should exist to listen to Alan Watts lectures on YouTube. You should </ran out of tokens>

infinitezest 3y ago
This comment inspired me, then made me laugh, then made me very, very sad about the trajectory of human civilization.

lr4444lr 3y ago

Have kids. It'll put things in a different perspective what it means to work 40 hrs./week.

robocat 3y ago

> is extracted to built other's wealth You are blaming the system S. However we have counter-examples where the problem P occurs outside of the system. If P occurs without S then possibly S is not the cause. Admittedly untangling causation, sufficient and necessary is difficult. The article itself appears to be a counter-example that is non-commercial: where problem P occurs without system S. I think it is worthwhile investing time to work out for yourself when to honestly blame commercial constraints, and when to recognise other root causes. Blaming the system by default is unhealthy IMHO.

onthecanposting 3y ago

I suppose you can move to Venice Beach sleep outside and just queue up for the soup kitchen a couple times and shoot up all afternoon.