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The ideal candidate will be punched in the stomach
- rexpop 2y agoI couldn't finish reading this because of the intimately familiar existential nausea it induces, so I scrolled rapidly through it only stopping to observe that it touches on both psychiatry and unemployment in ways that made me glad I hadn't continued reading. Frankly, this should be mandatory reading for everyone I've ever worked for. Edit: Yeah, wow, this is more depressing than Ted Chiang's Exhalation[1]. For more in this vein, but with an erotic cyberpunk theme, play the interactive novel Secretary[2]. Edit 2: Perhaps the antidote to this malaise is a re-read of Hexing the Technical Interview[3]. 1. https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/ https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/ 2. https://www.secretarygame.com/ https://www.secretarygame.com/ 3. https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview
- nemomarx 2y agoabsolutely did not expect to run across secretary on hn. although I'm not sure that was supposed to be a horror game as such
- rexpop 2y agoYes, I've shocked myself by referencing it, but if it's not your fetish, it is blackmail, abuse, and non-consensual body modification. It's somebody's literal nightmare.
- ikiris 2y agoCan someone post a summary? This is written in a way that’s really hard to read.
- yoctonaut 2y agoThis seems to have been written with the assumption that everyone will share the writer's understanding of why it's worth reading.
- ziddoap 2y ago>the assumption that everyone will share the writer's understanding of why it's worth reading. There is no "why it's worth reading". They write for enjoyment, and don't care if anyone reads it. "I write this content because I want to, and because I enjoy it. If you do too, great! And if not, also great; I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for elsewhere."
- yoctonaut 2y ago> There is no "why it's worth reading". On the contrary--every individual reader gets to determine this. I found that it wasn't.
- notevenreal 2y ago[flagged]
- Gormo 2y agoSo you found it not worth your time to read the story, but found that it was worth your time to participate in discussions about it? That's certainly an interesting set of choices.
- notevenreal 2y ago[flagged]
- Gormo 2y agoOr, perhaps, the author wrote the piece to fulfill his own intrinsic motivations, and then published it on his website so that anyone who did happen to find it worth reading could do so, without necessarily expecting anything of "everyone".
- rexpop 2y agoSkip to the first <hr />
- OutOfHere 2y agoMaybe read some from the top, then some from the bottom. The person ultimately quit the job as was expected. The story is relatable.
- avemg 2y agoI am seeing this kind of comment more and more here and I think it's a trend I would like to see end. That's fine if you don't want to read a long, meandering essay. I myself made it about 30% through and decided I didn't want to finish. But why would you then expend the effort to come here and ask others to do work for you? Paste it into chatgpt and ask it to summarize for you.
- Applejinx 2y agoI read the whole thing. It's a bit of a 'moralistic' ending, but I didn't have enough of a problem with it to find that a serious fault. Unlike that comment about 'please summarize'. I'll fault that. Here's the problem: this is an artwork. It's there to experience something, not intrinsically to deliver an answer or data point. It's to vicariously go on a journey without literally doing the thing. That's a purpose of artworks, and one that's completely wasted on LLMs as they cannot feel or experience or have a purpose: if they did they'd be fixed (or, I supposed, punched in the digital stomach) Summary? You don't need an LLM for that, conserve the energy. The summary is 'The ideal candidate will be punched in the stomach. And that's bad'. It's literally in the title. I read through to see if it was 'and that's bad' or, 'and that's good', or possibly 'and that's inevitable'. I like the author better for ending up at 'that's bad' with a little bow on the end to celebrate meaningfulness, but that's not the only possible conclusion, and other conclusions would be just as artistically valid. Quitting 30% of the way through is just as valid. You don't HAVE to take the ride just because it exists. If you're curious, averng, it's an okay story, leads up to its ending pretty well and finishes with a hopeful note. That's most of what you missed. The only NON-valid way to engage with it would be to point an LLM at it and say 'tell me what the point is, I'm busy' because that would be failing to take the ride without even comprehending that you're failing to do so. Living life through ChatGPT is about as useful as getting punched in the stomach. Try reading the story or ignoring it completely. There is no summary that is not as meaningless as… well, you know :)
- avemg 2y agoI mean, I agree. My point is just that if you can't be bothered to read the piece but have such an insatiable curiosity to know what it was about, then do us a favor and just dump it into an llm to scratch your itch. I find two things to be distasteful: 1) Asking others to do the work you're uninterested in doing yourself and 2) the rejection of any kind of stylistic writing as an annoying distraction. I don't know if the person I was replying to is guilty of #2 but I've seen the sentiment a lot here and more frequently than I used to. Not everything is a technical manual that needs to convey its main ideas in as straightforward a way as possible. This article is a work of art. And I don't mean that in the highfalutin sense. But the style is meant to evoke something just as much as the words themselves. It's fine if it that doesn't work for you, but the goal was not to convey as much meaning in as few words as possible.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 2y agoWith the caveat that this is only possible with very lossy compression: 1. You land a software job which is "perfect" on almost every traditional indicator. Amazing office and amenities, incredible compensation and benefits, and no hard demands on your time... except to meekly endure some brief pain, for no particular reason, every day. 2. However it seems that neither the team nor yourself really accomplish anything, you gain no sense of social belonging, and you are literally a (very brief) punching-bag for your manager. 3. You "should" be happy, but you aren't. What's the point of it all? What are your values, and what is your worth? You start to struggle with depression. Eventually you can't take it anymore. You quit. Maybe you heal. It's sort of like a Twilight Zone episode: You get (almost) everything you (believe that you) will be happy with, yet somehow the result is a subtle form of hell.
- latexr 2y agoIt’s a short story about corporate work and bullshit jobs, not an informative blog post. Either read it for your own enjoyment (or dread) or skip it, a summary doesn’t make much sense here.
- juancn 2y ago[flagged]
- rexpop 2y agoI've spent time with several schizophrenics, and this is infinitely more coherent. I envy your inability to digest it. > The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. — H. P. Lovecraft Edit: Apologies; I forgot that my mind's ear had edited out the first section entirely. Skip it.
- juancn 2y agoSorry I'm not a native speaker, the way it's written makes my mind itch and want to do something else, and I can read a lot of dense crap. But it's starts from nowhere, without context, is this fiction? Opinion? AI rambling? Why should I keep reading?
- arrosenberg 2y agoIf you aren't a native English speaker, it makes sense you would struggle with this - it requires advanced reading comprehension. It's an essay from a first-person perspective that describes the author's feeling of existential dread from corporate make-work roles. It's written in a way that suggests the writer has worked in big-tech for a while.
- webmaven 2y agoIt's written in second-person.
- arrosenberg 2y agoGood call. I am so unused to seeing that style, that I read it as first-person.
- alabastervlog 2y agoI'm only about 20% in but if anybody ever asks me "what is your day-to-day internal experience of ordinary life like?" I'm just going to point them to this. [EDIT] Still not done but this is just getting more true the farther I go.
- gitpusher 2y agoThis made my brain hurt. And not in a good way
- hiatus 2y agoThis captures a form of existential dread I am sure all of us have felt. On the one hand, you have an ostensibly "good" job with great pay, benefits, etc. On the other hand, you have to _get punched in the stomach_ each day. All while knowing that there are people out there taking more abuse for likely far less pay. Who are you to feel bad about your situation?
- everdrive 2y agoVery well put. Most jobs are definitionally bad in some way. Well-paying (at least relative to the wider job market) tech jobs represent some of the better jobs available. They’re deeply frustrating, nearly any customer service job is a significantly worse experience for far less money, benefits, time off, healthcare, etc.
- rexpop 2y ago> Who are you to feel bad about your situation? Who am I? Who are any of us to complain and/or fix things? The answer is: we're the only people who can. Change has to start somewhere. The best thing for people who have it worse isn't to silently suffer, it's to help ourselves by dismantling the systems under which we both suffer. We have to take every opportunity to do that, and that means even the unglamorous ones. > If I'm not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? — Hillel
- miketery 2y agoI agree we need to be the change we want to see. However taking about dismantling a system is probably going to introduce more pain (in the short and long run). For example capitalism doesn’t need dismantling, it has brought us far more good than bad. However we do need to figure out how to deal with bad actors and net negative behavior (deforestation, over fishing, ocean trash etc).
- Clubber 2y agoGlobalization is a big one. There are no good jobs for average people anymore, they all got moved to Mexico or China or Vietnam, etc. Tariffs can help with that if applied correctly.
- anotherhue 2y agoOh good, it's not just me. A friend of mine developed stomach ulcers, so this isn't even that fantastical.
- spondylosaurus 2y agoBefore anyone jumps in to say that stress doesn't cause ulcers, only H. pylori does: stress can absolutely trigger gastritis, especially if you're predisposed for that, and chronic gastritis can very much cause ulcers :') Hope your friend's doing okay.
- anotherhue 2y agoThey cleared up after the lay-off :( Stress pretty much ruins your body one way or another. It was the teeth grinding that got me. We both ended up putting more stock in family than work and it has been going well.
- LeifCarrotson 2y agoThis is art.
- OutOfHere 2y agoWe are at the stage where most creative experienced persons with at least a year or savings (of their expenses) should look to a self-bootstrapped AI-assisted entrepreneurship instead of a job. AI changes the game to enhance the chances of entrepreneurial success. Also, when you are working for yourself, it doesn't really feel like work. When you write truth to power, you get downvoted and suppressed!
- Applejinx 2y agoThere's a couple problems causing this negative appraisal of your 'truth'. Firstly, there's no reason to assume 'AI-assisted' will help you in any way. You might consider that by definition that places you in a position interchangeable with any other person or indeed running the AI by itself, without you. Secondly, 'most' creative experienced persons? As someone who's successfully-ish done the thing you're talking about, WOOF. No. In fact, I would suggest based on my experience and perspective, that a person looking to rely on AI assistance is the last person who should attempt to be entrepreneurial. I guess go ahead if you must? If it doesn't really feel like work, it probably isn't work. If it doesn't seem meaningful because it's just chasing what an AI tells you to do, it's probably not going to stick out with any competitive distinctiveness. And if you are only doing it for yourself, you should keep your day job because that's not enough to succeed at business.
- OutOfHere 2y agoIf someone doesn't yet feel substantially empowered by AI, then they just don't know how to use it very well, and also lack the imagination to do so. It's a lot more than just asking ChatGPT. AI is not a substitute for personal effort; it's a tool for going where one struggles to go alone. For work to not feel like work, one has to be super passionate about the goal that one is working toward, and this is never possible at a job. Most people have forgotten what it means to have a personal passion, some of which can also manifest a commercial angle. To make a long comment short, AI is the missing glue in ikigai that brings everything together.
- nunez 2y ago
- hardlianotion 2y agoHuh. I work on the 17th floor.
- karmajunkie 2y agothat's funny, i just got out of the hospital for a case of dysphagia that turned into a perforated esophagus. small world!
- pteraspidomorph 2y agoCan you please restock the Dr Pepper already?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wildpeaks 2y agoA lot (most ?) people do jobs they don't enjoy to make ends meet, figuratively punched in the stomach yet without the luxury of being highly paid.
- nunez 2y agoThe author calls this out too.
- dpc050505 2y agoHonoré de Balzac has a great bit about cashiers in Melmoth reconciled, basically explaining that it's a useless job that stems from a lack of trust (meanwhile the cashier becomes a trustee, which is ironic as if he had ambition he could just leave with the money). I have no idea how good the english translation is, but there's much better literature about bullshit jobs than this.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoAmbition may be cut short by a stay with a chain gang and a yellow passport
- glitchc 2y agoIt's a brilliant story. I read it end to end, can empathize. Thank you for writing it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ge96 2y ago> I read it end to end That's impressive, this post was massive
- buildsjets 2y agoTikTok user?
- ge96 2y agoProudly no edit: this post has almost 26,000 words in it I am extremely skeptical someone reads it in its entirety I'm not sure how long that would take
- tombert 2y agoI did read it in its entirety, it took about 45 minutes. I found it pretty engaging.
- jaggederest 2y agoI read the entire thing, it took about an hour give or take. Why do you find that hard to believe?
- ge96 2y agoit's a lot of words, I mostly engage on HN articles from other people's comments but yeah I get it, I read books but I don't spend an entire hour on a blog post someone posts. everybody has their own values I get that
- mortenjorck 2y agoThe casual, patent absurdity juxtaposed with the ennui of modern life at a corporate job is, in a genuine literary sense, Kafkaeque. Bravo. That said, this also feels like something of a relic from the zero-interest-rate era when jobs like this were plentiful, before layoff fever swept the American boardroom.
- TOGoS 2y agoI am working a job like this now. Instead of getting punched in the stomach I have to make Jira subtasks and come up with some narrative about what I'm doing in a stupid scrum meeting every morning. Easy, pays well, less physically demanding than being punched in the stomach, but not really making use of my skills, and ultimately soul-sucking in a way that previous jobs weren't. And yet who am I to complain?
- jayrot 2y agoBingo. It goes without saying that the physical damage of being punched in the stomach is a metaphor for the psychic damage of having your soul sucked. You can bare it for a while but it starts to add up. And, like many wounds, it CAN heal over time.
- K0balt 2y agoMost of this can be solved with a paradigm shift. Find something you enjoy, do it the way you like to. -that- is your new job. The soul desiccating jira handjob is -therapy- to remind you how pointless life is if you don’t do something that you love. Focus your energy on appreciating your “job”, and appreciating your therapy (and your co-therapists) for making it possible for you to retain focus on your job. Focus on making your therapy easier and making better metrics, especially at the cost of actual value. The purpose of the therapy-is- the pointlessness. I have seen this unironically used to excellent effect, and the user was considered indispensable, since being indispensable and highly “valued” was what he focused 100 percent of his 9-5 on. Meanwhile, he was able to leave work behind once he walked out of the office, because he was not at all invested emotionally in the “therapy “ sessions. Probably won’t work for everyone, but it’s a pretty solid pattern for accepting useless work. The important part is to have some “real” work that you -do- care about. Otherwise it’s potentially a shortcut to a high ledge.
- computronus 2y agoReminds me of a job posting sent by a recruiter that expected candidates to seek "professional and personal hypergrowth", "keep up with an unrelenting pace", and "thrive on change". Dealing with these facets of work in moderation is all well and good. However, these and other points led me to guess that they had set up a high-pressure, possibly chaotic environment, perhaps on purpose. I opted not to pursue the opportunity.
- Aurornis 2y ago> However, these and other points led me to guess that they had set up a high-pressure, possibly chaotic environment, perhaps on purpose. It's always wise to ask questions about this during the interview In my experience, though, hyperbole in job listings is usually the product of someone in HR who doesn't know how to write job listings, so they write a bunch of vacuous words that sound good but mean nothing.
- camtarn 2y agoThis was an excellent read. Thank you.
- philomath_mn 2y agoAnyone else feel that they cannot relate to the premise of this essay in any way? I mean I'd rather be on a road trip with my kids, but my work is generally pleasant outside infrequent periods of high stress.
- spacecrafter3d 2y agoYeah, I had the same reaction.
- nuancebydefault 2y agoThere are well paid corporate jobs that feel like a punch in the stomach every day. Luckily they did not cross your path. It can happen very quickly though, for example the company you work for gets bought by another one with different company culture or simply your boss got switched to a narcissist.
- alabastervlog 2y agoLots of the details hit for me (the lifelong habits from marching band, moments alone of feeling a little actually-crazy, being terrible at remembering names well past the point where you feel like you should have gotten good at that, the conference room lights shutting off and awkwardly standing to make them come back on, trying not to look as idle and bored as you are). It's mostly about big-corp life, though—my time with startups and little agencies and such didn't much resemble this, day to day, but still had some of that "why the fuck are people paying me to do this?" factor, like having finished projects cancelled without ever being released due to corporate politics or because it turns out a client was only paying us build a product as a BATNA for some acquisition negotiation and they weren't really planning on using it except as a bargaining chip, or having clients (or your own startup leaders...) assign you projects that you're 100% certain are a bad idea that's never going anywhere (and sure enough, you get it done, and it flops, for exactly the reasons you could have told them it would on day 1). Like, 80+% of the work I've ever been paid to do has been kinda pointless except to drive the gears on some abstract large-scale money-making machine that randomly sometimes produces returns but mostly just makes everyone do a bunch of work that at least someone involved already knows isn't valuable, at least not for any straightforward reasons, but everyone has to do anyway to keep the gears turning. Feeling lost in a large org, the awkwardness of being new at a large office and of kinda clinging to the very-few people whose names you can remember, being told you're doing well and being paid great while kinda feeling like you're just coasting along and money's showing up in your account for no good reason and because that's just how your stumbling-through-life path has worked out, for whatever reason, but why should that continue for another day and OMG what will I do if people figure out they could just not do a bunch of this stuff and nothing bad would happen and they'd save money and I'd be out of a job and what else do I even know how to do and is this current too-easy gig making me soft and messing me up for future employment (but they're all kinda like that...)—very relatable.
- LeftHandPath 2y agoWhat a metaphor. Beautifully written.
- jryan49 2y agoI recognized the lyrics at the beginning right away. The song is reel big fish’s say goodbye which has some other relevant lyrics > I know, you feel like a whore Working for a dream that isn't even yours Pleasing everybody but yourself Would you rather be, somewhere else with someone else?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- stevoski 2y agoThis is awesome. A reminder why I avoid working in the corporate world - or even full time.
- dgreensp 2y agoWhen casually-inflicted trauma and indifference to using you effectively, let alone your needs as a human being, are a constant, while other responsibilities come and go and are taken less seriously, it feels like the core of the job.
- philomath_mn 2y agoWorking a soul-sucking but cushy corporate job is not trauma.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoIt's duck-typed
- notevenreal 2y ago[flagged]
- RangerScience 2y agoThis hits so many feels, and so... effectively. The corporate speak. The callousness. The vapid emptiness. The confusion. The confusion - that this thing that seems like it should be excellent, isn't, and is in fact damaging - that's a sign of gaslighting, of being convinced to ignore or dismiss your own sense of reality. When we're in these situations, we do know something's wrong, but we doubt; that it's wrong enough, that the wrongness matters, that the wrongness is worthwhile. When you know it's wrong enough, you quit. When you know the wrongness is worthwhile, you don't have the dazed malaise. When you doubt your sense of reality, the reality you sense... crumbles.
- nuancebydefault 2y agoI remember one time saying to a coworker : something is wrong. Only after I left for a place with a more 'normal' boss, I realized just how wrong it had been.
- petsormeat 2y agoThis was a compelling story for me to read, after leaving a tech job so abusive that I didn’t work full-time for five years. When you envy the cashier at the minimart for their ostensibly more straightforward work day, it’s time to resign. I appreciate that the author found humor in so many inexplicable details of typical corporate office life.
- ryandrake 2y agoI think we've all had jobs where we were paid much more than we ever expected, that on paper looked like "dream jobs," where our acquaintances would gently rib us about how fortunate and pampered we were, yet working there we felt like an abused puppy until we finally resigned. This story really brought back that weird combination of dread and gratefulness that I simultaneously felt while working such a job.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoRelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Richards_(performer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Richards_(performer)
- supriyo-biswas 2y agoPerhaps the biggest takeaway or "moral" of the story would be this: > And let’s not even get started on you. You, who breezily engaged with any recruiter who blew smoke up your ass. You, applying and interviewing for jobs you didn’t want, then saying yes to their offers just because the compensation was higher and it felt like maybe the grass would be greener too. You, who time and time again sat around waiting for the world to tell you what you were supposed to do at every given moment, spelled out in big bright letters. Someday you will have to learn that opportunities never find you like that; historically, only punches do.
- scrumper 2y agoI was reading the story until that point, then it started reading me.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jollyllama 2y agoBold move to put this next to one's resume.
- MrMcCall 2y agoI raise you { Chris's resume, a stack of photocopies of my ass, and another of Chris's resumes }.
- svilen_dobrev 2y agothis sentence caught me.. > None of what you’ve been saying to people over the course of your career has been a joke. But seems, most did take it as such.. or pretended.. > as you mentally replayed your time at the company. and this one.. still hurts.
- quuxplusone 2y ago+1 to everyone saying the style is really hard to read. The second-person narration is part of that; but for my money the biggest problem is that the author can't decide whether the story is being told in present tense or past tense. Pick a point of view and stick with it! Either you're telling the story as it happens (present tense), or you're telling it after it happens (past tense), but you shouldn't keep switching viewpoints with every sentence. Frequently this story switches viewpoints within the same sentence. And it's not done in anything like an intentional style; my default assumption when reading something that feels like bad fanfic is that the writer simply doesn't know any better. "This job, it was you. Every sentence, every bullet point, they all described you [...] You fire off a copy of your résumé. [...] As each employee taps their badge, the turnstile emits a pleasant green [...] You were directed to the gate at the far end, which the receptionist opens manually [...] you are absolutely speechless [...] The only words that were polite but nonspecific enough to fill the absolutely dead air that now fills the room." Turnstiles emit green pleasantly, as Noam Chomsky might once have said. Style points for gratuitous misuse of the word "catachresis." (Autocatachresis?)
- perrygeo 2y agoThe shifting second-person perspective feels intentional to cause disorientation. The confusion makes the story feel like a mental illness, with thoughts jumping from the past to the future but rarely present in the moment.
- Gormo 2y agoDefinitely seems intentional. The author generally uses past tense to reflect the mental state of the protagonist, and present tense to describe events as they unfold. I found nothing jarring about the tense switches.
- momentmaker 2y agoThe TV show Severance shows the modern job and office dynamic very well.
- caseyy 2y agoAs I read the story, I thought it would look great as a Ben Stiller-directed show or episode, maybe Black Mirror or a similar anthology. If you like Severance's grounded absurdity, you might also like the film Corner Office with Jon Hamm.
- nunez 2y agoI can never look at Wellness benefits the same again. For someone who spent his whole career on camera, Stiller and company absolutely nailed every minute aspect office culture.
- npodbielski 2y agoSecond season is getting a bit redicoulous. But maybe it is just me.
- alabastervlog 2y agoI'd recommend anyone who liked the "perspective character experiencing mental illness" aspects of this check out Atwood's Surfacing.
- axus 2y agoThis reads like a more realistic version of leisuretown.com "Q.A. Confidential".
- tristor 2y agoThis might be one of the most beautiful, terrifying, and accurate takes on modern corporate life that I've read. I typically don't read things that are long-form if it's not in a physical book, but I found I couldn't stop even though I felt existential dread the entire time. This almost directly replicated some of my life experiences in my career, and I have the GERD (mis)diagnosis to show for it.
- csours 2y agoAll I will say is, never work in compliance. You never have enough data or the data you need, because compliance is very important, but never as important as the actual job.
- Boogie_Man 2y ago"I think it's important to pursue cross training opportunities for 'hit by a bus" situations and for organic, cross-pollinated efficiency. At least twice a week we should rotate puncher or punchee. Tuesdays I'll punch you, and Fridays we'll have Diane punch me. Besides, it'll keep your knuckles from getting too sore and it'll free up time on your end of week schedule to get those reports in".
- gadders 2y agoProfessional boxers, MMA fighters etc must get punched in the stomach most days they train and by experts. I would think getting punched every day by an amateur would be survivable. And for some unfortunates, this is their school life.
- MrMcCall 2y agoI did landscaping in Atlanta with the business owner, whose college-attending son and friends would sometimes fight each other for fun. "Good Sir, I must politely decline your generous invitation."
- renewiltord 2y agoQuite entertaining but could use an editor. Went as expected but the value is in being able to relate.
- npodbielski 2y agoWow, this hits surprisingly close to home. I do not feel existential fear about everything, do not take any antidepressants or anything like that... I just very rarely feel happy, or passionate about anything, at all anymore. My job just burned it all out. I felt depressed for few months, though I am not really 'depressed-stay-in-a-bed' type of person. I do live normally, I am just feeling sad and indifferent about anything. I told my manager that I am almost done with my mortgage and he asked in return if I am planning to quit my job... And the worst thing is that job is not bad, I would say it is quite good. Good pay, paid time off, remote... It is just so freaking pointless and stupid. I would prefer doing anything other than working there really, today I did groceries and it felt more rewarding. Oh well, maybe I should stay in my previous project like the moral of the story tries to incline instead going for bigger pay.
- AlwaysRock 2y agoNot to diagnose you over the internet based on one comment... But it does sound like you are suffering from depression. It would be worth talking to a therapist if you havnt. I did when I felt similarly and it changed my life.
- notevenreal 2y agoYou can absolutely be depressed because of your circumstances. Put a gorilla in a small room with nothing to do for weeks and watch it become depressed. We've built a society that values all the wrong things, and then overworks people until they break. Therapy is great, but you can't always fix broke things by gaslighting yourself into thinking they aren't really broken.
- ericmcer 2y agoAgree I am in the same boat as the parent comment and tried going to therapy but I felt foolish talking to the therapist. There wasn't some deep buried traumatic event that was manipulating my behavior in unseen ways, or some chemical imbalance that was altering my behavior and mood. I just don't like my job but it pays really well and has great benefits and I am scared to face the bundle of uncertainties that come with quitting.
- phtrivier 2y agoI don't understand what this is supposed to be a metaphor for. Bullshit / Pointless jobs ? Most are definitely not physically demanding. Meanwhile, our devices run on metals mined by 12 year old kids. Toxic bosses ? They probably don't act in the open. And they don't pay well. Lack of workplace regulation ? Your continent democratically decided that workplace regulations were bad, so it should be a "gleeful" metaphor ? Bad job market ? Then the guy would be accepting a job where he gets punched AND badly paid. But that's not metaphorical: that's a lot of real life jobs. So I'm missing something here.
- black6 2y agoFor being some type of metaphor for life, that the character's spouse was only mentioned a handful of times in passing was decidedly odd.
- oh_fiddlesticks 2y agoThat was puzzling for me also...
- thedanbob 2y agoThat was my biggest criticism. Maybe I could have suspended my disbelief back when I was single, but now I'm thinking "my wife would be holding an intervention for me after the first day, if not sooner".
- nunez 2y agoI actually didn't find this odd. I'm child-free, but one thing I've often read about/seen is how life just...disappears...once you have kids. Your time is either consumed by stomach punching, kids, or chores with very little left over. It's possible that his spouse didn't even notice that he was slowly losing it. It's possible that his spouse _doesn't even know_ that he gets punched in the stomach for work.
- npodbielski 2y agoIt was a bit odd. On the other hand, this story felt very close to what I feel about my job now and someone here wrote that I am probably depressed. Does my wife know? I think she subconsciously feels that I am not entirelly OK, but I just occasionally complain. That's it. I do not talk about that's stuff much. I do not talk about my thoughts to anyone really. I just have a feeling that nobody would understand. 'You are working at home for five times the pay I am making at factory and you complain?!'. People here complaining that the story was too long and you are complaining that you are still can't relate. This whole wall of text was not enough for you to understand. How me - who is not that eloquent - could explain what I feel inside to someone that I am hanging out once every few months? 'But your wife would understand if you spend five hours to explain.' Or she would just be annoyed to listen to the same stuff, me complaining about my job again. I am tired of me complaining about my job, others would be too. I essance, it is kind of bizarre and more felt as breaking of the third wall, a wink to the reader, but it is not something that I can't understand. Many man going through stuff like that alone, when asked if everything is fine, for sure they will tell 'its fine' and than decide to kill themselves.
- tombert 2y agoThis was a fun read, and I've worked enough jobs to where this just felt like someone was stalking me. Every job I've had has always felt like they're taking more than my time and energy: they take my "life force", as it were. A job can really drain you, especially since as the article says, a lot of jobs are just busywork. A corporation is a machine whose goal is to spend money, and sometimes make money back too. The massive layoffs in 2022 and 2023 in the tech world sort of exemplify this. The big tech companies had money, so they have to spend it, and the easiest way to spend money is to hire people. Whether or not they're "necessary" isn't the point, the point is that you need to do something with the money. When the money dried up, suddenly they have tens of thousands of people whose jobs really were not necessary and so they have to fire a bunch of them. It's terrible, but it's basically the backbone of our economy, so I don't even know that it can be fixed.
- light_triad 2y agoThis article reminds me of a tidbit about the VOC (Dutch East India Company): "There was an extraordinarily high mortality rate among employees of the VOC due to shipwrecks, illnesses such as scurvy and dysentery, and clashes with rival trading companies and pirates. The VOC 'consumed' approximately 4,000 people per year." [1] [1] Zanden (1993) The rise and decline of Holland's economy : merchant capitalism and the labour market
- gretch 2y agoI had some years in my life where I could definitely relate to this, but I'm completely recovered. I think the key is to have some part of your life that is meaningful and fulfilling and not dependent on your work situation - aka hobbies. To relate it back to the story, there's a part where the protagonist thinks about what they've been doing with their time ("What have you been doing with the remaining 36 hours of the past workweek?") - when you're at this step, you should pick something up. Painting, learning spanish, volunteering at the animal shelter, amateur hockey league, picking up trash at the park, writing a book, etc If you can manage this, you'll find a new appreciation for your job. This thing that is minimal tax on your life that allows you the opportunity to hobby in the 99th percentile.
- notevenreal 2y agoThat doesn't always work. Maybe some people can lie to themselves that the 8+ hours they spend grinding away in some fluorescent hellhole for 40 years is fine if they can just avoid thinking about that 1/3 of their precious short time on Earth, but that doesn't work for everyone. Compartmentalizing your misery is not healthy, and it DOES eventually catch up to you. Trust me.
- disqard 2y agoI'm intrigued by this exchange. I was like GP, and worked on fulfilling side-projects for years (after family goes to bed). Like you, I'm beginning to see that it isn't working well any more. Though I've built some very useful things for myself, being productive in this all-but-invisible manner still leaves much to be desired.
- gretch 2y agoI don't know how to express this in text, but I want to say that I'm not frustrated by it in the same way that I'm not frustrated by the other things that I just-have-to-do in order to live the life I want. For example, I'm not frustrated that I have to spend 8 hours sleeping. I simply accept that's the world I was born into, that our bodies require sleep, so I do it. I imagine you probably accept it in the same way. If we were to criticize this from a perspective of "this is a dumb design and we should change it", then maybe we would be frustrated by it. Now when it comes to "bullshit jobs", I feel the same way. I was born into a society where some % of my job is bullshit but I can be paid for it anyway. But it really doesn't bother me that much, it's historically a great transaction, and I'm not responsible to change it (is it even a bad thing that needs to be changed? even if it's dumb that doesn't mean bad) I simply spend some hours of my week doing this arbitrary thing, just as I do for Sleeping and Pooping. And as soon as I'm done, I put it down and go live my "real life". I've never thought - "wow 15 minutes spent pooping everyday? I'm wasting my life" So what's the difference between the bullshit job and pooping? Well maybe there's a perception that these 2 things are different categories because 1 is designed by other humans and can therefore be changed. But I don't actually think it is changeable because it turtles down to some quirk in basic human desire. It won't work in the same way that you can't just tell people "Hey don't be curious today" or "don't be vain" or "don't be greedy". I accept that our current iteration of society has been defined somewhat organically, much like the way our body has biologically evolved. And that I need to "poop" at the societal level.
- rachofsunshine 2y agoThis is one of the best things I've read in a long time. It's not exactly saying anything new - I'm sure this sentiment will be recognizable to almost everyone - but it's saying it quite eloquently. I'm a big believer in the power of the zeitgeist, and this quiet desperation is all over the air of the year 2025. It doesn't really have a name yet. It's not just ennui, because ennui is just boredom. The feeling of 2025 is boredom and fear and despair, all mixed together. But it doesn't seem to be entirely new: “...and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” ― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
- asacrowflies 2y agoGrapes of wrath is a perfect description of the mood. But I'd says been growing to this peak for a decade or so...
- happyopossum 2y agoSo, am I the only one here who was thinking "I'd take that job"? I mean I have a good job, and apparently am one of only 3 people on HN that doesn't feel abused by their FAANGNOAwhatever employer, but for 3x the pay and 1 minute of 'work' a day? Yeah, I'd take that job and do it for the next 20 years...
- MrMcCall 2y agoYeah, but I'd be spending hours a day training my body to be a finely-tuned fighting machine, ready to evade any damage if I chose to quit before the day's beating. Until I could improve my situation, every day I'd look him square in the eye with a fierceness that says: I'M READY, LET'S DO THIS M_O_T_H_E_R_F_U_C_K_E_R !!! Then I'd start hanging out a bit, learning what I could. Once I bump into Chris's boss, it will just be a matter of leverage, as is the nature of all tactical domination. Then one day Chris will show up, and be escorted by security into my new office, I mean, his old office. I'll crack my knuckles and tell him to have a seat. You're late for your onboarding, after which legal's going to explain your situation to you. I think I'll keep that ugly-ass sweater as a trophy. It can hang on the office wall. A reminder.
- disqard 2y agoYou might thrive there. There are definitely people that thrive in such environments (like Chris). FWIW, it's an office workplace, not MMA, so one shouldn't need to be a "finely-tuned fighting machine" to do the job. Perhaps one can extrapolate that the author is hinting at another dark truth -- the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the more MMA-like this will be. Therefore CEOs are, by definition, distilled psychopaths (like the Felon and the Husk in the White House right now).
- MrMcCall 2y ago> You might thrive there. Nah, I'm too easy-going for that bs. I'm a thinker, a problem-solver, but I was an athlete who trained myself pretty hard for nearly a decade of American folk-style wrestling. My thought-train started with simply being able to be able to take the daily bunch, then my imagination just ran wild, like the excellent author of the original post. Combine that with the fact that "Chris" was obviously a psychopath, I went towards figuring out how he could learn why he chose the wrong path -- learn as gently as possible. And, as someone who has watched a lot of MMA over the years, I understand that training the entire body for combat would require more than just a shitton of situps, so the story just kind of just followed the original story's inspiration, as per my life experience. > Perhaps one can extrapolate that the author is hinting at another dark truth -- the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the more MMA-like this will be. Therefore CEOs are, by definition, distilled psychopaths (like the Felon and the Husk in the White House right now). Hinting or not, he paints a disturbing-enough picture of the such narcissists and their choices to not give a shit how people suffer as a result of their decisions. If you want to learn a true story that is far, far worse, read David W. Blight's Pullitzer Prize winning 2019ish biography of Frederick Douglass. The audiobook was available as a free download from a reputable site (I forget), and my two teenagers and I listened 4-6 hours/day for 2.5 weeks (weekends off) until we made it through the entire 900+ page book. FD was an extraordinary human being who led an extraordinary life. As a result, my kids understand the cruelty of the wealthy as best as one can without having actually gone through it themselves. We are actually also pretty knowledgeable about WWII history (via Stephen E. Ambrose's unabridged audiobooks D-Day, Citizen Soldier, and Band of Brothers) so we are also aware of what our German kin are capable of, as are all human beings. Peace be with you, friend. "We gonna be alright." --Kendrick
- gangstead 2y agoI feel like I just read The Catcher In the Rye, but for middle aged developers. It was fantastic.
- hypeatei 2y ago> relieving about the days when he wasn’t physically right there. He still spewed emails and instant messages and ticket comments and video calls, but the physical distance was, you know, nice. > You notice, not even a month into this engagement, that you resent the regularity with which you are forced to interact with your supervisor. This is very relatable for some reason. I don't hate anyone I work with, but them being physically gone sends a wave of relief over me. Even if it's just for 15 minutes, being in an empty room with no one around really helps me focus and reduces stress.
- latexr 2y ago> Chris has never once capitalized anything in any written medium. You find his commitment to the style somewhat impressive, given how difficult this is to do in our current era of predictive text and auto-correction. There was a time when you yourself typed everything that way, but the difference is that you were fourteen years old and trying to be “edgy” while writing comments on a fan-run message board about The Simpsons, and he is a supervising manager at a multinational corporation.
- xg15 2y agoThe protagonist had read a detailed job description, had had a call with the recruiter, then an 180 minute interview marathon that ostensibly went absolutely stellar, then another one-to-one interview with Chris - and only at the very end of it all he gets to know that the position is actually about nothing else than being punched in the gut. Not sure if plot hole or even deeper metaphor.
- jiveturkey 2y agoisn't it about worthless leetcode interviews?
- nuancebydefault 2y agoI don't see a plot hole, it is just a twist that can happen in real life. You thought you landed the dreamjob after which you learnt that the interview was a big charade for a busywork job to keep up the pseudo statistics/metrics of a narcissistic boss.
- IggleSniggle 2y agoYou never had a job like this I guess. They hire someone with a particular set of skills because it makes some metric somewhere look right, and then they use you for something that uses none of those skills, at all. The weird part is that they even put the real job in the listing.
- memhole 2y ago“The seat at the head of the table remains undisturbed, perhaps reserved for Business Elijah.“ What a reference! Probably my favorite line of the story. I’ve never been good with twiddling my fingers at work. It’s a strange anxiety when you see others go, “yeah, I’m fine with this.”
- caminanteblanco 2y agoThis is easily my favorite read of this year
- JohnMakin 2y agoWow, this is a long read but hits extremely close to home. I think anyone who has experienced this kind of burnout can relate - I can relate to so much of it, more than I'd like to write publicly. I'm lucky to have a job where although my main value is tolerating a lot of disrespect and pointless abuse, I value my colleagues a lot and enjoy working with them, and my job/product/company is doing something meaningful, which offsets it quite a lot. I've also been in roles where that hasn't been true and the oppressiveness after a while is hard to put into words - particularly people like the unsympathetic bad-advice relative that thinks anyone that makes what you make shouldn't be miserable at all. The first time I noticed I was burning out like this, at an old miserable job, was there was a part of my commute I'd been taking for 10+ years where a few weeks in February, the morning sunrise will shine in a particular way at an intersection I noticed. Then, one year, I noticed this again and in my head I was like "oh, it's February again" and kind of uneasily noted that it had only felt like a few months, not an entire year - and then the next year it happened, was even more unsettling - huge chunks of time I couldn't really piece together clearly in between the two years. The year after I got a little bit better of a job and had recovered from burnout, the "February sunlight" phenomenon stopped. It now feels like a full year in between noticing this, if I notice at all, and I'm grateful for that very small and weird win.
- nunez 2y agoI did not expect to spend two hours reading a novella submarined into blog post as I was going to bed, but by God, it was totally worth it. This beautifully captured what some of my jobs felt like. Well, well done.
- thomasjudge 2y agoAlmost 26,000 words.
- caseyy 2y agoThe guy was piped for dodging the abuse once, but what's more impressive is that it really does happen.