4 ms·

Anyone 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 pl

Anyone 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 ago
Yeah, I had the same reaction.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  There 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 ago
Lots 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.
- philomath_mn 2y ago
  I suppose I was reacting mostly to the "my job is so bad it is akin to being physically assaulted" It is interesting to hear how your perspective resonates with the essay, I was mostly wondering how universal that resonance is.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    I think that's more metaphorical—unpleasant but easy, unclear what benefit it's providing, somehow leaves you out-of-sorts the whole week so the days slip away even though, when you look at it, there's not good reason for that (making you feel even worse). And getting punched is bad, but is it that bad? Just one punch a day, and in the stomach? It's degrading, but what isn't, and it's not like they're making you feel bad about it, it's just how things are. And the pay is so good. Subjectively you're miserable but objectively you shouldn't be, which makes you more miserable. Meanwhile you feel like an imposter, but everything else the others are doing also looks kinda-fake but you're never quite sure if it is and everyone else is just playing along, or if you're the odd man out and just don't get why all that stuff is useful because you're too dumb, and are just lucky nobody's yet noticed that you're not doing anything useful.
    - philomath_mn 2y ago
      Right -- I mean the misery at work is what I cannot relate to. Furthermore, if the best way to support my family and to live my non-professional life is to take a punch in the stomach each morning, I think I'd find a way to deal with it?
      - alabastervlog 2y ago
        Yeah, the counter-point to this is something like Yates' Revolutionary Road—you're not as special as you think, you definitely don't have the ambition to back up the way you think your life should look and probably not enough to make anything of it even if you were dropped into that situation for free, most of your misery is because you think you should have something else, and hey, look around—of course you don't like your job, that's the deal, and the more "nice life" you want the less you'll like it, and that accidental-success you're seeing there without even trying is something you should be leaning into rather than being repulsed by. In short, being a little clever just means you can live normal life on easy mode and you shouldn't feel bad about that, and wanting something more meaningful or glamorous or romantic without actively putting in the work to make that happen and accepting the sacrifices that come with it is just you making yourself miserable for no good reason. (And of course if you're in the throes of that sort of a mood, being familiar with the above perspective just makes it worse, even as it offers a way out to acceptance of a life as an ordinary schlub who doesn't have things too hard, LOL) [EDIT] I'm nearing the end and I think, to this piece's credit, some of this criticism of the perspective character's ("your") mindset is present as both text and subtext, plus a good deal of the darker thoughts and moments we're clearly to take as the output of a mind that's unwell and trying to square external reality, perceived un-reality of their situation, a certain awareness of their own privilege, plus the inescapable fact that they simply are not doing OK and are aware that they aren't and also aware that they should be and everyone else seems to be—rather than taking them as something the author intends for us to take as big-T or objectively True just because the perspective character is presenting these thoughts to us.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I'm in a profession that I chose because I was interested in it and I'm at an employer I chose because I was interested in what they do.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
notevenreal 2y ago
[flagged]

spacecrafter3d 2y ago

Yeah, I had the same reaction.

nuancebydefault 2y ago
There 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 ago

Lots 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.

philomath_mn 2y ago
I suppose I was reacting mostly to the "my job is so bad it is akin to being physically assaulted" It is interesting to hear how your perspective resonates with the essay, I was mostly wondering how universal that resonance is.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  I think that's more metaphorical—unpleasant but easy, unclear what benefit it's providing, somehow leaves you out-of-sorts the whole week so the days slip away even though, when you look at it, there's not good reason for that (making you feel even worse). And getting punched is bad, but is it that bad? Just one punch a day, and in the stomach? It's degrading, but what isn't, and it's not like they're making you feel bad about it, it's just how things are. And the pay is so good. Subjectively you're miserable but objectively you shouldn't be, which makes you more miserable. Meanwhile you feel like an imposter, but everything else the others are doing also looks kinda-fake but you're never quite sure if it is and everyone else is just playing along, or if you're the odd man out and just don't get why all that stuff is useful because you're too dumb, and are just lucky nobody's yet noticed that you're not doing anything useful.
  - philomath_mn 2y ago
    Right -- I mean the misery at work is what I cannot relate to. Furthermore, if the best way to support my family and to live my non-professional life is to take a punch in the stomach each morning, I think I'd find a way to deal with it?
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      Yeah, the counter-point to this is something like Yates' Revolutionary Road—you're not as special as you think, you definitely don't have the ambition to back up the way you think your life should look and probably not enough to make anything of it even if you were dropped into that situation for free, most of your misery is because you think you should have something else, and hey, look around—of course you don't like your job, that's the deal, and the more "nice life" you want the less you'll like it, and that accidental-success you're seeing there without even trying is something you should be leaning into rather than being repulsed by. In short, being a little clever just means you can live normal life on easy mode and you shouldn't feel bad about that, and wanting something more meaningful or glamorous or romantic without actively putting in the work to make that happen and accepting the sacrifices that come with it is just you making yourself miserable for no good reason. (And of course if you're in the throes of that sort of a mood, being familiar with the above perspective just makes it worse, even as it offers a way out to acceptance of a life as an ordinary schlub who doesn't have things too hard, LOL) [EDIT] I'm nearing the end and I think, to this piece's credit, some of this criticism of the perspective character's ("your") mindset is present as both text and subtext, plus a good deal of the darker thoughts and moments we're clearly to take as the output of a mind that's unwell and trying to square external reality, perceived un-reality of their situation, a certain awareness of their own privilege, plus the inescapable fact that they simply are not doing OK and are aware that they aren't and also aware that they should be and everyone else seems to be—rather than taking them as something the author intends for us to take as big-T or objectively True just because the perspective character is presenting these thoughts to us.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

Yeah, I'm with you on that. I'm in a profession that I chose because I was interested in it and I'm at an employer I chose because I was interested in what they do.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

notevenreal 2y ago

[flagged]