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I 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

by TOGoS 2y ago

I 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 ago
Bingo. 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 ago
Most 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.
- dpig_ 2y ago
  Trying to make transcendental work out of alienated labor feels a bit wet and sad.
- notevenreal 2y ago
  I don't think the solution is to try to anesthetize yourself for 50% of your waking hours. Maybe we ought to change the system.
  - ajmurmann 2y ago
    What do we change the system to though? Unfulfilling work needs to get done by someone.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      True, but how much of unfulfilling work that is being done worldwide is actually needed? We could also do a lot of things to make such work less uncomfortable. For example, why are cashiers in American supermarkets forced to stand?
      - ajmurmann 2y ago
        If the value created by doing that work wouldn't surpass the shittiness of doing it, the work wouldn't exist. Unless workers are slaves, they clearly prefer the work over other options or not working. Otherwise they'd leave. The employer is clearly getting enough value to pay them the compensation needed for the tediousness. If there is no upside for anyone, but only discomfort for the checkout clerks, someone might be able to disrupt the field by paying slightly less but allowing them to stand. Since that isn't happening, I assume that either a) workers are showing the difference between revealed and stated preference b) grocery stores are actually making more money of clerks stand c) paying less in exchange for sitting clerks isn't possible because minimum wage
        int_19h 2y ago
        You are assuming that all economic activity is rational. One only needs to look at Bitcoin price to know otherwise. Employer isn't actually getting any value out of making cashiers stand, and in most other countries, it is a sitting job. So far as I can tell, the only reason why US does it is because "we have always done it this way", which is also the ultimate rationale for a lot of other similar bullshit. The workers, realistically, don't have any choice if every employer does this. They can take the work as it is, or they can starve, especially seeing how US doesn't have full-fledged welfare.
pc86 2y ago
You are the only one who cares if your job is soul-sucking or not, so you're exactly the person to complain. This whole idea of "other people have it worse so it's rude or 'bad' for me to complain about things I don't like" is not a helpful mindset. That there are starving kids in Africa or victims of war in eastern Europe or slaves imprisoned in China doesn't make your life any better or worse. If every slave in the world was freed making those JIRA tasks would feel exactly the same so there's nothing wrong with wishing those JIRA tasks weren't quite as bad as they are.
- notevenreal 2y ago
  I don't blame too many privileged tech workers who feel their soul being slowly eroded away, because working in software is one of the only decent ways to have any economic security at all anymore. Admittedly, Silicon Valley is responsible for some of this insecurity, but still. Housing is expensive. Food is expensive. Childcare is expensive. Health insurance is expensive (even the "good" insurance, where a PPO will still gleefully deny your claims). So you can either be well-off and miserable, but probably not destitute, or you can work at a gas station, and enjoy 30-40 years of precarity before you die of a preventable illness. Great options.
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    And then people start to vote for a criminal that makes the situation worse... such a sad state of affairs.
    - TOGoS 2y ago
      I voted for the other one, but things were getting worse anyway, and the accelerationist in me wonders if somebody willing to say the quiet fascist stuff out loud and take a sledgehammer to the parts of the government that were actually doing anything useful is unfortunately what it will take to nudge a few more USAians out of their comfortable slow downfall mindset and into one where they actually start to organize against the uh, more-clearly-than-ever oligarchical system that they've been living under. Either way, things are going to suck for a while. That my employer prioritizes Jira tickets over making good software seems a small price to pay for a bit of financial security (at least until Elon hacks my bank account and takes all my money, or I get thrown in prison for being a wokeness sympathizer, or whatever).
cbozeman 2y ago
The age-old dilemma... Less money and greater meaning, or more money and mind-numbing tedium. I sympathize with you because on January 1st I nearly doubled my salary, but the job leaves me rather unfulfilled. I'm left substituting my hobbies and family for all meaning in my life, but it's challenging when you spend 50-55 hours a week at work.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
stickfigure 2y ago
Hey, don't knock the value of what you're doing. I spent some time at Pivotal, and then shamelessly adopted the Pivotal process at subsequent companies. One thing I took to heart is that a product manager that communicates through well-written user stories is golden. Jira is a drag but it's still fundamentally a textbox and you control what goes into that textbox. Run wild with it! Engineers actually are counting on you.

by TOGoS 2y ago

jayrot 2y ago

Bingo. 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 ago

Most 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.

dpig_ 2y ago
Trying to make transcendental work out of alienated labor feels a bit wet and sad.
notevenreal 2y ago
I don't think the solution is to try to anesthetize yourself for 50% of your waking hours. Maybe we ought to change the system.
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  What do we change the system to though? Unfulfilling work needs to get done by someone.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    True, but how much of unfulfilling work that is being done worldwide is actually needed? We could also do a lot of things to make such work less uncomfortable. For example, why are cashiers in American supermarkets forced to stand?
    - ajmurmann 2y ago
      If the value created by doing that work wouldn't surpass the shittiness of doing it, the work wouldn't exist. Unless workers are slaves, they clearly prefer the work over other options or not working. Otherwise they'd leave. The employer is clearly getting enough value to pay them the compensation needed for the tediousness. If there is no upside for anyone, but only discomfort for the checkout clerks, someone might be able to disrupt the field by paying slightly less but allowing them to stand. Since that isn't happening, I assume that either a) workers are showing the difference between revealed and stated preference b) grocery stores are actually making more money of clerks stand c) paying less in exchange for sitting clerks isn't possible because minimum wage
      - int_19h 2y ago
        You are assuming that all economic activity is rational. One only needs to look at Bitcoin price to know otherwise. Employer isn't actually getting any value out of making cashiers stand, and in most other countries, it is a sitting job. So far as I can tell, the only reason why US does it is because "we have always done it this way", which is also the ultimate rationale for a lot of other similar bullshit. The workers, realistically, don't have any choice if every employer does this. They can take the work as it is, or they can starve, especially seeing how US doesn't have full-fledged welfare.

pc86 2y ago

You are the only one who cares if your job is soul-sucking or not, so you're exactly the person to complain. This whole idea of "other people have it worse so it's rude or 'bad' for me to complain about things I don't like" is not a helpful mindset. That there are starving kids in Africa or victims of war in eastern Europe or slaves imprisoned in China doesn't make your life any better or worse. If every slave in the world was freed making those JIRA tasks would feel exactly the same so there's nothing wrong with wishing those JIRA tasks weren't quite as bad as they are.

notevenreal 2y ago
I don't blame too many privileged tech workers who feel their soul being slowly eroded away, because working in software is one of the only decent ways to have any economic security at all anymore. Admittedly, Silicon Valley is responsible for some of this insecurity, but still. Housing is expensive. Food is expensive. Childcare is expensive. Health insurance is expensive (even the "good" insurance, where a PPO will still gleefully deny your claims). So you can either be well-off and miserable, but probably not destitute, or you can work at a gas station, and enjoy 30-40 years of precarity before you die of a preventable illness. Great options.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  And then people start to vote for a criminal that makes the situation worse... such a sad state of affairs.
  - TOGoS 2y ago
    I voted for the other one, but things were getting worse anyway, and the accelerationist in me wonders if somebody willing to say the quiet fascist stuff out loud and take a sledgehammer to the parts of the government that were actually doing anything useful is unfortunately what it will take to nudge a few more USAians out of their comfortable slow downfall mindset and into one where they actually start to organize against the uh, more-clearly-than-ever oligarchical system that they've been living under. Either way, things are going to suck for a while. That my employer prioritizes Jira tickets over making good software seems a small price to pay for a bit of financial security (at least until Elon hacks my bank account and takes all my money, or I get thrown in prison for being a wokeness sympathizer, or whatever).

cbozeman 2y ago

The age-old dilemma... Less money and greater meaning, or more money and mind-numbing tedium. I sympathize with you because on January 1st I nearly doubled my salary, but the job leaves me rather unfulfilled. I'm left substituting my hobbies and family for all meaning in my life, but it's challenging when you spend 50-55 hours a week at work.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

stickfigure 2y ago

Hey, don't knock the value of what you're doing. I spent some time at Pivotal, and then shamelessly adopted the Pivotal process at subsequent companies. One thing I took to heart is that a product manager that communicates through well-written user stories is golden. Jira is a drag but it's still fundamentally a textbox and you control what goes into that textbox. Run wild with it! Engineers actually are counting on you.