9 ms·

You Have to Feel It

381 points by tosh 1y ago

rglover 1y ago
Unfortunately, the tech industry has completely lost touch with anything resembling this. It's a cold machine now; I'd call it soulless but I think that gives it too much animation.
temp0826 1y ago
Feels like a linkedin post
- dkdcio 1y ago
  feels like a self-help book in the tiktok era
- ivape 1y ago
  Feels like someone is still trying to copy and re-sell Steve Jobs. No one else gets what it takes maaaan.
CharlesW 1y ago
TFW a developer discovers UX.
kookamamie 1y ago
> You have to feel it. The corporate machine does not feel it. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead.
- mattigames 1y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlLQ2qJmy8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlLQ2qJmy8c
  - kkotak 1y ago
    That was great share. Thank you.
- arnvald 1y ago
  This is why small companies still stand a chance. They can build something that would fail the corpo test of metrics and surveys.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    Then they get acquired.
- johnfn 1y ago
  Plenty of people work at large corporations and enjoy their work.
  - bravetraveler 1y ago
    Plenty of people are certifiable
    - rglover 1y ago
      And how
    - johnfn 1y ago
      Surely we can have a better discussion on this topic than "everyone who disagrees with me is insane".
      - bravetraveler 1y ago
        Sorry, thought we were doing platitudes
  - cpursley 1y ago
    “Enjoy their paycheck”, there - fixed it for you
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      When you do the math, it looks like most jobs have never actually had an enjoyable paycheck though, just the fortunate few. In that case some peole are bound to find more enjoyment from something else, or why would the paycheck even be worth it? Sometimes that can occur within the very work they do, maybe even their life's work, which can take long enough to proceed through phases of education, underemployment, business ownership, retirement and back again. Surely there are other kinds of enjoyment continuity, which can function in parallel to a certain extent, that those concentrating on the paycheck alone may not come close to achieving.
- layer8 1y ago
  The corporate machine consists of people.
  - leoh 1y ago
    ... who do not feel alive in many basic ways that mean a lot
  - dygd 1y ago
    From my experience it consists of Excel spreadsheets. What I mean is that when a wave of layoffs hits, there's no humanity to it, you're just above or below a line.
  - akoboldfrying 1y ago
    People forget this. People are determined to forget this, because acknowledging it is painful. But it's so important that we do.
- bbddg 1y ago
  Kyle Reese?
- Wowfunhappy 1y ago
  Whatever you think about Apple, I find it hard to believe that the team that developed the original iPhone could have done so without feeling it. Perhaps that was just the magic of Jobs, who definitely felt things. But he didn't make the iPhone single handedly.
  - paulryanrogers 1y ago
    I think there is some survival bias in the analysis, and that something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market. Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often.
    - tempodox 1y ago
      > the Newton I found the idea fascinating, but it was too clunky and heavy for the features it offered. I think the concept was too far ahead of its time, it couldn’t be implemented well in available tech.
      - ghaff 1y ago
        For that matter, the Palm Pilot was beloved of a lot of techies at the time but neither the input nor synchronization technology/infrastructure were really there. I won one at a trade show and even upgraded it later but, honestly, it wasn't all that useful.
    - borski 1y ago
      Actually, I’ve found people often do praise the Newton. They lament it as being ahead of its time, but in terms of feeling it actually did have the right vibe. The tech just wasn’t there yet at the time.
    - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
      > something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market. I agree, but I don't think it would have been as polished as the iPhone out of the gate. > Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often. As a sibling comment mentioned, I think the Newton was perhaps better than you're giving it credit for, but my point isn't that Apple makes great products, it's that it's possible at certain times for certain teams within large companies to "feel it". Perhaps entertainment could be another example. Do you think the team that made Wall-E didn't "feel it"? What about Zelda Breath of the Wild?
- benreesman 1y ago
  It comes and goes in seasons. There is always a tension between the needs of the many and the pathological acquisitiveness of the few, but this is the worst in the West in living memory. The last remotely compatible situation was the late USSR, and a dysfunctional Soviet corpse plundering by middling oligarchs to even more pathic notional leadership is precisely what it is. Be of good cheer, it collapses under its own weight in this neighborhood of dysfunction. Its almost over. There will be a mess to clean up, then it'll be summer again until we get lax again. Always been this way, always will be. Empires grow in power, then corruption, then only corruption, and then they're done.
  - sneak 1y ago
    A lot of people suffer greatly and die to cause that mess. A perfect example is the terrible mismanagement of the epidemic in the USA; over a million people dead, many (most?) of them unnecessarily for the active rejection of basic infection control measures. A perfect example of the corruption of which you speak: many countries got €1-2 rapid tests (I bought a 50 pack) where the US only approved the $30 two-pack. Thousands died unnecessarily so the state could funnel money to their buddies. This is just one of a million examples. The rate of degeneration seems to be increasing further. You’re right about it getting close, but unfortunately “almost over” in this context usually means a generation or two. Children born today might only know a lifetime of suffering only for their own adult children to finally emerge in the spring. This is why I don’t like takes like this. It is impossible to be in good cheer when there will be millions of preventable and utterly unnecessary deaths and hundreds of millions of lives and bodies damaged and stunted irreparably due to lack of access to medicine and education and equal protection of law. Preventable diseases not being prevented, treatable conditions going intreated. Forced and unnecessary poverty costs lives. It is no different than any other genocide or intentional mass murder.
    - benreesman 1y ago
      Take it up with the people who could easily prevent it by instituting reforms, not with me, that's shooting the messenger because I'm easier to get to. But I'm fighting those people tooth and nail precisely because every small victory however symbolic is one pebble in the scale and there are degrees of "mess": plenty of corrupt elites make a deal, let's pray these do. If there's a genocide level event it won't have my endorsement, I'm still mourning a kid brother who would still be here if it weren't for a lot of the factors killing men his age in stupendous numbers. That genocide? It's been happening for a minimum of 5 years, more like ten. I appreciate the merits and gravity of your complaint (to put it mildly) but mine is the wrong complaint box for it.
- senko 1y ago
  That’s Austrian economics for you.
nextworddev 1y ago
Think most people are too numb / desensitized to feel anything (which is by design)
praptak 1y ago
I wouldn't get anything done.
bongodongobob 1y ago
As sure as fuck don't. Just keep the paychecks coming.
sixtram 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4mXZN1Zzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4mXZN1Zzk
sigotirandolas 1y ago
For as much as the author may get roasted for stating the obvious, I've often seen this "measure everything" mindset, coming from those you'd think should know better than that. I've even seen this stupidity in myself sometimes. In a way it's funny how you can get so lost on the numbers that you forget about the thing.
- mosselman 1y ago
  Measuring and feeling are not mutually exclusive. This is just the frame that the author is trying to prop up in order to sell us their shallow, meaningless piece. I wouldn’t normally even comment something like this about someone’s article, but I see this pattern a lot in “influencer” content that people sometimes share with me and I am worried that if we don’t point it out, we will lose our ability to spot nonsense like this and side step our critical thinking. The “trick” is contrasting or relating something completely irrelevant to some sort of nonsensical or obvious “thought piece”. I am sure this is some sort of named fallacy and someone else can explain it a lot more eloquently, but this is my attempt.
  - mitchellh 1y ago
    (Author of the linked blog post). Look at my other posts and you'll see I'm not like an "influencer content" person. I purposely made this piece shallow to encourage more people to read it and discuss the core idea, rather than get distracted by specific examples or points. I've blogged long enough on a personal level, done corporate PR long enough at a professional level, to know that the more words there are, the more people get bogged down in the details. I plan to follow up this post with specific callouts and associating it directly with my work (both positively and negatively). But, for example, if I used Terraform as an example of something in this (hypothetically), people would focus in on arguing the merits of "feeling" Terraform. That's not the point. The point is to think about what we're shipping.
    - elktown 1y ago
      I couldn't help but laugh when reading this, knowing that 80% of this thread would be picking apart any specific example if you provided one - completely missing any kind of "reading between the lines" message.
fuckaj 1y ago
But I feel depressed every time I use Terraform. I see why it is useful, good etc. But I just enjoy it least of all the programming activities. Pulumi isn't much better. I feel IaC done that way isn't the way we will settle on long term.
- losvedir 1y ago
  To connect the dots, Mitchell is the creator of terraform. And honestly, I kind of feel the same. I think it points out that even if you "feel" it as the creator, that doesn't mean others will feel the same way, necessarily.
  - azriel91 1y ago
    Does my side project provide any hope? https://peace.mk/blog/checkpoint/ https://peace.mk/blog/checkpoint/ (old blog post, but I'm slow in making progress)
  - ricardobeat 1y ago
    They left the role of CTO many years ago, then became an IC again, and then left, safe to assume he wasn’t feeling it either.
  - chanux 1y ago
    FWIW: https://x.com/mitchellh/status/1938066378185183279 https://x.com/mitchellh/status/1938066378185183279 With Terraform I have felt I'm fighting it at times but I also understand the reasons.
- danw1979 1y ago
  Not a popular opinion I know, but I really like writing Terraform in HCL2. Like, if I’d invented this, it’d give me the feels and I’d want to share it.
  - chanux 1y ago
    When you eventually understand the constraints and learn to work with it. A zen moment :D
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Good thought, but corporations don't care, and a whole lot of folks that play the corporate game won't, either. Money will still be made. Careers will still be advanced. It think it was Theodore Sturgeon that said "90% of everything is crap." For myself, I enjoy what I do. I write software that I want to use, in a way that makes me feel good. I have no illusions that I would be allowed to work like this, if I were still in the workforce, though.
- spongebobstoes 1y ago
  there are pockets even in the corporate world where people are able to feel what they are doing in my experience, those times have been with the most talented and productive people. perhaps they don't need the crutch of process it is rare, and does not last forever. as teams scale up, this is gradually lost. regression to the mean? leading with feeling is vulnerable. it can be very rewarding when met with like or very damaging when crushed under the corporate wheel
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    It's the same in other aspects of life too. Like where the cool bars are with the cool people. Over time it gets popular, overrun with average people and tourists. Then the cool people move their cool parties to some new, more obscure place and the cycle repeats. Same with online platforms. The people in those pockets will have to use their discernment to figure out where the next pocket is located. But it can't be something that everyone can easily do.
bbminner 1y ago
Oh, i thought it was a satirical critique of how arbitrary promotion criteria can be. Turns out someone is seriously claiming that someone else "doesn't not feel the right way" about the work they do, and THAT is their core problem. Ha. Well, at least the author feels that they are feeling the right way, good for them I guess.
- 404mm 1y ago
  Too bad he didn’t feel like Hashicorp anymore. F#ing IBM.
  - apgwoz 1y ago
    He left before IBM. Also, based on public filings, long before IBM was even a suitor.
- mouse_ 1y ago
  When you follow a cult/religion's instructions to the letter and still fail, this is the excuse every time. It's manipulative and unverifiable.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    That's the negative side. The opposite is, which anyone who ran some kind of group activity or forum should have experience with, is when someone obnoxious plays rules lawyering to slip out of everything. In the end you just have to leave it at a vibes-based reasoning. Yes, it can be abused. The explicit, written rules variant can be abused in opposite ways. It's all tradeoffs. I land on the point of the tradeoff spectrum where you have some "instructions" and rules, but it's also a "spirit of the rules" kind of thing, and someone has the means to exercise subjective judgment, instead of trying to fully eliminate subjectivity in favor of ever growing rules with ever growing exceptions that become a maze to navigate, and can become its own form of tyranny, especially if someone has the power to arbitrarily decide which set of rules to choose to apply for each case. You can have the best processes and rules, if the people are bad. You can't compensate for that. And if you have good people, you can and should allow them some range of judgment.
underdeserver 1y ago
I feel it when using Ghostty. So nice.
WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
I went through a longer quest, called "getting naturalized in another country". Went through the grind of getting visa, then the work permit, then the different visa, then the short-term residence permit. Changed jobs, had to go to the immigration department again, because these residence permits are tied to the employer. Kept a spreadsheet with dates of each exit and entry. Had to keep all my paperwork ducks in a row. To be able to get married, I had to get a permit from a judge. Got married and had to go through the immigration office again, as this changed the primary purpose of my stay yet again. The queue to the immigration office was so long that I had to come there at 2am (yes, 2 in the morning) to even have a chance to file my paperwork. Still had to keep the spreadsheet with exit/entry dates, the printout was attached to each application. Went to another city to pass the language exam to be able to get the long-term residence permit. In a couple of years, applied for citizenship. Had to go visit my birth country and gather some more paperwork from there, get it translated. All the while it all felt as if I was a student again and this was an important exam each and every time. Stressed. Constantly afraid that a document would be missing and I would need to start over. Then finally they texted me. I went to collect the papers that certified that I now was the citizen of my new country, almost ten years after starting the quest. I could apply for my new shiny national ID. I now wasn't a second-class person anymore. Upon leaving the government building, I felt nothing. I had expected that with all that stress and buildup, some kind of relief would come. But it never came. No relief, no joy, not a sausage. I remember that the weather was miserable on that day.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  It would help to know what your reason was to go through with that. Relief and joy can be more expected if it changes your life circumstances in a way that you were looking forward to. Something related to family etc. Easier travel to some places that you couldn't go before etc.
  - WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
    It did all of that and more. However, I would say that when a battle lasts long enough, one might have no emotional resources left to feel the victory. That also applies to TFA.
atak1 1y ago
I love this point. It's also one of the hardest things to do as a product person if you're not the typical user. It's hard to feel the feelings of many types of users.
- shermantanktop 1y ago
  That difficulty is quite obvious, which is why ineffective product people only seem have a single customer in mind: themselves. They slip in conversation easily to “I” language without realizing it. Devs who work on customer-reported tickets end up knowing a lot more about customer needs than some of the pms I have worked with.
sarreph 1y ago
Smart move by Mitchell to omit (in his opinion) _why_ you have to feel it, as evidenced by the spread interpretation in the comments. In my opinion, you have to “feel it” in order to do your best work. However(!), and also in my opinion, you shouldn’t always strive to be in a position where you “feel it”. While it is important to spend most of one’s life feeling it / doing their best work in order to be fulfilled, the hazard of insatiably “feeling it” is that you can much more quickly burn out. Working with passion fuels a level of intensity and emotional involvement that can take a while to recover from if you don’t get the result (read: success) you desired. But yes, you do indeed mostly have to feel it.
- nine_k 1y ago
  Feeling some moderate positive emotion as a result of your work is not incompatible with 9 to 5 work. The bigger problem is usually the opposite: nagging negative emotions, feeling annoyed, feeling contempt towards some parts of the work that one is bound to do. These emotions are unbecoming, so the psychological defenses hide them, as if there's no feeling at all. This is what "mind-numbing" work often is.
  - sarreph 1y ago
    Yeah, do not disagree with either of those statements.
    - goopypoop 1y ago
      you're not my supervisor
  - godelski 1y ago
    There's a related problem I see in academic review, but I think it applies far more broadly. The easy part of review is recognizing flaws. One should always acknowledge the flaws, but the authors tend to already be aware of them[0]. The difficult part is determining if the flaws undermine the research or if despite the limitations that the work pushes progress forward. (All but a few works are incremental) I think this applies much more broadly because even in conversations people are quick to latch onto a subtle inconsequential detail and then dismiss the rest. Being able to read the words does not make one literate, it is the interpretation of them that does. I think this example is quite prolific with internet conversations, enough that we can circle back to sarreph's mention of this in their first sentence. But I think another great example was from this post from a week ago[1]. Most comments are responding to the headline, but many even looked at the post and missed the entire point (which isn't about work being interrupted). [0] Authors may not acknowledge them in the work because the review process is too adversarial and such acknowledgements can be used as ammunition against them (thanks lazy reviewers ;), because solving those flaws is a good followup and they don't want to get scooped, or many other reasons. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44999373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44999373
cjk 1y ago
This is one of the things that I’ve tried really hard to impress upon engineers new and old while working on various projects, and IMO it applies to just about every layer of the stack; ultimately everything flows up into the UX. This vibe was pervasive at Apple and could be taken more or less for granted, but elsewhere it’s all over the place. And, like, sure, there are projects and industries where this doesn’t matter. But giving a shit and feeling it can be a major differentiator.
- neuralkoi 1y ago
  The vibe WAS pervasive at Apple during Steve's time. He understood the importance of asking "what is this?"[0]. The current vibe at Apple is "we want you to be an obedient worker". [0] https://systems-souls-society.com/what-is-this-the-case-for-continually-questioning-our-online-experience/ https://systems-souls-society.com/what-is-this-the-case-for-...
  - cjk 1y ago
    I believe it. It had started to wane even by the time I left in 2015. I know there are still a ton of good people there, but it's a way, way different company now.
PaulHoule 1y ago
I dunno. A good demo is all about the feeling it gives. One thing I got out of my adventures in startup land is how to go up on stage and demo some software that barely works and make it look like a million bucks. At the last hackathon I went to I was sitting in the audience at the presentation at the end with one teammate while the other one was upstairs pounding away at last minute revisions. We were scheduled last but I still had to make excuses to the organizers. He showed up with something that basically worked but I kept cool under pressure, made sure I didn't commit to anything until I was sure about it, and used good showmanship. We were all shocked when we won the 'player's choice' award. Mind you, it helped that he was experienced at writing platformers in Unity and the other student could draw, but thanks to my showmanship people saw everything that didn't worked and didn't notice the bugs and people were left with the impression that 'wow that looked like a polished game' whereas the main author said 'I don't think I'd want to play it' afterwards. My continuous push towards a 'minimum viable product' combined with their push to make something that looked polish really helped that showmanship work.
- throwaway314155 1y ago
  [dead]
saltysaltysalty 1y ago
I have delivered value, but at what cost? https://youtu.be/DYvhC_RdIwQ https://youtu.be/DYvhC_RdIwQ
- rustystump 1y ago
  So glad someone posted this. Their videos hit so close to home on the reality of the soul sucking drone work that is tech. Like a modern day office space sketch comedy.
ratmeadow 1y ago
I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded. Or a terrible argument that plays to some emotional point so is accepted. It's all feelings. Rare is the opposite.
- QuantumGood 1y ago
  You can analyze in different ways by choosing different frames of reference, etc., but choosing how to feel isn't the same. For most, "choosing to how feel" is difficult to attempt.
- kingkawn 1y ago
  This distinction is an absurdity first written to provide a rational for why everything being done in the name of Reason felt so bad.
  - reval 1y ago
    There is something to this. I believe that if you cannot feel, you also cannot reason. It’s almost as if intellectual ability is an application of emotionality rather than something separate. For example, when something makes sense to you, what does that really mean? In my experience, when something “clicks”, that is not intellect. The intellect kicks in to retroactively explain the feeling. The “clicking” itself- that’s the feeling.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    Rationale. Is it, though? It would be ironic if anyone found it necessary to construct an argument for why argument is unnecessary. (Though that sounds familiar - classical cynicism maybe?) Well, acting without reason is unreasonable, for sure. But since I don't think knowledge is (mostly) hierarchical, I don't think chains of reasoning are the main part of how we arrive at preferences. To the extent that knowledge does have foundations, the foundations are beliefs, and they're built in no particular order, and survive by merit of seeming to chime with other beliefs, fitting together in a paradigm. That effect where they seem to chime is an impression, a hunch, which is a feeling. What reasoning can do is tell you "these two beliefs definitely can't go together, because they're logically incompatible", and then you have to jettison one of them (or attack the argument), even if it feels like they both belong. Somewhat disconcerting.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mattgreenrocks 1y ago
Really, I think we’re all talking around some notion of beauty here. Not in the sense of personal vanity, but more of a sense of internal cohesiveness. Also, the feeling he’s referring to is what sold me on Ghostty. It was clear that he’d thought quite a bit about good defaults. Performance is great without having to tweak anything. In a way, I love that this sort of thing cannot be qualified, because it means that it cannot be commoditized or democratized. It either connects with someone, or it doesn’t.
sublinear 1y ago
> When you feel it, you know. The feature makes you smile when you use it. It fits right in, like it was always meant to be there. You want to use it again. You want to tell people about it. This is the difference. This is what metrics, specifications, and demos miss. Totally absurd! The metrics and specifications are what make all of that possible. This feels like it was written for execs and managers who bury their heads in the sand when they're overwhelmed.
marcelr 1y ago
feeling is something developed by evolution, not by accident my best guess is that it is far easier to deeply feel complex concepts rather than to arrive to similar conclusions purely based on reason/logic
hendry 1y ago
Vibe coding
tempodox 1y ago
> Our work evokes a feeling. The feeling matters. The feeling is part of the work. The desired feeling is part of the requirements. I do share this ambition. In my own metric, I was as successful as it gets when “the desired feeling” is achieved. But I often have the impression that others around me don’t share this, or do so to a lesser degree. However, that doesn’t stop me one bit.
mrugge 1y ago
The only thing you have to do is pay taxes and die. It does help to feel good about the project and the work, but it is not a requirement for a fulfilling life. Looking back at most times I have felt horrible in the depth of adversity, resistance or burnout I realize those were the times of greatest potential for achievement, learning and growth. Those are the memorable chapters, the things that define my character. The times when I continued to grind, continued to push through and didn't give up because of feelings were the times when I actually accomplished something: raised a kid, bought a house, switched continents.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  I think you are using different concepts of "feel good". "Feeling good" doesn't exclude adversity or resistance. But it should be resistance where you have reasonable grip on it, with some traction, and it's aiming towards something that you value. Neither trivial, nor so hard that you have no way of getting traction with it, being stuck on zero progress. Happiness is basically equivalent to feeling steady (even if slow) progress in response to one's own effort towards valued goals.
  - mrugge 1y ago
    I have often felt bad (or "didn't feel it" to quote this article) and it still turned out OK because I showed up and stuck with it.
PeterStuer 1y ago
Yes, and no. Yes in the sense Kano refered to as 'delight' [1]. An unexpected or tacit feeling of quality in an interaction with a product. No, because for whatever reason we sadly have become prone to spurious and unbridled emotion, making mountains out of molehills at the slightest friction. I sometimes feel what now passes as acceptable is what used to be borderline bipolar disorders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model
flohofwoe 1y ago
For me it's what I call the 'weekend test': Do I like tinkering with this thing enough that I'd want to play around with it on a weekend / in my own time, just for fun. This needs to check a lot of boxes: is it easy and quick to setup, do I need some hard to obtain 'license key', does everything work out of box or at least is easy enough to fix, and most importantly: is it a joy to use (which is entirely subjective though). If something doesn't pass this test then I also don't want to waste time with it at work. In a nutshell this is also why wheels should be reinvented over and over again, and if it's just for the sole reason that the new wheel feels better to just the person who reinvented it. Chances are other people will feel the same after trying the new wheel (on a weekend, hah) and start using it (or not and that's fine too), but in the end this is how innovation happens.
k__ 1y ago
As a neuro divergent person, I usually only feel relieved when I can mark a task as complete. Doing my taxes felt the same as getting a degree and publishing a book.
bubblebeard 1y ago
Whenever my logic said one thing and my gut feeling told me different, I used to ignore my gut. This would more often than not cause some sort of backlash I could not possibly have foreseen. Sometimes immediately, sometimes several days later. A year or so ago I got tired of this, started doing the opposite, and I will never go back. Feelings overall are underrated.
isaacremuant 1y ago
I wish we could turn off the self help twitter hybrid posts that we're getting more and more often in HACKER news.
ksec 1y ago
I think that shows if you are a product person. And product people are a rare breed. Within them, you will need to find someone who could do or understand business, operation, sales and marketing. Something every successful entrepreneur will eventually acquired.
tomdickandharry 1y ago
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kwakubiney 1y ago
Haven’t felt it in so long, but it’s what keeps the bills paid
llsf 1y ago
nuf said :) https://open.spotify.com/track/3cbV252akVZInSvJk7jAYX?si=86a2905c039e4c8a https://open.spotify.com/track/3cbV252akVZInSvJk7jAYX?si=86a...
bonoboTP 1y ago
Yes, absolutely true. And this fact will be used against you. Two sides of the same coin. Humans have an internal need to see that their work output is valuable and they are useful to society/community. This is not some unrealistic expectation. For most of history, it was fairly easy to see how one's work directly results in value. Farming, butchering animals, making clothes and shoes, paving roads or building houses or whatever it may be. People could feel satisfaction of jobs well done, applying their experience and being valued for it. It is normal. Pointless drudgery eats away at one's soul and leads to burnout, much more than simply being "overworked". If much of your work-related mental energy goes towards timing when to jump ship before it sinks, that won't be sustainable. Working on some pointless project that you know will get axed, but for some internal politics reason it has to remain up and running for a few more months to get someone promoted before killing it, etc. When people say that a job is a job, and you wouldn't get paid for it if it was enjoyable, it's just not right. If you produce value, you do deserve the pay, it's not supposed to be compensation for being miserable. On the flipside, when MBAs internalize this message, what they take away is that "passion" and "motivation" makes employees more productive and prone to put in extra effort. So they come up with the genius idea to test whether you are "passionate" before hiring you. Resulting in a dreaded and ugly song and dance ritual where you have to exaggerate your passion and talk in unrealistic language, and grifters and smoothtalkers win in that. That's not the kind of passion that is needed, the outwardly, enthusiastic-glowing passion. Just something where you feel that it's neat, it's a net positive for the world even if small, and you left the world a bit better when you go to sleep at night compared to when you woke up in the morning. Even extra money can't compensate for that in the long term (short term yes).
judithh 1y ago
[dead]

381 points by tosh 1y ago

Unfortunately, the tech industry has completely lost touch with anything resembling this. It's a cold machine now; I'd call it soulless but I think that gives it too much animation.

temp0826 1y ago

Feels like a linkedin post

dkdcio 1y ago
feels like a self-help book in the tiktok era
ivape 1y ago
Feels like someone is still trying to copy and re-sell Steve Jobs. No one else gets what it takes maaaan.

CharlesW 1y ago

TFW a developer discovers UX.

kookamamie 1y ago

> You have to feel it. The corporate machine does not feel it. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead.

mattigames 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlLQ2qJmy8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlLQ2qJmy8c
- kkotak 1y ago
  That was great share. Thank you.
arnvald 1y ago
This is why small companies still stand a chance. They can build something that would fail the corpo test of metrics and surveys.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  Then they get acquired.
johnfn 1y ago
Plenty of people work at large corporations and enjoy their work.
- bravetraveler 1y ago
  Plenty of people are certifiable
  - rglover 1y ago
    And how
  - johnfn 1y ago
    Surely we can have a better discussion on this topic than "everyone who disagrees with me is insane".
    - bravetraveler 1y ago
      Sorry, thought we were doing platitudes
- cpursley 1y ago
  “Enjoy their paycheck”, there - fixed it for you
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    When you do the math, it looks like most jobs have never actually had an enjoyable paycheck though, just the fortunate few. In that case some peole are bound to find more enjoyment from something else, or why would the paycheck even be worth it? Sometimes that can occur within the very work they do, maybe even their life's work, which can take long enough to proceed through phases of education, underemployment, business ownership, retirement and back again. Surely there are other kinds of enjoyment continuity, which can function in parallel to a certain extent, that those concentrating on the paycheck alone may not come close to achieving.
layer8 1y ago
The corporate machine consists of people.
- leoh 1y ago
  ... who do not feel alive in many basic ways that mean a lot
- dygd 1y ago
  From my experience it consists of Excel spreadsheets. What I mean is that when a wave of layoffs hits, there's no humanity to it, you're just above or below a line.
- akoboldfrying 1y ago
  People forget this. People are determined to forget this, because acknowledging it is painful. But it's so important that we do.
bbddg 1y ago
Kyle Reese?
Wowfunhappy 1y ago
Whatever you think about Apple, I find it hard to believe that the team that developed the original iPhone could have done so without feeling it. Perhaps that was just the magic of Jobs, who definitely felt things. But he didn't make the iPhone single handedly.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  I think there is some survival bias in the analysis, and that something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market. Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often.
  - tempodox 1y ago
    > the Newton I found the idea fascinating, but it was too clunky and heavy for the features it offered. I think the concept was too far ahead of its time, it couldn’t be implemented well in available tech.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      For that matter, the Palm Pilot was beloved of a lot of techies at the time but neither the input nor synchronization technology/infrastructure were really there. I won one at a trade show and even upgraded it later but, honestly, it wasn't all that useful.
  - borski 1y ago
    Actually, I’ve found people often do praise the Newton. They lament it as being ahead of its time, but in terms of feeling it actually did have the right vibe. The tech just wasn’t there yet at the time.
  - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
    > something like the iPhone was inevitable given all the experimentation going on in the market. I agree, but I don't think it would have been as polished as the iPhone out of the gate. > Apple also made the Newton. But folks don't call back to it or praise its makers very often. As a sibling comment mentioned, I think the Newton was perhaps better than you're giving it credit for, but my point isn't that Apple makes great products, it's that it's possible at certain times for certain teams within large companies to "feel it". Perhaps entertainment could be another example. Do you think the team that made Wall-E didn't "feel it"? What about Zelda Breath of the Wild?
benreesman 1y ago
It comes and goes in seasons. There is always a tension between the needs of the many and the pathological acquisitiveness of the few, but this is the worst in the West in living memory. The last remotely compatible situation was the late USSR, and a dysfunctional Soviet corpse plundering by middling oligarchs to even more pathic notional leadership is precisely what it is. Be of good cheer, it collapses under its own weight in this neighborhood of dysfunction. Its almost over. There will be a mess to clean up, then it'll be summer again until we get lax again. Always been this way, always will be. Empires grow in power, then corruption, then only corruption, and then they're done.
- sneak 1y ago
  A lot of people suffer greatly and die to cause that mess. A perfect example is the terrible mismanagement of the epidemic in the USA; over a million people dead, many (most?) of them unnecessarily for the active rejection of basic infection control measures. A perfect example of the corruption of which you speak: many countries got €1-2 rapid tests (I bought a 50 pack) where the US only approved the $30 two-pack. Thousands died unnecessarily so the state could funnel money to their buddies. This is just one of a million examples. The rate of degeneration seems to be increasing further. You’re right about it getting close, but unfortunately “almost over” in this context usually means a generation or two. Children born today might only know a lifetime of suffering only for their own adult children to finally emerge in the spring. This is why I don’t like takes like this. It is impossible to be in good cheer when there will be millions of preventable and utterly unnecessary deaths and hundreds of millions of lives and bodies damaged and stunted irreparably due to lack of access to medicine and education and equal protection of law. Preventable diseases not being prevented, treatable conditions going intreated. Forced and unnecessary poverty costs lives. It is no different than any other genocide or intentional mass murder.
  - benreesman 1y ago
    Take it up with the people who could easily prevent it by instituting reforms, not with me, that's shooting the messenger because I'm easier to get to. But I'm fighting those people tooth and nail precisely because every small victory however symbolic is one pebble in the scale and there are degrees of "mess": plenty of corrupt elites make a deal, let's pray these do. If there's a genocide level event it won't have my endorsement, I'm still mourning a kid brother who would still be here if it weren't for a lot of the factors killing men his age in stupendous numbers. That genocide? It's been happening for a minimum of 5 years, more like ten. I appreciate the merits and gravity of your complaint (to put it mildly) but mine is the wrong complaint box for it.
senko 1y ago
That’s Austrian economics for you.

nextworddev 1y ago

Think most people are too numb / desensitized to feel anything (which is by design)

praptak 1y ago

I wouldn't get anything done.

bongodongobob 1y ago

As sure as fuck don't. Just keep the paychecks coming.

sixtram 1y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4mXZN1Zzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4mXZN1Zzk

sigotirandolas 1y ago

For as much as the author may get roasted for stating the obvious, I've often seen this "measure everything" mindset, coming from those you'd think should know better than that. I've even seen this stupidity in myself sometimes. In a way it's funny how you can get so lost on the numbers that you forget about the thing.

mosselman 1y ago
Measuring and feeling are not mutually exclusive. This is just the frame that the author is trying to prop up in order to sell us their shallow, meaningless piece. I wouldn’t normally even comment something like this about someone’s article, but I see this pattern a lot in “influencer” content that people sometimes share with me and I am worried that if we don’t point it out, we will lose our ability to spot nonsense like this and side step our critical thinking. The “trick” is contrasting or relating something completely irrelevant to some sort of nonsensical or obvious “thought piece”. I am sure this is some sort of named fallacy and someone else can explain it a lot more eloquently, but this is my attempt.
- mitchellh 1y ago
  (Author of the linked blog post). Look at my other posts and you'll see I'm not like an "influencer content" person. I purposely made this piece shallow to encourage more people to read it and discuss the core idea, rather than get distracted by specific examples or points. I've blogged long enough on a personal level, done corporate PR long enough at a professional level, to know that the more words there are, the more people get bogged down in the details. I plan to follow up this post with specific callouts and associating it directly with my work (both positively and negatively). But, for example, if I used Terraform as an example of something in this (hypothetically), people would focus in on arguing the merits of "feeling" Terraform. That's not the point. The point is to think about what we're shipping.
  - elktown 1y ago
    I couldn't help but laugh when reading this, knowing that 80% of this thread would be picking apart any specific example if you provided one - completely missing any kind of "reading between the lines" message.

fuckaj 1y ago

But I feel depressed every time I use Terraform. I see why it is useful, good etc. But I just enjoy it least of all the programming activities. Pulumi isn't much better. I feel IaC done that way isn't the way we will settle on long term.

losvedir 1y ago
To connect the dots, Mitchell is the creator of terraform. And honestly, I kind of feel the same. I think it points out that even if you "feel" it as the creator, that doesn't mean others will feel the same way, necessarily.
- azriel91 1y ago
  Does my side project provide any hope? https://peace.mk/blog/checkpoint/ https://peace.mk/blog/checkpoint/ (old blog post, but I'm slow in making progress)
- ricardobeat 1y ago
  They left the role of CTO many years ago, then became an IC again, and then left, safe to assume he wasn’t feeling it either.
- chanux 1y ago
  FWIW: https://x.com/mitchellh/status/1938066378185183279 https://x.com/mitchellh/status/1938066378185183279 With Terraform I have felt I'm fighting it at times but I also understand the reasons.
danw1979 1y ago
Not a popular opinion I know, but I really like writing Terraform in HCL2. Like, if I’d invented this, it’d give me the feels and I’d want to share it.
- chanux 1y ago
  When you eventually understand the constraints and learn to work with it. A zen moment :D

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

Good thought, but corporations don't care, and a whole lot of folks that play the corporate game won't, either. Money will still be made. Careers will still be advanced. It think it was Theodore Sturgeon that said "90% of everything is crap." For myself, I enjoy what I do. I write software that I want to use, in a way that makes me feel good. I have no illusions that I would be allowed to work like this, if I were still in the workforce, though.

spongebobstoes 1y ago
there are pockets even in the corporate world where people are able to feel what they are doing in my experience, those times have been with the most talented and productive people. perhaps they don't need the crutch of process it is rare, and does not last forever. as teams scale up, this is gradually lost. regression to the mean? leading with feeling is vulnerable. it can be very rewarding when met with like or very damaging when crushed under the corporate wheel
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  It's the same in other aspects of life too. Like where the cool bars are with the cool people. Over time it gets popular, overrun with average people and tourists. Then the cool people move their cool parties to some new, more obscure place and the cycle repeats. Same with online platforms. The people in those pockets will have to use their discernment to figure out where the next pocket is located. But it can't be something that everyone can easily do.

bbminner 1y ago

Oh, i thought it was a satirical critique of how arbitrary promotion criteria can be. Turns out someone is seriously claiming that someone else "doesn't not feel the right way" about the work they do, and THAT is their core problem. Ha. Well, at least the author feels that they are feeling the right way, good for them I guess.

404mm 1y ago
Too bad he didn’t feel like Hashicorp anymore. F#ing IBM.
- apgwoz 1y ago
  He left before IBM. Also, based on public filings, long before IBM was even a suitor.
mouse_ 1y ago
When you follow a cult/religion's instructions to the letter and still fail, this is the excuse every time. It's manipulative and unverifiable.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  That's the negative side. The opposite is, which anyone who ran some kind of group activity or forum should have experience with, is when someone obnoxious plays rules lawyering to slip out of everything. In the end you just have to leave it at a vibes-based reasoning. Yes, it can be abused. The explicit, written rules variant can be abused in opposite ways. It's all tradeoffs. I land on the point of the tradeoff spectrum where you have some "instructions" and rules, but it's also a "spirit of the rules" kind of thing, and someone has the means to exercise subjective judgment, instead of trying to fully eliminate subjectivity in favor of ever growing rules with ever growing exceptions that become a maze to navigate, and can become its own form of tyranny, especially if someone has the power to arbitrarily decide which set of rules to choose to apply for each case. You can have the best processes and rules, if the people are bad. You can't compensate for that. And if you have good people, you can and should allow them some range of judgment.

underdeserver 1y ago

I feel it when using Ghostty. So nice.

WesolyKubeczek 1y ago

I went through a longer quest, called "getting naturalized in another country". Went through the grind of getting visa, then the work permit, then the different visa, then the short-term residence permit. Changed jobs, had to go to the immigration department again, because these residence permits are tied to the employer. Kept a spreadsheet with dates of each exit and entry. Had to keep all my paperwork ducks in a row. To be able to get married, I had to get a permit from a judge. Got married and had to go through the immigration office again, as this changed the primary purpose of my stay yet again. The queue to the immigration office was so long that I had to come there at 2am (yes, 2 in the morning) to even have a chance to file my paperwork. Still had to keep the spreadsheet with exit/entry dates, the printout was attached to each application. Went to another city to pass the language exam to be able to get the long-term residence permit. In a couple of years, applied for citizenship. Had to go visit my birth country and gather some more paperwork from there, get it translated. All the while it all felt as if I was a student again and this was an important exam each and every time. Stressed. Constantly afraid that a document would be missing and I would need to start over. Then finally they texted me. I went to collect the papers that certified that I now was the citizen of my new country, almost ten years after starting the quest. I could apply for my new shiny national ID. I now wasn't a second-class person anymore. Upon leaving the government building, I felt nothing. I had expected that with all that stress and buildup, some kind of relief would come. But it never came. No relief, no joy, not a sausage. I remember that the weather was miserable on that day.

bonoboTP 1y ago
It would help to know what your reason was to go through with that. Relief and joy can be more expected if it changes your life circumstances in a way that you were looking forward to. Something related to family etc. Easier travel to some places that you couldn't go before etc.
- WesolyKubeczek 1y ago
  It did all of that and more. However, I would say that when a battle lasts long enough, one might have no emotional resources left to feel the victory. That also applies to TFA.

atak1 1y ago

I love this point. It's also one of the hardest things to do as a product person if you're not the typical user. It's hard to feel the feelings of many types of users.

shermantanktop 1y ago
That difficulty is quite obvious, which is why ineffective product people only seem have a single customer in mind: themselves. They slip in conversation easily to “I” language without realizing it. Devs who work on customer-reported tickets end up knowing a lot more about customer needs than some of the pms I have worked with.

sarreph 1y ago

Smart move by Mitchell to omit (in his opinion) _why_ you have to feel it, as evidenced by the spread interpretation in the comments. In my opinion, you have to “feel it” in order to do your best work. However(!), and also in my opinion, you shouldn’t always strive to be in a position where you “feel it”. While it is important to spend most of one’s life feeling it / doing their best work in order to be fulfilled, the hazard of insatiably “feeling it” is that you can much more quickly burn out. Working with passion fuels a level of intensity and emotional involvement that can take a while to recover from if you don’t get the result (read: success) you desired. But yes, you do indeed mostly have to feel it.

nine_k 1y ago
Feeling some moderate positive emotion as a result of your work is not incompatible with 9 to 5 work. The bigger problem is usually the opposite: nagging negative emotions, feeling annoyed, feeling contempt towards some parts of the work that one is bound to do. These emotions are unbecoming, so the psychological defenses hide them, as if there's no feeling at all. This is what "mind-numbing" work often is.
- sarreph 1y ago
  Yeah, do not disagree with either of those statements.
  - goopypoop 1y ago
    you're not my supervisor
- godelski 1y ago
  There's a related problem I see in academic review, but I think it applies far more broadly. The easy part of review is recognizing flaws. One should always acknowledge the flaws, but the authors tend to already be aware of them[0]. The difficult part is determining if the flaws undermine the research or if despite the limitations that the work pushes progress forward. (All but a few works are incremental) I think this applies much more broadly because even in conversations people are quick to latch onto a subtle inconsequential detail and then dismiss the rest. Being able to read the words does not make one literate, it is the interpretation of them that does. I think this example is quite prolific with internet conversations, enough that we can circle back to sarreph's mention of this in their first sentence. But I think another great example was from this post from a week ago[1]. Most comments are responding to the headline, but many even looked at the post and missed the entire point (which isn't about work being interrupted). [0] Authors may not acknowledge them in the work because the review process is too adversarial and such acknowledgements can be used as ammunition against them (thanks lazy reviewers ;), because solving those flaws is a good followup and they don't want to get scooped, or many other reasons. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44999373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44999373

cjk 1y ago

This is one of the things that I’ve tried really hard to impress upon engineers new and old while working on various projects, and IMO it applies to just about every layer of the stack; ultimately everything flows up into the UX. This vibe was pervasive at Apple and could be taken more or less for granted, but elsewhere it’s all over the place. And, like, sure, there are projects and industries where this doesn’t matter. But giving a shit and feeling it can be a major differentiator.

neuralkoi 1y ago
The vibe WAS pervasive at Apple during Steve's time. He understood the importance of asking "what is this?"[0]. The current vibe at Apple is "we want you to be an obedient worker". [0] https://systems-souls-society.com/what-is-this-the-case-for-continually-questioning-our-online-experience/ https://systems-souls-society.com/what-is-this-the-case-for-...
- cjk 1y ago
  I believe it. It had started to wane even by the time I left in 2015. I know there are still a ton of good people there, but it's a way, way different company now.

PaulHoule 1y ago

I dunno. A good demo is all about the feeling it gives. One thing I got out of my adventures in startup land is how to go up on stage and demo some software that barely works and make it look like a million bucks. At the last hackathon I went to I was sitting in the audience at the presentation at the end with one teammate while the other one was upstairs pounding away at last minute revisions. We were scheduled last but I still had to make excuses to the organizers. He showed up with something that basically worked but I kept cool under pressure, made sure I didn't commit to anything until I was sure about it, and used good showmanship. We were all shocked when we won the 'player's choice' award. Mind you, it helped that he was experienced at writing platformers in Unity and the other student could draw, but thanks to my showmanship people saw everything that didn't worked and didn't notice the bugs and people were left with the impression that 'wow that looked like a polished game' whereas the main author said 'I don't think I'd want to play it' afterwards. My continuous push towards a 'minimum viable product' combined with their push to make something that looked polish really helped that showmanship work.

throwaway314155 1y ago
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saltysaltysalty 1y ago

I have delivered value, but at what cost? https://youtu.be/DYvhC_RdIwQ https://youtu.be/DYvhC_RdIwQ

rustystump 1y ago
So glad someone posted this. Their videos hit so close to home on the reality of the soul sucking drone work that is tech. Like a modern day office space sketch comedy.

ratmeadow 1y ago

I've learnt that just about everything in life boils down to feelings, which is interesting. No matter how rational a person or people claim to be, usually it comes down to feelings... Life choices? Business decisions? Who gets promoted? It's all vibes and feelings. People will deliberate and argue over facts but ultimately there will be some "weighting" factor which is feelings and will make or break the outcome. You can have a perfectly argued decision that fails some vibe check and is hence discarded. Or a terrible argument that plays to some emotional point so is accepted. It's all feelings. Rare is the opposite.

QuantumGood 1y ago
You can analyze in different ways by choosing different frames of reference, etc., but choosing how to feel isn't the same. For most, "choosing to how feel" is difficult to attempt.
kingkawn 1y ago
This distinction is an absurdity first written to provide a rational for why everything being done in the name of Reason felt so bad.
- reval 1y ago
  There is something to this. I believe that if you cannot feel, you also cannot reason. It’s almost as if intellectual ability is an application of emotionality rather than something separate. For example, when something makes sense to you, what does that really mean? In my experience, when something “clicks”, that is not intellect. The intellect kicks in to retroactively explain the feeling. The “clicking” itself- that’s the feeling.
- card_zero 1y ago
  Rationale. Is it, though? It would be ironic if anyone found it necessary to construct an argument for why argument is unnecessary. (Though that sounds familiar - classical cynicism maybe?) Well, acting without reason is unreasonable, for sure. But since I don't think knowledge is (mostly) hierarchical, I don't think chains of reasoning are the main part of how we arrive at preferences. To the extent that knowledge does have foundations, the foundations are beliefs, and they're built in no particular order, and survive by merit of seeming to chime with other beliefs, fitting together in a paradigm. That effect where they seem to chime is an impression, a hunch, which is a feeling. What reasoning can do is tell you "these two beliefs definitely can't go together, because they're logically incompatible", and then you have to jettison one of them (or attack the argument), even if it feels like they both belong. Somewhat disconcerting.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mattgreenrocks 1y ago

Really, I think we’re all talking around some notion of beauty here. Not in the sense of personal vanity, but more of a sense of internal cohesiveness. Also, the feeling he’s referring to is what sold me on Ghostty. It was clear that he’d thought quite a bit about good defaults. Performance is great without having to tweak anything. In a way, I love that this sort of thing cannot be qualified, because it means that it cannot be commoditized or democratized. It either connects with someone, or it doesn’t.

sublinear 1y ago

> When you feel it, you know. The feature makes you smile when you use it. It fits right in, like it was always meant to be there. You want to use it again. You want to tell people about it. This is the difference. This is what metrics, specifications, and demos miss. Totally absurd! The metrics and specifications are what make all of that possible. This feels like it was written for execs and managers who bury their heads in the sand when they're overwhelmed.

marcelr 1y ago

feeling is something developed by evolution, not by accident my best guess is that it is far easier to deeply feel complex concepts rather than to arrive to similar conclusions purely based on reason/logic

hendry 1y ago

Vibe coding

tempodox 1y ago

> Our work evokes a feeling. The feeling matters. The feeling is part of the work. The desired feeling is part of the requirements. I do share this ambition. In my own metric, I was as successful as it gets when “the desired feeling” is achieved. But I often have the impression that others around me don’t share this, or do so to a lesser degree. However, that doesn’t stop me one bit.

mrugge 1y ago

The only thing you have to do is pay taxes and die. It does help to feel good about the project and the work, but it is not a requirement for a fulfilling life. Looking back at most times I have felt horrible in the depth of adversity, resistance or burnout I realize those were the times of greatest potential for achievement, learning and growth. Those are the memorable chapters, the things that define my character. The times when I continued to grind, continued to push through and didn't give up because of feelings were the times when I actually accomplished something: raised a kid, bought a house, switched continents.

bonoboTP 1y ago
I think you are using different concepts of "feel good". "Feeling good" doesn't exclude adversity or resistance. But it should be resistance where you have reasonable grip on it, with some traction, and it's aiming towards something that you value. Neither trivial, nor so hard that you have no way of getting traction with it, being stuck on zero progress. Happiness is basically equivalent to feeling steady (even if slow) progress in response to one's own effort towards valued goals.
- mrugge 1y ago
  I have often felt bad (or "didn't feel it" to quote this article) and it still turned out OK because I showed up and stuck with it.

PeterStuer 1y ago

Yes, and no. Yes in the sense Kano refered to as 'delight' [1]. An unexpected or tacit feeling of quality in an interaction with a product. No, because for whatever reason we sadly have become prone to spurious and unbridled emotion, making mountains out of molehills at the slightest friction. I sometimes feel what now passes as acceptable is what used to be borderline bipolar disorders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model

flohofwoe 1y ago

For me it's what I call the 'weekend test': Do I like tinkering with this thing enough that I'd want to play around with it on a weekend / in my own time, just for fun. This needs to check a lot of boxes: is it easy and quick to setup, do I need some hard to obtain 'license key', does everything work out of box or at least is easy enough to fix, and most importantly: is it a joy to use (which is entirely subjective though). If something doesn't pass this test then I also don't want to waste time with it at work. In a nutshell this is also why wheels should be reinvented over and over again, and if it's just for the sole reason that the new wheel feels better to just the person who reinvented it. Chances are other people will feel the same after trying the new wheel (on a weekend, hah) and start using it (or not and that's fine too), but in the end this is how innovation happens.

k__ 1y ago

As a neuro divergent person, I usually only feel relieved when I can mark a task as complete. Doing my taxes felt the same as getting a degree and publishing a book.

bubblebeard 1y ago

Whenever my logic said one thing and my gut feeling told me different, I used to ignore my gut. This would more often than not cause some sort of backlash I could not possibly have foreseen. Sometimes immediately, sometimes several days later. A year or so ago I got tired of this, started doing the opposite, and I will never go back. Feelings overall are underrated.

isaacremuant 1y ago

I wish we could turn off the self help twitter hybrid posts that we're getting more and more often in HACKER news.

ksec 1y ago

I think that shows if you are a product person. And product people are a rare breed. Within them, you will need to find someone who could do or understand business, operation, sales and marketing. Something every successful entrepreneur will eventually acquired.

tomdickandharry 1y ago

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kwakubiney 1y ago

Haven’t felt it in so long, but it’s what keeps the bills paid

llsf 1y ago

nuf said :) https://open.spotify.com/track/3cbV252akVZInSvJk7jAYX?si=86a2905c039e4c8a https://open.spotify.com/track/3cbV252akVZInSvJk7jAYX?si=86a...

bonoboTP 1y ago

Yes, absolutely true. And this fact will be used against you. Two sides of the same coin. Humans have an internal need to see that their work output is valuable and they are useful to society/community. This is not some unrealistic expectation. For most of history, it was fairly easy to see how one's work directly results in value. Farming, butchering animals, making clothes and shoes, paving roads or building houses or whatever it may be. People could feel satisfaction of jobs well done, applying their experience and being valued for it. It is normal. Pointless drudgery eats away at one's soul and leads to burnout, much more than simply being "overworked". If much of your work-related mental energy goes towards timing when to jump ship before it sinks, that won't be sustainable. Working on some pointless project that you know will get axed, but for some internal politics reason it has to remain up and running for a few more months to get someone promoted before killing it, etc. When people say that a job is a job, and you wouldn't get paid for it if it was enjoyable, it's just not right. If you produce value, you do deserve the pay, it's not supposed to be compensation for being miserable. On the flipside, when MBAs internalize this message, what they take away is that "passion" and "motivation" makes employees more productive and prone to put in extra effort. So they come up with the genius idea to test whether you are "passionate" before hiring you. Resulting in a dreaded and ugly song and dance ritual where you have to exaggerate your passion and talk in unrealistic language, and grifters and smoothtalkers win in that. That's not the kind of passion that is needed, the outwardly, enthusiastic-glowing passion. Just something where you feel that it's neat, it's a net positive for the world even if small, and you left the world a bit better when you go to sleep at night compared to when you woke up in the morning. Even extra money can't compensate for that in the long term (short term yes).

judithh 1y ago

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