11 ms·

You are not your job

• anovikov 7mo ago
  Indeed, thinking that people and the way they extract money from the environment is same is ridiculous and i've been teaching my kid from childhood that it's just wrong. We've been conditioned to think that way from the industrial era. I hope now people will finally learn to think different.
• tim-tday 7mo ago
  50% of your waking hours are spent at work. The person you are revolves around your working hours, the problems you solve the concerns you have, the money you make the persona you display at work. Saying you are not your work is wishful thinking. Try giving it up and check in on how much of you is still the same. Maybe you wish to be more than your working self. That’s honorable and desirable. Just declaring it isn’t going to cut it though.
  • IncreasePosts 7mo ago
    I'd only become more "me" if I stopped working. Work isn't a place I go to self actualize, it's a place I go to earn money to do the things I want to do.
    • mhurron 7mo ago
      It's also a place a great number of people have to hide who they are because they have to fit in.
      • Tade0 7mo ago
        This. I refrain from making jokes or even smalltalk in my new role because I noticed people don't do that here and keep meetings to the point.
    • rexpop 7mo ago
      Super sad that the majority of your day for the majority of your life is repressive of your "self.*
      • IncreasePosts 7mo ago
        Maybe, maybe not. Directly, I only work about 30h/week, so I actually have 86 hours of free time and 30 hours of work per week. And, at this point I'm working for my kids, not for me. I could have easily retired years ago if I didn't have kids. I could retire right now but my kids might not inherit much if I did. I lucked into a field that paid me > 10x the median salary in the US, but my kids might not be so lucky. So, I'm working a little harder and longer than I need to, so that my kids perhaps don't have to. 1 year of working and saving for me might, 25 years from now, mean my kids can retire 10 years earlier than they would. That seems like a worthwhile thing for me to do, even if it means I have a little less "me" time.
      • tayo42 7mo ago
        Ill take it offline and we can circle back to that thought. I find corporate culture to be extremely fake and it's tough to deal with. Like you ever do something simple and some one tells you wow that's amazing great job. And you think they can't be seriously right now, this was some low effort basic thing? That annoys me, corporate America demands that behavior though.
  • heikkilevanto 7mo ago
    > Saying you are not your work is wishful thinking. Try giving it up and check in on how much of you is still the same. I retired a few years ago, and I believe and insist that I am very much the same person. To see a person only as what they do at work seems awfully limiting. Even when I was working, I was also a sailor, musician, woodworker, home brewer, cat person, chess player, leather guy, and a good number of other things. And yes, even after retiring, I am still a computer guy. I even like hobby coding projects more than I did.
    • Tor3 7mo ago
      Well said. I'm nearing retirement age and planning what I'll do, and yes, setting up my hobby room with computers and whatnot. And, as you, I've also been many other things, including some on your list, and more.
  • rexpop 7mo ago
    This idea that you are not your job is ridiculous because of the amount of time that you spend at your work. And it’s not just fifty of your waking hours, right? There’s also time spent preparing for, commuting to, and winding down from that work. And also, you know, how much of your work are you doing in the shower? It stains the rest of your life; it soaks into everything. This concept goes hand in hand with... (oh, to say nothing of the many years of your life dedicated to developing this vocation through school and training or whatever. So it’s not just hours of the day; it’s years of your life that revolve around developing this vocation. It’s deeply disingenuous to suggest that it’s possible to separate yourself meaningfully from your vocation. Frankly, it’s insulting—to suggest that such separation is possible or even preferable, or to judge people for failing to separate their vocation from their identity when it’s impossible. It makes me think of some of the impossible requirements placed on women: that they not be too slutty while at the same time not wearing a hijab or being too conservative. They get pressure from both sides, and there’s very little space, if any, that goes unjudged or unremarked upon. Having children too early, too late, or not at all—women will get flack from one corner of society or another. Likewise, workers get flack for overidentifying with their vocation, but it’s really impossible to extricate ourselves from it. For that reason, I find the whole idea offensive.) ...this concept of not making friends at work—or of distinguishing between your “work friends” and your “real friends.” People tell me, “Your manager is not your friend. Your co-workers are not here to be your friends. You shouldn’t expect loyalty from them.” And okay, I get that. I understand the economic realities; I’ve had co-workers say things like, “Hey, I agree with you on this one, but I have a mortgage. I have kids in college. So I’m not going to speak up. I’m not going to join you in this complaint or in this effort to improve working conditions.” I understand there are real economic constraints on the friendships, the loyalty, and the relationships that we establish in the office. I’ve also had co-workers who were loyal, empathetic, caring, honest, earnest—decent, good people—and they were groomed for management in a way that basically meant that once a week they’d be taken into a room and grilled about everyone else’s behavior. They were made into unwilling spies, and that has a chilling effect on the depth of friendships you can create. What’s tragic about that is, as I said at the start, because so much of our lives are dedicated to our vocation, the fact that we cannot establish meaningful, trusting, loyal relationships—that we’re forced to snitch on and betray one another—is a stunning, fundamental, disgusting injustice. It’s an enormous violation of human liberties and possibilities. It is an utterly debased compromise that we’ve made as a society, one that wrecks us. It is a deeply troubling flaw in our foundation—that the majority of our hours, days, and years are dedicated to an environment where mutual trust and free association are fundamentally compromised.
  • lm28469 7mo ago
    > 60% of your waking hours are spent at work. More like 15% of you work from home for a small company and shut the fuck up about wanting to be a career man. If you're not a homo consumator and play your cards right that's enough to check out of the corporate life before 45
  • encrypted_bird 7mo ago
    I only ever feel like "me" when I'm not at work. I work in retail, and every minute I'm at that job I feel my soul dying just that little bit more. But I go there because I like to not starve, which by the way I've done and lemme tell ya: it ain't fun.
  • Eridrus 7mo ago
    Beyond this, you are what you do. And you are what you do for other people. Besides providing support and entertainment for our friends and families, the concrete things we do that bring value to society are through our jobs. Society doesn't run on hanging out or hobbies.
• ashwinnair99 7mo ago
  The people who figure this out early are rare. Most only get there after losing the job or burning out completely. Shame it takes that long
• OJFord 7mo ago
  I am not my age or gender either in this sense, but I am still going to say 'I am a man' and 'I am x years old', because I am fluent in English.
• rvz 7mo ago
  This was obvious to those who value their time over the job given to them and all the office politics, performative meetings and the blame-game that comes with it.
• MattDamonSpace 7mo ago
  Fine essay overall but “We possess the means to care for everyone -- yet choose not to” I really don’t think this is true
  • Etheryte 7mo ago
    The US could make homelessness a thing of the past with a minuscule fraction of what it is spending on the military. It is very much a choice.
    • deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    • konaraddi 7mo ago
      DoD spent $1.43 trillion in FY2026 Around ~1 million homeless in US Let’s say it costs $10K/month/person so $120K/yr/person. Probably a big overestimate but gotta include healthcare and help people with long term stability. That’s 120,000 x 1,000,000 = 120,000,000,000 or $120 billion USD. Idk what the Nth order effects would be but yea I think what you’re saying tracks in the numbers
    • slopinthebag 7mo ago
      You cannot just throw money at a problem like homelessness in order to fix it. That is such an incredibly reductive viewpoint. It's akin to saying 9 mothers can birth a child in a month - oh look, we solved the population decline crisis! Someone go tell Japan!
    • PhilipRoman 7mo ago
      For an ideal ('spherical cow in a vacuum') type of homeless person, sure.
• ilamont 7mo ago
  When you meet someone, you assess them on two dimensions. The first is warmth - do you believe they mean you well? The second is competence - do you believe they're capable? Well, sometimes. At other times, the assessment may be based on signalling, tribalism, perception of status, personal connections, career connections, transactional goals, or other criteria. Some people don't have or can't show warmth. Or they don't have the ability to "crack a joke at the right time" or make small talk. Should that be held against people when making assessments?
  • throwaway2027 7mo ago
    >Should that be held against people when making assessments? It shouldn't but it does.
• beastman82 7mo ago
  I want to thank everyone who hates work, is mentally checked out of their jobs and quiet quitting etc. It makes it much easier for me to distinguish myself as a hard worker who cares about the business being successful. It also helps me keep my job during layoffs because I can assure you the managers have noticed. When you are old and have lots of formative experiences that are not work-based, we can shake hands and mutually appreciate each other's motives and respective outcomes.
  • Arainach 7mo ago
    > It also helps me keep my job during layoffs because I can assure you the managers have noticed. If you believe the managers who interact with you have any say in who gets laid off, then your understanding of how business works isn't nearly as good as you seem to believe it is.
    • yurishimo 7mo ago
      Depends on the size of company. I’ve definitely worked for companies where I know for a fact that my manager had the final say.
      • windward 7mo ago
        If you still have a manager, it's not a bad layoff
  • asveikau 7mo ago
    > worker who cares about the business being successful In most cases, this is a sucker mentality that makes you vulnerable to abusive employers. You will stress yourself out making your boss richer. They won't care or make reciprocal gestures. They'd be happy to replace you should you become inconvenient.
    • yurishimo 7mo ago
      It’s not about stressing yourself out; that’s something you can ultimately control (though admittedly, many people are bad at separating the two) but more about _how good you are at putting on a show_ of giving a shit. There is a non zero chance that the company I work for pivots into some weird crypto niche (low, but we’re already fintech-y). If that happens, I’m out, but no way in hell am I gonna pivot my work personality overnight because of a business decision made by the company’s board and investors. If I need to put on a happy face for my boss to keep my job, then I’m gonna do it because I can’t afford not to at the moment. That’s not to say there is no line, but being a generally positive person in the workplace is a role I’m fine with playing. It costs me very little personally and opens a lot of doors because let’s face it, nobody likes working with a loathsome human being, even if they’re right. Am I a sucker? Maybe by your definition, but I don’t feel like one currently.
• ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago
  There’s an old aphorism: “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I worked in tech, because I love tech. No other reason, really. I accepted a job, making maybe half of what I could make, elsewhere, because of the personal satisfaction I got from it, and the relationships I made, there. When I retired, I have continued to develop software, and am currently “leaning into” AI-assisted development. During that time, I’ve also had plenty of time to be human.
  • vrganj 7mo ago
    I have found that aphorism does not ring true for me. “Do what you love for work, and you'll stop loving it" seems more true to me. It always eventually turns into a chore once it is a thing you need to do.
    • hinkley 7mo ago
      IMO, there are more steps. Do what you love for work, someone will exploit you for it, and break your heart. One of my kids has taken this advice, does art (really good art) for themselves and is pursuing a STEM career instead. The other is pursuing a game dev career, despite every current and former dev in his life warning him off for the last fifteen years. To quote Kissing Jessica Stein, “OY! This child will suffer.”
      • ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago
        Back in the day, I was a fairly good artist[0]. I was good enough to get work, and pursue a career, although I don’t know how successful I would have been. Fortunately, I also really enjoyed tech, and figured that even a mediocre programmer would do better than a top-shelf fantasy artist. Back then (hard to believe, these days), competition was a lot less prevalent, in tech, and was brutal, in art. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886
    • saltcured 7mo ago
      It's a bit fractal and tautological... On the one hand, I think a lot of the ruinous parts are the extra things it forces beyond the parts you actually love. So the problem there is you are actually doing a bunch of things you don't love, so do "work" some portion of your day. The other is that many of us do love a bit of oppositional defiance. Doing what is demanded of us by others is definitely not doing what we love in that respect!
• 31aga 7mo ago
  [flagged]
• cedws 7mo ago
  >My technical skills are being disrupted by machines - that's fine I'll go do other things. [links to long bike trip] Ok that's cool and all but many of us have bills to pay. Bike trips don't pay the bills. Software people have been economically advantaged up until now that they can go and do stuff like that.
  • block_dagger 7mo ago
    Within a few years I think UBI or UBS will be required for people to continue living, in which case basic needs (bills) won't be a concern. There's just no way for us to transition fast enough to avoid high unemployment as AI replaces large swaths of jobs. I do worry about the ~10 year transition it will take for societal governments to react.
    • cedws 7mo ago
      I think UBI is a pipe dream. I live in the UK and even with our social safety net which is much stronger than the US's, I can't imagine the government ever handing out money adequate to live a middle class life to large chunk of the population. UBI has problems that far as I know haven't been addressed. Vast numbers of people no longer being occupied doesn't seem like it would lead to a healthy society. And how do you uphold democracy when the government is effectively handing out the paychecks?
      • andai 7mo ago
        Recently: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46977175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46977175 Not quite UK, and not very big, but somewhat promising :) >How do you uphold democracy https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... >Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. Can't uphold what isn't there, lol As for how do we avoid becoming WALL-E blobs... elite opinion seems to suggest the UBI will be just enough to prevent people from going into the streets with pitchforks, but not enough for a dignified life. (Enough to live in ze pod and eat ze proverbial bugs.) I don't see employment being a very big thing (unless AI creates some kinda fake jobs economy to pacify the humans, which would be a rational thing to do). The crisis of meaning is going to be worse than the economic crisis, and I think people would literally pay to work rather than question their existence on such a deep level. Beyond fake jobs and human-only jobs (robot can't replace the cute barista at Starbucks!), I think entrepreneurship will be the only real vehicle. So... basically how it already is today.
• david-gpu 7mo ago
  Agreed with the title and some of the broad sentiment, but two things stood out. > I can't delegate my capacity to sit with someone when they're confused or scared or just need to feel known Plenty of people rely on therapists and/or chat bots to listen to them. Not everybody feels comfortable burdening their friends and family with their problems. > We possess the means to care for everyone -- yet choose not to There is a trade-off between social services in a broad sense and the ability to pay for them. The stronger the social safety net, the more people at the margin will choose to work less, earn less, make less of an effort. In turn, the tax base becomes smaller, and thus unable to maintain those same social services. For example, the vast majority of people choose to retire once they reach the age where they are able to collect enough from their pension that they no longer need to work in order to get by. If we lowered the age of eligibility by a year, most people would retire a year earlier. Just like we see people retiring later in countries that have moved the eligibility to the age of e.g. 67. With this I am not advocating to increase or decrease the current social safety net in whichever region you, dear reader, are living. I am simply pointing out some of the real-world effects of moving the needle in one direction or another. Thus, yes, in rich countries we have collectively decided that "caring for everyone" is not the best way forward, because we see that it becomes unsustainable when you go too far. Where exactly we place the needle varies from place to place, obviously. Thinning the social safety net too far also has massive societal and economic consequences.
  • futura_heavy 7mo ago
    [flagged]
  • ricree 7mo ago
    >For example, the vast majority of people choose to retire once they reach the age where they are able to collect enough from their pension that they no longer need to work in order to get by Part of the problem is that the current system doesn't provide a great way to taper off, at least not by default. I suspect there would be a lot more people who'd keep working if it was simple to get a comparable job at 30 hours per week 25 weeks out of the year. But for those who are traditionally employed instead of contracting, the choice is often between full time or nothing.
• 3hasjhGH 7mo ago
  The company has ex Fly.io people:;dissent is flagged. What a surprise. Fly.io will still end like Starfighter, where abusing HN for marketing did not work.
• oytis 7mo ago
  People don't need self-help advise, they need a fair redistribution of increased productivity. We don't make a big deal of our jobs because we are stupid - it's the society that assigns this or that income to this or that job, and income determines lifestyle or in worst case the survival.
  • logicchains 7mo ago
    >People don't need self-help advise, they need a fair redistribution of increased productivity. The increased productivity is pretty much entirely coming from AI researchers and the companies investing in huge amounts of GPUs, and they are the ones receiving most of the windfalls, how's that not fair?
    • thn-gap 7mo ago
      The biggest contribution is still from the training set, whose original authors get 0 because of "fair use" in the copyright.
      • Noumenon72 7mo ago
        This presumes that the value was created by the authors and not the people who found a way to use the structure in the training set to create intelligence. Like crediting wi-fi router owners with creating Wi-Fi Positioning System instead of the people who realized they could wardrive around to create maps and extract a new kind of value that would never have existed without them. Or Egyptians for deciphering hieroglyphics instead of the Frenchman who realized the Rosetta Stone they were using to hold up a wall could actually be used to do much more. My thinking here is coming from the paper "From Entropy to Epiplexity"[1] which partly discussed why you can train on synthetic data: it's the structure of the data that enables learning, not just the amount of "information". Authors of images and videos may have worked just as hard as authors of text training sets, but they didn't contribute to AI as much because there just wasn't the same kind of structure to discover there. It's the people who found the usable structure, not the people who accidentally generated it, who created the value. 1. https://arxiv.org/html/2601.03220v2 https://arxiv.org/html/2601.03220v2
• weatherlite 7mo ago
  Some people indeed identify too much with their jobs, but for many others getting replaced by A.I means on very practical terms - a huge hit in salary, it means possibly retraining - maybe for years, means stress to the family (mortgage, bills etc) perhaps even stress to the marriage. I disagree that the people near you only love you or need you for your presence; they also rely on your paycheck. Your daugher may love you for you but she needs that check to the private school, that money for nice clothes and gadgets like her friends all have and paying for that apartment in the nice neighborhood.
  • CAPSLOCKSSTUCK 7mo ago
    Nobody needs private school, give me a fucking break.
    • weatherlite 7mo ago
      It's an example, you give me a fucking break.
  • amunozo 7mo ago
    I know it's hard, but I guess it's a good idea to live below your means in case something happens, and also save considerably to face moments of uncertainty. People with tech salaries can do it. Most of the world (and country, independently of where you live) live with much less.
  • ehnto 7mo ago
    As well, your point of view and it would seem the general default assumption in articles like this, is that people have families. We are in an unprecedented time of lonliness, there will be many people who if they lose their job they will have no support. Financial, emotional or logistical.
• tomekw 7mo ago
  I used to BE a software engineer. Then, I experienced a 3 years long burnout and got professional help. Now I work AS an Engineering Manager. You are not your job. Do not put your ego in what you do. That’s something I discuss a lot during my 1:1s.
  • satisfice 7mo ago
    I’m sorry you had trouble with this, but I don’t understand the problem. I really don’t. I am a tester. I’ve been a tester for 39 years. I’ll be a tester until I die, whether or not anyone pays me for it. At some point, you believe I am going to… collapse or something? I have been burned out. Before I was a tester, I was a video game developer. I didn’t get the vitamins from that for the nourishment of my soul, and I DID collapse. In my experience, burnout has nothing to do with ego investment. It has to do with forcing one’s self to do something that isn’t a fit. Once I learned about staying within my limits, I ceased having trouble with burnout. It had nothing to do with investing my identity into my chosen work. BTW, I am a tester. I am also a father, a husband, an American, a philosopher, and a teacher. All these things are in me. As I turn 60, I am also beginning to embrace a new identity: old man.
  • Christian-B 7mo ago
    [dead]
• block_dagger 7mo ago
  One's job and the rest of one's life are not clearly delineated. Best friends and spouses are often met through work, which is inexplicably linked with one's actual performance on the job. This article treats them as if they are isolated. Also, it's worth noting that one's sense of purpose (as in career) is important to happiness, just as being part of a strong social network in one's personal life is. Balance is key.
  • david-gpu 7mo ago
    Some retirees struggle with meaning in the absence of work. Most adapt just fine. Work is not the meaning of life for most people.
• standwportugul 7mo ago
  [dead]
• andai 7mo ago
  We're currently in the process of designing and building machines that can do everything better, faster and cheaper than humans. Gradually, we are succeeding. This leaves us with two options: a) Decouple the value of human life from economic output b) Watch as the value of human life rapidly approaches zero
  • thevillagechief 7mo ago
    Sadly, it seems to me that history has always chosen b), and I doubt this time it's gonna be different.
• rmoriz 7mo ago
  I also took the route of finding a new hobby (biking, all things bike mechanics, even politics) but of course it's not paying any of my bills. That's the point. While I helped making other people very rich, I never owned shares or got a bonus after an exit.
  • musicale 7mo ago
    "X. Employee, 19xx-20xx. Beloved co-worker and technical specialist. Sacrificed health and happiness to deliver value to shareholders."
    • rmoriz 7mo ago
      Well. Nobody remembers me already so I doubt they will even care when a truck hits me on my bike.
• musicale 7mo ago
  > You are not your job. You're a person first. Your ability to connect, be present, and make people feel understood is what makes you irreplaceable to the people around you, which is the only market that counts. True, but losing your job is still a big deal. It often means that you lose your income, your health insurance (in the US at least), many (if not most) of your daily interactions with other people, and your social status. > My technical skills are being disrupted by machines - that's fine I'll go do other things. As others have noted, it's great to not actually need the paycheck you are working for.
  • zinodaur 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    • musicale 7mo ago
      > in the US, you can get another one much more quickly than anywhere else in the world Depending on the economic conditions for the year, it can still take months: > To illustrate the recent trajectory: one analysis found that in January 2023 it took job seekers 268 days on average to land a job offer, whereas by August 2024 this had improved to 182 days (about 6 months) (How Long Does it Take to Find a Job in 2024?). Another dataset focusing on tech jobseekers showed a similar trend – those in 2024 took about 247 days on average to secure a “good” job, down from 281 days in 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/average-job-search-time-tech-roles-us-20242025-antonio-montano-qehve https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/average-job-search-time-tech-...
      • zinodaur 7mo ago
        The whole world is hurting pretty bad right now when it comes to tech jobs - America seems to be hurting the least. I'm not saying the tech job situation in America isn't bad - but the world dances to America's fiddle, and its frustrating hearing Americans complain about how hard their situation is while their boot is firmly planted on my neck
        • 7mo ago
• jojobas 7mo ago
  You are what utility you deliver to others. I doubt they'll keep feeding, dressing and sheltering you for your ability to connect, be present and whatever.
• anonymars 7mo ago
  "The job will not save you, Jimmy. It won't make you whole, it won't fill [you] up." https://youtu.be/NR1g30pQi4I?t=106s https://youtu.be/NR1g30pQi4I?t=106s Yes, it's true one needs to eat, have a roof over one's head, etc. Of course you can even like what you do, make friends at work. But never forget the nature of the relationship. It won't love you back.
• abcde666777 7mo ago
  Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we value about ourselves are generally not that valuable to others. I love my own personality and humanity, my soul if you will, but nobody's paying me for it, and so I have to value it accordingly. Hell, let me go even darker: there are billions of souls on this planet. They're not a rare thing like say, gold. They're very easily produced, by two people getting it on. That leads to a harsh conclusion: human beings aren't that valuable as individuals. We are in fact very disposable and replaceable. Those living in the first world have been shielded from that harsh reality for some time, but it's starting to show up on our doorstep and we don't like it, and due to our inexperience with it we haven't learned how to adapt to it. It scares me too, but I refuse to be in denial about it.
  • throwaway-11-1 7mo ago
    They aren’t valuable to markets, but like I have neighbors who are treasured by the community and genuinely bring joy to everyone. But no, I guess they aren’t economically important. I actually don’t like how every soul has been reduced to an efficiency metric, surprised how much I find forums like this accept that framing.
    • abcde666777 7mo ago
      True as well. I've had similar communal experiences where you get a taste of the old way, the way humans would have operated when we lived in tribes. And on that level I think we are capable of valuing each other as beings - the instinct to look out for each other kicks in. But this modern society we live in... it's just not structured that way anymore. Most of us live in little silos now: our job and our atomic family. And we've become so used to depending on it that it looks very unlikely to change until/unless shit hits the fan. Your average person doesn't know how to grow their own food or build their own shelter, and even if they do it's far less convenient than just getting a paycheck and relying on the supermarket. It's often amazing to me that the whole edifice of it functions as long as it does. Sometimes when I'm in the CBD here in Melbourne, I sit there marveling at the thousands of people I see wandering the streets, all of whom are somehow employed by someone to do something such that they have enough money to keep afloat.
• melenaboija 7mo ago
  Super nice read. > The harder version is asking yourself: if my job title disappeared tomorrow, would I still be me? This part, though, misses an important point: status and wealth. And I think it’s especially directed at those. It can be beautiful to identify yourself with your job if you are a professor or a social worker. The problem is identifying yourself with the social status provided by your job (paycheck and power), not the work itself.
• waingake 7mo ago
  A small correction to this, your friends don't really like you due to any desirable attribute you have, its not an exchange process. They like you for your you-ness. Think about a friend, what is it you like about them? I think you will find that it's not a series of attributes, but a rather unquantifiable them ness - you like the fact they are uniquely them, this is how you are seen as well. You're enough.
• skyberrys 7mo ago
  [dead]
• beeflet 7mo ago
  >But warmth. Empathy. The ability to sit with someone in their confusion and make them feel understood. The ability to crack a joke at exactly the right moment and remind someone that they're not alone. The capacity to be fully present with another person, to see them not as a role they're playing but as a whole human being… that cannot be automated away and hopefully never will. Yeah it can. People have been using LLMs as therapists and digital friends for a while now. All of the soft skills were the first to get automated. > My technical skills are being disrupted by machines - that's fine I'll go do other things. Oh yeah? What exactly?
• hatmanstack 7mo ago
  How has Severance not been mentioned in this Thread. Definite Ricken Vibes.
• bitwize 7mo ago
  I really don't care about my intrinsic value as a person. Without this line of work I couldn't make enough to support my household by myself, which I must now do.
• ainiriand 7mo ago
  Since the beginning of human history, people have always defined themselves by what they contribute to the group; a hunter, a farmer, a king... Today is no different. We may not be our job, but that is how others see us at first. They are not trying to get to know you; they just want to know where you fit, so they know how to deal with you. Only later, if things get personal, might they become interested in you as a person.
  • firecall 7mo ago
    > Since the beginning of human history You have that backwards though! :-) We'd get to know people in our community, often because they were born in to it, then we'd fit in to productive roles. The way we do it these days is a recent, post industrial revolution, mode of society.
    • i_am_a_peasant 7mo ago
      Nah I think this paradigm already exists when city states form and you no longer live in a village where everyone knows everyone
  • atmosx 7mo ago
    Where I live, when meeting ppl they don’t introduce by asking “so what do you do?”, instead the phrasing is somewhat akin to “what do you spent your time on”. Even though they mean “what is your profession”, it allows me to stir the discussion to “what I like” or what kind of subject I enjoy discussing at that time eg philosophy, theatre, books, etc.
  • baq 7mo ago
    I agree to an extent that you mostly worked with people you grown up with on those farms, some of which became lifelong friends. This has been replaced by making friends in high school and then parting ways forever, more or less. I’ll add that if you see your colleagues as anything else than primarily working for money, you’re a bit delusional unless you know for a fact they could not work for the rest of their lives and be financially fine. Of course there are other reasons to work than money, but the way the system is set up you’re not supposed to care more about them than about cold hard cash.
• ludston 7mo ago
  I agree with this article fully, but there is a problem that most blog posts about identity don't talk about before telling you what do with your own. What is identity actually for? This is the only article I know of that talks about this: https://danielkeogh.com/blog/post/On%20not%20being%20miserable https://danielkeogh.com/blog/post/On%20not%20being%20miserab...
  • rrgok 7mo ago
    What a fantastic article. Lately I came to the same conclusions but never could put it in words. Thank you!
  • sph 7mo ago
    Thanks for sharing. I truly enjoy the author's definition of identity as optimisation to decision-making. It does make a lot of sense, and explains why big identity crises (midlife crisis, for example) can have devastating effects and take a long time to resolve. Questioning your identity is akin to going through an ego death, and many developers that do not want to accept this AI-driven future are going through some very painful feelings with large ramifications to their lives. I can only recommend people going through these phases to treat it (seriously) like any midlife crisis. You can't sweep it under the carpet. Carl Jung has written a lot about those, start there. (5 years deep into mine, and the timing of the AI revolution certainly made my quest much more difficult than I would have wished)
• NalNezumi 7mo ago
  >The capacity to be fully present with another person, to see them not as a role they're playing but as a whole human being… that cannot be automated away and hopefully never will. I agree but I don't hold such a positive view of the result of this (anymore) as the author do. (I think?) in the book The End of Burnout, an argument is put forward about how our change in work culture is contributing to burnout. One aspect of it being that with the service economy, part of the value we provide in return for salary is not just our skills but a pleasant "persona". In previous times, our work used to be less socially oriented: farmers farm, craftmans craft, factory workers do line work. Social interaction happened ofc but wasn't as much the core for many professions. With increased automation, the social component got more important. These days it's not even surprising for many craftmans to also work close to customers or other group of people in an organization, increasing the number of interactions you need to manage by order of magnitude. You're also expected to be socially professional, "pleasant" as the article points. You're supposed to act graciously when your customers demand the impossible, or your manager doesn't understand the problem at hand. Leave your emotions, personality, and completely valid thoughts at the company main entrance: here you be a "pleasant professional". Combined it with another trend: the onus for productivity increase is on the worker and not the employer, as it used to be in the factory floor (productivity increased with improved system, not individual effort). I think this point was from Byumg chul Han, and I can see that with the onus on productivity increase being on the worker, in a "be pleasant" job it will be more and more "sacrifice your true self to be maximum pleasant" and the result will be a horribly burnt out society. So the authors prediction is rather dystopian. A workplace that focus on pleasantness with a detachment to meritocratic conditions will also inevitably converge to squashing of diverse thought and getting stuck in their heads.
• TheRoque 7mo ago
  Meh, I feel the opposite. Even though I come from a culture that values separation of work and free time a lot (France), I still feel like it's copium. The fact is, if you spend most of your valuable brain time on a task, your brain starts to get shaped for such task, therefore I don't see why you can't identify yourself as your job. The stuff the author talks about, empathy, ability to joke etc. is also heavily influenced by your day-to-day activity, your job. Heck, there are even some people who claim they became aphantasic and lost all capacity for dreams and creativity after working too much with computers. Anyways, I get the point of the post, capitalism sucks and makes most of our existence as worth as cattle, that is, if we don't value the stuff outside work.
• paganel 7mo ago
  This text feels like AI-slop, or at least AI-“improved”. No life in it, lots of (by definition, artificial) cheesiness, the usual, I mean.
• Tor3 7mo ago
  The focus on "what you do" is very US-centric (or possibly North American). When you meet someone then one of the very first things asked is "what do you do" or something to that extent. What your job is. But it's not like that at all elsewhere in the world. It varies a lot. I myself never ask that question, unless it's for a very specific reason. And _never_ as part of an introduction. I've known people for decades without knowing what their job is, or I only have a vague idea about their job. It's not important for people here. The person itself is important. There are other things than the job which define the person. I know this sounds very strange for Americans, but, in fact, the strangeness is the other way around. I'm not sure that I can say "I am not my job" [mostly because I actually very much enjoy what I do there], but I can definitely say "you are not your job". Because I don't even know your job, nor do I much care.
  • titanomachy 7mo ago
    I have noticed the same thing, but I still think it's an interesting question. It would be strange for me to have a close friend and never have any kind of curiosity about how they spend nearly half of their waking hours. We don't live in severance-world: understanding someone's vocation feels like part of understanding them as a person. I guess if you live in a community where most people do sort of menial interchangeable jobs then it's probably different, maybe everyone has a job as an unfortunate necessity but would rather think and talk about it as little as possible.
  • tock 7mo ago
    Not surprised because most people in the world only have time to work/commute/sleep. Stuff like hobbies, sabbaticals, vacations, etc are quite rare. I've only seen the contrary when I met Europeans.
    • bigDinosaur 7mo ago
      Domestic tourism is massive even in countries with terrible work culture like China, so your claim is not particularly strong. Either way, hobbies and holidays are certainly not unique to NA and Europe.
• pjmlp 7mo ago
  Great article from a place of privilege, now go tell that to the HR drone, nowadays most likely a LLM powered assistant, that my CV matters enough for a phone call.
• waterTanuki 7mo ago
  Firefox doesn't seem to like your website. I get an insecure connection warning. Error code: SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG Works on chrome though
• zdkaster 7mo ago
  IT people go even further, some people tie themselve to the tool they use, language they program in.
  • windward 7mo ago
    Indeed. It's hard to imagine the size of the carrot needed for me to take a job with C++11.
• mentalgear 7mo ago
  Strange how yet nobody commented on the irony of having an article titled "You are not your job" starting with: > I'm Jacob - I run Sancho Studio a software consulting studio - I write about cryptography, craft, and human experience. Basically opening with who they are as defined by their job.
  • sph 7mo ago
    When in Rome... he's talking to a modern audience that are defined by, and evaluate other people by their job.
• adamcarley 7mo ago
  Work inevitably has highs and lows. Sometimes you'll fail at something. If you tie your self-worth to your job, then you risk anchoring your self-esteem to external factors you can't control. Learn to value yourself on who you are aside from your work.
• sandworm101 7mo ago
  A rather privileged perspective. Software engineer, tech in general, is a new and unique sort of job. Knowledge workers who can work out of any office, even remotely from home, is a very new thing. Throughout history, even the most educated and able had to locate themselves near the worksite. Doctors need to be near patients, lawyers the courts. Even congressmen used to live in dormitories to stay in DC. My point: You job does define you because, for the vast majority of people, one's job dictates where and how you live. It is a rarefied elite that can so easily disconnect their work from their outside lives. Tell a farmer about work-life balance when if he sleeps in, animals will suffer. Tell a cop that her doing graveyard shifts wrestling drunk people doesn't dictate the flow of her daily life. Tell a soldier that moving home ever other year doesn't impact his long-term social connections. Normal people have long been defined by their jobs, and it still holds today. Calling out such ties as unenlightened or to be avoided sticks a finger in the eye of the billions for whom their job is their life.
• keiferski 7mo ago
  Kind of bizarre how Fight Club was so influential a couple decades ago, but doesn’t seem to have much cultural impact today. This exact theme is one of the most memorable quotes from the movie. Too counter-cultural and anti-money for today’s young people, I think. Everyone’s trying to make it, not drop out of society.
  • 4gotunameagain 7mo ago
    Capitalism has done with youth cultures what capitalism does best : dissolved them into irrelevance and monetisation. A new movement ? What a great opportunity to create and sell cheap merch, turning it into a joke. When everything in life is about money and profit, we lose our humanity. Take a look at the "cultural leaders" of kids these days. It is disheartening.
    • keiferski 7mo ago
      That’s a part of it but I don’t think it’s really that external. I think people in general, themselves, are just less interested in the counter cultural ethos. It doesn’t feel to me like anti-consumerist cultural movements are being founded and then co-opted by commerce. Rather they aren’t being founded at all, and if they are, it’s just some lazy online thing with no actual real-world presence.
      • yunwal 7mo ago
        > I think people in general, themselves, are just less interested in the counter cultural ethos. Gen Z is less patriotic than any other generation, so the counter-culture of their generation is really just... culture. Everyone kind of just agrees that patriotism is a joke, politics are a joke, taking any of this seriously or contributing to it more than necessary is a joke. Gen Z protests as much as any previous generation. The fact that it's not taken seriously in traditional politics is just another signal for them to opt out. The issue is not that there's no counter-culture, it's that we've designed a system of governance that can withstand it without budging (or at least pretends like it can). Long term, the system will starve. Good luck finding anyone competent to join the military, engage passionately with their jobs, or contribute to civil service. It's not gonna happen. The american dream is now to be on the winning side of a scam. It might take some time for something else to arise from the ashes of all this, but the first step is already occurring. https://www.theupandup.us/p/genz-sinking-american-pride-patriotism-july4 https://www.theupandup.us/p/genz-sinking-american-pride-patr... https://www.yahoo.com/news/marine-officer-explains-why-gen-175926623.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/marine-officer-explains-why-gen-1...
• JuniperMesos 7mo ago
  > When Bronnie Ware interviewed people at the end of their lives, she asked them about their regrets. The clearest pattern wasn't hard to see. Nobody was lying on their deathbed wishing they'd earned more money or accomplished more. I'm reminded of the story of the great manga artist Tezuka Osamu, who, as he was dying of stomach cancer in a hospital bed at the end of his life, begged to be given a pencil to let him continue his work. Granted, not everyone is Tezuka. But many people have work they care greatly about accomplishing, even at the end of their lives.
  • Supermancho 7mo ago
    I've been on death's door at least 3 times. Sepsis, heart failure, complications from Pneumonia. Each and every time, I've wished I had made more money and accomplished more. The money for my family after me, and the accomplishments for my own ego to feel like my life contributed to part of humanity. I have had a top 10 concrete goals since I was under 10. I have completed many, but not all.
• svessi 7mo ago
  My father in law lost his job 2 years ago, completely unrelated to AI, at the age of 63. He had worked this same job since he was 18 and it was his identity. He'd almost greet people with "Hey I'm CEO, my friends and family call me X". Being fired from his own company completely destroyed him - and not because he's worried about the financial aspect, he doesn't need to worry about that at this point. I remember watching him go though this and thinking to myself "Jeeze, I'm glad my identity isn't completely tied up with what I do for work". With AI knocking on the door I'm surprised how much my identity and perceived self-worth is actually tied to being a "good" developer. But it's more of a slow burner than what my father in law got. So I at least have some time to mentally prepare for my new reality.
  • asdff 7mo ago
    Makes you wonder with some of the dinosaurs in office if a big reason why they cling on is that internal mythmaking. Presumably everyone knows they can just up and kick back by some body of water doing whatever they'd like with their time, should they ever want to step down. And yet they don't. They prefer their busy, stressful, life of importance. Me personally I'm just not wired like that. I work hard only to get to that payoff of being lazy and carefree later. I don't actually like being in this stressful state. It bewilders me frankly that some seemingly are addicted to it. Maybe they literally are, considering flight or flight response is a real measured altering of neurotransmitters.
    • svessi 7mo ago
      [dead]
• dinkumthinkum 7mo ago
  The OP says he is going to "do other things" and clicking the link reveals a bike tour across the coast of California. How quaint. These articles always seem like they are trying to dismiss some fantasy of reader or chide them to have the right perspective and basically boil down to say "Why are you so obsessed with work? Go outside, have fun. You Americans are so serious!" But all of this betrays the fact that is the writer of such articles that appears to be extremely naive. I think it is very clear that these people actually believe in this UBI fantasy world or mathematical mysticism. The "other things" that he would be more likely to be doing would be to be hunting and foraging for food and not hunting with ammunition because that is expensive and he won't have money for that. It's so delusional and sort of pompous at the same time. Just my take.
• crocodile10203 7mo ago
  > The regrets were about relationships. Not staying in touch with friends. Not expressing what they felt. Working too hard. Not living true to themselves. The people who were dying weren't grieving their lost productivity. > The people who love you don't love you because you're good at your job. They love you because of something else entirely. Maybe it's your humor. Maybe it's that you actually listen. Maybe it's that you remember things about their lives and ask about them. Maybe it's simply that you show up. You're present. This feminization of society is concerning. Sure you don't want to be corporate slave. But a man's native instinct is to achieve great things, push the boundaries, achieve fame. "Be loved for what you are" is not how it works in the real world. Well not for men at least. People on this site will sing praises of bellards and torvalds and knuths and bernsteins of the world, long after they're gone. For a man's deeds and heroism are his identity. That's probably why every ancient Indo-European society fixated on heroism, renown of one's self and progeny. We might today think of them as violent primitive pastoralists who didn't have the talk therapy like the tiktok teens from US of A. But they understood something we don't. You're not your job, surely. But you're your deeds. You're the children you raise. You're the society you create.
  • littlexsparkee 7mo ago
    > But a man's native instinct is to achieve great things, push the boundaries, achieve fame. I don't care to spend my time worrying about the manliness of the things I value or strengthening the strictures that narrow the possibilities in my life. Ends that arise out of ego, like fame, are fleeting and not worth pursuing in my book.
• keybored 7mo ago
  More therapeutic nonsense for the AI age.[1] [1] AI Inevitability Soothsaying https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362178 > Saying "I am a software engineer" is beginning to feel like saying "I am a calcultor" in 1950 now that digital machines can use electrical circuits to count, add, multiply - it's not long until they'll be able differentiate a non-continuous function... You're beginning to feel less-than-useful. > This bothers a lot of people for a reason (I think) that has nothing to do with the technology. The fear isn't really about losing a job title, it's about losing the story you tell yourself about who you are. Get Fing real. Most, most, most people in the world need a job to survive. Some technologists might have stonks and financial independence. Those with stocks or other kinds of passive (parasitic) income are the minority. I think that goes for most programmers as well. Okay so we’re going to get to how this just means you’ll need to change jobs. So let’s wait for that. > I like Susan Fiske's research on how humans judge each other shows something worth sitting with. When you meet someone, you assess them on two dimensions. The first is warmth - do you believe they mean you well? The second is competence - do you believe they're capable? This is farcical when you consider that people with enough capital can survive on just that, capital. No matter what the research says about “competence”. There are billions of dollars invested in portraying people with money as competent. But if that propaganda is ineffectual it’s not like it matters. The system is arranged such that they won’t be inconvenienced by the judgement of commoners. > Thus far we have automated away "wasteful" or "unnecessary" jobs. Perhaps the elevator operator was your friend, someone you saw everyday. I'm not certain their purpose was "useless". They're gone nonetheless. > This is the whole point of the system. [...] The point of the system is to commoditize everything and concentrate wealth. Labor is a commodity. Labor created automation. And labor will be discarded once the automation that it created displaces labor. The automation is then fully in the hands of the so-called competent. Capital. > Whether you do well through an economic transition or not has little to do with the cause (AI, digital technology, industrialization, coal), and more to do with the social and political structures which exist around you (which is a blog post for another day). That’s rich. The author already told us the fairytale version of Capitalism, the version where we are supposedly all going to benefit. But now the author pretends to shy away and tell us that it is a blog post for another day? No—you already took a stance with that statement, even with the premise of this therapeutic distraction since you assume that it is just a matter of changing jobs. Is it though? When the whole system is made for Capital? And Capital obviously owns the automation? Who managed to buy up so much RAM that it caused a global shortage? But meh, political structure and all that—trivialities for another day. We’re here to pump up Inevitability discourse with. > You are not your job. You're a person first. Your ability to connect, be present, and make people feel understood is what makes you irreplaceable to the people around you, which is the only market that counts. I’ll remember that while in the unemployment line.
• komali2 7mo ago
  > Whether you do well through an economic transition or not has little to do with the cause (AI, digital technology, industrialization, coal), and more to do with the social and political structures which exist around you (which is a blog post for another day). I keep hearing "AI will free us to do things we love," and all I can think is, in what world? Because in this one, if you don't have labor worth buying or anyone to buy it, you don't eat.
  • krapp 7mo ago
    >I keep hearing "AI will free us to do things we love," and all I can think is, in what world? You're likely to hear this sentiment from rich and privileged SV entrepreneurs and people who were handed six-figure salaries right out of school, and who have never had a realistic view of how most people live. People who only continue to work to satisfy their intellect and lifestyle. You don't hear this sentiment from normal people.
• 0dayman 7mo ago
  eh..just lining up words next to each other here
• windward 7mo ago
  I went through this reckoning when a company I worked for underwent layoffs for poor financial performance. Nothing I could have done since I started the job would have made it avoidable. I had the epiphany that I'd tied up my sense of self, and self-worth, with a status that I actually had very little control over. Not being a software developer. That's actually generally a net negative, socially. It was all about class. I've been fairly upwardly mobile. That alone gave me a feeling of success that glossed over any other inadequacies. Being comfortably financially also means - or meant - that I had the luxury of ignoring the reality of daily life for most people I met, however much I thought I hadn't lost touch. Confronting the idea of how I'd feel about my life without it, and how the people in my life would feel about me, and how I feel about people who don't have the same comfort, is an instrumental part of me developing into a better, happier person.
• IdontKnowRust 7mo ago
  > The fear isn't really about losing a job title, it's about losing the story you tell yourself about who you are. No, it's just the fear of loosing your mind because you're broken. It's just about money and survivability. There's no room for ego when you don't even know if you will have food to provide for your kids next month
• yurii_l 7mo ago
  There are no irreplaceable people. No matter how irreplaceable you are, If you get sick or die, you will be replaced in 1-2 weeks. In 2-3 months, you will be forgotten...
• SkyeCA 7mo ago
  For all intents and purposes I am my job and I'm tired of people trying to pretend like this isn't true. As a human I am worth exactly what I'm able to earn, not a cent more and I am judged by others first and foremost based on my job title. I am not inherently valuable. I wish it wasn't like this, but this is the world we've built and all I can do is cope with it as those in power work on replacing me.
  • bevelwork 7mo ago
    I think you as a person have intrinsic value, and I hope your opinion changes in the future.
  • namelessone 7mo ago
    That depends a lot on your social circles, no? I’ve met plenty of people who never cared about or knew my job title or salary, and whose job titles and salaries I never cared about or knew.
    • SkyeCA 7mo ago
      I've been in circles where I thought it didn't matter and I've had people in my life who I thought didn't care...and then they find out (because good luck hiding the thing you do for 40+ hours a week) and the relationships permanently change.
      • henry2023 7mo ago
        If life is a game, are you playing it right?
• bastidererste 7mo ago
  [dead]
• thrance 7mo ago
  I don't tie my self-worth to my job, but I still need the dough and I don't see myself doing anything else, hence why I've been so concerned as of late. I only started working four years ago, and I don't have the luxury to retire and go biking for the rest of my days. What a ridiculously bad article. I don't need Facebook-tier self-help "advice", I need reasons to feel confident in the fact that I'll be able to provide for myself in the future by doing something reasonably enjoyable.
• t43562 7mo ago
  Culture matters and going against yours is difficult. I think everyone tends to be unable to put themselves in the shoes of someone from another country - it is terribly tempting to use one's own "lense" to see everything. In America there's pressure to "be a success" and it's not easy to get away from. If you're successful it's a virtue and if you're a "loser" it's because you're lazy or something bad. Bums sleeping on the street don't deserve a place to live even in the richest country in the world because losers need to be punished and winners should not be taxed unfairly. Where I'm from in Zimbabwe, foreigners including my parents always misunderstood the importance of age - the need to show respect to older people no matter what you think of their utterances. Every 2 seconds I could see other immigrants like myself rubbing Shona people up the wrong way by not understanding where the power lay and what people were proud of. When I was in Turkey with my wife I realised it was another place where older people held a huge amount of power and the whole country operated differently from Britain - where one only has to be able to get a mortgage to be independent and tell one's parents to go to hell. In Turkey you have to kowtow to your parents and uncles and aunts because you're probably living in a flat that one of them owns until you're quite late in life. It's not that "success" doesn't matter everywhere but that there are multiple priorities and it's not a pure indication of status. Quite often it's about family or not being of "the other" tribe. As for thinking you're defined by your job, that is just part of the "pigeon-holing" process by which people try to understand you quickly and sometimes attempt to neutralise a perceived competitor socially. I don't think there's much you can do other than not buy into it yourself and not practise it yourself.
• 999900000999 7mo ago
  I don't think it'll happen, but we only need a fraction of people employed. Robo Socialism is possible, I'd rather send a robot up to clean a roof , build a house, down a pipe , etc. Robo taxis will be safer in due time. Instead as the number of viable jobs continues to shrink we'll blame each other.
• steveharing1 7mo ago
  Many people define themselves based on their job & tbh its what they learn from the Society, I remember steve jobs once said in a video i watched that Everything you see is created by someone who is just a human like you, and many people just don't wanna create their own bcs they are too comfortable being in someone else's creation , I'm not talking about Mother nature, I'm talking about tech and stuff like these jobs , which a human has created, so many people needs to come out this thinking and they can casually define themselves based on their interests and even goals.
• DailyGeo 7mo ago
  This all changes when you have a kid. Before I had a kid I was my job and it hurt me when I did have a kid by not prioritizing what was important (my kid - not my JOB). I thought I was important at my place of work but realize nobody cared and I could disappear and things would be fine without me.
• ryguz 7mo ago
  [dead]
• maerF0x0 7mo ago
  Engineers have never been calculators or specification machines. Good engineers have always been builders. Our identity is "I build stuff that works well and improves lives" ... Architects needn't be diminished by CAD. Teachers needn't be diminished by internet access / computers. Nurses/Doctors needn't be diminished by new detection techniques or medicines. No matter the era, we should carry the identity that we're not the tools we use, we're more than that.
• simopa 7mo ago
  There's something more, to me: the confusion between identity and role isn't just psychological, it's social. People ask "what do you do?" and mean "who are you?" It takes either courage or a real crisis to separate those two questions. AI is forcing that crisis at industrial scale. Maybe that's not totally a bad thing.
• Freebytes 7mo ago
  I am often asked "What do you do?" when I meet someone new. I know they are asking about my job, but I throw off the expectations by saying, "Oh, I like to play video games and watch movies primarily." This is usually followed by, "Sorry, I meant what do you do for a living?" I will then, of course, tell them what they expect to hear; however, even the question "What do you do for a living?" implies that we live to work. I play video games and watch movies for living. I work merely to survive and buy the things that allow me to live my life the way I want.
  • csjh 7mo ago
    maybe it implies some amount of "live to work" etymologically, but the word "living" in that context specifically refers to living in the financial sense (the act of living wouldn't really make sense in that sentence) you live to play video games and watch movies, but you make a living by working
• DGAP 7mo ago
  But unless you’re independently wealthy, you are your income.
• GMoromisato 7mo ago
  I'm curious whether this is a strawman argument or not. Do software engineers really believe, even subconsciously, that they are their job? Imagine that tomorrow the government decided to pay $250K per year to each software engineer for life as long as they never worked again. Would there be a lot of anxiety about losing the meaning of existence? Of course not! SEs would be celebrating in the streets. That means the anxiety about AI destroying jobs is all about economic loss, not psychological meaning.
• aanet 7mo ago
  I was prepared for another fluffy post... But this resonated with me 100% > The people who love you don't love you because you're good at your job. They love you because of something else entirely. Maybe it's your humor. Maybe it's that you actually listen. Maybe it's that you remember things about their lives and ask about them. Maybe it's simply that you show up. You're present. You don't extract a conversation and then disappear. As I get older (and, I hope, wiser), this matters more and more. Jobs come and go (and how many have gone), money comes and goes (rather too quickly), time comes and goes (progressively faster, if I might add), but what matters more than anything else is the people in your life who stick by you, and who you stick by. The nattering nabobs of negativism will disagree (and there are plenty in the comments). I dont care. I agree with the poster. @jyrio - let's do a bagel + coffee in NYC. I'll be there the last week of April
  • jryio 7mo ago
    Thanks for the great feedback. There's a link to find some time when you're passing through. Otherwise shoot me an email! Cheers.
• NoSalt 7mo ago
  > "This bothers a lot of people for a reason (I think) that has nothing to do with the technology. The fear isn't really about losing a job title, it's about losing the story you tell yourself about who you are." No, it is 100% about the fear of losing a job due to companies replacing skilled people with AI.
• oxag3n 7mo ago
  > ...the disruption happening in AI feels like existential threat. And it should be. The skill that which you exchanged for money and stability is being replaced, you are being replaced just shuffled around. Illusory Truth Effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect The narrative is being built that AI has already won, somewhat AGI, replaced jobs. It's sneaking into blogs and articles which are not even about AI, which makes it even harder to notice.
• zaps 7mo ago
  Dobel says work gives us the illusion of meaning
• pnt12 7mo ago
  > You are not your job Fully agreed. >You're beginning to feel less-than-useful. Nope, not at all. Or maybe I do feel a bit useless against the AI slop and FOMO that gets pushed around. But the field is still gonna need engineers to do the non-slop work, or to fix it when it goes wrong. (I use AI daily BTW.) As someone said: AI will take our jobs when the execs are able to state their requirements precisely. We're safe!
• joquarky 7mo ago
  This advice is not as useful if you have a high ACE score and have been severely conditioned to not trust people. The tech industry used to be a refuge for analytical people who have severe social anxiety, but now it has been completely overrun by gold rush bros.
• nuancebydefault 7mo ago
  > But warmth. Empathy. The ability to sit with someone in their confusion and make them feel understood. The ability to crack a joke at exactly the right moment and remind someone that they're not alone. The capacity to be fully present with another person, to see them not as a role they're playing but as a whole human being… that cannot be automated away and hopefully never will. To me, that describes for me a human capability that is often overlooked but is in fact at our core. All the rest is almost futile in comparison.
• cat-turner 7mo ago
  Adapt or die. It has been the law for nature. It serves now.
• thoughtpeddler 7mo ago
  I'm surprised that neither this article nor any of the comments have thus far mentioned the fact that rarely do tombstones, eulogies, and the like mention or emphasize much a person's occupation. Most of the time it's "Here lay {name}, loving {relation}, {relation}, and {relation}. May he eternally do {hobby} in the skies forever." And here's the crazy part: I'm still not convinced this is the right take! Of course we are our jobs and what we do. It literally shapes who you get to meet on the dating market, favors you can call in, and so forth. How naive it is to think otherwise. The Cracked article that another post linked to is pretty spot-on. Yes, obviously being a 'person' who can be 'with' people (cf. 'for' people) is simultaneously also a thing. Both are true. But "You are not your job" is just cope, and the tombstones and eulogies fall for it too.