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I Wasn’t Prepared to Work
- yoster 13y agoWelcome to the real world :)
- timothybone 13y agoIs academia an excuse to "hide out" for a while and continue being an autodidact? Also, the 2 hour commute, as I'm sure you suspect, is no small part of the intellectual killer.
- tel 13y agoOnly if you want to be slowly edged out. Academia actively kills off people too interested in taking classes and insufficiently interested in doing work for whatever preset research effort can pay their rent.
- wavefunction 13y agoI'm an autodidact and I found "higher ed" limiting and throttled to an artificially low rate of learning. If anything, dropping out of college was in many ways a god-send though it does make it more difficult dealing with the professional population for whom the old college experience was more "meaningful."
- aprescott 13y agoIf the start of this post put you off because it sounds arrogant, please keep reading. It is an intentional setup to highlight the core point, which I think is in this paragraph: But the environment matters a lot less than the fact that when I get home from work—which is a two hour commute each way (sorry, I can’t afford to live in downtown San Francisco)—I just feel like being mentally incapacitated. Occasionally I have a little spark of brilliance (relative, not absolute) that motivates me to write a short bit of code, but the code is never more than one or two hundred lines. It usually consists of some little trick. That is: you cannot fight your day-to-day work — long-term — by working on your own stuff, when you get home after already spending 6-7 hours working and thinking in a particular way. The author tagged it "sad" for a reason.
- jdotjdot 13y agoAgreed. What if we could have a world where work was the pursuit of intellectual growth rather than the pursuit of money? What would it be like?
- mikeash 13y agoI'll play the part of the economist and say that this world would primarily be hungry and cold.
- vijayr 13y agoIt would also be a world of half finished projects. Most people who do things just for the sheer joy of learning, challenge, art etc would lose interest in a task when the challenge is conquered.
- seanp2k2 13y ago>"What if we could have a world where work was the pursuit of intellectual growth rather than the pursuit of money? What would it be like?" Non-existent, because people are greedy and will always want more than their fellow man. Even if /you/ don't personally, most of the people around you probably do. This is the #1 reason I get depressed about this life.
- AndyKelley 13y agoI recently quit my job due to having an eerily similar feeling. I saved enough money to take a break for even a year or two if I want. It is difficult to express how much more fulfilled I feel following my own academic pursuits rather than someone else's business plan. So far my plan for the future is: 1. Enjoy as much time off as my heart desires, until I start feeling monetary pressure. 2. Suck it up and get a job that is boring and pays an inordinate amount of money. 3. Do that for 1-2 years, living frugally, fattening my savings. 4. Repeat. Better suggestions welcome.
- kmasters 13y agoThats exactly what Ive been doing. Every day isnt a party but I worry that the culture of software shops has changed in ways that I will never be happy in a software job again. And I hate pretending Im OK with stuff Im not OK with. Its gotten to the point where no matter how much I lower my expectations, they are never low enough.
- enraged_camel 13y agoI'm going about it a different way: work hard while I'm young and save (i.e. invest) as much as I can so that I can retire early. My current retirement age goal is 45.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- irremediable 13y agoThe way I see it, the advantage of your approach is that you'll get a lot more interest on your money. The disadvantage is that you might take longer than you expect, and if you take too long you might be too old to fully enjoy your retirement.
- manmal 13y agoWhat if you die at age 44? And what if there is hyper-inflation?
- mattchamb 13y agoThis post resonates with me a lot. I have often considered writing something similar called "How I became a 9-5 programmer." I got my current job straight out of university, about 2.5 years ago. Since I started working, I have noticed that I feel both more, and less capable. What I mean by this is that while I am certainly more skilled at writing software than when I started working, I feel much less optimistic and able to tackle hard problems.
- rangibaby 13y agoThis just sounds like a case of reality setting in. When people know a little about something, they often think they are at a far higher level than they really are. There is a word for this, but it's evading me ATM.
- orangethirty 13y agoThis is why I freelance remotely. I set my own hours, charge by day of work (or by week), and don't really need to commute (drove less than 200 miles in 6 months(grocery shopping)). I know I'm lucky.
- mindcrime 13y agoWell said. It is damn tough (if not impossible) to keep the same sort of intellectual stimulation going when you have to "work" at a dull, boring job (or maybe any job, other than doing pure research). I definitely miss having time just explore, play and do interesting stuff, now that I have both a $DAYJOB and a startup. However, the goal is to get the startup to a point where I can either: A. IPO or sell the company, and walk way with enough cash to be financially independent for life, giving me all time I want to do "fun" stuff. B. Get the startup to a point where it makes sense to hire somebody else to be CEO, appoint myself some nonsense title like "Chief Scientist", collect a reasonable salary, and spend all my time researching and playing with neat stuff. It makes me sad though, every time I look around my apartment and see all these math books, or philosophy books, or history books or whatever, that reflect some interest I've been wanting to explore forever, but don't have time for. :-(
- mattchamb 13y agoI know exactly how you feel about seeing the books you never have time to read... http://sdrv.ms/10HTsYs http://sdrv.ms/10HTsYs
- minikomi 13y ago積ん読 (Tsundoku) - piling books bought, but not read .. https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=積ん読&client=safari&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=積ん読&client=safari&...
- notimetorelax 13y agoIf you have difficulty reading AI book, I highly recommend taking this course: https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeley/cs188-1x/artificial-intelligence/579 https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeley/cs188-1x/artificial-i... Just read the chapters that are being covered in the course and you will have read one third of it! Second part will start early next year with further chapters covered.
- mattchamb 13y ago
- skyraider 13y agoI empathize with this a ton. Reminds me of a David Foster Wallace commencement speech in which the takeaway point was something to the effect of 'you graduates don't yet know what day in, day out really means.' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFt7EzpsZQo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFt7EzpsZQo) Come on folks, let's think up a better primary waking activity for the average person than "attach yourself to someone else's dreams, and help build their wealth, at the expense of your own intellectual freedom and sanity." It's a first world problem, but I think privileged first world people should put some effort into thinking up something better for everyone. Effort meaning an intentional foray into some creative economics. The economic world is something that can be shaped. The problems, of course, are where to start, and how to do it :-)
- unimpressive 13y ago>Come on folks, let's think up a better primary waking activity for the average person than "attach yourself to someone else's dreams, and help build their wealth, at the expense of your own intellectual freedom and sanity." Part of the reason that efforts to do this have cooled down some is that the previous attempts didn't go so well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale
- skyraider 13y agoSocialism is about attaching yourself to the community (or usually the Politburo's) 5-year dream for production. Doesn't have anything to do with individual freedom. In the 21st century, there is little valid reason to coordinate production centrally - it's inefficient and causing industries to bumble along, generally. The direction now is to automate production and have universal minimum income that can be used for competitive purchasing of goods and services. Sounds like a market economy to me.
- unimpressive 13y ago>Doesn't have anything to do with individual freedom. Generally 20th century enterprises employed millions of factory workers as machines in a giant productive machine, with the benefits going to the founders/owners/etc. Socialist movements were an attempt to capture this value for the people creating it. Which would presumably mean you didn't have to work as much. As a casual reading of history will tell you, it didn't work. >In the 21st century, you there is little valid reason to coordinate production centrally I wholly doubt that decentralized manufacturing solutions benefit from economies of scale as well as their centralized kin. (Assuming you're talking about 3D Printing/etc/all.) >Sounds like a market economy to me. I would hope so. Command economies are generally a bad idea.
- jostmey 13y agoI suspect that part of the problem is that many people working on programming projects no longer feel like they are making the world a better place. Many of the world-changing ideas have been implemented. For many people, what is left but to continually optimize what already exists?
- Peaker 13y ago> Many of the world-changing ideas have been implemented. For many people, what is left but to continually optimize what already exists? This sounds unimaginative to the point of absurdity.
- gt565k 13y agoWhy not use that 2 hour commute to learn a new language? Pop in some audio of sentences, grammar, and vocab words. I'm sure you can find plenty of audio resources for new languages online, and start learning! Everyone is so set on coding for their personal projects. Why not explore other areas like learning a new language, and expand your skills.
- SandB0x 13y agoEasier said than done - your advice sounds a bit like http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-p.... I can't imagine how exhausting four hours of commuting per day must be.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoI do three hours a day (1.5 hours each way) from a Chicago suburb to downtown, 5 days a week. It's exhausting.
- thyrsus 13y agoI've tried this. It's OK in the morning, but in the evening it lulls me to sleep -- suboptimal when driving.
- georgemcbay 13y agoThis is a big part of the reason I support the idea of a "basic income" system. I believe there are lots of people out there not wired for dealing with the politics or immediate-results stress of the VC system but who are self-directed, interested and motivated enough to work on big problems, but whose energy is destroyed by having to deal with the immense bullshit inherent in modern office-style software development to make money to pay the bills. As a society I believe we would be better off if these people were free to go live in some cheap cost of living area while just doing their thing and contributing to the commons in the form of open source or taking what they eventually create and marketing it (if it is marketable when complete) in order to generate wealth on top of their basic income. I believe the same would hold for non-software creative jobs as well. But, of course, I'm not holding my breath for this to happen.
- verbin217 13y agoI've argued this before. People usually tell me I'm living in a bubble and that the general public is too lazy for this to work.
- rhizome 13y agoIt's not aimed at the general public though, only those who would create IP, businesses, etc. but otherwise than through established economic engines (businesses and companies).
- chad_oliver 13y agoBut how do you choose who would create IP, businesses, etc? Seems like the selection process would become just as politicized as the processes which it has been set up to avoid. Not to mention, we already have this scheme (tenure) and it's slowly going out of fashion.
- rhizome 13y agoWell, I'm not versed in the minimum-income ideas GP was describing, but one way to think about it might be as an expansion of the Small-Business Administration.
- phoenix5a 13y agoMaybe you're learning now that the skills you learned and valued so much weren't really that valuable at all?
- raymondh 13y agoThe author's point is that "valuable" isn't the same as "valued by others who are willing to pay you", and that the latter can interfere with the former.
- kmasters 13y agoStaring at traffic for 4 hours a day is no way to treat oneself.
- foobarian 13y agoHe should treat a 4 hour commute as a life-threatening emergency. That is insane. Drop what you are doing and find somewhere closer to live or get a closer job.
- smtddr 13y agoNot even just "treat" it like that; it _IS_ a life-threatening emergency. I was forced into that exact situation for 1 month. Even paying $4 bridge-toll. It wasn't even a question if I was going to quit that job, the situation fell apart on its own. I just couldn't sustain it. That daily 4hr commute eclipses any other issue he has, IMHO. Whatever physical or mental energy you didn't burn up in the office is destroyed in 4hrs of traffic. Nobody should live like that.
- mratzloff 13y ago> I Wasn't Prepared for Work Some people just aren't cut out for the business world. Centuries ago they might have become monks or clergy. These days they exit academia with a master's degree or Ph.D., try unsuccessfully to fit into the business world, then retreat back to academia and eventually become associate professors or professors. It's very easy to spot these types of people in interviews. I generally pass on them because it's been my experience that in the business world they are rudderless. They are very smart, but they often don't understand why companies pass on them. On the other hand, in this case, it may just be the four-hour commute. No job is worth traveling four hours in a car each day, unless it's the only one you can find and you're supporting a family. If that's not the case, find something closer, or move. San Francisco isn't the only place that creates software.
- mattdeboard 13y agoThanks for making me feel fortunate for working where I work, doing what I'm doing, with the team I'm a part of, HN.
- govindkabra31 13y agoSome tips I learned from my commute from south bay <--> SF for two years. - Take caltrain for normal days. Drive for days with evening events. Trains are far slower in off peak hours. - Use a bike for station to home/office. Bart or VTA are shit. - Get up early, use bullet train (last one leaves Mt View ~8am) - Use a data plan on train to catch up on emails, code reviews, etc. Or type up some code that you can finish up compiling debugging when in office. I probably would prefer this commute over 30minute drive within south bay.
- vinceguidry 13y agoIs a two-hour commute really necessary? I found rooms on Craigslist for $650 a month in South SF. Personally though, I'd shoot for one of the $850/month pads I saw in downtown. As long as you're making at least $60K that should be doable. Shaving 20 mins off a daily commute is worth 200 bucks at least.
- michaelochurch 13y agoOP deserves a lot of credit for having the courage to write this. 1. Software was supposed to be trans-industrial. If you knew how to write code, you could work anywhere in the industrial economy. This meant it would have all the same benefits (stability, industry-agnosticism) of management without the negatives (subjectivity, politics). Unfortunately, that didn't last. Managers took that from us and created a culture of oblique/inappropriate specialization because it's easier to do that than to admit that they don't understand what we do. 2. Our industry has become extremely anti-intellectual. There's a sharp phase change between what your professors groom you for (out of a legacy leftist hope, never realized, that if a leadership education is delivered down into society's middle; then the scorned middle classes will revolt against the elite) and the world of Work, which hasn't evolved in most places. Adam Smith called Britain "a nation of shopkeepers". Corporate America is a nation of social climbers. It's fucking revolting. The good news is that, after a few years, you get used to it and develop the social skills necessary to survive it. 3. I don't think the future is in the Bay Area or Manhattan. Those are great places to build your career and gain some credibility/savings/experience while society figures out where the future will be. However, if you want to build the future, California's not the place for that anymore. Forty years ago, Northern CA was where people went to escape the Mad Men nonsense. Now, houses in Palo Alto-- a suburb; we're not talking San Francisco-- are more expensive than many places in Manhattan. The future's going to come out of a location that's free from the high-rent nonsense that creates a work culture of subordination. The years that made Silicon Valley cheap were those in which few feared the boss because one could make living money doing odd jobs, the cost of living being so low. That's over now. The Valley is Manhattan (again, Mad Men) minus winter and with worse architecture. 4. Through all this, you gotta play the long game. Sure, you're not going to be able to do hard experimental mathematics. You may have to let that dream go. Just keep current/sharp enough to be eligible for interesting work when it comes up. That is doable. Things are terrible right now for cognitive 1-percenters who want meaningful, interesting work (i.e. an upper middle class salary isn't enough, and it's never "stable" for top-0.x-percent intellects because of the job security risks that level of talent implies) but they won't always be like this. 5. Relatedly, if you watch the social climbers, they don't do a lot of real work. If you get even passably good at their game, you can get by with a couple hours of focused effort and that leaves 5-6 for self-directed learning. (Don't write code that you'll use later on work time-- you don't own that-- but feel free to explore and just rewrite the code from scratch at home.) Don't feel wrong about doing this; it's a crooked game and that makes criminals of everyone. Work is (for 95+ percent of people) just about advancing your career; the other shit is stuff people say to distract the naive and clueless. That idealistic shit is a luxury of the extremely privileged, and you need to pretend it as a status signal, but don't believe your own lie. Proles have to take what they can. Just be smart about it. Stealing office supplies == stupid. It's illegal and wrong and dumb and you'll get fired. Making decisions that help your career but aren't optimal for others (who don't give a shit about you either) == smart, if you don't get caught. If you steal, make sure to take intangibles. 6. If you can, start getting up at 5:00 in the morning. Get some productive hours banged out before you go to work. If you can't go to bed early, then compensate by taking mid-afternoon naps in a place where your co-workers won't find you (almost no one gets anything done during those hours anyway). Relatedly, it's worth a lot of money to kill your commute. If you can't afford to live near work, then consider a different city. 7. There are jobs that aren't like the corporate hell being describe above. They exist, but they're not common, and they're probably extremely selective in the Bay Area. When you get one, hold on to it for as long as it's good and learn as much as you can. Also, on this: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/we-should-pay-people-not-to-subordinate/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/we-should-pay...
- papaver 13y ago"I find myself abstaining from studying advanced topics in programming and computer science, and instead sticking to this comfort zone of what I know." that pretty much sums up why you may not enjoy work anymore. i've been doing the exact same thing for the last 8 years, research on google, find an example that gets me close, manipulate it to my desire to get the results im looking for. this is not a bad thing, and is also an art. i find one can get a rush through learning, it seems you get the same when you delve into certain subjects. i usually get bored with working at a company after a couple of years. mostly due to the repetition that ensues when one is comfortable with their environment. i've worked in 5 different industries using 13 different languages in the last 8 years. you always have a choice on how to solve the problem. implement it the easy way you know how, or do extra research and find a more optimal solution. i code in a manner that excites me. this usually leads to better code as well as learning new techniques in the process. i do a lot of language research and slowly work my way to the most advanced techniques a language has to offer. i learned about pythons named tuples the other day, iterator tool's groupby and chain. i use these new constructs when i can. if you make learning part of the job, it stays enjoyable longer. i also make an effort to learn other things outside of tech at home. learn to skate, play the guitar, learn a new language. don't get burned out on coding.
- jumpbug 13y agoblasted simple neural network behavior equations :P
- skyraider 13y agoWait, ya'll, let me know what you think about this idea as a way to enable more people to work on math, CS and other formalized things and get paid. More generally, this is a potential way to solve the friction between what workers are doing and what they are capable of doing. I have this notion that there should be an online community that formalizes the search for solutions to open problems. Each open problem has directions and attempts. Proof software validates attempts, and senior community members discard fruitless directions. Let's say you want to tackle a hard unsolved math problem. Import all of the research directions to date, and log the attempts. Recursively log directions and attempts, and build up a tree of research into the problem. Generous organizations and governments set up very large prizes for successful solutions, and when a solution is discovered and verified, contributors are rewarded according to merit. The person who provides the proof gets the largest prize, and the folks higher up in the tree for that problem who defined new directions get some money, too. Research will accelerate, so it's worth the money. It doesn't solve the problem of tedious work in general - it only solves it for the specific case of workers who, due to friction and the incentive structure in the economy today, are producing at less than their potential.
- strlen 13y agoI'll say this: it sounds like the author went through a great deal of stress (interviewing, moving to another state, taking a new job, taking on a huge commute, living in an unfamiliar area) and stress does make one feel like they're less intellectually capable. I found best way to deal with this is to connect with like-minded folks: look for people who do interesting things (whether at work or elsewhere) and who live or work next to you; at the least grab dinner or drinks with them occasionally, attend meetups/conferences that they attend, etc.. To your surprise, you may find that many people with what you see as enviable careers went through same challenges as you have (everyone had to face self-doubt, stress, and exhaustion at some point or another). Others talked about commute, but I'll suggest some actionable choices: commuting from Oakland/Berkeley/Emeryville is 20-25 minutes door-to-door (granted these places are no longer inexpensive, but still much better than downtown SF -- if by downtown SF you mean somewhere close to a Bart Station). If you're willing to commute for 30-60 minutes (still less than two hours), Pleasanton/Dublin (a 40-45 minute Bart ride) is an option, as is Daly City/Colma (30-40 minutes), or Sunset (40-45 minute commute by Muni Metro). Education is also a great alternatives: if your high school grades are too poor to be admitted to a university, California has a great community college system (e.g., Foothill or De Anza). While the days of "guaranteed transfer to UC Berkeley or UCLA" are over due to budget cuts, you still have a high chance of getting into a good school (including Berkeley MA CS program, even if perhaps not EECS). What you've probably realized right now is that you've got the rest of your life to work: it's one thing to drop out if your side projects becomes a wild success, it's another thing to forego college altogether in favour of work. Furthermore (and I am not defending this as necessarily just or right, it's more of "the way things are" right now) coming in as an intern can generally be a gateway into more rewarding jobs as opposed to trying to find a full time job without any experience in areas that compose the set intersection of "interesting" and "in-demand". I've known folks who went back to academia after 10 years in the industry (most in order to attend graduate school, but a few returned for undergrad) and it is really never too late.
- michaelochurch 13y agoTo your surprise, you may find that many went through same challenges as you have. That's why I post things I "should never say" under my real name. Ten years from now when I succeed in spite of it, I want people to realize that this painful shit is part of the path, rather than suffering in silence and being ashamed of their (actually very common) setbacks. We live in a phenomenally stupid world where a lot of horrendous, incapable people have power, and if there is anything good about you, you will suffer for it; but people overcome that anyway. It's not as common as it should be, but it happens. I can't stand this world where people pretend to be happier than they are in order to project status, and thus create a world of full-out dishonesty that almost no one has the courage to challenge. I'd much rather bring out the truth so we can start fixing things and solving problems. I'm young, but I won't always be; so let's get this shit over with, be completely honest with ourselves as a society, tear down whatever powers deserve it, and build something better.
- kmm 13y agoFascinating. I have the same symptoms as described by the author, but they're due to a major depression. I stay in my comfort zone, and am lacking the brilliance I had earlier, if I may be so unhumble. I can't write code anymore. I'm sad for the author, but it's interesting to recognize myself in a completely different setting.
- hypersoar 13y agoOh man, this really hit me hard. I'm halfway through an MA in mathematics and thinking about going on to a Ph.D. I've done very well at my current institution and think I'll have a decent chance of getting into a good program. But I'm not totally convinced I'll make it in the long run. I've seen some friends of mine go through the academic job search this year, and it's absolute hell. I don't imagine it'll improve when I hit the market. If I go the academic track, I might not get a job. Or worse, I get caught in postdoc limbo or am denied tenure. Then I'll essentially be where I am now, minus 5-15 years of my life (I'm studying pure mathematics. I'm not likely to pick up any directly-marketable skills in further graduate studies). Meanwhile, essentially my entire social infrastructure is moving to the Bay Area. The appeal of going up there, getting a job (establishing financial security next year instead of next decade), and being around people who I know I want to have in my life, is becoming hard to ignore. I'm frighted by my eventual prospects in the academic job market, but I already knew that was scary. But down the other path might be something at least as bad. Fuck.
- vlasev 13y agoI saw a statistic claiming there are about 5 graduate students for every professor in the American graduate schools. Unless you want to really pursue the academic path, maybe a phd is not worth it.
- grannyg00se 13y agoThe lead-up describes somebody who definitely seems destined for research work, PhD, think-tank analyst, that kind of thing. It's not surprising that a run-of-the-mill code-slinging J.O.B is a terrible fit and I feel bad about it - but it's never too late to change paths. Why not make an effort to steer out of the situation into a career that is a better fit? You smashed a multivariable calculus course in less than a week and here you are working next to people who barely scraped through a general arts degree. It's painful to even hear about.
- vlasev 13y agoThe problem is more complex than that I believe. I can say that my experience with mathematics has been very similar up until a certain point during my undergraduate years when money became really tough for me. All the stress and uncertainty ate me up and I ended up feeling a lot like his later self much earlier than at a run-of-the-mill job. There simply aren't enough spots in academia and during graduate school a big portion of people like us don't get paid enough to get by. I'd say most of us burn up before they get to the end.
- calhoun137 13y agoI just read like all of this guys blog posts, they are great!
- dschiptsov 13y agoThe ability to google and copy-paste the answer is as common as the ability to drive a car - it is absolutely nothing special and absolutely must have. And of course it isn't enough to secure a job, let alone to make something people will appreciate. And, pardon me, but having a chalkboard in one's room is a sign of narcissism.) Get a Ph.D from Princeton first.)
- nilkn 13y ago> But the environment matters a lot less than the fact that when I get home from work—which is a two hour commute each way (sorry, I can’t afford to live in downtown San Francisco)—I just feel like being mentally incapacitated. Although this seems like a minor point in the article, and to some extent it is, I think this is still fairly significant. Four hours of commuting every day is a hell of a lot. I'd eventually come to hate almost any job if I had to commute that much. I'm also quite confused on why this person didn't go to graduate school. By his own admission, he's not making enough to even live inside San Francisco (you can certainly share an apartment downtown on a modest income if you're frugal), so he's not really getting the main advantage that a career offers over graduate school: money. If he's not going to make much money doing something he dislikes, why not instead make little money doing something he loves?
- brotchie 13y agoExactly my thoughts. He comes across as the ideal candidate for further study. No doubt, if he's as capable as he makes out, he'd be able to get a PhD scholarship, and spend all day doing what he wants do to. Granted, there is still a lot of "politicking" in grad school, but you can avoid most of it. re: commuting. I spent 10 years commuting 1 hour each way (2 hour daily commute) to and from first high school, then university. The biggest quality of life improvement I've ever experienced was moving closer to wherever I had to be day-in-day-out. Every single relocation decision has been chosen explicitly to lower my commute time.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoThis is exactly why I'm in graduate school. It has its own problems, the premier of which is: you spend a lot of time meeting others' expectations before you can start even looking at "your own" research. Turns out the real world exists in grad-school too. Still better than a cubicle, for me!
- carbocation 13y ago> I have no room for a chalkboard or whiteboard, unless I wanted to cover up half of my mirrored closet. You have a mirrored closet? Problem solved. You have a fancy dry-erase board, no modifications necessary. This is a random offshoot of the actual point, but I think it's useful to know that you can use any window or mirror as a dry-erase board.
- mwfunk 13y agoI feel for the author, but it seems like (whether he realizes it or not) he's not complaining about the modern working world so much as he's just complaining about fundamental facts of life- at some point you've got to move away from home and start supporting yourself, and it may take a while to find a way to do that in a way that doesn't drive you crazy. At the end he says this: "Had I known the burden that an average (or above average) job would put forth, I might have re-evaluated my decision to rush off to stuff my bank account." The phrasing, "to stuff my bank account" makes it sound like he feels like he made some Faustian bargain to give up his soul for the filthy lucre. But that's not why he rushed off. He rushed off because of this: "I was approaching my 20s and I had to get a job. Living at home off of my parents was not sustainable, and wasn’t conducive to a better future." Is he saying, he wished he never left home, and continued living off of his parents? Because I hope he realizes that that's not an option, or at least not one that's going to be good for him or anyone else in the long term. Or, is he saying that he had achieved some reasonable way of supporting himself back at home, but he kept moving around and chasing higher-paying jobs, until some financial version of the Peter Principle kicked in and he attained some high-paying position that he hated? It doesn't sound like it, since he still complains about not being able to afford a decent place near work and spending 4 hours commuting every day. I'm not sure he's saying anything other than verbalizing why he feels unhappy right now, and for that I feel bad for him. This is the thing though- he's clearly approaching a fork in the road where he's going to have to make some tough decisions in order to get back to a reasonable level of happiness. The fork is whether he blames the world for his problems, or uses it as an opportunity to grow and find new ways to be happy and satisfied. If he blames the world for his problems, then presumably he quits his job, moves back in with his parents, and goes back to being addicted to his inner world all day long for as long as that lasts. He doesn't change, nothing changes, he just figures out some way to prolong his adolescence for a while longer. The much better alternative is to just realize that a life well-lived continually pushes you outside your comfort zone, and the best skill you can acquire is to figure out how to roll with the punches and figure out new ways to be happy when the old ones aren't practical anymore. People in your life come and go, jobs come and go, where you live will change all the time, and your amount of free time and what you can do with it will change continuously over the years. More than anything else, YOU will change, the things you need will change, and the things that make you happy will change. You'll miss the people and things and places that are gone, but all of the pressure is on you to adapt and find new ways to be happy. It completely and totally sucks balls, but everybody has to go through it and it hits some people a lot harder than others. There's things you can change and things you can't change. You can't change having to support yourself, or being responsible for your own health and happiness. But you can change just about everything else. Is a 4 hour commute making you miserable? Get a new job that's much closer to home. Or move closer to work. If you can't stand the commute, then one of those two things has to change, period. Also, it sounds like his passion for the more abstract, academic side of things would make him a perfect fit for grad school or a PhD. Maybe your parents have to help you with that for a while, or you can get a scholarship and/or student loans. Every problem you can verbalize like this is just a question that you need to come up with an answer for. Actually, based on what he wrote, it kind of blows my mind that he didn't want to at least stick around for an MS. Finally, he does sound like he may have some depression issues, and he should at least meet with a therapist or psychiatrist a few times to talk this stuff out. Nothing wrong with that, it happens to people all the time. Good luck, you won't need it though.
- Morcane 13y agoThis entire article reeks of first-world problems, and in general, the problem with Millenials. You complain too much. You write an article outlining how fantastic you are, with fancy formulas, yet whine on about work not being challenging enough and how it's not fair. Boo-fucking-hoo. You're obviously smart enough to figure out what to do. Young people over here in Europe are forced to move all over Europe to fight for jobs. At least you have a decent job, and you don't have complete culture shock every time you move.
- test001only 13y agoAn amazing article which resonates well with what is happening to me. I find myself just copy pasting lot of code from stackoverflow(website), leaning to google for every answer and not able to come up with good solution for even moderate tough problems. Earlier I used to be able to convey my thoughts well in writing at least - now even that has degenerated I think. Thinking about something deeply is now a chore for me. I get distracted, irritated very easily and this increases mental tension...this is a vicious circle. I stopped TV for the fear of it dumbing me down. Now I am abusing stackoverflow, google and getting into the same situation. Fear of job security and having to learn just enough to get the job done is not helping either.
- scotty79 13y agoFind a job you can do remotely, therefore no commute. Move to another country. You'll be rich there so you'll have nice place to live in. At some point you might want to ditch US citizenship to make IRS stop draining your income. Accumulate enough money to retire for few years than do it. During this few years have fun with your own stuff. You'll create some passive income inevitably, just don't sweat about it. It might be even enough to live in his country without ever taking a job again. find a wife, have an awesome kid. Die happily. If you are white I suggest moving to Poland. Locals won't be able to tell whether you are foreigner unless you speak. And in Poland we don't speak much with the other people, apart from friends.
- genofon 13y agoI think the point is another: it seems that only if you do maths you are smart. And whey all the formulas at the beginning, to make sure the reader think you are smart? You might have lost some abilities in that field but you gained others, to me more valuable than doing demonstrations. If you like math do something with that, to me it seems that academia is more suitable for what you want from your life.
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- grey-area 13y agoNot all jobs require producing a solution in a short time to a trivial problem, some jobs involve a lot of abstract thought (academia, some software companies) which the OP seems to enjoy, though very few combine high salary, thinking freely on topics which interest you, no workplace politics, and convenient location, however if you are not in a job and environment which satisfies you, you clearly have the abilities and resources to change that situation. To the OP I'd say: Ditch the commute - either move closer to work or find other work - I don't know how you can stand a 4 hour commute, that alone would knock me out. Long term, ditch the job - it's clearly not a good fit for you, there are plenty of jobs out there suited to your particular interests. They won't all be well paid but they won't require a 2 hour commute and work you find tedious either. Accept compromise on some areas (i.e. lower pay or living with others) in order to gain on others (short commute). Don't succumb to bitterness or blame others for your predicament, it doesn't help.
- jsejwal 13y agoFrom the article - "shortest distance between a point and a line". Distance between a point and a line is the length of the line segment that joins the point and the line, and is perpendicular to it. It's nonsense to speak of "shortest distance". It tends to imply that there are many distances between...one of them is shortest.
- nick_urban 13y agoAmong the HN crowd, and especially those who dislike working for others, I'm surprised there isn't more of a focus on early retirement. If you make an upper-middle class salary, it's not difficult to become financially independent in a decade, even if you don't "strike it big". Here's a great article by a programmer-turned-blogger about how savings rate affects time-to-retirement: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...
- calinet6 13y agoJust a bit of a shock at the end here -- "my decision to rush off to stuff my bank account." Not everyone gets to decide and not everyone stuffs their bank account. Far from it. It seems that the OP is very self-aware and aware of his own benefits, but the luxury for work to be a decision is one you should never take for granted.
- roguecoder 13y agoProductivity is antithetical to intellectual exploration. Software is a craft pursuit, essentially blue-collar work. The OP does not wish to be a craftsman. He wishes to be an intellectual, an explorer, an inventor, all of which are pursuits of luxury, enabled by the efforts of those people who actually make things and do the labor of the world. I find it unfortunate that in stating his preferences he finds the need to dismiss the value and joy of crafting. It used to be that those luxury pursuits were the realm of the upperclass or the genius, though more recently they were subsidized by the labor union-enabled middle class support of public universities. Such accessibility, though, is a historical anomaly and has fallen apart with the fall in funding for higher education. I enjoy making things, even out of parts, because those choices are valuable. The application of design patterns is joyful, even if it involves creating nothing from whole cloth, because of the rapid creation of a product in which I take pride. I recommend to the OP that if he genuinely does not enjoy what he is doing, he seek out some other field, part time work or simply long-term employment where his employer will appreciate algorithmic innovations (I find computer vision to be an excellent field for this).
- e3pi 13y agoRE: "When I was 16 or 17, I was exploring the relation x ....After all of that, I came up with, through experimental ways, methods for approximating x to1/x using rational functions, very reminiscent of Padé approximations." At 16 or 17 your brain filled with a hot-rush golden glowing light as you knew you moved the whole ball of wax. You want that. We also. Therefore please: Show HN: (Padé) Rational Approximations of y = x to 1/x?
- Tycho 13y agoI found this blog entry interesting not so much for the point being made, but as an insight into the intellectual pursuits of an extremely intelligent teenager. At that age, I was mostly playing Goldeneye 007.