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The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)

• websitescenes 13y ago
  Sounds like this author has some angst against those that are willing to go above and beyond in pursuit of a goal or accomplishment. This generation has been forced to be very entrepreneurial because of a lack of jobs. We learn fast, test our assumptions and make adjustments. This is a big contrast to the way AlexeyBrin thinks the world works. From his cushy and comfortable desk job, he thinks the same avenues available to him are available to everyone now. Not true. We have to be smarter, faster and willing to work for less. It's hard for the generation of plenty to realize how the world has changed around them. I suggest you stop hating and catch up.
  • leephillips 13y ago
    It doesn't seem as if AlexeyBrin is the author of the article, just the submitter.
    • websitescenes 13y ago
      Seems you are correct. I had assumed.
    • sliverstorm 13y ago
      I like how you have to point that out. Has it become so strange for an article to be posted by someone other than the author?
  • Artistry121 13y ago
    This hasn't been my experience. For me and my classmates graduating college all have jobs in traditional companies much like my parents and (some) of their parents had. In fact many of us are going to make more inflation adjusted dollars out of college than our parents did. It may be true in certain parts of the country but mobility for young people should be high anyways. For those around me it's not whether or not we will get a job but whether or not we will be prepared to work hard and smart for 40+ hour workweeks. In Texas in any major city a college degree and some experience is highly valued and job opportunities are plentiful.
    • websitescenes 13y ago
      Not like this in El Paso at all. Degrees are practically worth nothing.
      • Artistry121 13y ago
        I guess I misspoke then. The Metroplex and Houston area at least are booming. Dallas is growing at insane rates.
• rubyn00bie 13y ago
  I am part of the generation, but actually agree with what he's saying. The article on HN he was critiquing, I also read, and felt "really, mate, you're complaining about this?" Hard work sucks, it often involves things you don't want to do, but you must push on... I don't like paying back technical debt, but I have to. It's the most boring work, unglamorous work I can do, but among the most necessary. As well, often times in start ups, in the beginning you're forced to do work outside of your "role" for better or worse. As a business matures, the need for this reduces and you're left with what you were hired for... this is part of growing a business. It can be viewed as boring, but is sort of the goal. Being over worked, and forced to do tasks outside of your description isn't something people should be fighting for...
• deleted 13y ago
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• VladRussian2 13y ago
  They are afraid of droning, not work. Fine with me as the droning pays my mortgage. edit: and it is pretty applicable to any generation - Gates or Zuckerberg (saying with all my distaste for FB or its creator) could have continue droning in Harvard and beyond, yet they declined, and as far as i know they are very far from being slackers.
• skrebbel 13y ago
  There might be a point here, but the whole "just suck it up and keep going for years and years" attitude that I'm getting from this post feels, well, misguided. If you think you can improve your life, work better, with more fun, with more meaning, with better challenges, then by all means go for it. There's no need to stay put at a place that sucks for you and that slowly boils your brain to pulp just because some old guy on HN did his time, too. Sure, there are plenty places where you're valued based on the amount of years to "put in for the business", but thank god there are also plenty places that got past that. The other side is, of course, that if you give up too soon, you'll never get anywhere. But my impression is that most programmers stick around places too long, rather than too short. They just don't blog about it as much.
  • return0 13y ago
    > If you think you can improve your life, work better, with more fun, with more meaning, with better challenges, then by all means go for it. Sure, but what if that is to the expense of others? The widening wealth gap seems to suggest so.
    • BWStearns 13y ago
      Taking advantage of an opportunity while somewhere someone doesn't have as many opportunities as yesterday does not necessarily translate to "you took their opportunity". In what sense is getting yours "at the expense of others" unless you have achieved it by deceit, fraud, or force? If you're referring to general technologically driven unemployment, then yes in a very broad sense programmers do profit at the expense of others. Should companies ease off increasing market share if a competitor is on the verge of collapse in order to save the jobs of those at whom's expense they were profiting?
      • fleitz 13y ago
        They'd be doing everyone in the other company a favor by killing it, the other company is inefficient and the population as a whole suffers for it wasting the resources it does instead of those resources being freed up to do something more productive.
• radley 13y ago
  Ironic.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• jmduke 13y ago
  Uh, the Nietzsche quote has a slightly different connotation when you give it a wider context: When seeking work for the sake of the pay, almost all men are alike at present in civilized countries. To all of them work is a means, and not itself the end; on which account they are not very select in the choice of the work, provided it yields an abundant profit. But there are rarer men who would rather die than work without enjoyment in their work: the fastidious people, difficult to satisfy, whose object is not served by an abundant profit, unless the work itself be the reward of all rewards.
  • gboudrias 13y ago
    This is priceless. And then: It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster you exited the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every morning and direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring it may be, will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly travel. That's not how life works. You can direct all your efforts to bending cutlery, but you're not going to make a good living out of it. You're just not. And some people have it easy. Sorry, life is unfair. But then I read that: Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early. The author may be a great programmer (I suspect him of being a robot), but he doesn't understand psychology. Not worth a read.
    • aaronem 13y ago
      > The author may be a great programmer Really? He reads like a motivational speaker. What's he shipped? Where's his repo?
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        I suggest you research the definition of the word "may", and consider the quoted phrase in the context of the sentence you extracted it from.
        • pessimizer 13y ago
          I suggest that you research the idiom, "he may be X, but Y." If I say "He may be tall, but he's ugly"[1] his height is not in question. Semantically, it means that one of his features may make him effective at something, but another feature (or aspect of the situation) offsets that effectiveness. [1] ...read in the voice of Redd Foxx.
• dexen 13y ago
  If I'm unhappy with work conditions -- be it bad management, burden of unmanageable technical debt, incompatible culture or the mundane problem of low pay -- I am expected to `vote with my feet'. It's market self-regulation, it's feedback for the organization and it just works. If I refrain, for any misguided reason, it only makes market suboptimal. Does OP really advocate skewing the job market for some fuzzy reasons? > (...) others are hard at work ever so humbly providing real value through their—at times—loveless toil. Hard work alone is not enough for humanity to benefit; it must also be well-focused, well-tooled and well-managed. If the clueless middle-management wastes 90% of your effort, there's more benefit to humanity when you move. Similarily, if 100h workweek and 24/7 stress wreck your family / relationship / friendships and derails your life for several years to come, there's more benefit to humanity if you move.
  • StandardFuture 13y ago
    >If the clueless middle-management wastes 90% of your effort, there's more benefit to humanity when you move Yes, thank you for this statement. I don't think many people yet realize how much more detrimental to society so much bureaucratic bullshit in everything we do(are) is over a few hackers getting fed up with that same bureaucratic bullshit and moving on. In fact, put that way it really does not seem logical to get mad at a few young programmers choices to change course. Maybe it's societies framework you should be getting mad at.
• vichu 13y ago
  Previous discussion on this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6199446
• menssen 13y ago
  Hard work. Boring work. Unfulfilling work. There is no relationship between these three things, but the author keeps saying "hard, boring work." I don't feel particularly bad about insisting that hard work doesn't have to be boring, and that boring, easy work is not hard. "The HN Generation doesn't want to put in their time doing boring, unfulfilling work" doesn't sound nearly as damning as "The HN Generation doesn't want to put in their time doing hard work." Anecdotally, programmers tend to work pretty damn hard.
• craigyk 13y ago
  I am one of the people this article talks about, and I agree heartily. Fortunately I've long since identified this personal issue and have been working to improve myself. In all those years I spent watching peers working hard and struggling with things I did not, I had a nagging suspicion there were hidden benefits to their struggle. Now I know. Today they are better at getting shit done. They can grind through the menial day to day minutiae real world projects are burdened with whereas I tend to obsess over the pockets that are "interesting". Working on it though...
• tptacek 13y ago
  The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski? Not a helpful post.
  • jbigelow76 13y ago
    Strong men also cry...
• md224 13y ago
  > nothing of any worth is obtained by any means except for good old honest hard work This sounds nice as a slogan on a motivational poster, but is it actually true? On the one hand, I sort of understand what he's trying to say: many things in life require significant effort. But the phrase "nothing of any worth" is a little extreme... worth is pretty subjective, after all.
• RyanZAG 13y ago
  I feel sorry for the author of this post - he actually believes hard, boring work is the only way to accomplish anything. I've done both hard, boring work, and easy, efficient and enjoyable work. The easy work was both more enjoyable, more profitable and far better for my life as a whole. Life is not fair, there are no points awarded for working harder or being more diligent - there are only 'points' awarded for accomplishing things. Make sure you accomplish the right things in the right way. Nobody is interesting that you slaved away coding for 6 months to develop something when someone launches something with 6 hours of work that solves the right problem.
  • StandardFuture 13y ago
    >...there are only 'points' awarded for accomplishing things.Make sure you accomplish the right things in the right way. Exactly, and I find a complete bias towards hard work for the sake of "feeling good" about your hard work is actually ... lazy. Feeling good about tediously slaving away at manually inserting data into a database rather than coding a handler to automate that is actually working hard to avoid doing things the way they SHOULD be done. An older generation getting mad at a younger generation for wanting fulfilling and meaningful work is exactly this laziness. It's code for: "look I know we should have made things be this way but we can't do anything about it so you(plural) just do this boring stuff that we want you to do right now b/c we are too lazy to find a better way to work meaningfully... " My two cents: don't work hard. Work Smart. And then work hard AT working smart. ;)
    • rprospero 13y ago
      I largely agree with you and am usually the first to start automating things. However, I'll also say that sometimes doing it the boring, hard way really is the smart way to handle it. I've seen the pressure to work smarter used to spend weeks automating a system that could be performed by hand in hours. Using an hour to write a program that saves a month of work is smart. Using a month to write a program that saves a night of tedious manual labor is lazy.
      • crucini 13y ago
• dclusin 13y ago
  I agree with what the author is saying, however, I think that the overall message of sticking with something, and not leaving when you encounter the first sign of monotony is applicable to software engineering more specifically than the author describes. I will provide an anecdote from my career to illustrate what I mean. I have been working at the same company for almost 4 years. During those 4 years I have worked on the same project and haven't really switched teams. I've seen employees come and go, architecture decisions made and debated ad nauseam, and so forth. I am currently in the processing of re-implementing some functionality and architecture decisions that I made when I first started (~4 years ago). When I made these implementation decisions I thought they were the best approach based on my experience at the time. However, having stuck around all these years and seen the product and business evolve, these decisions have turned out to be either poor choices or not the most optimal. As a consequence I've derived a lot of experience and wisdom from revisiting these past decisions, as I am now able to go back with production data and performance characteristics and see how they work or do not work. This software that I wrote way back when functioned in production and worked flawlessly without ceremony for approximately 3.5 years. Only recently and under a changing production environment has this code started to become a pain point. Had I been part of the new every two crowd I would have never been able to see how my designs and solutions would hold up, or fall down, over the years of their life span. Furthermore, I never would have gained the wisdom and experience that comes from implementing something and having to come back and re-visit it years later. This is really the takeaway message I understand from the author. Basically, when you only do what strikes your fancy and change your priorities with the weather, you lose out on the sort of experience and opportunity for growth that I have had in the past few weeks.
  • smellf 13y ago
    Agreed. The guy is railing against the emerging twitterati culture of folks who bounce from one gig to the next, blurting about the trendiest new Javascript library and spewing garbage code that someone else then gets to maintain.
    • Iftheshoefits 13y ago
      I don't know. I've had a "new every two" experience over the last decade, and I still use "old" languages (C, C++, Fortran, even some Ada). I'm in my mid-30s, and my view is that the kind of person you're talking about isn't restricted to any "emerging twitterati" culture. "Fad followers" exist in every age demographic. Also, my "new every two" experiences give me a lot more breadth of experience than some poor "lifer's" years slogging away maintaining his project. It also gives me more depth in each area--because I haven't been fossilizing over the same code, in the same language, for the same project, day in and day out. As an edit, I'll add: the (relative) ease with which (some) of the "youth" in our profession are able to switch things up so regularly ought to be viewed as a virtue. I can't stand the culture of sharing all the intimate personal details of their lives on the internet, but this is one thing which in my view they do right.
• tenpoundhammer 13y ago
  I think the definition of value is important, and I believe there is a large disconnect between generations and even individuals on this. Many in the younger generations value experience far more highly than tangible assets and career trajectory. That is why they are so fickle and likely to move from one thing to the next. While older generations say 34 years older, are interested in career trajectories, legacy building, and building a family home/unit. The method in which you choose to carry out your professional duties is much more closely tied to the type value you wish to create, than some vacant concept of lazyness or not understanding hard-work. I think a more pertinent argument is whether the younger generation is mistaken in their goal to gain experiences as opposed to building longterm tangible capital and careers.
• mscarborough 13y ago
  Yeah, at the start of the article I was already in disagreement after the equating of "grinding it out", "boring work", and "working hard". Sounds a little too self-justifying. I'm in my 30s but quit the startup and bigcorp stuff to work less and be happier. I put in plenty of time busting ass for people way over my pay grade for 8 years. Honestly, a lot of the higher-ups in technology really don't care about those extra hours you put in, because often it's basically free to them. Now I can work in a billable hours business and do pretty well with respect all around. I enjoy it, can explore new technologies, without being a full time drone. Sorry to the author, but I don't think that makes me someone who needs to be talked down to. He doesn't seem to understand the concept that you can love what you do for a paycheck but placing more importance in other things is not a personality defect.
  • scott_s 13y ago
    Hey, Mike. Whatcha up to these days? (Also: guess who I'm visiting at the moment.)
• Havoc 13y ago
  I'm rarely massively critical of HN posters, because on the whole they seem pretty solid. So when in doubt I ere on the side of caution & assume I'm missing something instead of them missing something. On this particular article I can't help myself though - the author seems utterly oblivious to the real world. >The big problem is that “kids today” don’t understand the value of hard, boring work. Hard work & kids...yeah...remember the news article 3 weeks ago about an intern in London dying from working 3 days straight. An intern for fck sake...not even an employee. Dead. Now tell me again that kids today don't know about hard work. I dare you.
• tetatet 13y ago
  It does matter what passion you pursue. The right passion will drive you to get better. The passion for just getting along with people who don't give a toss will leave you utterly dissatisfied, physically tense, and miserable. It takes some experience in experiencing how poorly dispassionate and, inevitably, disappointed, people can be to be sunk in this. You may want to read this - http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/. If you have more time, read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.
  • zokier 13y ago
    > If you have more time, read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I read them couple of times when I was a teenager, but I can't make the connection here.
    • tetatet 13y ago
      tBlind, religious following. Your daemon dying... You being disconnected from your daemon. Yes, tenuous, but existing... OP is a man without a daemon. Tenuous, but existing. Read it again...
  • aaren 13y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean with the Pullman. Could you elaborate on this? It seemed like you were relating His Dark Materials to the content of the strikemag article, but are you just suggesting that we should read a good book?
• adventured 13y ago
  If this were a post worthy of the front page of Hacker News, it wouldn't read like this: "Unfortunately this kind of thinking and mentality seems to accurately embody much of the general ignorance and blatant stupidity of the next generation of software developers." It's trash if it has to make its point by going to such great and obvious lengths to insult the topic audience, rather than just explaining why without relying on said insult as an introduction.
• zokier 13y ago
  > The myth of burn out > Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early I wonder what this guy thinks about the "myth of depression". Is it just rationalization for laziness?
• deleted 13y ago
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• deleted 13y ago
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• princess3000 13y ago
  Does writing yet another article about those darn kids these days count as hard, boring work or easy, enjoyable work?
  • mscarborough 13y ago
    It's hard work to determine the answer. The author seems to think it's an obvious life lesson. So it's easy for him to understand, and probably enjoyable to write. Maybe boring to keep clicking on the 'bold html' button? I'm so confused!
• yeahbutbut 13y ago
  "There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself." --Alan Turing
• ianstallings 13y ago
  I'm not really one to talk about "kids these days" given that my longest job at one place was a little over 3 years. It's part of my personality. I get bored, what can I say. I'm looking for completion of my soul. It's out here I know it.. I saw it at the Porsche dealership I think.
• badman_ting 13y ago
  Terrible, terrible.
• Smudge 13y ago
  Somehow this article manages to be both wise and presumptuous. The points he makes speak from experience. It's a perspective that is too often ignored by younger generations: You can't always quit a job when the work gets boring -- sometimes you just have to push through the tedium if you want to be the best at what you do. This is a widely applicable bit of advice. But the way this message is presented -- to chastise loren, the 20-something who quit AirBnB because he "got bored" -- is just plain arrogant. In his post, loren went on to describe an environment where he was slowly pushed-out of the decision-making process. Where he went from being a passionately engaged team member to being a comfortably-paid code monkey. This was not just about getting bored -- his role in the company was changing, and his attempts to reverse the changes had little effect. Sure, he could suck it up and adapt to the new role, becoming the best code monkey he could be. But maybe that didn't line up with his personal goals. Maybe loren quit because he wasn't being fulfilled. Seems like a pretty smart reason to leave, if you ask me. Lastly: > "Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early." No, no it's not. This is a very dangerous line of thinking. If burn out to you means getting tired of mind-numbing tedium, you haven't experienced burn out. Actual burn out can be a very valid reason to "give up", or at the very least take an extended vacation. You can't just push through the physical symptoms of extreme stress and exhaustion, at least not without causing even more harm.
  • jsonmez 13y ago
    My point is only that if you quit a thing, don't do it without something else lined up, it is just foolish. Doesn't matter if it is your own business or another job, but you don't just say, "I don't like this, so I'm not going to do it anymore."
    • calinet6 13y ago
      Maybe not for you; in general that's a silly detail to argue about. You can always change your situation. This is one of the most valuable pieces of advice I've ever received. How you do it is an implementation detail, but the most important thing is knowing you can.
    • Smudge 13y ago
• scotch_drinker 13y ago
  That guy put a lot of hard, boring work into bolding random pieces of text and interspersing tangentially related pictures throughout his article. It's ironic that he disparages the "sly and witty comments" on Hacker News while going out of his way to doll up a fluff piece about fluff comments on HN.
• frozenport 13y ago
  Rertrand Russell acknowledged that only a fraction of people need to do real work. As we move towards a more efficient society we will see this manifested, in that the only people working will be doing it `for the fun of it`. I'd take a burnt out hacker over the business major whose only interest is playing xbox any day. I think we forget how lazy 90% of our generation really is.
• vectorpush 13y ago
  What we haven’t told them is that nothing of any worth is obtained by any means except for good old honest hard work. This is just false. Dishonest corner-cutters do pretty well on average. I bet the author believes "crime never pays" as well. Get real.
• lelandbatey 13y ago
  The author really hasn't said what's actually wrong. He's hating against something he's not even done us the courtesy of defining (in any kind of a substantive way). Once again, we've got a classic "kids these days are so lazy" post without any real content. "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Socrates
  • 001sky 13y ago
    This is an apochryphal quote. Just FYI.
• smoyer 13y ago
  I going to float an idea out there that might not be too popular ... I think companies caused the workforce to adopt this attitude, and I think the healthy spot is in the middle. We tend to oscillate around the optimums right? Companies used to offer a good worker life-time employment and a pension, and they supported the idea of a reasonable workload as it would lead to longevity in their workforce. The combination of excess workers and the menialization of many jobs prompted the companies to minimize their commitment to the worker, both in salary and relationship. Once the relationship was gone and it was obvious to the worker that they were valued for their effort on the hamster-wheel, is it any wonder so many of them were lacksidasical about how fast they spun that wheel? And when work because rote, is it any wonder that creative types that were in those positions were disenchanted? The other interesting thing I've noticed is that you end up having both types of people in any given environment ... some of the people work hard because they don't want to get yelled at, want a step up the ladder, etc, but when you watch closely, you'll often see that the "lazier" employees (the ones the hard workers keep expecting to get laid off) actually garner about the same rewards for dramatically less effort. Of course, these are my observations and your mileage may vary ... I've spent the majority of my working life doing work I enjoy, but I no longer identify my worth by what I accomplish on-the-job.
• BjoernKW 13y ago
  "The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris." - Larry Wall, not exactly a member of 'The Hacker News Generation' ...
• jbail 13y ago
  I grow weary of people telling other people that they don't know what hard work is...especially as it contributes to the constant putting down of my generation. If you want to make a condescending, sweeping generalization about an entire generation of people, I have some advice: Don't. As an aside...I watched the author's "Why You Need People Skills" video on his website. At 3 minutes in he talks about how rubbing people the wrong way won't get you good results. He has another video titled, "The Power of Positivity"...which I'm guessing would be the opposite of the disparaging post he just wrote? I don't know what my point is other than you really look like a jerk when you try to act like you're positive and good with people..and then act the complete opposite.
  • aylons 13y ago
    I was once freelancing reporting in a convention about "Y Generation"[1] and the best presentation I attended as themed on how much bullshit is said about this generation. The grand finale of this presentation was a quote just like this, saying something in the lines of "this generation is lazy, and arrogant, and think life is easy". Everything people say about Millenials, except this was taken from a 60's newspaper, focused on the baby-boomers. Moreover, it clearly was a reinforcing piece, not a proposing one, and there were other smaller excerpts to confirm this was the standard thinking at the time. [1] Funny thing, I take "Generation Y" as the way people who doesn't really care about generational studies talk about Millenials. I can't stop thinking they heard "Generation X", called this way at their time because they were unknown, and extrapolated the meaning without further thinking. EDIT: too many "about"s.
    • tesseractive 13y ago
      > Funny thing, I take "Generation Y" as the way people who doesn't really care about generational studies talk about Millenials. I can't stop thinking they heard about the "Generation X", called this way at their time because they were unknown, and extrapolated the meaning without further thinking. Indeed. Before the term "Generation X" stuck, lazy commentators who wanted to make sweeping generational statements often referred to "Baby Busters."
• ruethewhirled 13y ago
  I find this article a terrible sweeping generalization and opinionated based on the authors perception of success and what it takes to be successful.How about working smarter and not harder
• xradionut 13y ago
  I disagree with the OP. It's never been widely claimed that "Work should be fun." There's a reason work is called work. :) And there's a lot of "hard, boring work". In my lifetime, I've worked on the farm, in fast food, in factories, in the military, in wafer fabs, at desks, in school and at work benches in all sorts of crazy roles enduring all sorts of physical and mental strains. Creating the same damn CRUD application over and over for years is just as dull as chopping weeds in a oats field. It pays more, but at a certain point a creative mind wants difference, a challenge, something to accomplish.
• wnevets 13y ago
  get off my lawn!
• weames 13y ago
  Thank you for being candid, and really trying to make a difference by posting and writing something meaningful.
• deleted 13y ago
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• tomjen3 13y ago
  Why is this article HN worthy? It is just some person who still hasn't realized that it doesn't matter how hard you work, if what you work at isn't worth working at.
• brianmcconnell 13y ago
  I agree 100% with the author about the spoiled brat mentality of this generation of developers. I personally prefer to hire older developers because a) they tend to be steady producers, and b) they have the maturity to understand that sometimes work sucks and c) provided managers don't treat them like shit, they tend to stick around. The flip side of the deal is I am not going to work them to death or make unreasonable demands unless we're in a do or die situation. Guess what kids. Work can be boring. If you're writing reporting software for a utility grid monitoring company, it's probably not your "passion", but it'll pay for your mortgage, your kids school, and time off.
  • nostrademons 13y ago
    It's perfectly fine for you to hire older developers, particularly if you're writing reporting software for a utility grid monitoring company. A younger developer probably isn't going to want to do that job anyway. The reason we have a market economy in the first place is so that people can find the work the matches their interests and abilities best, and then get paid well for doing it to the best of their abilities.
    • swah 13y ago
      Why a younger developer wouldn't want to write reporting software for a grid monitoring company? Sounds more interesting than webapps.
      • nostrademons 13y ago
        I don't think there's anything stopping them if they really do. The grandparent poster is talking about people who think they "above" the work. Someone who really wants to do the work isn't going to act like they're above it, and is probably going to do just fine at it. That's the system working as intended.
  • aragot 13y ago
    > b) they have the maturity to understand that sometimes work sucks and c) provided managers don't treat them like shit, they tend to stick around. Flip it around: What happens when you pay non-seniors at a non-senior rate? They go get a better paid job. How surprising.
• Arjuna 13y ago
  Phrases like, "The myth of burn out" and "Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early" give me great pause. Burn out is real. It is dangerous, and even an overwhelming, driving passion for your work, your creation, can lead to disaster. Ed Catmull recounted this story about the production of Toy Story 2 [1]: "So we came back, John [Lasseter] told the story crew to take a good rest over the holidays, and come back on January 2nd... we were re-boarding the movie. We had 8 months left. We then started this incredibly intense effort to get this movie out. It was boarded quickly, it was pitched to the company, it was an electrifying pitch. We had a lot of over-achieving people working for over-achieving managers to get the movie out. We worked brutal hours with this. When I say "brutal", we had a number of people that were injured with RSI [2], one of them permanently left the field. We had, actually, a married couple that worked there. This was in June, so it's summer, and the father was supposed to drop the baby off at daycare, but forgot; don't know why... but came and left the baby in the car, and came into work. Again, as the heat was rising, the mother asked... they realized and they rushed out: the baby was unconscious. The right thing was done, they put ice-water on the baby. The baby ended up being fine in the end, but it was one of those traumatic things, like, 'Why did this happen, are they working too hard?' So when I say it was intense, it really was intense." [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc&t=1064 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc&t=1064 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury
  • munificent 13y ago
    > This was in June, so it's summer, and the father was supposed to drop the baby off at daycare, but forgot; don't know why... but came and left the baby in the car, and came into work. Several years ago, I almost did the same thing with my infant daughter. Put her car seat in the back seat. Got in. Started driving. On auto-pilot started heading towards the office. It was only when she happened to make a sound (she often slept on the way to daycare) that I remembered she was still in the truck. A combination of factors led to this: 1. I wasn't getting anywhere near enough sleep at night with feedings every few hours. 2. Carseats can't go in the front seat anymore. Good for safety, but bad for remembering a kid is in the car since they're out of sight. 3. Did I mention I wasn't getting enough sleep?
• j2d3 13y ago
  Arbeit macht frei
• j2d3 13y ago
  This article is a just a huge HN troll.
• kemofo 13y ago
  I'm just finishing up a web based ordering and accounting system. Me and one other guy wrote it. It runs a $100,000,000 company, it keeps all the orders and books, day in and day out. It took two years of my life to write, I slept fitfully for most of that time. I doubted myself and my team mate (but he stuck through it and my doubt made me ashamed). Now that the system is up and running I'm extremely proud. But I know that 90% of the programmers I'll meet for the rest of my life won't even believe I did this. Very few people I've met can conceptualize the work effort required to complete a feat like this. This idea is lost on my generation of peers, it's gone and it's not coming back. The "me" generation is fundamentally lacking in this way. I mourn this a little every day b/c I can't relate my achievements to them, they just don't understand. They think I'm the one who needs to change...
• emiljbs 13y ago
  >Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early. No. Fuck that noise. Has the author ever seen someone who's burnt out? It is not a pretty sight, it is though the person is but an empty shell of what he once was (I know this sounds incredibly corny, but it really is the shortest way in which I can describe "being burnt out").
• dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  I have to say, I agree with real moderate amount of this. There is sort of an echo chamber and a bit of a crazy echo chamber where people are cheered living in their cars like crazy people and think that says something about their entrepreneurial spirit. But there's another side to this post that is a bit unfair to HN and generalizes us too much and the "these kids today" language ... I don't know, it's like he has a very good point and I agree with to such a large degree but he almost goes too far with the insults. However, I do agree the initial blog post he is referencing raises so many flags for me. The first paragraph is like "I worked their two months" and then he got bored. If I was the simpleprogrammer.com author, I would probably would have written this very same blog post in reaction to the other one. It is just outlandish crazy-talk ... But then I would have tried to calm down and not quite go after all of HN with such vitriol. But I agree, the crazy he is responding to does kind of come out of an echo chamber in our community; down the whole "I'm going to make a publicity ploy by making a website dedicated to company X hiring me" stuff. I think the language could be toned down a little but I think we can all learn from this as well. Perhaps if the language had been less acidic, we wouldn't have paid attention though.
• Aloisius 13y ago
  > Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early. That kind of talk is not only monumentally ignorant, but it is downright dangerous. If anything, it shows that you haven't ever really worked hard in your entire life. Anyone who thinks burn out is some sort of myth should just go check the major universities' suicide rates among their overachieving students.
• resu 13y ago
  "I wish I worked harder" said nobody on their deathbed ever. There's a difference between working hard as a corporate slave and working hard on something you personally believe in. A big difference the author doesn't seem to understand...
• mrpoptart 13y ago
  Anyone who has lived through their 20s understands that 20-somethings are not yet adults and don't quite get how the world works. They'll be forced to live in it with responsibility soon enough. Don't shame them for trying to explore the boundaries and make mistakes along the way. Your path is not the only one.
• gurvinder 13y ago
  "It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster you exited the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every morning and direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring it may be, will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly travel." So what if they will pass ? I prefer to be left behind and do something I like. Life is not about getting ahead of others, some take joy in getting ahead of others, while some enjoy being left behind but doing their thing.
• justinhj 13y ago
  Every generation since the dawn of humanity has claimed that the one before it is lazy. And what's more what is that noise they call music these days?
• goshx 13y ago
  This is a complicated topic, in which I think there must be some kind of balance. There are the lazy ones from the perspective that they are too lazy to put their heads down and do the hard/boring work, and there are the lazy ones from the perspective that they are too lazy to get out of their comfort zone, even though the work is hard/boring.
• hawkharris 13y ago
  Whenever I read an article accusing my generation of selfishness, I can't wait to disprove it by posting comments all about me and my situation.
• trustfundbaby 13y ago
  I really wanted to like this article ... but it seems to come from a place of emotion and it shows. The arguments are unsubstantiated and as a commenter below pointed out even the quote he used from Nietzsche is out of context Its hard to read something like this ... "It is really easy to sit at your desk when you are supposed to be working and browse hacker news, injecting in your sarcastic wit and sly comments, believing them to be of value, believing that somehow that in this false self-affirming reality that you are actually creating something of value, when indeed all you are doing is destroying and marring the work of others to your own detriment" And not feel like this is a rant, but plenty of rants have a lot of hard truths in them, this one does not. I take issue with this ... "The big problem is that “kids today” don’t understand the value of hard, boring work" This idea that you should be able to go to a job that bores you to tears, or even worse, actually hate just because it pays you money and thats just what people have to do really really upsets me. I've been a developer for 10 years now, and I can categorically tell you that your work can be challenging, your work can be tough but it should never be boring. Because I find that when I had autonomy at my job, whenever my opinion was respected by decision makers, and when I was surrounded by a team that I loved, I never had any boring moments. And I think that goes for a lot of people too, because you see, it turns out that work is only really boring when you don't care. And if you don't care, you shouldn't be there. PS: The part about burn out is abysmally wrong and doesn't even warrant comment.
• ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Sometimes people conflate passion with interest, and they miss out on the notion of agenda. Basically, if you are passionate about something you can set goals based on that, and the hard and boring work that is part of getting to the goal is overcome by the passion of getting to the goal. As an interesting example, look at people who play storyline video games to the end, versus ones that stop before finishing. People who are invested (a form of passion) in how the game ends, slog through the boring parts to get there. People who aren't invested get turned off by the boring part and stop. The same thing is true with movies and books. If you care about how they are going to turn out, you sit through the 'slow' parts, if you don't care, you don't. I found the call to action at the end "Sign up for info on my super secret project that will turn you from Lazy Bum to Execution Machine!" really jarring as well. If you conflate passion and lazyness and rationalization then how can you make something effective? When people tell me they can't stick to a project they just wander off into other things. I try to figure out if there are things where that doesn't occur. You know, the kind of person who says "I've got ADHD that is why I just played this video game for 4 hours straight." And you ask the obvious question, "Were you giving it your full attention?" I don't doubt for a moment that folks will rationalize their drop in productivity as burn out sometimes, but it is dangerous to go from there to saying something like "burn out is a myth." One does not imply the other.
• neur0mancer 13y ago
  I don't think i want to work that hard.. i lived and worked in the U.S for a short time and i tasted what is to work very hard. I discoverd that i prefer to work a little less hard doing things at my own speed, even if i don't develop my "full potential".
• fleitz 13y ago
  "What we haven’t told them is that nothing of any worth is obtained by any means except for good old honest hard work." This is such crap when the real estate market was good I made more money per year watching my apartment appreciate than by working my ass off. Perhaps in some existential sense of 'worth' this is true, but in terms of making piles of cash, definitely not.
• mikekij 13y ago
  "...will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly travel." This post assumes that there is a single criterion for success that is universal to all people, and that those who move "haphazardly" between pursuits will fail to meet this criterion. The truth is that some people are maximizers who define success through things like financial achievement, and some people are satisficers for whom success is truly getting to work on things you love every day. I do agree that this generation (myself included?) is much too willing to give up on something that is getting boring / tiresome in favor of something new, when continuing on the original path would have in fact made them successful shortly. The only project I've stuck with for > 4 years in my entire life is paying off, largely because of my team's dogged pursuit of the same goal, even when things got tiresome.
• avenger123 13y ago
  John is really good at getting eyeballs to his blog. His also the author of 'The demise of Javascript'. Apparently, since he actually started using it, he thinks its not so bad now and will be around for a while. John also likes to make very broad and just downright swiping generalizations like this below: 'We’ve sort of reached the place in the C# and Java space where just about everyone is doing “cargo cult programming.” What I mean by this is that a majority of developers are writing unit tests and using IoC containers without understanding what value those practices bring or even if those practices are actually bringing any value.' I find this article along the same lines. I applaud him for his ability to generate views but I don't put too much weight in his "insights".
• uladzislau 13y ago
  If you can see beyond provocative part without getting offended you'll see that the post main point is how persistence and grit beat passion and being smart. Hardly anyone can argue with that. "It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster you exited the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every morning and direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring it may be, will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly travel."
• e13tra 13y ago
  The Nietzsche quote is not only out of (very meaningful) context, but also from a poor prewar translation, as far as I can tell. Even so, anyone even slightly familiar with Nietzsche's tone should see the irony of appropriating this in the article's reasoning.
• snorkel 13y ago
  " ... others are hard at work ever so humbly providing real value through their—at times—loveless toil." ... and those people are suckers. Honestly. If you are working long hours, jeopardizing your personal relationships, and devoting most of your mental attention to achieving someone else's success over your own -- and you are doing this because your are told it is noble to work hard, and there might even be a slightly bigger piece of cheese waiting for you at the far end of the maze -- then you are a sucker. There is no end to the maze, and the cheese is a mirage. If you enjoy your job out of passion for the art, you are paid fair, respected, and you enjoy the company of your coworkers then great, enjoy it, stick with it. Otherwise you've been hoodwinked.
• buckbova 13y ago
  Nearly everyone I've ever spoke with thinks: - they are a hard worker - they deserve more money than they are making - they are stronger and/or smarter than the majority of their peers - they are a good driver It takes quite a bit to convince someone of the opposite. Once you have someone's back against the wall with a pile of evidence that they are dumb or lazy, they will start at you with every excuse in the book, mostly I think they are trying to convince themselves. Of course I believe I am a hard worker, deserve more money, am smarter/stronger than my peers and am a good driver too. Someboday has to be.
• 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Oh please, change the record. Your generation has a money money money aesthetic (no, I don't actually think this, but if we're caricaturing each other...) a boundless greed. But I don't really care that much if I earn more than £30k a year for the rest of my life. I've got enough. Heck, I'm considering taking a couple of years off to read books and build a house. There's a limit to how greedy I can be. It's fine to work hard if it's a work of passion, something that you really want to accomplish. And there's certainly something to be said for working through downspots, we all have bad days and quitting just because of some minor irritant that may well pass will scupper your chances of greater happiness in the long run. But working hard just to get money to buy stuff you don't need, or even draw a commensurate pleasure from? Spend less and save more, don't fritter your life away suffering to make someone else's dream. I'm happy living a life that entertains me, I've sufficient money to provide security - beyond that what benefit am I going to get by doing things that bore me? You think that it's a race? That we won't get as far? I honestly have to wonder: So what? You don't get points for finishing life before the other person.
• mratzloff 13y ago
  So why exactly am I not allowed to down-vote this link bait garbage?
• 001sky 13y ago
  There is a sort of Irony in this post, which I think most people intuitively feel. That is of the leader complaining that his followers are no good at following. This is of course, a classic sign of weak leaderhsip. Not poor follower-ship.
• joyeuse6701 13y ago
  Whenever I read something like this, about the virtue of work ethic, and the vice of laziness I always think back to the phrase on those Auschwitz gates: Arbeit macht frei Working hard on something you're passionate is good. Working hard on an important far out goal is good (whether you enjoy it or not). Simply working hard in and of itself is not something I'd consider a virtue. In fact it may be a sign of stupidity.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• aragot 13y ago
  Hi John Snmez, I am one of those you talk about: I've left my job at the most awesomest start up in the world to create my company. I believe I've failed, failed to stay in those companies, failed to get value out of my employments, even if my 6-years carrer got me into world class places, even though I was the last guy in the office every day and I never look at HN at work. I admit working hard isn't even enough, one need to work hard and good. But hey, who should guide me into working "good"? I've left, because I didn't learn that where I was. Hence my question: Could you please provide the criteria to distinguish between slackness/"leaving to pursue an opportunity that you love" and the right thing to do/"leaving to spend the right time to learn more and avoid productivity pressure"?
  • jsonmez 13y ago
    Pick a direction, ride it out to see where it goes. If it doesn't work out, start again. All I am saying is don't get in the cab and pay the fair and them jump out of the window when the ride gets bumpy. Hang on a bit, ride through the bumps and get to your destination. Perhaps this takes a year or 2, but don't give up before you get there because you are bored or the work is hard.
    • aragot 13y ago
      Ok, I did stay more than a year or two in every job, and I want to be in control of my work, and I was no way near of achieving this simple goal when I left. Job done, I move on.
• kybernetyk 13y ago
  Sorry, but this post reeks a little too much of "I spent my youth in a boring shit job and so should everybody else". Where's the problem if someone decides that he doesn't want to keep working in a boring job?
• spoiler 13y ago
  This article states so many hypotheses the are unproven, and the author is making absolutely no attempts to prove them. Also, I know that I am addressing the "tone" of the article[1], but there is simply so much of that self acclaimed witty know it all attitude that he claims is dominating HN. What he fails to understand (which I believe is the core reason responsible for his post) is that life, is a very personal experience. So is work (any type of work, not just job-work). Secondly, he is having a rant (call it what you want, but this is effectively a damn rant) about people (these are all people he is talking about) he knows nothing about. I've known people (I did it myself too) who did things and lied about their motivation, because they were embarrassed, wanted support, etc. An example is my friend who lost her father at a very young age (15) and her life was upside down for a while, but she was better and everything was fine for a year or two, but it wasn't. She claimed she got "bored of physics" (which was her high school degree), but she was too embarrassed to admit that it was because it reminded her of her late dad every day, who was also a (retired) physicists. A more personal example: I was ruining my life, I was perfectly aware of what I was doing, too. I didn't care, though. I had no power, no will, no motivation to do anything about it. My life was literally out of my control. I just didn't. I was driving my mum crazy with my "care free" facade, which was to protect her from something I couldn't explain, and I simply knew she'd blame it on herself (she is an overprotective single mum, just to draw a picture): On the inside I felt worthless, I wanted to drop out of university. I considered suicide many times, I even went as far as planning one that would look like an accident (thankfully a great friend saved my life without realising it). I'd go to "classes," but I was really just sitting in a park, I felt too tired to move. The sunlight felt like it was pushing me down, the shadows felt heavy (shadows one is not even a metaphot) . I had a friend for a very long time who realised it wasn't just a phase and forced me to seek help: turns out I was depressed since early childhood. Nobody realised it because child depression symptoms are different than adolescent or adult ones. Everyone thinks depression just makes you sad. Well, it's a way bigger clusterfuck that most, unless they've been through it, can even fathom. You can't be bothered to do things you are passionate about, doing something you don't like? Hello Purgatory. Anyway, I'm a lot better now. I also know that some people do fall into the HASHTAGIDGAFYOLO category the author is describing, but I sincerely doubt that (I might be biased about the following statement) someone of our intellect can plummet to such levels of stupid. Yes, these people are running away, but he doesn't know why or what they are running away from, and it's fucking unjust to make such claims with no evidence to prove them. Someone once said to me that "lazy" is more often a symptom than the cause itself. They also used a clever analogy: "Diagnosing someone with laziness is the same as diagnosing someone with a cough." You need to look deeper before you can make assumptions. I was making up "cool" excuses rather than admitting that I am depressed. Internet gives me a thin cloak of anonymity, so I don't mind sharing my thoughts. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html P. S: Sorry if the post is a bit incoherent, but I have a bit of a temper when I see insensitive swines saying bullshit. Sorry for the previous sentence, too. And yes: I might have taken the post a bit too personally because I was hurt by some of the things that were said. Anyway, this was longer than I intended it to be.
• spoiler 13y ago
  That last sentence didn't turn out quite right... EDIT: Hollow words from people part of one of the biggest misconceptions on this planet about a stigmatised disease.
• guynamedloren 13y ago
  Hi, I'm the one who wrote the 'saddest most uninformed blog post on hacker news' [1] that inspired this post. Just want to chime in with a quick update: two months in, still 'funemployed'. Currently working harder than I ever did at my job, on so many different levels. Possibly working harder than I ever have in my life. To stay at the job I was at would have been a huge cop out. I'd basically be showing up and collecting a check without pushing myself forward, stunting my growth as a developer and as a person. [1] http://madebyloren.com/i-quit-my-job http://madebyloren.com/i-quit-my-job
• MortenK 13y ago
  It's rare I've been so ticked of at an article. First off, this guy has no conception of burn out. I work as a consultant. Just the last 12 months in my tiny part of the woods, I've seen several people break down at work and go home crying, two under-30 founders getting hospitalized for heart conditions(!) and the worst: A 40 year-old managing director falling dead from a simple flu infection. Family said the doctors explanation was a severely compromised immune system, most likely due to overwork. This is not isolated cases, I'd bet most people with just a modicum of perception and commercial experience, will have seen this time and time again. This guy says that when he wastes 2-3 hours on surfing the net, he feels more burnt out. And it's really just a mental attitude. Your little ups and downs during the working day/week, has nothing what so ever to do with stress and burn out. If it weren't for his extremely condescending tone and know-it-all attitude, I'd have given him a pass as some young, social media wannabe. But to go out and exclaim "just power through, it's all in your head" is not just uninformed or stupid advice. It's downright dangerous, and it has to be addressed. I hope anybody, especially young, reading this piece of garbage, thinks twice before they adapt the "rah rah" attitude of this strongly opinionated but completely narrow minded programmer. For his other point about the "hard workers" toiling away at the same things for years on end, always surpassing more fickle personalities in the end. Well, I think anybody who's worked at big corp will know a whole bunch of lifers, soon-to-be-retired greybeards / middle managers who, despite 40 years at the helm, still only have a third of the influence, autonomy and income of the young and driven business consultant. Yeah hard work is a requirement to go somewhere. But unless you just want to climb a ladder that others have put in front of you, don't let anybody call you a lazy, entitled brat for not buckling down for 5-10 years at a time.
• dallasrpi 13y ago
  I had a project manager we were interviewing decline a 2nd interview because he read some reviews on glassdoor that indicated he might have to work hard. Just the idea that there was a chance he might have to put in time on a night or weekend scared him off. Now granted this was the culture years ago and maybe in other groups but he didnt even bother to ask about it just took the reviews from ex bitter employees (does anyone else but bitter people leave feedback on that site?) as gospel. I guess its better he took himself out of the running. He has also been unemployed for several months.
• barbs 13y ago
  I don't really understand what he's trying to say. He says: > Your passion may at first carry you further than your peers. But, overtime you’ll find those peers of yours that were willing to put in the hard work and stick to one thing, as boring as it might have been for them, will overtake you. and > It doesn’t matter how brilliant you started out or how much faster you exited the gates than everyone else, those who consistently get up every morning and direct their energies along a single path, no matter how boring it may be, will eventually pass you on each of the many roads you haphazardly travel. What does he mean by "overtake you"? In wealth? Specialised experience? It sounds like he's just butthurt about having worked hard at things he didn't enjoy.
• elwell 13y ago
  Great read; inspiring. Alright, now let me see if my hn karma changed while I was reading.
• wglb 13y ago
  Wow: saddest most uninformed blog post on hacker news yesterday. Personal story is "uninformed"? Sounds a little totalitarian. I think this blog post is uninformed and quite out of line.
• dredwerker 13y ago
  For a different view on working hard, take a look at In Praise of Idleness By Bertrand Russell " I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached." http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
• PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  TL;DR: In the society we live in, you are expected to spend a good chunk of your waking hours wading in shit. We have gotten together and decided that wading in shit is virtuous and builds character, and if you don't like wading through shit and try to avoid it or do less of it, you are objectively a bad person. Wanting to spend more time with your family and friends or pursuing hobbies and interests (other than wading in shit) is a sign of laziness and malformed character; so are outlandish malingerer's claims like "burnout" or "clinical depression". Your entire educational curriculum is designed by people who enjoy wading in shit and expect that you will too. If, upon graduation into the real world, you find that you do not enjoy wading in shit, we will shake our heads sadly and wonder how we failed to inculcate you with a seemly affection for shit-wading. If you are lucky enough to enjoy wading in shit, you are a superior species of human and deserve to be smug about it. (Not addressed: The unthinkably heretical notion that we, in the first stirrings of post-scarcity, might perhaps look to and work toward a future where people don't have to wade in shit if they don't want to.)
• nileshtrivedi 13y ago
  Every generation (and employers who want to hire young people for cheap) considers the next one "lazy and arrogant" while the fact is that life really is becoming easier across the board. In my opinion, the author is confusing "boring work". There is two kinds of boring work. One is where you are still committed to the end goal but some things just have to be done in order to achieve it. There's no arguing about this and I think even the new generation recognizes the value of it and the value of going through the "dip" and finishing things. The other is when you become disinterested in the end goal itself. Leaving this kind of boring work is a good thing. It's a shame to continue working on uninspiring projects especially when there are so many other opportunities. Life is too short for that. Adding some whitespace to one's life is how you move on to better opportunities. This article comes out as attacking the second category as well. For example, he compares this to "the vapid life of a vagabond merrily traveling from pleasure to pleasure in life ever thirsting, but never being quenched, every tasting, but never consuming.". Vagabonds have vapid lives? That's a bit presumptuous. "Not all who wander are lost."