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I really enjoyed reading this article. I've been thinking quite a bit about work recently. I'm just about to turn 29, and by all accounts I'm fairly successful

I really enjoyed reading this article. I've been thinking quite a bit about work recently. I'm just about to turn 29, and by all accounts I'm fairly successful: I graduated college with a worthless liberal arts degree just as the Great Recession was beginning. After an unsuccessful attempt at copywriting for a couple years, I managed to learn programming. A few years after that and I'm the leader of the engineering team at 12-person startup that looks to be pretty successful. And yet I'm as unhappy now as I've ever been. And it sucks. Why can't I just be happy with what I have? I've got a steady job, I've got a pretty good income. Why do I feel so awful about my own life? I've suspected for some time now that work itself is the problem. I'm trading in the best years of my life, my focus, my attention, my time, my life for money. That's the nature of this transaction. I'm trading in this short life I get for cash. I feel like a prostitute. Honestly I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes thinking about it. And apparently I'm not alone in how I feel about work. From the article: "A 2014 Gallup report of worker satisfaction found that as many as 70 percent of Americans don’t feel engaged by their current job." I think the truth is that work is an ocean of human misery, unfulfilled dreams and wasted lives. I think a vast majority of us waste our youth, our time, our energy in fields that we don't give a shit about, when in a better society we'd be able to work on the things we do care about.

deleted 11y ago
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oliveira12345 11y ago
This. Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng new interesting fields, etc... The mere fact that in today's professional career there is little oportunity for a 40-50years to work on a completely-new-unexperienced-field is an clear example. There is a point in time after which a job converts from ilusion-and-motivation into delusion-and-economic-compromise. And that's blocking people from growing and fully apply their capabilities to reach higher achivements
- daodedickinson 11y ago
  Look, I think the robots are gonna take over, but you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum, because no one will want to produce the boring things everyone wants to consume on the other end. Therefore, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER agitate for a basic income in terms of whatever brand-name of money (dollar, euro, nyancoin or some abstract non-existent Platonic form of "money"), but instead say something like "Everyone will be given a X by Y square foot dwelling, allowed Z gallons of water a year, given 20 fresh tomatoes, etc." and THEN reason about how those can be provided (do we force [enslave] people to provide this to others? what do we do if no one coughs up the goods?). If you agitate for a minimum wage or minimum income, it will always be worthless at the whim of the currency's authority(ies). More realistically, just reason instead what the least you need as an individual is, work to get it from within whatever economy you find yourself in, and then begin the REAL work of life, developing your happiness for and from what you have. See: Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does A Man Need?"
  - michaelchisari 11y ago
    The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum The word for that is inflation, and so far economists have not seen evidence that a basic income would effect inflation. developing your happiness for and from what you have. That's a good goal for microeconomics. But this is about macroeconomics.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    >you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. Really? First off, any basic income that is provided is not going to come close to what a 'highly technically skilled' individual makes. Secondly, if those individuals do find some activity or undertaking valuable enough to trade the relative income for, it probably has unrecognized value. I would bet they these individuals will acquire expertise, develop new knowledge, and create new things that will be highly benificial to society. This is very similar we what do with grants to scientists conducting general research. Following your logic, we have too many important problems to bother wasting scientists time on anything that isn't an immediate problem. Thirdly, there is no way that these individuals would be operating 'without any sort of economic integration whatsoever'. They would still be consuming in our society and their non-consumptive actions would still have economic effects. That said, I don't think we are at the point we can realistically provide a basic income capable of supporting a reasonable standard of living. I do think we can start providing a basic supplementary income and I think that if paired with reductions in the minimum wage, it could be very successful at stimulating economic growth during the next downturn or slow down.
washedup 11y ago
The key to a happy and successful life is to find meaningful ways to spend your time. Meaningful to you, of course. Because of the monetary system we live in, usually a large chunk of our time needs to be devoted towards earning money, or at least finding a way to eat, live comfortably, and reproduce (too scientific sounding?). Buddhist monks will be able to show you other ways to enjoy life outside that system, however. That's always an option. Work is not misery as long as you believe in, and are constantly engaged with, your work. It becomes misery when it doesn't align with your needs and expectations. The biggest question is, what would you rather do? What would you do with your free time if money wasn't an issue? If you are happy with your product, then what is it about the work environment? Does simply managing people stress you out? Or, is it the expectation that "I should" enjoy what I do because it is successful?
- tspike 11y ago
  The vast majority of the job postings I see are for companies optimizing the way other companies sell stuff to consumers. I don't find any meaning in that. Even the "great" jobs (ones where you can focus purely on a technical challenge) don't hold much allure: why optimize technology for the sake of optimizing technology? Where am I to look for jobs where I have agency in the choice of technology and the direction of the product, a group of intelligent and supportive peers, and a product that directly improves the lives of others? These types of jobs seem to be a vanishingly small percentage of those that are available (not even accounting for the further filtering that happens: skill match, inteviewing, salary requirements, etc).
  - harryh 11y ago
    I run the engineering team at www.hometeamcare.com It might not be immediately apparently from our website jobs here definitely satisfy all of your criteria. Let me know if you want to chat.
  - tolmasky 11y ago
    The problem isn't that there isn't any impactful work, its that impactful work is hard to identify at the outset. We've allowed narratives to shape our view of how "impact" gets made: the aha moment when a scientist discovers something in a movie. But the underlying connections between breakthroughs are much more subtle and actually impossibly difficult to predict. Who would have guessed that the video game industry would push graphics cards to a point where they are now incredibly beneficial to scientific applications? You could say the makers of PC games were just optimizing things for consumers, but there is a direct connection between what they did and the computing power we have for worthwhile applications today. Who would have guessed, in 1847, that Boole's philosophical papers on logic, would form the foundations of computing a hundred years later? George Boole died without every knowing any of this. The most impactful changes in people's lives are rarely direct. Seeking "impactful" goals is a trap in my experience. Find something that excites you and if its creative, my money's on that being more useful than you think.
misterbwong 11y ago
I understand the sentiment but I think your conclusion is misguided. You're not trading your life/focus/attention/time for money, you're trading it for what you can do with that money. Money is just a temporary store of value. It's worthless unless you use it for something. That something is what you're working for. Whether that's worth trading your time for is the real question you need to answer.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  Generally speaking I agree with you, but there's another element to discuss, and that's in flexibility. Imagine you have two jobs to choose from, both in the same field. One is part-time and pays a low wage, but a wage that is just about high enough to live on. One is full-time and pays a much higher wage, enough that you can spend without worrying about overspending. How many people have the luxury of choosing between these options? What many people end up with is a situation where they're working full-time just to make ends meet. For these people, both time and security are hard to come by, and the competitive nature of the job market means people get trapped working hard in jobs they don't enjoy because they don't want to lose what little they already have. Whilst I believe that you're right to point to personal choice and responsibility, it's worth acknowledging that some of the problems are systemic. Why can't we change the way we work together, so that doing what you enjoy isn't so much an act of bravery but is just the norm? What might those changes look like? As for the article, thought it was great. I'm very much in favour of a communal creativity future, though I'm sure we'd find all sorts of ways to keep ourselves amused. I thought this section was particularly insightful... 'Hunnicutt told me that if a cashier’s work were a video game—grab an item, find the bar code, scan it, slide the item onward, and repeat—critics of video games might call it mindless. But when it’s a job, politicians praise its intrinsic dignity.'
  - misterbwong 11y ago
    Good thoughts. The hard nosed capitalist in me is saying that those more unfortunate people aren't trapped but are choosing to keep what (little) they have instead of choosing the (often riskier and very often unsuccessful) ways of moving up. Good thing that part of me is small ;)
daodedickinson 11y ago
Stop blaming work, which for thousands of years has been endurable and honorable for humans. Study philosophy seriously, and avoid philosophical paths that manifestly cause depression.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  For thousands of years, work was something the peasants and the poor people did. An excellent trick pulled recently was to convince many of them that there was such a thing as a "work ethic" and that it was good and right and honourable.
  - aaron-lebo 11y ago
    It is good and right and honorable to not be a strain on others if you are capable of doing the work. Just because some people have taken advantage of that to get others to work for them doesn't mean work or work ethic in and of itself is bad.
    - qu4z-2 11y ago
      The level of work required to "not be a strain on others" is far less than the level of work expected these days, I believe.
- qu4z-2 11y ago
  Work may have been around for thousands of years in one form or another, but I don't think it'd be unfair to say the nature of work has changed with the industrial revolution. Further, just because something's been "endurable" for thousands of years doesn't necessarily make it good, or invalidate attempts to change it. And "honorable" is all about cultural values.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  By that measure, leprosy and the black death were "endurable and honorable" for humans. Or, to give a somewhat more Biblical example, so was war.
snowwrestler 11y ago
> I'm trading in the best years of my life, my focus, my attention, my time, my life for money. That's the nature of this transaction. I'm trading in this short life I get for cash. I feel like a prostitute. Money is unavoidable, so if you're going to be unhappy about earning it, you're going to have an unhappy life no matter what. I kind of doubt money is the issue...you might just be looking for inspiration. Maybe look into the nonprofit world. These are organizations that stand for something, and most are in desperate need of technical talent. You won't make as much money but if you can work for a cause you believe in, you might feel your work is more worthwhile.
- tspike 11y ago
  Where do I look for those organizations?
  - tmoullet 11y ago
    Check out http://www.idealist.org/ http://www.idealist.org/
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    There are some nonprofit job search engines (just search something like "nonprofit jobs"), but another way is to pick an issue you feel strongly about, and then do some web searching to find orgs that are working on that issue. Then check their job listings to see what they're looking for. Nonprofits tend to not grow very fast, so there might not be a job that's exactly what you want to do. If you can find one or two orgs you like, you can get your foot in the door through volunteering first. There is also a healthy ecosystem of companies that provide support to nonprofits. Nonprofits often outsource parts of their technology, so another way to get into the nonprofit world is through a digital agency. I would try looking for tech jobs in the DC area--a lot of the companies in DC that support nonprofits will happily hire remote developers, project managers, etc.
nicholas73 11y ago
I felt the same way at your age and in many ways still do at 32. 29 wasn't that long ago, and it wasn't biological maturing that happened. I became a father and now have a tenth of the free time I had before. The perspective that changed is twofold: first is that a job does provide life (your kid's), and second is that life is LONG. If you don't get rich by 30, you can get rich by 40 and still have a long time to do whatever you think is impactful. The thing I try to do now is to accept my situation and only think about what I can do to improve it. Play the hand you are dealt and don't think about what could have been. That is an endless loop of despair. It takes time to truly understand how to be grateful for what you have. I wasted all I had, including money, because I was not grateful. Now all I have to do is look at my beautiful baby to be grateful.
- rayiner 11y ago
  Having kids is a great way to give yourself some perspective and curb existential angst.
  - paulkon 11y ago
    Kids are great, but by my observation, the primary logical motivation to have them is so that one can make sense of their own existence. It's a never ending cycle to figure out what this life is about by giving birth to life which then again must solve the same question themselves. However, do we really understand this existential angst at its root? Or is this simply a never-ending passing of the torch? I'm not questioning how much joy children can bring to a couple's life but I've been thinking about the non-evolutionary purpose of having children for a while and I'm not sure how to think about it.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      > However, do we really understand this existential angst at its root? Children are a great reminder that understanding existence is irrelevant. Children don't contemplate their own existence, they simply experience and relish that existence. You can't be sure that you have any sort of purpose or destiny, but you can be sure of the ground beneath your feet and the sand between your toes. Children get that intuitively, and for a long time they can't approach life any other way.
aaron-lebo 11y ago
You are in the top 0.0001% of history as far as what you have. Hell, anyone on this site is. Most people in the past or right now would kill to have what you are describing. Yeah, you are working for money, so use that to your advantage. What is it that you really want or want to do? Start putting money aside so you can spend time doing that at a later date. Use your free time and when possible work time to work on skill sets and projects which will make that possible. You are incredibly lucky, and you've got a great foundation to build off of. Don't discount how valuable that is, and don't waste that opportunity.
- djrobstep 11y ago
  I really dislike this line of reasoning. There are always people better off and worse off than any particular one of us. Does that mean we are all wrong to feel any emotion? Of course not. The human experience is subjective.
  - aaron-lebo 11y ago
    Of course it isn't wrong to feel emotion. I'm the same age as the OP, I'm also well-off, I also get disillusioned and unsatisfied. But a large part of that emotion is misplaced. You can change how you feel simply by changing your perspective. You can look at a situation like that and feel like you are doing unsatisfying work, or you can also realize the benefits that come from that and turn it into a positive. And based on what they are saying, there's a lot of good that can come out of it. Good that most people don't have any chance at. You've got to feel a little thankful or lucky to even have that opportunity.
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation I don't disagree with your point, but I don't think selling most of the daylight hours of your youth is great either.
orionblastar 11y ago
I think it is because in college you pursued your passion that was liberal arts. Couldn't find a job in that area, so you learned programming. You did well as a programmer, but it isn't were your passion is at. I studied computer science and information systems. I also studied business management. These are areas I had a passion in and when I worked as a programmer I felt good enough it because I was passionate about it. In 2001 I developed a mental illness from too much stress, ended up on disability in 2003. I lost my passion because I was no longer able to work. I became broken as it were. All of the technology changed around me, new programming languages got invented and the old ones I knew ere obsolete. I got into writing and self-published a short story. I botched some of the grammar so it got some bad reviews. I couldn't afford an editor to fix it. I've tried writing code on Github, but haven't got noticed by anyone yet. It isn't easy for me to get into a group of people and try to help out. I got into the debates with the Opal CoC, and connected with at least one other person. I am trying to rebuild my career one step at a time. Work isn't supposed to make you happy, work is there to earn money to afford the things in life that make you happy. You have to invest time and money in other people to form relationships. Sometimes those relationships pay off and you are happy, other times they don't and you are sad. Sometimes you work too many hours and don't have the time to do anything that makes you happy. There was a video someone showed me of a fish market, where they made the work at the fish market enjoyable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxQW5xgX8A8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxQW5xgX8A8 It uses a new type of management where employees make their own decisions instead of being micromanaged. Where employees are empowered instead of having a tyrant boss. Where employees have fun working and make a game out of throwing fish to each other and singing. It really does make a difference.
hamoid 11y ago
If life feels awful, what makes you continue on the same path? I was feeling like that a few years ago. I stopped, thought about what was wrong, and took a different path. Now I'm making much less money, I'm not working in things I don't believe in and I interact with people I like. Much better than before.
- dbtc 11y ago
  If you don't mind sharing some details, I'd love to hear what you switched from and to!
  - hamoid 11y ago
    I did web and app development. Years of PHP + MySql + CSS + JavaScript. At some point it felt overwhelming to choose a PHP framework and I switched to ActionScript, which I enjoyed a lot. I worked in a startup, got paid well, but noticed their only plan was to sell and retire. They did not care about their impact on the world or their employees, nor about doing things properly. I quit and worked in an FOSS Android project with a positive impact on people. Then I could not do than anymore. I started finding databases, forms and interfaces unbearable. First I thought I did not like coding anymore. Then I realized it was not coding, but doing it alone, and focusing on things so detached from color, movement, space and sound. I decided to focus on art and creativity. To teach creative coding, and play with code. Create beautiful interactive things without thinking so much about the performance, about the usability, about the correctness. Basically experimenting and playing as I had done as a kid. Apparently there's some demand for teaching, generative art and design, and helping other creative people with their projects.
notNow 11y ago
Honestly I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes thinking about it. This sentence reminds me of the First-world problems lady meme, nothing to see here boys.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  First world problems can be worth exploring... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uLL418S1GQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uLL418S1GQ
- Retra 11y ago
  If your thoughts begin and end on memes, you've got nothing to say.
gluggymug 11y ago
29 is a good age to be thinking about this. I have an alternate philosophy that doesn't make you quit your job to find yourself. See if it resonates with you. You can't be too emotionally attached to your job. Jobs have value but they come and go. You change jobs throughout life. Some jobs that used to pay really well are now becoming extinct etc. Eventually you retire. My dad has been retired for ~15 years. My mum has been retired for ~10 years. (He lectured in music and she taught primary school.) Even if your job is awesome, you can't do it forever. Circumstance forces you out. Life moves on. I've been kinda retired for 1 year. Most people have different jobs throughout their working life. I've been through a few as have my parents. The grass always looks greener from the other side. You chase each dream and when/if you get it, you realize you probably had some unrealistic expectations of how great it should have been. Even the jobs that seemed super important at the time turn out to be not that mind blowingly significant over time. In whatever work you do, you have to detach yourself a bit from the triumphs and tragedies. If it all goes bad, you don't take it personally. If things go really well, you don't get a swelled head about it. That's the nature of true professionalism. Maybe if you cure cancer or something, you can take the time to do a quiet double fist pump. But then you move on! :) Essentially, you should perform your work like a machine. Or like breathing. There's no emotions necessary, good or bad. You act how you believe another professional should act without bringing your personality into it. In engineering jobs, people want you to be the engineer. They don't need the other parts of you. Outside of work you can be yourself. In Australia, we tend to say, "Work to live" rather than "Live to work". It means do your work then enjoy living.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  "Essentially, you should perform your work like a machine." I agree with a lot of what you say, but I can't agree with that. Yes, if dull work was a necessary part of life then there's some sense in just getting through it, but I don't agree that it is. Take away people's need to work and you can free them up to do what they want to do instead. Your advice is pragmatic, and there is wisdom in what you say about taking the rough with the smooth, but there is a better way of living than being slave to a wage, even if it's only part of the time. Why sell ourselves short when we don't have to?
Florin_Andrei 11y ago
As work becomes more and more abstract, probably fewer and fewer people will find satisfaction in it. Some will, but the majority will not. We're just not built for doing this sort of thing for extended periods of time. We've evolved operating in the real, physical world, and our reward mechanisms are fine tuned for it.
- abandonliberty 11y ago
  Our reward mechanisms are not tuned finely enough to prevent video games and porn from hijacking them :)
  - Florin_Andrei 11y ago
    Sure, but even that is temporary. You can't play video games forever.
    - abandonliberty 11y ago
      Many of us eventually figure out that the rewards are false. Then video games stop being enjoyable, so they start to rely on our social ties e.g. farmville.
  - icanhackit 11y ago
    Our reward mechanisms are not tuned finely enough to prevent video games and porn from hijacking them They're not hijacking the reward center so much as they've found that people like sex and winning (you could argue they're intertwined or one and the same). They are our primary motivators. The problem is that what we call "work" these days is so abstract that we never actually complete a task and thus never get that juicy hit of AH, job well done. Nailed it! It's just Well there's more of that shit on its way... There's no winning - it's a race that drags on until you retire or die.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
While I broadly feel the same as you do about wage-labor, you're not going to be able to do anything positive for your situation in life if you're clinically depressed. Have you started seeing a therapist? To emphasize: I'm not implying something's wrong with you. In fact, I sought therapy for work-related depression only ~4 years ago, and had the bad luck to find a therapist who told me, just after graduating university, that adult life just is careerism. That wasn't helping! But, again, unhappiness is a part of life, whereas clinical depression is a crippling illness that prevents you from being able to work on your situation or even experience your unhappiness as meaningful.
cko 11y ago
I am 29 and I also feel uneasy about my life. I have no real interests. I make a pretty good salary as a pharmacist and I've been saving and investing 80% of my income (up to 90% this past year) the past five years. I plan to do this for another few years. But then what? I already designed my minimalist life to be filled with free time (no possessions, no obligations). No mortgage, no loans whatsoever, and getting a vasectomy next month. Literally all the time I have not at work is free time. This may sound like humblebrag, but because my expenses are so low I can quit working right now. But it's nothing to brag about. Because I'm scared. I'm addicted to a salary and the reason I keep working (I don't like my job - it's repetitive and tedious and stressful) is because I don't want to make less money than I'm currently making. I don't want kids, I don't want to travel. I don't want to commit to a relationship. What will happen in five years when my passive income comes close to what I make at work? What will I do with myself? I really don't know. I'm learning how to code but lose motivation every two weeks. It'll be interesting to see what people actually do when there's no work left to do. I don't picture a good outcome, mainly from my perspective of having too much freedom. Yes, there is such a thing.
- gluggymug 11y ago
  I think you better get some interests. What's the point of free time otherwise? Or the savings?
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  Can I ask you a personal question: why the vasectomy? I get that you're not looking to have kids now, but why make that a permanent decision now when you're not sure what you want in the future? I don't know you that well, but you don't strike me as the sort of person who is likely to get someone pregnant accidentally. What does getting the vasectomy mean to you?
  - cko 11y ago
    So what I tend to do with my free time is overplan. I guess I'm trying to maximize my freedom even more by guaranteeing zero kids. I can be quite impulsive, and I don't want to get trapped by my own poor decisions. Plus there's always adoption, IVF, etc.
mercer 11y ago
Clearly, happiness does not seem to correlate entirely with how well off you are. Perhaps happiness relates mostly to social relationships, and spending your most productive hours with colleagues with whom you generally have relatively weak bonds depletes your 'social happiness' reserves. Or perhaps the kinds of jobs many of us do in modern life, especially those involving computer screens and office buildings, are just not well-suited to us. Or maybe it's just an inherent human property to be unhappy much of the time, and perhaps some people suffer more from this than others (a happiness 'baseline'). I could go on, of course, but fortunately a lot of research has been conducted on this, and many very wise people throughout the ages have written extensively about this. One thing that could help is to start researching 'happiness' or what you could call 'the good life', whether through philosophy or religion or psychology, if you haven't done so already. And I don't mean 'google for happiness and click through few articles', but rather really dive in. Treat it as a proper project. Take a particular philosophy/approach that appeals to you, and actually apply it. Properly. At least for a while. A lot of it might be crap, or just not for you, but some of it will resonate. For me, it was Alan Watts (and zen buddhism), Seligman/positive psychology, and just the act of reading 'denser' philosophical stuff in itself that somehow tickled my happy bone (hmm, poor choice of words). Also consider what you've tried, and most importantly, if you've actually tried these things. It took me until my thirties to realize that I had not, in fact, experimented with different ways/perspectives/philosophies of life in my twenties, but rather I had mostly half-heartedly flirted with all these things from a safe distance, and mostly let things happen to me. And all that generally just confirmed what already was while making me feel like I'd explored. Or, to make an analogy: if you want to find a partner to be happy with long-term, this usually requires a degree of 'experimentation', as few people are lucky enough to find such a partner right away. Common mistakes in this regard are to 1) keep dating the same essential person, and then wondering why it keeps going wrong, or 2) be too shy to take initiative, and wait for things to 'happen'. I've noticed that 2 often ends up leading to 1, as you tend to attract and feel attracted to the same types of people if you remain the same kind of person. Basically: break your patterns, and break them properly. Our natural instinct is not to, and cling to safety and the familiar. And if breaking patters becomes a pattern, well, then break that and go do the same thing with full abandon for a while. If quitting your job seems like too much, and perhaps it is, then start with other stuff. Perhaps that will be enough. But just make sure that you really did try other things, because I think the illusion of doing or having done so is an easy trap to fall into. I personally did quit my job, because it was the only way for me to actually try different stuff, but then I'm perhaps just generally too inclined to get sucked up in what I do for work. You might not need this. And finally, with my rather biased current perspective: give up on trying altogether. Just let yourself be 'now'. Perhaps read some of Alan Watts' material before you do this, so you have an idea as to why this might be effective. For me the major breakthroughs and a more consistent sense of happiness came as a direct result of giving up (mostly) on all that finding. I can strongly recommend Alan Watts' 'The Book', as well as 'The Wisdom of Insecurity'. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, he's an entertaining writer, and the approach he suggests is (relatively) unusual, perhaps especially to many of us HN types (ambitious, stuck in the 'virtual', analytic).
mj_langford 11y ago
Someone once wrote a lot about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation Go start a microISV-style tiny business a la @patio11 in a field you feel you can make things better
jcovington 11y ago
Make/adopt some babies and enjoy your successes as an engineer in the context of something larger!

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oliveira12345 11y ago

This. Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng new interesting fields, etc... The mere fact that in today's professional career there is little oportunity for a 40-50years to work on a completely-new-unexperienced-field is an clear example. There is a point in time after which a job converts from ilusion-and-motivation into delusion-and-economic-compromise. And that's blocking people from growing and fully apply their capabilities to reach higher achivements

daodedickinson 11y ago
Look, I think the robots are gonna take over, but you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum, because no one will want to produce the boring things everyone wants to consume on the other end. Therefore, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER agitate for a basic income in terms of whatever brand-name of money (dollar, euro, nyancoin or some abstract non-existent Platonic form of "money"), but instead say something like "Everyone will be given a X by Y square foot dwelling, allowed Z gallons of water a year, given 20 fresh tomatoes, etc." and THEN reason about how those can be provided (do we force [enslave] people to provide this to others? what do we do if no one coughs up the goods?). If you agitate for a minimum wage or minimum income, it will always be worthless at the whim of the currency's authority(ies). More realistically, just reason instead what the least you need as an individual is, work to get it from within whatever economy you find yourself in, and then begin the REAL work of life, developing your happiness for and from what you have. See: Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does A Man Need?"
- michaelchisari 11y ago
  The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum The word for that is inflation, and so far economists have not seen evidence that a basic income would effect inflation. developing your happiness for and from what you have. That's a good goal for microeconomics. But this is about macroeconomics.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  >you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. Really? First off, any basic income that is provided is not going to come close to what a 'highly technically skilled' individual makes. Secondly, if those individuals do find some activity or undertaking valuable enough to trade the relative income for, it probably has unrecognized value. I would bet they these individuals will acquire expertise, develop new knowledge, and create new things that will be highly benificial to society. This is very similar we what do with grants to scientists conducting general research. Following your logic, we have too many important problems to bother wasting scientists time on anything that isn't an immediate problem. Thirdly, there is no way that these individuals would be operating 'without any sort of economic integration whatsoever'. They would still be consuming in our society and their non-consumptive actions would still have economic effects. That said, I don't think we are at the point we can realistically provide a basic income capable of supporting a reasonable standard of living. I do think we can start providing a basic supplementary income and I think that if paired with reductions in the minimum wage, it could be very successful at stimulating economic growth during the next downturn or slow down.

washedup 11y ago

The key to a happy and successful life is to find meaningful ways to spend your time. Meaningful to you, of course. Because of the monetary system we live in, usually a large chunk of our time needs to be devoted towards earning money, or at least finding a way to eat, live comfortably, and reproduce (too scientific sounding?). Buddhist monks will be able to show you other ways to enjoy life outside that system, however. That's always an option. Work is not misery as long as you believe in, and are constantly engaged with, your work. It becomes misery when it doesn't align with your needs and expectations. The biggest question is, what would you rather do? What would you do with your free time if money wasn't an issue? If you are happy with your product, then what is it about the work environment? Does simply managing people stress you out? Or, is it the expectation that "I should" enjoy what I do because it is successful?

tspike 11y ago
The vast majority of the job postings I see are for companies optimizing the way other companies sell stuff to consumers. I don't find any meaning in that. Even the "great" jobs (ones where you can focus purely on a technical challenge) don't hold much allure: why optimize technology for the sake of optimizing technology? Where am I to look for jobs where I have agency in the choice of technology and the direction of the product, a group of intelligent and supportive peers, and a product that directly improves the lives of others? These types of jobs seem to be a vanishingly small percentage of those that are available (not even accounting for the further filtering that happens: skill match, inteviewing, salary requirements, etc).
- harryh 11y ago
  I run the engineering team at www.hometeamcare.com It might not be immediately apparently from our website jobs here definitely satisfy all of your criteria. Let me know if you want to chat.
- tolmasky 11y ago
  The problem isn't that there isn't any impactful work, its that impactful work is hard to identify at the outset. We've allowed narratives to shape our view of how "impact" gets made: the aha moment when a scientist discovers something in a movie. But the underlying connections between breakthroughs are much more subtle and actually impossibly difficult to predict. Who would have guessed that the video game industry would push graphics cards to a point where they are now incredibly beneficial to scientific applications? You could say the makers of PC games were just optimizing things for consumers, but there is a direct connection between what they did and the computing power we have for worthwhile applications today. Who would have guessed, in 1847, that Boole's philosophical papers on logic, would form the foundations of computing a hundred years later? George Boole died without every knowing any of this. The most impactful changes in people's lives are rarely direct. Seeking "impactful" goals is a trap in my experience. Find something that excites you and if its creative, my money's on that being more useful than you think.

misterbwong 11y ago

I understand the sentiment but I think your conclusion is misguided. You're not trading your life/focus/attention/time for money, you're trading it for what you can do with that money. Money is just a temporary store of value. It's worthless unless you use it for something. That something is what you're working for. Whether that's worth trading your time for is the real question you need to answer.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
Generally speaking I agree with you, but there's another element to discuss, and that's in flexibility. Imagine you have two jobs to choose from, both in the same field. One is part-time and pays a low wage, but a wage that is just about high enough to live on. One is full-time and pays a much higher wage, enough that you can spend without worrying about overspending. How many people have the luxury of choosing between these options? What many people end up with is a situation where they're working full-time just to make ends meet. For these people, both time and security are hard to come by, and the competitive nature of the job market means people get trapped working hard in jobs they don't enjoy because they don't want to lose what little they already have. Whilst I believe that you're right to point to personal choice and responsibility, it's worth acknowledging that some of the problems are systemic. Why can't we change the way we work together, so that doing what you enjoy isn't so much an act of bravery but is just the norm? What might those changes look like? As for the article, thought it was great. I'm very much in favour of a communal creativity future, though I'm sure we'd find all sorts of ways to keep ourselves amused. I thought this section was particularly insightful... 'Hunnicutt told me that if a cashier’s work were a video game—grab an item, find the bar code, scan it, slide the item onward, and repeat—critics of video games might call it mindless. But when it’s a job, politicians praise its intrinsic dignity.'
- misterbwong 11y ago
  Good thoughts. The hard nosed capitalist in me is saying that those more unfortunate people aren't trapped but are choosing to keep what (little) they have instead of choosing the (often riskier and very often unsuccessful) ways of moving up. Good thing that part of me is small ;)

daodedickinson 11y ago

Stop blaming work, which for thousands of years has been endurable and honorable for humans. Study philosophy seriously, and avoid philosophical paths that manifestly cause depression.

EliRivers 11y ago
For thousands of years, work was something the peasants and the poor people did. An excellent trick pulled recently was to convince many of them that there was such a thing as a "work ethic" and that it was good and right and honourable.
- aaron-lebo 11y ago
  It is good and right and honorable to not be a strain on others if you are capable of doing the work. Just because some people have taken advantage of that to get others to work for them doesn't mean work or work ethic in and of itself is bad.
  - qu4z-2 11y ago
    The level of work required to "not be a strain on others" is far less than the level of work expected these days, I believe.
qu4z-2 11y ago
Work may have been around for thousands of years in one form or another, but I don't think it'd be unfair to say the nature of work has changed with the industrial revolution. Further, just because something's been "endurable" for thousands of years doesn't necessarily make it good, or invalidate attempts to change it. And "honorable" is all about cultural values.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
By that measure, leprosy and the black death were "endurable and honorable" for humans. Or, to give a somewhat more Biblical example, so was war.

snowwrestler 11y ago

> I'm trading in the best years of my life, my focus, my attention, my time, my life for money. That's the nature of this transaction. I'm trading in this short life I get for cash. I feel like a prostitute. Money is unavoidable, so if you're going to be unhappy about earning it, you're going to have an unhappy life no matter what. I kind of doubt money is the issue...you might just be looking for inspiration. Maybe look into the nonprofit world. These are organizations that stand for something, and most are in desperate need of technical talent. You won't make as much money but if you can work for a cause you believe in, you might feel your work is more worthwhile.

tspike 11y ago
Where do I look for those organizations?
- tmoullet 11y ago
  Check out http://www.idealist.org/ http://www.idealist.org/
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  There are some nonprofit job search engines (just search something like "nonprofit jobs"), but another way is to pick an issue you feel strongly about, and then do some web searching to find orgs that are working on that issue. Then check their job listings to see what they're looking for. Nonprofits tend to not grow very fast, so there might not be a job that's exactly what you want to do. If you can find one or two orgs you like, you can get your foot in the door through volunteering first. There is also a healthy ecosystem of companies that provide support to nonprofits. Nonprofits often outsource parts of their technology, so another way to get into the nonprofit world is through a digital agency. I would try looking for tech jobs in the DC area--a lot of the companies in DC that support nonprofits will happily hire remote developers, project managers, etc.

nicholas73 11y ago

I felt the same way at your age and in many ways still do at 32. 29 wasn't that long ago, and it wasn't biological maturing that happened. I became a father and now have a tenth of the free time I had before. The perspective that changed is twofold: first is that a job does provide life (your kid's), and second is that life is LONG. If you don't get rich by 30, you can get rich by 40 and still have a long time to do whatever you think is impactful. The thing I try to do now is to accept my situation and only think about what I can do to improve it. Play the hand you are dealt and don't think about what could have been. That is an endless loop of despair. It takes time to truly understand how to be grateful for what you have. I wasted all I had, including money, because I was not grateful. Now all I have to do is look at my beautiful baby to be grateful.

rayiner 11y ago
Having kids is a great way to give yourself some perspective and curb existential angst.
- paulkon 11y ago
  Kids are great, but by my observation, the primary logical motivation to have them is so that one can make sense of their own existence. It's a never ending cycle to figure out what this life is about by giving birth to life which then again must solve the same question themselves. However, do we really understand this existential angst at its root? Or is this simply a never-ending passing of the torch? I'm not questioning how much joy children can bring to a couple's life but I've been thinking about the non-evolutionary purpose of having children for a while and I'm not sure how to think about it.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    > However, do we really understand this existential angst at its root? Children are a great reminder that understanding existence is irrelevant. Children don't contemplate their own existence, they simply experience and relish that existence. You can't be sure that you have any sort of purpose or destiny, but you can be sure of the ground beneath your feet and the sand between your toes. Children get that intuitively, and for a long time they can't approach life any other way.

aaron-lebo 11y ago

You are in the top 0.0001% of history as far as what you have. Hell, anyone on this site is. Most people in the past or right now would kill to have what you are describing. Yeah, you are working for money, so use that to your advantage. What is it that you really want or want to do? Start putting money aside so you can spend time doing that at a later date. Use your free time and when possible work time to work on skill sets and projects which will make that possible. You are incredibly lucky, and you've got a great foundation to build off of. Don't discount how valuable that is, and don't waste that opportunity.

djrobstep 11y ago
I really dislike this line of reasoning. There are always people better off and worse off than any particular one of us. Does that mean we are all wrong to feel any emotion? Of course not. The human experience is subjective.
- aaron-lebo 11y ago
  Of course it isn't wrong to feel emotion. I'm the same age as the OP, I'm also well-off, I also get disillusioned and unsatisfied. But a large part of that emotion is misplaced. You can change how you feel simply by changing your perspective. You can look at a situation like that and feel like you are doing unsatisfying work, or you can also realize the benefits that come from that and turn it into a positive. And based on what they are saying, there's a lot of good that can come out of it. Good that most people don't have any chance at. You've got to feel a little thankful or lucky to even have that opportunity.
seanp2k2 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation I don't disagree with your point, but I don't think selling most of the daylight hours of your youth is great either.

orionblastar 11y ago

I think it is because in college you pursued your passion that was liberal arts. Couldn't find a job in that area, so you learned programming. You did well as a programmer, but it isn't were your passion is at. I studied computer science and information systems. I also studied business management. These are areas I had a passion in and when I worked as a programmer I felt good enough it because I was passionate about it. In 2001 I developed a mental illness from too much stress, ended up on disability in 2003. I lost my passion because I was no longer able to work. I became broken as it were. All of the technology changed around me, new programming languages got invented and the old ones I knew ere obsolete. I got into writing and self-published a short story. I botched some of the grammar so it got some bad reviews. I couldn't afford an editor to fix it. I've tried writing code on Github, but haven't got noticed by anyone yet. It isn't easy for me to get into a group of people and try to help out. I got into the debates with the Opal CoC, and connected with at least one other person. I am trying to rebuild my career one step at a time. Work isn't supposed to make you happy, work is there to earn money to afford the things in life that make you happy. You have to invest time and money in other people to form relationships. Sometimes those relationships pay off and you are happy, other times they don't and you are sad. Sometimes you work too many hours and don't have the time to do anything that makes you happy. There was a video someone showed me of a fish market, where they made the work at the fish market enjoyable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxQW5xgX8A8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxQW5xgX8A8 It uses a new type of management where employees make their own decisions instead of being micromanaged. Where employees are empowered instead of having a tyrant boss. Where employees have fun working and make a game out of throwing fish to each other and singing. It really does make a difference.

hamoid 11y ago

If life feels awful, what makes you continue on the same path? I was feeling like that a few years ago. I stopped, thought about what was wrong, and took a different path. Now I'm making much less money, I'm not working in things I don't believe in and I interact with people I like. Much better than before.

dbtc 11y ago
If you don't mind sharing some details, I'd love to hear what you switched from and to!
- hamoid 11y ago
  I did web and app development. Years of PHP + MySql + CSS + JavaScript. At some point it felt overwhelming to choose a PHP framework and I switched to ActionScript, which I enjoyed a lot. I worked in a startup, got paid well, but noticed their only plan was to sell and retire. They did not care about their impact on the world or their employees, nor about doing things properly. I quit and worked in an FOSS Android project with a positive impact on people. Then I could not do than anymore. I started finding databases, forms and interfaces unbearable. First I thought I did not like coding anymore. Then I realized it was not coding, but doing it alone, and focusing on things so detached from color, movement, space and sound. I decided to focus on art and creativity. To teach creative coding, and play with code. Create beautiful interactive things without thinking so much about the performance, about the usability, about the correctness. Basically experimenting and playing as I had done as a kid. Apparently there's some demand for teaching, generative art and design, and helping other creative people with their projects.

notNow 11y ago

Honestly I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes thinking about it. This sentence reminds me of the First-world problems lady meme, nothing to see here boys.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
First world problems can be worth exploring... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uLL418S1GQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uLL418S1GQ
Retra 11y ago
If your thoughts begin and end on memes, you've got nothing to say.

gluggymug 11y ago

29 is a good age to be thinking about this. I have an alternate philosophy that doesn't make you quit your job to find yourself. See if it resonates with you. You can't be too emotionally attached to your job. Jobs have value but they come and go. You change jobs throughout life. Some jobs that used to pay really well are now becoming extinct etc. Eventually you retire. My dad has been retired for ~15 years. My mum has been retired for ~10 years. (He lectured in music and she taught primary school.) Even if your job is awesome, you can't do it forever. Circumstance forces you out. Life moves on. I've been kinda retired for 1 year. Most people have different jobs throughout their working life. I've been through a few as have my parents. The grass always looks greener from the other side. You chase each dream and when/if you get it, you realize you probably had some unrealistic expectations of how great it should have been. Even the jobs that seemed super important at the time turn out to be not that mind blowingly significant over time. In whatever work you do, you have to detach yourself a bit from the triumphs and tragedies. If it all goes bad, you don't take it personally. If things go really well, you don't get a swelled head about it. That's the nature of true professionalism. Maybe if you cure cancer or something, you can take the time to do a quiet double fist pump. But then you move on! :) Essentially, you should perform your work like a machine. Or like breathing. There's no emotions necessary, good or bad. You act how you believe another professional should act without bringing your personality into it. In engineering jobs, people want you to be the engineer. They don't need the other parts of you. Outside of work you can be yourself. In Australia, we tend to say, "Work to live" rather than "Live to work". It means do your work then enjoy living.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
"Essentially, you should perform your work like a machine." I agree with a lot of what you say, but I can't agree with that. Yes, if dull work was a necessary part of life then there's some sense in just getting through it, but I don't agree that it is. Take away people's need to work and you can free them up to do what they want to do instead. Your advice is pragmatic, and there is wisdom in what you say about taking the rough with the smooth, but there is a better way of living than being slave to a wage, even if it's only part of the time. Why sell ourselves short when we don't have to?

Florin_Andrei 11y ago

As work becomes more and more abstract, probably fewer and fewer people will find satisfaction in it. Some will, but the majority will not. We're just not built for doing this sort of thing for extended periods of time. We've evolved operating in the real, physical world, and our reward mechanisms are fine tuned for it.

abandonliberty 11y ago
Our reward mechanisms are not tuned finely enough to prevent video games and porn from hijacking them :)
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago
  Sure, but even that is temporary. You can't play video games forever.
  - abandonliberty 11y ago
    Many of us eventually figure out that the rewards are false. Then video games stop being enjoyable, so they start to rely on our social ties e.g. farmville.
- icanhackit 11y ago
  Our reward mechanisms are not tuned finely enough to prevent video games and porn from hijacking them They're not hijacking the reward center so much as they've found that people like sex and winning (you could argue they're intertwined or one and the same). They are our primary motivators. The problem is that what we call "work" these days is so abstract that we never actually complete a task and thus never get that juicy hit of AH, job well done. Nailed it! It's just Well there's more of that shit on its way... There's no winning - it's a race that drags on until you retire or die.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

While I broadly feel the same as you do about wage-labor, you're not going to be able to do anything positive for your situation in life if you're clinically depressed. Have you started seeing a therapist? To emphasize: I'm not implying something's wrong with you. In fact, I sought therapy for work-related depression only ~4 years ago, and had the bad luck to find a therapist who told me, just after graduating university, that adult life just is careerism. That wasn't helping! But, again, unhappiness is a part of life, whereas clinical depression is a crippling illness that prevents you from being able to work on your situation or even experience your unhappiness as meaningful.

cko 11y ago

I am 29 and I also feel uneasy about my life. I have no real interests. I make a pretty good salary as a pharmacist and I've been saving and investing 80% of my income (up to 90% this past year) the past five years. I plan to do this for another few years. But then what? I already designed my minimalist life to be filled with free time (no possessions, no obligations). No mortgage, no loans whatsoever, and getting a vasectomy next month. Literally all the time I have not at work is free time. This may sound like humblebrag, but because my expenses are so low I can quit working right now. But it's nothing to brag about. Because I'm scared. I'm addicted to a salary and the reason I keep working (I don't like my job - it's repetitive and tedious and stressful) is because I don't want to make less money than I'm currently making. I don't want kids, I don't want to travel. I don't want to commit to a relationship. What will happen in five years when my passive income comes close to what I make at work? What will I do with myself? I really don't know. I'm learning how to code but lose motivation every two weeks. It'll be interesting to see what people actually do when there's no work left to do. I don't picture a good outcome, mainly from my perspective of having too much freedom. Yes, there is such a thing.

gluggymug 11y ago
I think you better get some interests. What's the point of free time otherwise? Or the savings?
ZenoArrow 11y ago
Can I ask you a personal question: why the vasectomy? I get that you're not looking to have kids now, but why make that a permanent decision now when you're not sure what you want in the future? I don't know you that well, but you don't strike me as the sort of person who is likely to get someone pregnant accidentally. What does getting the vasectomy mean to you?
- cko 11y ago
  So what I tend to do with my free time is overplan. I guess I'm trying to maximize my freedom even more by guaranteeing zero kids. I can be quite impulsive, and I don't want to get trapped by my own poor decisions. Plus there's always adoption, IVF, etc.

mercer 11y ago

Clearly, happiness does not seem to correlate entirely with how well off you are. Perhaps happiness relates mostly to social relationships, and spending your most productive hours with colleagues with whom you generally have relatively weak bonds depletes your 'social happiness' reserves. Or perhaps the kinds of jobs many of us do in modern life, especially those involving computer screens and office buildings, are just not well-suited to us. Or maybe it's just an inherent human property to be unhappy much of the time, and perhaps some people suffer more from this than others (a happiness 'baseline'). I could go on, of course, but fortunately a lot of research has been conducted on this, and many very wise people throughout the ages have written extensively about this. One thing that could help is to start researching 'happiness' or what you could call 'the good life', whether through philosophy or religion or psychology, if you haven't done so already. And I don't mean 'google for happiness and click through few articles', but rather really dive in. Treat it as a proper project. Take a particular philosophy/approach that appeals to you, and actually apply it. Properly. At least for a while. A lot of it might be crap, or just not for you, but some of it will resonate. For me, it was Alan Watts (and zen buddhism), Seligman/positive psychology, and just the act of reading 'denser' philosophical stuff in itself that somehow tickled my happy bone (hmm, poor choice of words). Also consider what you've tried, and most importantly, if you've actually tried these things. It took me until my thirties to realize that I had not, in fact, experimented with different ways/perspectives/philosophies of life in my twenties, but rather I had mostly half-heartedly flirted with all these things from a safe distance, and mostly let things happen to me. And all that generally just confirmed what already was while making me feel like I'd explored. Or, to make an analogy: if you want to find a partner to be happy with long-term, this usually requires a degree of 'experimentation', as few people are lucky enough to find such a partner right away. Common mistakes in this regard are to 1) keep dating the same essential person, and then wondering why it keeps going wrong, or 2) be too shy to take initiative, and wait for things to 'happen'. I've noticed that 2 often ends up leading to 1, as you tend to attract and feel attracted to the same types of people if you remain the same kind of person. Basically: break your patterns, and break them properly. Our natural instinct is not to, and cling to safety and the familiar. And if breaking patters becomes a pattern, well, then break that and go do the same thing with full abandon for a while. If quitting your job seems like too much, and perhaps it is, then start with other stuff. Perhaps that will be enough. But just make sure that you really did try other things, because I think the illusion of doing or having done so is an easy trap to fall into. I personally did quit my job, because it was the only way for me to actually try different stuff, but then I'm perhaps just generally too inclined to get sucked up in what I do for work. You might not need this. And finally, with my rather biased current perspective: give up on trying altogether. Just let yourself be 'now'. Perhaps read some of Alan Watts' material before you do this, so you have an idea as to why this might be effective. For me the major breakthroughs and a more consistent sense of happiness came as a direct result of giving up (mostly) on all that finding. I can strongly recommend Alan Watts' 'The Book', as well as 'The Wisdom of Insecurity'. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, he's an entertaining writer, and the approach he suggests is (relatively) unusual, perhaps especially to many of us HN types (ambitious, stuck in the 'virtual', analytic).

mj_langford 11y ago

Someone once wrote a lot about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation Go start a microISV-style tiny business a la @patio11 in a field you feel you can make things better

jcovington 11y ago

Make/adopt some babies and enjoy your successes as an engineer in the context of something larger!