There was also a very striking change in… people scenery? Working for a tech company, even remotely, meant that I spent much of my time talking to a large group of tech-minded people who knew the context behind things I was working on.
Should’ve done what I do: pursue your artistic hobby (drawing for them, DJing for me) in your free time and meet people who aren’t programmers. Easier said than done, I know, especially if you’re an introvert (like me), or live outside of a cultural capital (unlike me).
People like to quip that money can’t buy happiness. I think that’s missing the point. Money can remove sadness, but only if that sadness is related to not having enough money.
There was some reasearch to that effect. Happiness has positive correlation with income only up to a certain point at which the person can satisfy their needs.
My problem was not having enough time.
Why not work part-time then?
The original post happened to hit lobste.rs a few days ago, and there were a couple “what a rich asshole” comments
Were there? I only see people saying “first world problems” / “rich people problems”, without implying that being lucky equals being an asshole.
He’d get eaten alive, in the modern corporate world, if he asked for that. Either he’d get a reduction in pay without a significant reduction in expectations, or he’d be relegated to low-status work and have no career there. That’s how these cultish tech companies work. They want “true believers” who are “all in” (i.e. people who are stupidly loyal and easy to take advantage of) and not people who (quite rationally) view work as a transactional trade of time for money.
The best way to pull this off is to work from home and, because you’re no longer in a distracting open-plan office, you can get a full day’s work done (at least, by the standard of everyone else) in about 2-3 hours (unless you have a lot of meetings). The downside is that you still have to be available for 8 hours, so it’s not like you can go rock climbing during the day, but you can use that time to read, build skills, etc. Also, you’ll probably start to get the second-class citizen treatment at some point, but it tends to settle that way over years instead of months and you can usually engineer your next move in that time (which is harder to do if you’re on-site but working part-time).
In my experience, though, I tend to overwork when I work from home. I get too much done, and that ends up causing problems because (a) people think I’m making them look bad, and (b) while I’m getting 5x as much done, I’m unaware of political minefields that may emerge… and of course actually doing work is dangerous if your manager isn’t looking out for you and aware of where those political traps lie.
He’d get eaten alive, in the modern corporate world, if he asked for that.
Unless he (she?) works in two places for 2 days a week each as a contractor. At least here in Europe, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Also, you’ll probably start to get the second-class citizen treatment at some point
The solution is to work from home only some of the time. Though I normally prefer to work at an office anyway.
They want “true believers” who are “all in”
Which means 40 hours a week and >=24 days of vacation here. Maybe the solution is to live in a place where the corporate culture doesn’t demand unreasonable sacrifices.
“ I’d love to see a world where everyone could do or learn or explore or make all the things they wanted.”
That would be a world filled with a lot of bad novelists, terrible painters, horrible poets. And, I’m afraid, people would be just as happy and unhappy as they are now.
That would be a world filled with a lot of bad novelists, terrible painters, horrible poets.
Yep. And that means more good ones, too. And fewer people building shopping cart apps and analyzing ad yield reports.
And, I’m afraid, people would be just as happy and unhappy as they are now.
I don’t agree. When people have greater latitude in what they can do, they’re more likely to find something rewarding. It won’t be a quick process, but neither is the process of coming to grips with something you dislike but are forced by circumstance to do.
Doesn’t apply to everything. Some stressors, people adapt to. Others get worse. Living next to highway noise is one example. People are more, not less, affected over time. Long commutes can have a similar effect. Discomfort during travel is another one. If you fly once per year for vacation, you can fly economy and it’s not an issue. If you fly economy 50 times per year, you’re going to be miserable. That’s why airlines can charge so much for business and first class, after all.
Spending 8-10 hours per day in an environment designed to abuse your fight-or-flight response and intimidate you into working is going to have a powerful negative effect on your happiness. Also, the happiness of the group and that of the individual are strongly connected. Would you want to go to a school where everyone studies all day and there’s no social life? Of course not.
Sure, there’s very rapid hedonic adaptation both to possessions and social status tokens (i.e. job titles, views, high-class travel) but the idea that each human has one immutable hedonic set point is not well supported.
One could debate whether basic income is a good idea or practical, but I don’t think anyone who understands this issue would argue that there’d be no hedonic gain in relieving people of their corporate shackles.
I agree that if your personal situation is unusually bad, a relief will be a long lasting change for the better. Happened to me when I left academia for my current job. However, there is also the tyranny of choice which also hits different people differently, but for most people without an important forcer in your life, you drift, aimlessly, in the large. Some would say that is the aim of life - to be aimless. They are poets. And all poets are mad.
That would be a world filled with a lot of bad novelists, terrible painters, horrible poets. And, I’m afraid, people would be just as happy and unhappy as they are now.
We already have that. But at the current state of things, the question is more if you have the money to do what you want (and be good or bad at it) more then your skill. Especially in the fields you name.
I will certainly stick to programming stuff even if someone would pay me a minimum income.
I don’t fault Eevee for leaving the tech industry. Hell, it’s not really a tech industry anymore. It’s a marketing industry with a smattering of tech that exists to support its grandiose claims of preternatural insight (data science!) and efficiency (lean startup!) The truth is that in a 100-person VC-funded “startup” there might be two real tech jobs– for PhDs who are hired for their names/prestige and just never told that their work isn’t actually going to be used in the product– while the other 18 programmers are assigned do work that an 11th-grader could do. The industry is in a terrible state and I don’t fault anyone for wanting to get out.
What I do wish for is that people had more of a fighting spirit. If you’re on the way out, why not propose some ways to make it better? Why not go down fighting? I’ve had some of the worst people in the industry set out to destroy my career. I had to pull my blog posts last February because I feared for the safety of people I cared about. I know that it’s ugly and I know that this industry seems hopeless– and, yes, it is run by some of the worst people in the world– but if you’re going to submit yourself to the judgment (often, unreasonably harsh and from a place of ignorance) of thousands, why not try to do so in a way that makes things better?
My issue isn’t with Eevee. I hope he succeeds in getting to the life that he wants. It’s with a generation that quits instead of fighting. Yes, it’s a hard path. People will betray you for no good reason and it will hurt, the whole process will take a toll on your health, and you’ll probably want to end yourself on a fairly regular basis. The thing is: the cushy corporate jobs of the olden days, with expense accounts and meaningful work and job security and expat packages, are gone; so if you dick around in the startup-ified private sector without achieving financial escape velocity (Pr < 0.01) that’s going to happen anyway. Might as well fight and make the misery mean something.
Hey, we get a mention; the discussion referenced is this one. I wonder if eevee has an account here and/or wants one?
eevee found the discussion via me linking them. They didn’t take me up for an invite.
Should’ve done what I do: pursue your artistic hobby (drawing for them, DJing for me) in your free time and meet people who aren’t programmers. Easier said than done, I know, especially if you’re an introvert (like me), or live outside of a cultural capital (unlike me).
There was some reasearch to that effect. Happiness has positive correlation with income only up to a certain point at which the person can satisfy their needs.
Why not work part-time then?
Were there? I only see people saying “first world problems” / “rich people problems”, without implying that being lucky equals being an asshole.
He’d get eaten alive, in the modern corporate world, if he asked for that. Either he’d get a reduction in pay without a significant reduction in expectations, or he’d be relegated to low-status work and have no career there. That’s how these cultish tech companies work. They want “true believers” who are “all in” (i.e. people who are stupidly loyal and easy to take advantage of) and not people who (quite rationally) view work as a transactional trade of time for money.
The best way to pull this off is to work from home and, because you’re no longer in a distracting open-plan office, you can get a full day’s work done (at least, by the standard of everyone else) in about 2-3 hours (unless you have a lot of meetings). The downside is that you still have to be available for 8 hours, so it’s not like you can go rock climbing during the day, but you can use that time to read, build skills, etc. Also, you’ll probably start to get the second-class citizen treatment at some point, but it tends to settle that way over years instead of months and you can usually engineer your next move in that time (which is harder to do if you’re on-site but working part-time).
In my experience, though, I tend to overwork when I work from home. I get too much done, and that ends up causing problems because (a) people think I’m making them look bad, and (b) while I’m getting 5x as much done, I’m unaware of political minefields that may emerge… and of course actually doing work is dangerous if your manager isn’t looking out for you and aware of where those political traps lie.
Unless he (she?) works in two places for 2 days a week each as a contractor. At least here in Europe, that wouldn’t be a problem.
The solution is to work from home only some of the time. Though I normally prefer to work at an office anyway.
Which means 40 hours a week and >=24 days of vacation here. Maybe the solution is to live in a place where the corporate culture doesn’t demand unreasonable sacrifices.
Per Eevee’s Twitter description, she is fine with she/they/he for pronouns.
Europe is very different. I believe that Eevee lives in the US, as do I.
In the US, employees are treated a lot worse than in Europe.
“ I’d love to see a world where everyone could do or learn or explore or make all the things they wanted.”
That would be a world filled with a lot of bad novelists, terrible painters, horrible poets. And, I’m afraid, people would be just as happy and unhappy as they are now.
Yes, I’m a cynic.
Hey, sucking at something is the first step towards being kinda good at something. :)
Yep. And that means more good ones, too. And fewer people building shopping cart apps and analyzing ad yield reports.
I don’t agree. When people have greater latitude in what they can do, they’re more likely to find something rewarding. It won’t be a quick process, but neither is the process of coming to grips with something you dislike but are forced by circumstance to do.
Hedonic adaptation
Doesn’t apply to everything. Some stressors, people adapt to. Others get worse. Living next to highway noise is one example. People are more, not less, affected over time. Long commutes can have a similar effect. Discomfort during travel is another one. If you fly once per year for vacation, you can fly economy and it’s not an issue. If you fly economy 50 times per year, you’re going to be miserable. That’s why airlines can charge so much for business and first class, after all.
Spending 8-10 hours per day in an environment designed to abuse your fight-or-flight response and intimidate you into working is going to have a powerful negative effect on your happiness. Also, the happiness of the group and that of the individual are strongly connected. Would you want to go to a school where everyone studies all day and there’s no social life? Of course not.
Sure, there’s very rapid hedonic adaptation both to possessions and social status tokens (i.e. job titles, views, high-class travel) but the idea that each human has one immutable hedonic set point is not well supported.
One could debate whether basic income is a good idea or practical, but I don’t think anyone who understands this issue would argue that there’d be no hedonic gain in relieving people of their corporate shackles.
I agree that if your personal situation is unusually bad, a relief will be a long lasting change for the better. Happened to me when I left academia for my current job. However, there is also the tyranny of choice which also hits different people differently, but for most people without an important forcer in your life, you drift, aimlessly, in the large. Some would say that is the aim of life - to be aimless. They are poets. And all poets are mad.
Who cares? It’s not like somebody’s shoving it in your face making you read it or look at it.
We already have that. But at the current state of things, the question is more if you have the money to do what you want (and be good or bad at it) more then your skill. Especially in the fields you name.
I will certainly stick to programming stuff even if someone would pay me a minimum income.
I don’t fault Eevee for leaving the tech industry. Hell, it’s not really a tech industry anymore. It’s a marketing industry with a smattering of tech that exists to support its grandiose claims of preternatural insight (data science!) and efficiency (lean startup!) The truth is that in a 100-person VC-funded “startup” there might be two real tech jobs– for PhDs who are hired for their names/prestige and just never told that their work isn’t actually going to be used in the product– while the other 18 programmers are assigned do work that an 11th-grader could do. The industry is in a terrible state and I don’t fault anyone for wanting to get out.
What I do wish for is that people had more of a fighting spirit. If you’re on the way out, why not propose some ways to make it better? Why not go down fighting? I’ve had some of the worst people in the industry set out to destroy my career. I had to pull my blog posts last February because I feared for the safety of people I cared about. I know that it’s ugly and I know that this industry seems hopeless– and, yes, it is run by some of the worst people in the world– but if you’re going to submit yourself to the judgment (often, unreasonably harsh and from a place of ignorance) of thousands, why not try to do so in a way that makes things better?
My issue isn’t with Eevee. I hope he succeeds in getting to the life that he wants. It’s with a generation that quits instead of fighting. Yes, it’s a hard path. People will betray you for no good reason and it will hurt, the whole process will take a toll on your health, and you’ll probably want to end yourself on a fairly regular basis. The thing is: the cushy corporate jobs of the olden days, with expense accounts and meaningful work and job security and expat packages, are gone; so if you dick around in the startup-ified private sector without achieving financial escape velocity (Pr < 0.01) that’s going to happen anyway. Might as well fight and make the misery mean something.