Hacker News Reader

Comment by gonk | Hacker News Reader

I just don't see how its applicable to connect your experience with the fact that you started reddit .. I mean, fair enough, you have a lot of Internet celebrity credits, but you're spending them by telling the world details about your life that have no real bearing on your profession.

The moral of the story? I guess it is that you should always try to persist in life no matter what gets thrown at you. I just found myself realizing, in the middle of your post, that I was spending my life reading about someone I don't even vaguely know, talking about how sad they were that their dog died. Is this really what its all about?

View on HN

I am just really cringing for you right now... I know you don't really mean this, you just picked a bad article to quit reading right in the middle of before making a comment.

Edit: per the commenter's followup, I withdraw my benefit-of-the-doubt.

His personal life very much had bearings on his professional life. People are very much affected at work by what they do outside of it, and vice versa. Positively speaking, the tough times in his personal life may have proven to be the sort of motivation that inspires people to do great things. Negatively speaking, perhaps if he'd been able to spend more time working on Reddit at the start, they'd be in an even better off position than they are now. But we'll never know.

Regardless, while it is more extremely apparent in a startup, people's personal lives leak into their professional lives and vice versa. Something as small as the breakfast that you ate (or didn't) this morning affects your decisions and capabilities. When it comes to the bigger events in life, like family deaths, the repercussions in people's professional lives are quite significant. Hell, studies have shown that when men perform jobs that are too easy for them, their testosterone levels drop. That's a clearcut case of seemingly insignificant professional decision leaking into your personal life as testosterone levels affect so many personal choices.

Is it what it's all about? Hmmm. Did you take anything away from reading it that will help you in the future?

If so, context doesn't matter much, but you gained something positive, no matter how small.

Maybe you realized that everyone has hard times, and you don't feel it merits public discussion. However, it got you to read the post and not only that, but to comment on it as well. It's undeniable the post impacted you in some way. You will take something new away from that post, be it good, bad, or indifferent. Either way, in an ever so small way, you have been changed. What you do with that change is up to you, but in most cases I find it leads to positive change.

Are you disillusioned with the current status of programming/IT/tech in general?

I cant say if I'm reading this right, but it really sounds like you're suffering a crisis of confidence in your decision to spend your time / career in tech (tech just being a broad catchall). I might be making a leap, but to me your tone of frustration and harshness ring familiar and its an open secret that a lot of us hit this brick wall at one point or another.

Your personal life is deeply entwined with your work. It's shortsighted to think otherwise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com