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Comment by ProxCoques | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. My father told me a story of when he was stuck in traffic with somebody who was then about the 10th richest person in the world. To make conversation, my father asked him what his plans for the coming year were. The guy listed all sorts of business goals. My father asked if he had anything personally that he was planning. The guy basically replied that those were his personal plans. He made no distinction between work and play.

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There is a HUMONGOUS difference between owner of a business and employed by a business.

Makes sense for the "10th richest person in the world" to work long hours. It's his call. He is working basically for himself.

Totally different when you're making say 50K and the "10th richest person in the world" wants YOU to work all day every day too.

There's nothing wrong with being passionate about your job

Wanting to work all the time and being passionate aren't the same thing.

True, but that’s what people mean in an interview when they ask if you are passionate about I dunno, doing payrolls in COBOL or something

In a sense not, but it does make it easier to exploit you.

Just look at the game dev industry. Lots of passionate people there, and lots of companies who will exploit that. In the end, those people lose their passion.

Being passionate about work can make you very happy. But always make sure you don't get exploited because of it. You will need to set your limits.

Inherently? No, but it does come with potential for negative externalities.

If you consider that work passion to be a moral virtue and this comes through in your discussions with others, that contributes to pushing society towards a culture of being overworked.

If you try to overtly filter for passion within hiring at a company then that encourages bullshitting and reduces the efficiency of managing employees. You'll be trying to give "passion" benefits to a bunch of secret mercenaries.

If you're non-business inclined and passionate then this can lead to capturing far less of the value that you generate than you otherwise could. This is effectively charity to the business owning class. If you're working for $80k when a few extra conversations—or even just sentences—over the years could have put you at $150k, then that's effectively a yearly donation of $70k to the people in the world who need it the least. Even if you don't care for that money for yourself because you're too busy having fun working to spend it, then that's an awful lot of good you could have done for others that you're failing to do.

What's more with this one is that it also hurts your colleagues by acting as a salary anchor which again, results in a greater share of the value being generated going to the owning class.

This hits the nail on the head. Most of the value that you're creating is captured by someone else. So why should you be expected to spend all your life to benefit someone else's interests?

It's quite strange that today slavery is a completely taboo subject (rightfully so) and yet workplace slavery is not only tolerated but encouraged. It's essentailly the same; someone else uses their coercive power over you to essentially steal a big chunk of your life. The worst part is that it's a first-in best-dressed, roll-of-the-dice kind of game.

It's not slavery, because you're not forced to do it. You signed a contract agreeing to those conditions.

Speaking as an outsider to Western/American culture, this is one of the worst parts of America. There are millions of people peddling the bullshit dream of "success" (whatever that means) and the implied message of "work harder" in every corner of the media and workplace. Which is great if you reap 100% of the rewards, but for most its only a way to make them compliant worker-bees competing with each other for scraps that the higher-ups dose out at their leisure.

Unless we’re in some kind of rent-seeking or monopolistic situation, you never get 100% of the rewards. Businesses increase their revenues by providing more value to clients.

Most of the value that you're creating is captured by someone else. So why should you be expected to spend all your life to benefit someone else's interests?

Exactly. And they push you hard to squeeze just a little bit more out of you, every day. I am currently working a contract. They offered me a full-time post, to move to one of the move expensive cities on the planet, and make half of what I do now. Naturally, I questioned the defunct logic in this particular offer, and the come back was "but you will be full-time". Suffice to say, the negotiations, such as they were, rapidly went downhill from there. My client is pretty pissed with me for not wanting to work for half of what they are paying me now. Whatever. My next contract is on the horizon, I have several lucrative offers on the table, and I am pretty sure my current client will be surprised when I hand in my notice.

Somehow, clients are taken aback when I discuss remuneration in terms of receiving a fair share of the value I create. They point at their ability to snare others for a minimum as evidence that I am not playing the game correctly.

Well-paying contracts are tools that big boring corporations use to lure talent that they couldn't otherwise get... Then if you stick around long enough, you start to get comfortable in the role; that's when they offer you a full time position for half the pay - By that point your skills have become so specialised for that specific company/role that you don't really have any alternatives anymore. You're a house-broken dog; while you weren't paying attention, they hooked you up on the leash and are now sleeping in the kennel. I have big respect for software contractors who manage to keep doing contracting past their 40s.

It isn't binary. I like my work, work long hours, don't own the company, and am treated well. I'm lucky, of course. But not every such situation is exploitative.

I watched a talk recently where Ivan Sutherland approvingly quotes Fred Brooks as saying "I don't plan to retire, I plan not to retire."

p.s. Please don't use allcaps for empahsis on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Do you feel that because you're contributing to the health and wellbeing of a community (as HN's community steward), that provides you with purpose above and beyond the usual monetary compensation?

I think people who work 40+ hours are supportive of doing so when they're contributing to something they believe in, or they enjoy it beyond compensation.

I think so, yes. Also, we have creative control over what we do and that makes the work much more satisfying.

The GP does have a point about how rare this is. It's just not a point that pertains to the original question.

The difference is the type of work you do and how you feel about it, not whether you're employer or employee. There are businesses it's a grim schlep to run, and jobs that are very interesting.

Perfectly agreed.

That's sad.

That's patronizing. How about 'I would find that sad if I was in his position'.

When I see you use "That's patronizing", I feel conflicted because it seems to be in the same evaluative style as "That's sad". I am not sure if it's constructive to use a style being criticized against a person.

(this is me practicing nonviolent communication or something :)

The solution is not to feel offended when you're being criticized. As long it doesn't get abusive.

That's fair--it sounds like you're saying a person receiving criticism should be resilient to that criticism to some extent. I'm interested in hearing what you think the solution (if any) is for the person giving the criticism.

(to be clear, I don't feel offended by the parent comment)

I don't believe in overwork, nor do I believe it is sad. There's a big difference working 70-hour weeks achieving the goals you've set for yourself, and working that much to avoid getting fired.

Why?

Because there are vast range of experiences beyond the world of work which can fill and enrich a human life. To be not engaged in the rest of the world is to live a half life. No one died regretting time no spent at work or money unmade

"No one died regretting time no spent at work"

Citation needed.

Here's one example of a situation where I could very easily see someone regretting not spending more time at work.

As a professional creative, I'm betting there are a fair number of authors, film directors, screenwriters and so on who died regretting they didn't finish their latest work, or didn't spend more time on the thing they really wanted to make. That's work.

Could you please not post unsubstantive comments here?

It's not unsubstantive in my opinion. It's just an expression of my opinion, which is questioning the thought of making no difference of personal and business goals combined with an emotional component (sadness).

This reply is already more substantive than a mere "That's sad", which may or may not have any thought behind it. If you fleshed it out a bit more into a thoughtful point, you'd have a good HN comment.

Merely stating an opinion doesn't count as substantive. There needs to be something to interest the reader.

You're right. I'm sorry.

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