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Comment by lbacaj | Hacker News Reader

Totally agree with you.

I think the biggest reason this is not universal is because not everybody hates their job or working. I get an incredible amount of Joy doing what I do. So much so that when I get home I have plenty of energy to do a little more on my own personal projects. This is obviously not true every single day but the vast majority of days it is.

That dosent mean I don’t love my wife or my family, quite the contrary I spend as much time as possible with them and love them very much.

But it does mean that I don’t love TV or much of the other bullshit.

This article is a great read, with a different sort of take on life:

https://blog.stephsmith.io/you-dont-need-to-quit-your-job-to...

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I love my work too. But this still resonates with me. Yesterday I left work at 8:30. Why? Because I'm designing a software architecture that will change a lot of people's lives around the world and I ended up having this stimulating conversion about our design with my coworker. Nobody does this if they don't like their work. I do this only because I believe I'm capable of contributing something to conversation, and I want to contribute. But we're all humans and I think having entirely exhaust on weekends is pretty expected after working hard for 5 days. I hate weekends because I'd much rather working. I hate weekends because it gives me this existential crisis, it makes me feel like I'm not doing anything with my life.

That's cool, and I've been there, but not a lot of people will have that opportunity in their careers... and certainly not on a regular basis.

Idealists will say not to take a job unless it lets you do something cool and world-changing like that. Well okay, but there is a LOT of code to be written in the world. Somebody has to write the boring stuff. And 99.999% of it is boring. If every developer held out for the chance to write the fun stuff the world would just not work.

It's like if everybody held out for some kind of job they passionately cared about. Theoretically cool, but who'd sweep the floors and shovel the horse shit out of the stables?

This is probably what I resonate with most.

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