Ask HN: What's your biggest pain point in your life? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's your biggest pain point in your life?

I spend the majority of my focus and time on stuff I don't find meaningful. I'm a university student studying mathematics and work part time in buy side finance ~20 hours pr week. I want to work on my startup, but I work most days from 5 to 19 (a little later in weekends) so I can't find any focus or energy to begin working in the evenings on my startup.

I'm probably going to quit my job real soon...

Having job + uni can drain any energy to work on your project

Doctors are over-specialised and have no real ability/incentive to track down problems. If you go to a GP with a complaint, the doctor will look at the most common causes of the complaint. If it doesn't fit, then they may send you to specialists. The specialists are useful if your GP guessed right as to what the problem might be, but otherwise they are completely useless. They do do a quick look to determine if you fall into their category of specialisation, but if you don't then you are out the door. You go back the GP, who may send you to another specialist. You keep getting shunted back and forth with each specialist saying, "Nope. Not me. Next." At every step you need to explain your problem and there is no continuity in the process. You aren't narrowing down the problem: you are only narrowing down the number of specialists who are willing to look at your problem. If you have an ailment that is even a little bit complicated, for example if it touches a number of different areas, nobody has an overarching understanding of what's going on. The GP only sees you for 5-10 minutes at a time and each visit to a specialist results in all of the information being essentially thrown away. The only person that has the ability to piece together the whole puzzle is the patient. However, they are the least qualified to do so. Without considerable effort in self education, it is practically impossible to figure out what's going wrong. It's also embarrasing to ask questions because the doctors want you out of their office as soon as they realise that you aren't going to be treated by them (and if I'm cynical you aren't going to make them any money).

Not to mention the absolute abyss of useless care that is physical therapy. The same cookie cutter treatment plans are assigned to every patient. Any PTs that have real skill and interest in curing their patients (as opposed to symptom management for geriatric care, which is a huge majority of the market) don't accept insurance. I've been given almost the exact same home care program by 5 different PTs despite me describing what I've tried and didn't see results from, and I'm pretty sure it's because that's what their insurance allows them to prescribe. God forbid they try to dig in at the individual, underlying issues with a novel treatment plan that could open their practice up to liability issues.

> What's your biggest pain point in your life?

Having to work full time, but using 80% of my income to survive (tax, flat, food, transport..)

Almost all your income is going for essentials, not much in the way of savings.

Feeling like I won't have time to do everything I want to. Which, ya know, I won't but I guess I just haven't been able to accept that yet.

Oh, and money. Not enough of it sadly but I'm young and it's early in my career so I'm hopeful.

Not knowing what I want to do with my life. I'm in my 30s now, have hopped jobs a lot of times, and have some savings, but I feel more lost than ever.

Every two years or so my software job will bring in a director from overseas and I have to go find another job. This has happened four times in 8 years.

OMG that would suck. From my experience, when they come from outside, not just overseas, they have an arrogant attitude that the locals 'just do not understand, if they did it my way...'.

Is it the industry you are in? Or is it because of the country you are in, that causes this. 4 times seems awful high.

I would say culturally these directors have been more on the same wavelength with the VP's and SVP's of the companies. That is I think it is more likely to pay a bribe or do a shady deal for a job in many countries. I'm not saying Americans don't do that, its just there are fewer willing.

Plus, the companies want to hire an outsider usually, not someone with political allies all over town. Third every company is in some stage of "replace all Americans with H1B's" and these directors are like brokers for H1B's. H1B's don't want an American manager either. Foreign managers don't want American employees because they have a lot more power in the workplace.

That my skills keep me at a computer screen all day.

Not knowing what are other people’s pain points

Being mostly stuck inside, having no outside relationships (har), for the next three years while Trump tries to kill us all off with covid.

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