Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

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I am at least and it's terribly exhausting. Need to pretend I care about the product, care about being perceived as a high output individual contributor etc. Need to pretend I'm good with people and generally cheery.

I am all of those things at work, but I need to say to myself "be all of these things" and consciously think about "ok how would or should the professional me act in this situation".

Maybe everyone does it to an extent, I don't know.

Professional life has certain expectations I find artificial and incomprehensible (multiple weird games going on behind the scenes etc) so I try to cope.

Weird rules like "every engineer is expected to take pride in their work and have their professional output be a matter of honor" and so on. My take is - "meh. You pay me. I write your high quality code. It's terribly important but also terribly tedious and boring. I really do not appreciate the hours I need to waste at my job but that's what it means to earn a living as a cog in a machine and I seem to be a pretty well performing cog".

Every programmer probably dreams of winning a lottery so they could focus on writing programs they find interesting and not just those that pay the bills.

It is so exhausting. I made the mistake of letting the real me peek out during a "why are you leaving?" conversation and holy hell it led to a kerfuffle:

"Why are you leaving?" "<3 other reasons> And, I'm a bit bored, the product and roadmap aren't very technically challenging to me".

Queue worried texts and emails from all over the company, thinking my boss isn't explaining the roadmap or hiding things, trying to figure out how to get me to stay, etc. It was a cool company that definitely helped people, but at the end of the day, it's basically a survey app and we were going to integrate with other companies that were doing the challenging technical bits. Lesson learned.

I hate that feeling. The real me is kind of an asshole. I let a lot of people see that at a previous job and now I can't be around any of them any more. I've worked hard to be someone else where I'm at now and I've been mostly successful. When I let my guard down I caused a minor shitstorm with my peers, but I was able to tamp it down.

It's absolutely imperative to keep my real self away from work. I'm hoping I can keep this up long enough to retire early, and then I can just be me.

> pretend I care about the product

This form of hypocrisy is a recipe for burnout.

Unfortunately, the opposite is often met with repercussions, and finding a job where one cares about the product is still a privilege.

So yes, many of us accept the potential burnout outcome while trying to find something better.

I would not call it hypocrisy but necessary.

I mean what can you respond to outreaches like "Our client has a billion euro building project X, our collaborator has promised them Y, but our product can't do Z, can you fix it please"

Either you respond with sufficient gravity which enables the stakeholders to trust you that you can get the job done, or you admit you don't care anymore and find another job.

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