Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

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Sounds like a great place to work. I got out of web dev for companies in San Francisco around the time I saw a client bill and realized they were charging 5-6x my hourly for my work to clients. Still, what you do for a company like Google would be a lot harder to quantify (or explain to a client), and it's probably a lot more personally gratifying.

I'm probably an asshole to say this, but I'm reasonably sure I could've gotten a job with Google in 2001-2; and at that point I didn't want to work in that kind of office. I went back to LA and drove a taxi for a year and a half, and wrote a novel, to clear my head.

The thing that makes me flinch about it is the competitive nature of the job, even if your job shouldn't have to be competitive. The open offices, the personal time, all of these things make you run faster rather than being allowed to slow down and think. And if you get to thinking about who you're running for...who knows? As insulated as you are from the clients -- which is great -- you also almost never get to see the direct result of your own work. So what emerges is this endless Senior Year of High School, where everyone's waiting to be recommended or get their acceptance letters, while partially slacking off while looking like they're on their best behavior. I'm not sure that's a way I'd be willing to spend my life.

I make about 1/5th what you do, probably, for about the same level of work and commitment to my own startup. But I don't envy your job.

>I went back to LA and drove a taxi for a year and a half, and wrote a novel, to clear my head.

How did that work out for you? Was it a good use of your time? Given how things worked out, do you think you would make the same choice again?

>The open offices, the personal time, all of these things make you run faster rather than being allowed to slow down and think. And if you get to thinking about who you're running for...who knows?

I've noticed the same thing. It's not just offices that make it difficult to close down and think, the entire world seems to pull us forward. Every moment pulls you to the next, there's always something to be anticipated and worked towards. How much time is spent thinking about what needs to be done for the day, what email to respond to first, whether to eat pork or chicken for dinner, what to listen to, etc., and not just living in actual present. Even our senses serve as stimuli to motivate us to act. Given how strongly and persistently these forces act to divert our awareness from the present, I think there is a lot to be gained by attempting to understand why this is so.

>How did that work out for you? Was it a good use of your time?

Well, I wrote this novel, right, about the 2004 presidential election; where I posited that Bush declares a fake terrorist attack, and DHS uses it as a reason to start herding liberals into concentration camps, and only this rock band on tour somehow escapes it, and they end up going and blowing up Bush and Cheney.

Would I take it back? Fuck no. But pretty soon after I finished it I had hundreds of hits from DHS, DoD, bases in Iraq, etc., and white unmarked Crown Vics were driving by my bungalow in the middle of the night. After they broke in and stole our laptops and papers and the LAPD couldn't figure out why they didn't take my money or my shotgun, we lived at Motel 6 for a month and fled to Argentina. Tried to stay out of the US since then. Spent a year in Australia, a year or two in southeast asia, and then Europe. Started a Bitcoin casino in my free time. Gave myself to drinking, smoking, drugs, snails and foie gras.

I would never, ever take back my decision to drive a taxi in LA, or write that book. It was the most eye-opening experience of my life. When I went to San Fran after high school in '97, I had $1800 in savings and moved into the Hotel Nazareth, Jones & Geary, where the hookers next door and the crackheads on the street screaming kept me up all night. There was no phone. I walked to the Hilton every day in my fucking only suit, and used the payphones to call every single ad agency and design firm in the city. Went for an interview with Bear Magazine, which was terrifying (they offered me $33k, more than I make now, ironically) -- twelve giant hairy guys turning around to welcome you while you try to be interested in whether they're using Quark or Pagemaker. Took a job for $22k to spare my psychiatry bill, working for a bunch of douchebags doing web bubbgle 1.0 on Green Street.

Anyway, would I change in my time under the russian mob driving for bell cab? No way in hell. It was an exploration of the soul. I learned things about the human condition, the human soul, that can only be put into a novel, where no one believes them.

Whats the name of the book? I'd like to read it.

Yeah, it's not fair to make claims about a book like that without naming it!

That's a fascinating story.

But pretty soon after I finished it I had hundreds of hits from DHS, DoD, bases in Iraq, etc., and white unmarked Crown Vics were driving by my bungalow in the middle of the night

I'm surprised that writing a fictional novel can get you that kind of treatment. Do you think that it was perceived as a plan to be carried out?

It was the most eye-opening experience of my life.

In what way? And what are you doing now?

The book's still online. It's a farce. It was never meant to be taken seriously. No one in their right mind would consider it a legitimate threat. Although that didn't stop DHS from considering it one. I wrote it based on a few kids I knew in a band who didn't give a crap about politics, and what would happen to them if Bush got re-elected and declared a state of emergency while they were all high and on tour. I wrote it in a about three weeks.

It's called American Apocalypse. http://www.joshstrike.com/amap/ In some weird way I think it's kind of a precursor to Cory Doctro's novel Little Brother, which I love; he swears he never read mine; and AA was written a pretty critical 4-5 years earlier. But there are still some striking similarities.

Now...I'm basically a freelance coder like everyone else. Lived overseas for the last seven years. Write, play music, travel to countries where it's cheap; live in a suitcase; drink and smoke a lot. American Apocalypse was the last novel I wrote. There were five others. There wasn't much point. Better to just stfu and make web, like a friend of mine says.

>Given how strongly and persistently these forces act to divert our awareness from the present, I think there is a lot to be gained by attempting to understand why this is so.

This... I mean, even as far as I've tried to isolate myself from civilization, and I've gone really far and given up almost all personal possessions to do that, I still feel the pull of the constant entertainment/what-next machine.

I probably don't have anything really smart to say in this, but I've noticed that the more survival shit I have to deal with, the less all of these things seem to matter. So if I have to chop wood, it's pretty easy to forget about what's next for an hour or two. If I have to think about rent, I could give a shit about the next twitter update.

I think the most dangerous thing for the human species is allowing yourself to be catered to on a 24/7 basis as if you're on some kind of thinking cruise ship.

Taking a cut in salary and catering to myself has never been a serious question.

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