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Comment by cobertos | Hacker News Reader

> motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL

Do you have any guiding star for what work gives you meaning?

I thought getting closer to the users/customers would help me. After all, software is for humans. But I found the social aspects of that, handling bugs, setting expectations for features, was tiresome and not meaningful. The only happiness I did find was when I saw my client/users flourish without me with the software I made tailored as best as it could be for the money. But that doesn't make a business unfortunately...

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Work satisfaction is a meme. Yes, there are people satisfied with their work, but realistically, this is not going to happen to you. Stop giving a fuck about your work, slack off as much as possible, and look for coworkers with whom you can build real human connection, instead of corporate NPCs.

I don’t know if that’s sustainable. We’re all stuck with this work-thing being one third of our life for the foreseeable time, so spending 33% of like, everything I’ll ever experience on something I don’t give a fuck about seems like both a lot of dull time and a bad decision overall.

Well, your choices are that or death - no matter whether you give it bare minimum effort or a lot of effort.

You you actually feel fulfilled giving anything minimum effort?

Like, I’m not going to work overtime for free or anything, but the time I do work gets my best effort.

Cynicism is a cope for not doing the work. Minimum effort is exhausting for the long term.

Work from home exists for a reason

"We're all stuck with this..."

I think you are rationalizing your choices by thinking everything does the same. It is not true, some are not stuck anywhere, some choose to live a simpler life that needs less money, fewer compromises, etc. etc. the world is a big place.

Sure. I was specifically talking to people browsing hacker news, which have a high probability of working a job in the capitalist economy. Of course there are other ways of life, but the predominant part of humanity does not choose those. So I still think it’s appropriate to talk about ”all of us“ in this case.

You still have to give people the impression you do a terrible good job and that you are working your ass out.

That's the tricky part

If I could pick a comment to explain a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” it would be this one right here.

Exactly... if you want to be miserable at work, by all means, "slack off as much as possible".

I think we forget the big picture that "no one gets out alive" and that it's up to each of us to spend the time we have in a way that makes us happy. If you can afford to not spend 1/3 of your time at a job in order to fund the remaining 2/3 of your existence, lucky you! But if not, choosing to slack off at a job you hate is essentially choosing to throw 1/3 of your life away being miserable. (Not judging if that's your choice, but its baffling to me.)

That’s my opinion, too. I also find that by taking this attitude, you guarantee that you’ll only end up working jobs that confirm your worldview. I have friends who think my work experience is a wild fluke.

And it makes your colleagues miserable because they have to carry the load or slack off too, which inevitably means the whole team is disfunctional and should be let go

I agree completely. I’ve had periods where I just slacked off and I was miserable, leading to a negative feedback loop. The only way to break out was ironically to actually work more, which led to more enjoyment of it. Cognitive dissonance is powerful.

How is making this human connection w/ coworkers done remotely? Is it possible? I'm struggling with that.

Is it reasonable to accept/leave a job based on no interesting connections?

I would say that anything that is opposed to Marx’s concept of alienation would fit the bill. Work should feel impactful and your decisions should lead to some tangible output.

It helps to be close to your users, or to build software that has a clear purpose. It’s good to work on a small team where your input has a clear influence on the quality pf the product.

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