Hacker News Reader

Comment by amagumori | Hacker News Reader

i think in most cases it's harmful to give one single iota of a fuck about whatever it is you do for work, unless you work for yourself. 40 hours of every week of your life, at a minimum, is being used to further someone else's goals, and you have no choice in this because you have to survive. don't ever work hard unless it's on something that matters to you or something that's altruistic. if you're in tech and aren't specifically working towards helping people, your job, company, and product don't matter. at all. stack your money, smile, nod, and GTFO as soon as you can.

View on HN

I couldn't agree more with this. I've developed the same approach to work. In fact I go out of my way to avoid doing any work where possible now and balance everything in favour of, for lack of a better analogy, collecting slack. Life is in the most part, pretty bloody good since I switched to this mode of working and stopped giving a shit about my day job.

During the day, I spend my entire time cranking the cogs on enterprise crap that really doesn't do anything other than top slicing some cash off some data flying around. I really don't care if the product burns in hell. That doesn't mean to say I don't do a good job, but I don't use the best of my energy on something I don't enjoy and aren't passionate about.

The company on the other hand suggest that passion is mandatory and that you're owned by them and you will attend every social event and be part of the "family", which a self professed narcissistic control freak manager explained is simply their control method and they don't give a fuck either. In fact everyone wouldn't piss on the place if it was on fire but hey everyone is making some cash and until that happens, who cares?

This is a recent development due to two separate medical near miss on myself and my wife. When shit gets put into perspective, your priorities are corrected. Before that I bought into it all and was the 80 hour a week slave. Now; 20-40 hours a week expended.

If it all goes to hell, as you say, smile, nod and GTFO, then do the same elsewhere.

Now for something I really enjoy, I spent a couple of hours writing some deduplication software for Google Drive in python the other day. It solved a real problem I had and was interesting. Note: I've even contracted out giving a shit about files to Google.

Anyway back to learning postgresql (something I am interested in) and watching the tomatoes grow on my window sill instead of cranking out Java EE model classes which is what I'm supposed to be doing. They can wait for the people who do care or have a large enough ego to pile-drive each other in the meeting rooms.

I care deeply about the work I do. It would be hard to have as great an effect on as many people without my current cow-orkers. In the sense that they've chosen me to work with them, I've also chosen them.

Of course, I get paid as well. This is nice. It lets me do something that I enjoy, live a comfortable life and continue to learn. I go to work to study at the feet of masters, and to have fun.

Then some loser comes long and tells me that passion is bad for me. Or that I should be working for myself. Or that my efforts just serve The Man and I'm somehow evil, and perpetuating an evil system by refusing to quit. Or some other crock of shite. People have been in my face and personal with this "help," and my response has been, and has been for 35 years, a solid: Fuck off.

Why do we treat programmers like children who somehow lost their way in life and need spiritual, career and financial advice all in one shotgun blast? Many of us know what we're doing.

I'm going to keep programming as long as I can. If I'm 75 and still writing code, that's great (I know several people who have done this). I love doing programming, I don't see a reason to stop.

He/she did say "don't ever work hard unless it's something that matters to you". You've stated that your work does matter to you therefore you do care, so I'm wondering what point you're actually disagreeing with?

It seems to me like poster is perhaps ranting against making people feel like they're defective if they can't muster the same fawning adoration for their work as colleagues.

Granted, I think the poster's views lean towards a more black and white viewpoint, but I think there's something to think about in both viewpoints.

yeah, s/he missed the point (if you like what you're doing, then great!) and got their feelings hurt. i went super one-sided on purpose. more fundamentally i am simply trying to remind people that life is about what you spend your time doing, and whether or not you enjoy that. don't sacrifice your life for goals, they slip away as soon as you grasp them like sand in your fingers, giving you no fulfillment. focus on making your present as nice as possible.

Yeah, this is some high-caliber nonsense that completely ignores the idea of mutually beneficial agreements.

Just because you're helping your employer doesn't mean whatsoever that they're necessarily taking advantage of you or exploiting you.

That's just some deeply cynical shit. You can do your job, enjoy it, care about the work your produce, and go home 8 hours later, all while holding a healthy attitude for your employer and at the same time yourself.

"Stack your money and gtfo" is just sad. I feel bad for you, if that's the attitude you bring to work.

Do you think his attitude here is a problem with him personally, or is it indicative of something more widespread in our industry? Because the former interpretation is an invitation to dismiss, whereas the latter is an invitation to improve the situation for all of us.

I think that's a "few and far between" position. I've done the contract circuit and the permanent circuit around the UK for 20 years and it's been a rough ride. You're lucky if you find an ethical company that isn't fucking someone over intentionally somewhere.

To be fair the most interesting position I had was working for a giant company who's fortunes were amassed working on the most efficient ways of killing people.

Eventually the experience builds cynicism and you either end up accepting it, succumbing to depression or going "meh" and returning the compliment.

Healthy attitude is doing what matters which is what the parent is saying.

I feel bad for his coworkers if that's the attitude he brings to work.

My coworkers think I'm some kind of guru. They've never worked with a real guru, so they mistake me for a the real deal because I read Design Patterns once. You should feel sorry for them. :)

I dunno. Sometimes working towards someone else's goals is a reasonably pleasant experience: if they're paying you well enough to help you save up the cash meet your goals, if the work itself is interesting, and if you have the latitude to do your job the way you want to. Then as long as you don't get too attached to it and you remember that you'll walk away from the code someday, caring is much more fun than the alternative.

On that basis you're only giving a shit about their goals for the money. If that went away, which it occasionally does from experience, does your care persist? Nope.

I've learned not to get attached to anything unless I'm in control of it.

Part of the issue here is the idea of the "incomplete contract" inherent in labor: that, since there's no way to adequately define performance in an employment contract, what counts as "doing the job" is something that gets negotiated through the day-to-day interaction between a worker and her boss. The "passionate programmer" idea is fine when it informs how you meet your own goals to find the happiest, most satisfying way to work. But it has a dark side in that the programmer herself is not the only one with a stake in elevating the work into something worthwhile above and beyond its monetary value to the programmer. Never forget that the negotiation over your job happens every day you clock in, and you'll never mistake your love of programming for your employer's interest in harvesting your marginal value.

I suppose one can be passionate about programming without setting oneself up for exploitation. But how many of us are? How many of us lose ourselves in technical problems as an alternative to living more full, self-actualized and self-aware lives? How many of us tell ourselves we're passionate about code to explain away the shitty work we have to do?

I am curious if you bring up this attitude when being interviewed for a job?

I assume your attitude is the same that the 1 year 10x developer has. I don't want top work with them any more (though I have to). It definitely prefer working with colleges who do have some interest in the technology.

Doesn't mean that I hang around doing unpaid overtime. It does mean that I want to improve my knowledge and skill-set, and become more valuable a result. It also means I produce better code that doesn't break as often, freeing me up to build more, rather than repairing the same dumb errors as last month.

I wonder if employers often bring up the negative attitudes their management will expose future employees to in the interview. I expect both sides put their best foot forward and hope the other side isn't too bad.

But I kind of resent the gist of the point you're making: that if you're not going to be a top-notch wage slave, you better tell your employer up front. Says who?

Your statement implies we are supposed to meet some standard of professionalism--a standard we have no say in, I might add, and that employers often excel at defining--and that we owe a duty to others to signal when we don't meet that standard. That standard is precisely what the author of the piece is attacking: the idea that if you are normal and human, you aren't good enough.

Enough with the guilt and the elevation of tech work into inherent value and meaningfulness. Most of us do what the goddamn boss says. Leave that crap at work, and never stop pushing for less work and more pay. After all, they're never going to stop pushing for more value for less money.

There is some truth in your Marxist sentiment, but there is a wide, wide range between "being a top notch wage slave" and not "giving one single iota of a fuck about whatever it is you do for work".

Fair enough if you work in McDonalds.

Personally my work is funded by taxpayers, and some of it will hopefully cure rare (and not so rare) diseases. Its pretty disrespectful to everyone involved (tax payers, colleagues, patients) that I would take the money and put in minimal effort afterwards.

Personally, I don't think it's fair to lump their attitude in with the 1 year 10x developers.

I've met developers with this attitude, they power through work and are out the door on the clock, but they don't work over 40 hour weeks. The reason I say not to lump them with the 1-year-10x crowd is that they still push their technical skills in their own spare time and explore that passion off the clock, and were every bit as effective as the folks who did longer hours and pushed their skills while in the company office chairs.

  > i think in most cases it's harmful to give one single
  > iota of a fuck about whatever it is you do for work 
  > unless you work for yourself. 40 hours of every week 
  > of your life, at a minimum, is being used to further 
  > someone else's goals, and you have no choice in this
  > because you have to survive.

I agree with your sentiment for the most part. For many (most?) jobs this is true.

But software development feels like a potential exception to me.

Being passionate about your boring-corporate-CRUD-coding job can do more than further your corporate bosses' goals. It can be self-investment as well. By improving your own craft by "passionately" coding for your corporate masters you can put yourself in a position to command a better salary, get a job you actually like, start your own business, etc.

Of course it's very very very possible to passionately... slave away for somebody else as a coder without furthering any of your own goals.

me too. I have worked for a company at start of my career and it was first job so pretty much company was top priority and was very proud of the company. Until one day The company said we are making 25% profit and they don’t do anything that does not net 50% profit so they sold the plant with worker to shitty competitor who in fact made everything to ensure does not get firmed in India. All the employees asked that they sell the company to employees rather than competitor but they said no, in fact employees offered the same amount as competitor.

That is the day I decided we should never get attached to company and that in 15 years of experience comes as job is just a job. So do what is asked, get the pay check and get out of work. And if you like coding and learning do it for your growth if company benefits out of it then good, otherwise continue your path.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com