The Cult of Work You Never Meant to Join

I'm not a "free-rider". If my employer isn't satisfied with what I can do in a 40-hour week, then they shouldn't be paying me. I will absolutely not work 60-hour weeks on a regular basis.

If my individual interests clash with those of the "ecosystem", then my individual interests take precedence. If I don't look out for my work-life balance and overall happiness, then who will?

Making societally optimal decisions is a crazy burden to try to put on a single person. As single entities we don't have near the amount of information or power required to act on that impetus with any weight.

Society as a whole needs to establish norms, and perhaps regulations, to ensure it doesn't fall apart. Individuals should consider those norms in their decisions (and fight to make them better). But slapping someone with the responsibility to be a single person acting alone to maximize happiness for their collective is asking them to be impotently act on shoddy heuristics.

It seems to me it might even make their bargaining position worse. There is less need for people who can accomplish the task the more any given individual can accomplish on their own and the more people there are who can accomplish that task. Monopolising the potential pool of work is a bad thing just to get more money that I don't need.

Yes, let someone else do more work. Perhaps someone who wouldn't have chance to work otherwise. And in my free time maybe I'll spend some of that money I make, and that will create even more jobs - providing people in other parts of society with a better bargaining position as well as those who share in the pool of work; the pool of mutually beneficial need; that I enjoy....

The idea that if I work 60 hours at some esoteric piece of technology the work life balance of people who don't have the leverage to achieve a comparably small working week will get better strikes me as nuts. There's no plausible mechanism connecting the two being shown.

Also, cranking away on Rails sites isn't going to feed the hungry or give water to the thirsty, by and large. Those are social problems of bad distribution, not lack of productivity.

I must say, it was actually really nice. I would just decide to not come in here and there when I needed to. It was nice to have the freedom and feel like you could use it. It's the big thing I miss now that I'm expected to be in 9 to 5.

Fuck yeah. I re-framed and now I compete at home. I eat dinner and doze off on the sofa like a mother fucking CHAMPION :)

When people are at the end of their lives, what do they talk about, what do they remember as the happy times, the times that were worth savoring and experiencing. Just google it. People specifically say that time spent at work, though not a total loss, was not typically worth remembering. Those extra 30 minutes a day at the desk or shovel? Not worth it. Harvard ran a study for about 70 years on their business school grads. It's admittedly biased towards rich WASPy males, but it's the best we have thus far for study. The results: When controlling for drinking and smoking, LOVE is the single greatest factor for a happy, long, and fulfilling life. FULL STOP. Love wins the game of life; bet on love.

So, when you prioritize your life, keep the end in mind. Memento Mori. Your family, friends, travel, dinners, those are the things that matter. Yes, you have to work, but do not think that work will love you.

That's not very nice of them, actually. Have you tried raising the point (civilly, of course) that it might be more convenient to switch to midday brainstorming instead of late night? A good employer ought to play to everyone's strengths.

I've met a few rich ones, dated one, and simply put, there is nothing in their life I envy, and I wouldn't change for their life no matter what (rich in millions/tens of millions of usd). There are only few really important things in life, and only few things that make people really happy (no, new phone ain't one of those). When comparing how they spend vacation, I end up with much more creative, adventurous and full experiences. When comparing how to spend free time, similar results (but here it's also about personal preferences).

I'm not advocating money-less world, but most of us here have/can have enough to cover all we really need. If you see a long term happy person, money ain't the primary reason he is where he is.

However, in between contracts I have the ability to take long breaks to work on my own projects or travel. Overall, the benefits have outweighed the risks for me, but then again, I'm just one data point.

At one point a blood test did show a blip in my thyroid levels but not within the range of a diagnosis for hyperthyroidism.

Periods of stress can definitely induce it. Which is why I'm trying to exercise a lot more and reduce stress.

The job of a manager is to lead as a natural outgrowth of deep domain knowledge and industry experience. The best bosses I've ever had were those from whom I learned new things every day, and I was glad to take guidance and instruction from them. The trust goes both ways--the manager trusts in his/her people to make the right decisions because he/she has led them well. In that way they don't need to be involved in the day to day of their reports and are only called upon in moments of uncertainty or conflict.

On the other hand, I've had bosses where I was 95% certain I could do their job better than they could, and the only reason I had to subordinate to them was because they got there first. These were also the type of people to micromanage to 'prove' that they had organizational value (probably also because they feared losing any control). You then have a few choices: either shut up and submit, or play the political game of positioning yourself either as a lackey of the boss or as a potential replacement should they fail (there's obviously some incentive there to secretly engineer situations to make them look bad/incompetent to the rest of the org). Neither is a particularly good option--that's when I know it's time to seek better opportunities elsewhere.

In practice, police can't do the job so well that they're no longer needed because the world is so big. There are always new criminals, and there are many sources of crime, and that's not the cops' fault.

With management, whether that is true depends on the size and competency of the organization. With a small team, a good manager can get everyone aligned and then step back. With hundreds of people, maybe not. There will always be conflicts to resolve and problem employees to watch.

A manager's job is "protect, direct, eject". The strong employees need to be steered away from and shielded from ("protect") the political messes that earnest high performers often fall into, and from the resentment that being good at their jobs (and being rewarded for it) may attract. They also need to be able to take risks and spread their wings. The average ones need to be kept on track ("direct"), and the incorrigible problem employees need to be fired ("eject").

If you do the job well, you won't have many problem employees (the "eject" category) because the corrigible or previously-unlucky ones you can fix, and the rare incorrigible ones you should fire. The mediocre employees (the "direct" category) will be mentored until they're good, and therefore in to the "protect" category, as well. So two of the three jobs (direct and eject) are finite and temporary (except for when the team acquires more people). As for "protect", who do high-talent employees need to be protected from? Executives and other managers; basically, anyone else who can hurt them. So, yes, in an ideal world there wouldn't be the "manager" job. In practice, it's different and you actually need them.

Too many managers fall in love with the "direct" part of the job. They like telling people what to do. They ignore the "protect" part of it (because it can put them at personal risk, and because it's hard to do) and no one (except for a psychopath) enjoys the "eject" aspect. They get good at that one aspect and develop an approach that works reasonably well for middle-of-the-road employees but (a) doesn't handle the extremes, and (b) doesn't really allow for growth or progress (as in Scrum, where there's no allowance that one might graduate out of having to justify small amounts of one's own working time).

Of course, I don't care about their profits either or how they look to their boss. Yes, that makes some management types annoyed that you don't sell your soul to the company.

Show up, do your job well. If you do you will be calmer. You are just there to do the job you were hired for. Stop caring so much about anything else.