[HN Gopher] Work/life balance should be difficult
___________________________________________________________________
Work/life balance should be difficult
Author : KentBeck
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-12-14 21:19 UTC (1 days ago)
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| dvt wrote:
| > Withdrawing from either side is pure lose.
|
| Disagree. Withdrawing from _family_ is a pure loss. Who cares
| about work. Maslow is a red herring here. You hunt for food for
| your _family_ , you build shelter for your _family_ , it all goes
| back to your local community.
|
| "Work" in the Silicon Valley (and more generally corporatist)
| sense, has nothing to do with community, with making a better
| life, or with family, just pure productivity for the bottom line.
| I would argue that that's not even really work.
| amw-zero wrote:
| But say that we didn't have business or currency, and you had
| to go and get food for your family. Wouldn't you have to make
| sacrifices even then? There might be an emotional situation
| going on at home, but if the food supply was dwindling that is
| also an immediate problem.
|
| If anything, businesses have allowed us to spend way more time
| with family than we would if we actually had to hunt / farm /
| gather for food. Our quality of life is so absurdly high
| exactly because of our economy. I think people forget what it
| would take to survive without society.
| black6 wrote:
| > If anything, businesses have allowed us to spend way more
| time with family than we would if we actually had to hunt /
| farm / gather for food.
|
| That is untrue. There is ample evidence that hunter-gatherer
| societies have _more_ leisure time than industrialized
| societies. Just to name two sources I 've recently read:
| Harari covers it in _Sapiens_ , and before that Mumford
| covered it in _Technics and Human Development_.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Realistically, if I wanted a similar family quality of life
| as hunter-gatherer societies, I could reach it in far less
| work time in modern society. Cutting out the expenses of
| larger/modern housing, advanced healthcare, higher
| education, and a lot of expensive leisure activities,
| living a simple family life would be very cheap and
| affordable on less than a 40 hour work week. I could even
| have a better lifestyle in many regards for the same amount
| of work time.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Yeah I think the problem here is that modern "work" is too
| separated from survival.
|
| This seems to be why a lot people feel much more fulfilled when
| then venture out into nature for a decent amount of time. The
| things they do there directly impact their survival. I agree
| that people do need work in that sense.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's not even pure productivity, much of it is just wasted
| time.
|
| Imagine if all of the workaholic middle managers in the world
| couldn't work sixty hour weeks and had to go home and shut off
| their work phones after 35 hours... just think of all of the
| meetings and reporting that wouldn't have to happen if they
| were forced to use their limited time wisely.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Advocating for a 4 day workweek (or rather, the ongoing
| ratcheting down of the workweek) gets us to what you
| describe: flushing out the busy bodies and preventing the
| savagery of work theater. If work fills the time you allocate
| for it (Parkinson's Law [1]), there is no governor on useless
| tasks or meetings, and countless hours of person life are
| needlessly wasted.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
| slibhb wrote:
| Aren't you contradicting yourself? Work has to do with
| family/community if you use your salary to support your
| family/community.
|
| Anyway, I think a significant majority of people would have no
| idea what to do with their lives if you took away their jobs
| and provided them with food/shelter/entertainment. For better
| or worse, our jobs are a huge part of how we conceptualize
| ourselves.
| golemotron wrote:
| Some people aren't family oriented. They find more meaning in
| work and, despite the all of the attempts to devalue work in
| the blog and this response, it's ok. We don't have to judge
| people who make that choice because we prefer another.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i made some other replies that would imply otherwise but you
| do make a fair point. I think it's not fair to ask your
| partner/children to pay your ticket if you want to put work
| first however. If that's who you are (and that's perfectly
| acceptable) then don't have a family and ask them to foot
| your bill emotionally.
| MathYouF wrote:
| I wonder how these companies we all work for manage to pay our
| salaries by selling anything if nothing we build contributes to
| the needs of peoples families.
|
| After all, as you say, people are only buying things to benefit
| their families, so how do they manage to be parted with their
| money on what you posit to be useless frivolities produced by
| the tech industry?
| [deleted]
| llIIllIIllIIl wrote:
| Your work should revolve around your life, not your life around
| your work. There's always going to be another exciting project
| after this one. There's not going to be another exciting life
| after this one.
| shard wrote:
| This might be true in this case since the father was a Silicon
| Valley engineer. Stepping back, however, and I hate to be that
| guy, but your statement is "dripping with privilege", as the
| kids say nowadays. I can tell you that my parents would have
| not been able to say that, as they worked in manual labor jobs
| which damaged their bodies in order to provide me with the
| opportunity to study instead of work.
|
| As a second point, reincarnation is a common religious concept,
| and there could very well be another exciting life after this
| one (although you probably shouldn't peg any plans on that).
| llIIllIIllIIl wrote:
| You're right, that was coming from the statement that the
| father was a SV engineer.
|
| My parents didn't have any exciting projects either, in fact,
| children's lives depend on my mother who is a pediatric
| cardiologist in 3rd world country. Nevertheless, she came
| back from work and read the book with me before bed. I
| couldn't ask for more.
|
| But when people pull long shifts to get the next version of
| the browser that makes marginal improvements instead of
| spending time with friends/family/doing a hobby (essentially
| living, not working) and take it as a medal of honor, they
| are missing a lot in life. People working late hours to put
| the food on the table and people deliberately working late
| and then using it as an excuse are different. If they're the
| latter, please don't tell that they're having hard time
| balancing work/life.
| chasd00 wrote:
| well privileged or not death is inevitable. From the person
| panhandling on the street to the Elon Musks of the word, you
| have about 75-80 years on average then lights out. I think
| you can consider and contemplate that no matter your
| privilege.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > We need work.
|
| Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social
| knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like
| learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit
| down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify
| things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun
| teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before.
|
| The author seems to have done a little trick. By assuming this
| little fact, it serves as a rationalization for Dad's emotional
| neglect. It explains his behavior in retrospect, and I get why
| that makes sense. But that doesn't mean it's true, it doesn't
| have any predictive power because it reverses subject and object.
| "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true
| as much as it's believed to be true. To me it stands out like
| pickle in pancake, maybe it can for you too.
| teekert wrote:
| Fwiw, I felt exactly the same.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| I disagree that it's a social construct.
|
| I'm not saying that we all need to work for hyper-capitalistic
| machines. Or even anything remotely resembling a "business".
| But humans need to do semi-regular things that approximate
| work. Whether it's something like running a farm, coding
| programs, or passing lessons on to the next generation--we all
| need something semi-recurring, with some perception of value.
|
| I do agree that the sense of duty towards work that is stereo-
| typically cultivated in Silicon Valley is a social construct
| and not at all a universal truth. THAT we can both agree is
| definitely a social construct.
| amw-zero wrote:
| Work is generally a proxy for survival. Do you agree that you
| need to eat in order to survive?
| Bancakes wrote:
| Technology has allowed the rise of "made-up", survivally
| unnecessary jobs like Metaverse programmer, pop singer, and
| marketing specialists. If anything, the pandemic proved we
| don't need restaurants and tourism to survive.
| walshemj wrote:
| You would consider Homer "survivally unnecessary" (the poet
| not the cartoon character)
| kube-system wrote:
| Art, entertainment, and communication are not new human
| creations. These jobs are the result of psychological needs
| that humans have. Maslow's Hierarchy is more than a cave,
| nuts, and berries.
|
| Furthermore, not everyone can survive without
| specialization of labor. Prior to specialization of labor,
| it was much more common for people to die young, and the
| world's population reflected this.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Everyone agrees that people need to do certain things to
| survive. What complicates this line of thinking are the
| social facts that are assumed when we conceptualize work. The
| way that work is conceptualized is culturally specific across
| space and time. The construction "eating implies survival
| implies work" doesn't imply that our culturally specific
| conceptualization of work is implied. There are many
| interesting ways to have conversations about work means, how
| it changes, and what factors influence how people think about
| what work is and isn't.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Filling out TPS reports is not a survival skill
| nomel wrote:
| Honestly asking, how is it not a survival skill? It's a
| high level abstraction that's part of the _" need"_ for the
| company, which is why they're paid to fill out that report,
| with the skill being all the intelligent/understanding
| required for that high level abstraction. It's literally
| paying for all the needs _and_ squishy comforts of life for
| that individual, most likely _much_ squishier than an
| average individual.
| emaginniss wrote:
| This is a function of specialization. You fill out TPS
| reports to generate value for a company which allows you to
| purchase food created by people who specialize in food
| generation.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Not all work involves filling out TPS reports. A lot of
| workplaces have completely automated this aspect. And you
| should feel free to quit jobs that haven't for jobs that
| have; by doing so, you're making the economy more
| efficient.
| amw-zero wrote:
| That's why I said proxy. The vast minority of members of
| our society take care of our actual physical needs. The
| rest of us do other things to provide other kinds of value,
| so that the farmers can do things like enjoy a nice TV show
| at the end of their day without producing it themselves.
|
| For some of those other companies, a TPS report is
| required.
| disambiguation wrote:
| I think you're also doing a trick here.
|
| While it's not necessary that everyone works, some work is
| necessary. If people stopped showing up to the farms, or the
| water treatment plants, everyone would die. So, someone has to
| work.
|
| Labeling "we need work" as only a social fact is a misguided
| kind of relativism. "Society has created arbitrary weights and
| values on which work gets rewards, therefore we only need work
| if we believe we need it". The logic is just plain faulty.
| supernovae wrote:
| I've always wondered why we don't switch to a 20-30 hour work
| week or 4 work days a week...
|
| And not in some bs "part time vs full time" but that we have
| enough humans on this freakin planet that you should only
| need to work 30 hours a week to live a healthy, balanced
| life.
| new_stranger wrote:
| Well, "work" is a broad term. It can mean a paycheck, the
| gulag, or that todo you've been putting off because you want to
| finish the show. Lots more as well.
|
| Some are meanings are constructs, but some are limitations of
| complete communication from a single English world.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| It's more than a social fact. It's a consequence of living in a
| physical reality with physical wants and needs that require
| action to be satisfied. The best we can do is move the work
| around, and have someone else do it. (We can harness physical
| forces to take care of most of the work in the force-times-
| distance sense, but we're still a long way from moving the
| rest.) And the ultimate problem with moving it around so that
| we don't have to do any of it will be that it is likely to
| result in some outside entity having outsized power over our
| lives.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| But now the goalpost has been moved. The OP claimed that it
| is a _psychological_ need.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| "We need work" and "we things to get done" are different
| things in my mind. I agree just like anyone that we need
| certain things to get done to survive. "We need work" is a
| curious little phrase though. It's setup in the same way as
| "we need food", or "we need safety and security", or "we need
| to feel loved." The framing is that of a basic human need and
| it's my impression that's how many people see it. It's
| interesting that the language follows suit in a Metaphors We
| Live By[1]-type of way.
|
| 1. https://www.biblio.com/9780226468013
| Barrin92 wrote:
| OP talks about 'work' in a particular way, as does the author
| of the piece. What we need is food, shelter and so on. 'Work'
| as in conflict with 'life' (i.e the work-life balance) is a
| social construct.
|
| It didn't always use to be that way, and it doesn't have to.
| That we have physical needs is a fact. That we have alienated
| work from life, or family, or expressing ourselves is not.
| That work created an absentee father is not in the laws of
| physics, obviously, but that it's hard to perceive it as
| anything else is what OP pointed out, and that's something
| worth paying attention to.
|
| The idea that you have to 'move work around' (kind of sounds
| like moving garbage around) wouldn't make sense to a person
| who is able to express themselves in their work. Ask a
| craftsman for example, an artist, or someone on a family
| farm.
|
| The fact that people are detached from their work, that
| they're objects of their work, that their work dehumanizes
| them in extreme cases, that is a result of a particular _mode
| of production_ we are living under. Someone for whom their
| work is an extension of their life, who are not detached from
| the products of their work, and for whom work strengthens
| their social relations, there is no work-life balance,
| because there is no work-life conflict.
| sdwr wrote:
| Beautifully put!
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > The idea that you have to 'move work around' (kind of
| sounds like moving garbage around) wouldn't make sense to a
| person who is able to express themselves in their work. Ask
| a craftsman for example, an artist, or someone on a family
| farm.
|
| When I go over to the printmaking studio, I recognize that
| in principle someone else might be able to grind the
| limestone slabs I intend to use for printing, maintain the
| printing press, clean up the ink, or perform any number of
| tasks incidental to the expressive portion.
|
| I am just as sure that anyone on a _family farm_ knows they
| can, in principle, get someone else in the family to do
| work, and that hired hands exist, and can take care of many
| tasks or unpleasant chores. They may prefer to do the work
| themselves, so that they get better results, or have more
| control or feel useful, or because they have a duty to
| contribute productively.
|
| In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.
| It is essentially never _entirely_ fun.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only
| true as much as it's believed to be true.
|
| Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where
| I wasn't working and was also not engaged in an existential
| struggle for survival, I have to disagree here.
|
| Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual
| life. It needn't be employment, but "work" is a fair way to
| describe it. I can spend two or three weeks idling most of the
| time, but after that I need something to direct my energy and
| concentration toward. I need a goal that stretches my
| abilities, or I find myself constantly battling a depressive
| spiral.
| ravitation wrote:
| > Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual
| life.
|
| Would your abilities feel stretched by being a cashier? How
| about a janitor? Waiter?
|
| These jobs are what "work" actually is for most people. I
| think most people could go without doing those things.
|
| Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's
| abilities, don't have to come from work (and for most people
| those things and "work" are hardly related at all).
| Therefore, saying we (as humans) "need" work is generally
| incorrect (at least for the reasons you stated) since most
| people don't even get what you say we "need" from work
| anyway.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's
| abilities, don't have to come from work _
|
| Your reply is entirely reasonable but it seems the gp
| already covered what you wrote and anticipated it in his
| disclaimer: _" >It needn't be employment,[...]"_
|
| He just happened to use the imprecise label _" work"_ --
| which is so tainted and overloaded that one can't re-use
| that word to _also_ describe _" non-employment intellectual
| activity"_ because it inadvertently tricks people into
| talking past each other.
|
| (E.g. Notice that you used "work" as synonym for
| "employment" but the gp did not.)
| ravitation wrote:
| You're right. This is clear had I actually noted that
| disclaimer, and was simply an oversight on my part.
|
| With that in mind, I'll just agree with your analysis,
| redefining "work" to include "non-employment" is
| detrimental to the conversation. When people discuss
| work/life balance (i.e. in the original article), they
| are (almost universally) not talking about balancing
| intellectually stimulating hobbies and the rest of life.
| We are, from the onset, talking about jobs, i.e.
| employment.
|
| Additionally, I think my original comment is still useful
| when discussing the more common definition of work.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's
| abilities, don't have to come from work
|
| Just different definitions of "work". I think the sense
| meant by those saying people "need work" is "meaningful
| toil". Something that requires focused effort, and done for
| some tangible purpose.
|
| So cashier, janitor, waiter would fit that broad
| definition, even though they are not a focus of
| intellectual life. But there can be other types of work
| that also fulfill intellectual needs, that might be more
| fulfilling for many (most? all?) people.
| ravitation wrote:
| > Just different definitions of "work".
|
| I'm going to disagree on this simplification. There is a
| common definition of work, e.g. the definition used in
| the context of work/life balance (i.e. the context of the
| original article), that is widely used; redefining it to
| be as broad as you've described is detrimental to the
| conversation.
|
| > Something that requires focused effort, and done for
| some tangible purpose.
|
| Essentially everything can be made to fit this
| definition, making it, I think, not very useful.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Thank you for laying this out. Exploring these are the
| ideas I had in mind when exploring the work-survival
| substitution. If I may also point out, the
| conceptualization of work is self-reinforcing too. Jobs are
| defined from the assumption of the work-fact. This in turn
| transforms peoples' subjective experience of work into
| definitions of work as an objective reality.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I just went into the hardware store last week. The cashier
| at the store was talking to someone he knew. He actually
| took the job there because he had retired, and had nothing
| to do. So he works there for 20/hrs a week. So for him, he
| needed work.
|
| I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all...
| but I do that kind of interesting. I like to think that if
| I had unlimited free time, there's no way I'd ever be
| bored, I have so many things that I love doing... No way
| I'd give up 20 hours of my week just to go work as a
| cashier when I don't need to.
|
| That said... things might change when I get older.
| 20211215throw wrote:
| > Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months
| where I wasn't working and was also not engaged in an
| existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here.
|
| Sure but that is taking a short break from your job/career.
| Its not like leaving school and never working.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Could you accept "We need projects" as a revision?
| psyc wrote:
| I recommend Factorio and Shenzhen IO as alternative forms of
| self employment. And it's true self employment, in that
| you'll need to pay yourself too.
| jfzoid wrote:
| > Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual
| life. It needn't be employment, but "work" is a fair way to
| describe it.
|
| "It is difficult for a man who always has a full stomach to
| put his mind to some use. Are there not players of liubo and
| go? Even playing these games is better than being idle." --
| Confucious
| goodpoint wrote:
| > I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn't be
| employment, but "work" is a fair way to describe it.
|
| Intellectual life and work are completely orthogonal.
|
| People have been taught to confuse them because it benefits
| the ruling class.
| zepto wrote:
| I agree with this, but "work" is an utterly terrible word to
| use to describe it.
| antisthenes wrote:
| That's too vague and inaccurate to be meaningful.
|
| What people need is to be able to channel their energy into
| something productive, whether it be learning, hobbies,
| helping others in a meaningful way, or maybe some sort of
| self-improvement in terms of health.
|
| I suppose you could put all of that under the vague umbrella
| of "work", but for the purpose of having a conversation
| that's not arguing about semantics, work is what most people
| do to generate an income to support their life goals and
| activities.
|
| > Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months
| where I wasn't working and was also not engaged in an
| existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here.
|
| I've also gone through a few such periods, in between jobs.
| Best time of my life. Even though I didn't accomplish a whole
| lot during it that you could put on paper and call work.
| Learned a few things, improved friendships, and did a little
| room remodel.
| aulin wrote:
| That's not work, that's life. The opposite of working is not
| idling, it is spending your time in activities that realize
| your self without being constrained by the survival struggle.
| as300 wrote:
| I think his point (and the broader point being assumed by
| the author) was that "spending your time in activities that
| realize your self" does, in fact, feel a lot like work.
| aulin wrote:
| And that's true for a limited subset of people lucky to
| work in a field where the two aspects overlap.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Semantics.
|
| Some people still consider tasks they enjoy doing a form of
| "work". Work doesn't have to be compensated activities
| engaged in out of a desperate need to provide basic
| necessities.
|
| Just different people using the same word to mean different
| things.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only
| true as much as it's believed to be true.
|
| Nonsense.
|
| Most men derive purpose in life from work (ie. providing) -
| this is basic psychology. Even male millionaires start new
| companies so they have something to do with their time.
|
| Women have entered the workplace, but they're mostly driven by
| insecurity, not purpose. As one woman programmer told me, "You
| want to be world-class. I want to sit in my garden patio."
|
| Also, give the fruity prose a break, this is HN, not Lapham's
| Quarterly.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _" We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's
| only true as much as it's believed to be true. To me it stands
| out like pickle in pancake, maybe it can for you too._
|
| Something I believe, but can't really prove is that this is
| completely wrong and there's very little about the need for
| "work" that's socially determined. We are biological creatures
| that evolved under very specific circumstances. And "work" in
| the most basic sense is a big part of that. We need to be
| struggling to feed ourselves (or simulating it) -- every day.
| Most of us wither and die when that need is removed.
| ryeights wrote:
| Who's to say that the work we do is a good simulation? Most
| jobs are not fulfilling, and our country is in the midst of a
| mental health crisis
| dionidium wrote:
| Probably this is true. Something about specialization,
| maybe.
| what_is_orcas wrote:
| That's cute, but it doesn't make sense.
|
| Most (I avoid saying all, because I'm not _that_ smart)
| animals, when not _surviving_ (finding food, consuming food,
| finding sex, having sex) are super idle. It 's energetically
| expensive to work, and, so far as I can tell, nothing has
| evolved to be _energetically stressed_.
|
| If we're throwing around words like "evolution" we need to
| understand that we're talking about genetic survival (passing
| genes on through generations). The state of "struggling to
| feed ourselves" is directly antithetical to the goal of
| having sex. At best you could argue that the hypothesis that
| peacocks attract mates with their flamboyant tail feathers
| suggests that they've survived to maturity as intact as they
| are because of their good genes (survival in spite of being
| an easy, colorful target for predators), but that's a
| stretch.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _Most (I avoid saying all, because I 'm not that smart)
| animals, when not surviving (finding food, consuming food,
| finding sex, having sex) are super idle. It's energetically
| expensive to work, and, so far as I can tell, nothing has
| evolved to be energetically stressed._
|
| "[F]inding food, consuming food, finding sex, having sex"
| _is the work_ I 'm talking about. So, yes, animals are
| either working or they're "super idle." There's no third
| mode where they're, like, finding their true selves.
| They're either working or they're asleep.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I don't think that was the author's message at all.
|
| Rather, I think that this post is about _balance_ , and about
| being emotionally present. He's saying that it should be a
| constant struggle to balance off things that you care about,
| because _that shows you care_. The only way to avoid the
| struggle is to cease caring, and that means you push something
| out of your mind that you really should be paying attention to
| because it 's uncomfortable.
|
| I've got plenty of stories about a dad who went the other way -
| full time househusband, gave up his career entirely soon after
| my sister and I were born - but they're a bit too personal to
| share on HN. It's not all roses and sunshine on that side
| either, though.
| paulstovell wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this Kent, I got a tremendously valuable
| insight from it.
|
| I run a company and I love my work. And I recognise that this
| puts me in an extremely lucky minority. And my business has been
| successful enough that I could even quit working, but I enjoy it
| too much to. I also love my family. But there are never enough
| hours in the day. I could spend 16 hours a day with my kids and
| it would not be enough. I could spent it working, and my business
| would want more. I look back on the last 10 years and feel many
| regrets about how my time was spent in both directions.
|
| So I feel like a failure constantly. I am not the husband I wish
| I was, not the CEO I wish I was, not the parent I wish I was.
| Because they all want 100%. I can't get this balance right.
|
| The point I took from your post is that this balance is meant to
| be difficult when you love both sides of the things you attempt
| to balance. Because giving time to one takes from the other.
|
| I feel a lot more at peace for reading it. Thank you for writing
| it.
|
| PS:
|
| Lots of the comments here question the "need to work" point or
| admonish those of us who do derive substantial meaning from our
| work and wish we had more time for our work. I think that's
| missing the point. Replace "work" with something socially
| acceptable that you love, like I dunno, protecting baby penguins
| or teaching orphans. You could spend 100% of your time doing
| that. Now balance it against the other things you love. Don't
| feel bad about not getting that balance right, because by giving
| to one you take from the other, and both would love 100%. If work
| for you is something to be minimised as much as possible then I
| don't think a post about work life balance is particularly
| relevant to you, because you must have it figured out.
| a45a33s wrote:
| this is a pretty bizarre article and im not even sure what to
| take away from it
|
| guy who works all the time loses some of his family, feels bad,
| continues to neglect the remaining family, and the son chastises
| him for not climbing the corporate ladder high enough. in
| conclusion work is a Very Important Thing
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The sum total of your life at any period of time should be
| fulfilling and each part of your life should be rewarding.
|
| If you don't have that, then you probably need to be doing
| something else.
| amw-zero wrote:
| This is spoken from a clear position of entitlement. Many lives
| do not have the benefit of being fulfilling or rewarding, and
| those same lives do not have a choice to "do something else."
| [deleted]
| mfer wrote:
| Our society needs people to haul garbage away. I would bet many
| of them don't do it because it's rewarding. It just gives them
| money to pay for things they care about. Should all those
| people leave hauling our garbage?
| wccrawford wrote:
| When I worked retail, I met a lot of people who I would bet
| didn't find the work rewarding at all. They were there to get
| the paycheck. Most of them did as well as they did because
| they felt it was the right thing to do, but some only did
| well enough to not lose their job.
|
| The older I get, the more I understand those people who only
| did enough to keep their job. I used to feel it was an
| ethical obligation to do my best, but I'm realizing that that
| is a one-sided view. The opposite argument was always "they
| don't treat me as well as they can" or something like that,
| and so they excused their own behavior... And I get it now.
|
| I have no doubt that there are many garbage collectors who
| find their job rewarding... But I've also no doubt that there
| are many who just do it for the money, and would be just as
| happy (or more so) if their needs were met by society and
| they could concentrate on something they enjoyed instead.
|
| FWIW, I think it's important that people do things that they
| feel contribute to society. But that doesn't have to be
| "work".
| [deleted]
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Hauling away garbage is a thankless but virtuous task that
| benefits society. I would bet that a fair number of workers
| in that space actually do find satisfaction in it. Likewise,
| my usual UPS delivery driver seems to take pride in his work
| and I've noticed and appreciate it. The longer I work in
| tech, the more I get the itch to quit and work as a handyman
| or something for a few years.
| convolvatron wrote:
| you will be amazed at the satisfaction you get from doing
| something to better the world a tiny bit and help your
| fellow man. and how much skill and creativity some of those
| other people express every day.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| There are actually people who have retired from their IT jobs
| to drive garbage trucks. If the garbage hauling job doesn't
| itch a scratch that you have, then find something else or
| raise the pay until someone is happy to haul your trash.
| shard wrote:
| Sounds like there are hierarchies in the garbagemen
| business. I recall reading an article a few years back
| about garbagemen, the ones who ride on the back of the
| trucks, they do back-breaking work, and it's definitely a
| young man's gig.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| That you _need_ work is kind of tautological: work is some kind
| of struggle that you have to go through in order to achieve some
| end. When work becomes either a non-struggle or optional is also
| when it stops being _work_.
|
| But it's quite the claim to say that work is a psychological
| need.
|
| Think what work _is_ for most people. Work for most people
| consists of providing surplus value to the owners of whatever
| organization that they work for. That is what work is in economic
| terms.
|
| Where is your Maslow now?
|
| But people like this author--although perhaps not him in
| particular--have to give some lip service to show fealty to the
| concept of Loving Work in case some potential employer or
| whatever other person-with-networking-potential stumbles upon his
| blog. (We have _careers_ to maintain...)
| jonahrd wrote:
| This article is also operating under the assumption that all
| "work" is equally fulfilling on every level of Maslow's
| heirarchy.
|
| But much of what we work on nowadays has very little attachment
| to the actual physical sphere of connections, people, objects,
| community, etc that we interact with daily. [1] This makes a
| large portion of modern work simply not worth doing, because of
| how little it fulfills our needs.
|
| It goes without saying that if you're able to work as a caretaker
| or nurse or volunteer with people in need (and also magically
| maintain the life side of the balance) that you will be very
| fulfilled by your work. But I don't buy that this is true for
| very many jobs in tech.
|
| [1] https://davidgraeber.org/articles/
| ravitation wrote:
| > But I don't buy that this is true for very many jobs in tech.
|
| Not only that, but it's probably true even less often when
| looking at the totality of jobs everywhere.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I'm not sure how "Dad sold his soul to work, regretted it
| forever, but couldn't change his ways" leads to the conclusion
| that "work/life balance should be difficult."
|
| It's not really that hard, especially in STEM, where we tend to
| make more than enough money to meet basic needs. So, maximize
| your enjoyment, or your family's enjoyment. The equation is a bit
| different for everybody, but there's absolutely zero reason to
| work more than makes you happy and meets your needs.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| He says "Work" and uses it as a synonym for "Career". I'm not
| sure about anyone else (though having read enough posts on this
| site, I know I speak for many), there are many kinds of work. I
| get log off from my job, these days, and play with my son and
| while he's being put to bed (no mean feat for my wife these
| days... I'd help if he'd allow it), I crack open the personal
| Linux box and start in on Rust code with the Bevy engine, for no
| reason other than self fulfillment.
|
| It's work, of a sort. I'm not sure I'd call it fun. It has ups
| and downs, but not fun, exactly. There's definitely a learning
| curve, and some of it _might_ help me in my career, but I kind of
| doubt it... maybe in the most ethereal sense. All the same, it 's
| work. Probably the most fulfilling work I do all day. But it has
| definitive goals that are attainable, kind of like the MMO's I
| used to love playing. I entertain wonderful ideas about selling a
| product that will never happen and I'm not sure I'd want to do it
| even if it was a viable product. Being a developer and a
| salesman/CEO are so vastly different, I wouldn't want to make the
| switch really. There are days I don't even enjoy managing the
| small team I do, and they're nice.
|
| I hop on the treadmill or bike, hit the weights in the garage,
| and I hate them... and that's work. But I do it. That one's
| practice with a purpose, though, so I'm not sure that gets lumped
| in.
|
| I know other people who garden like it's their born profession
| when they get home. It's amazing. People who knit and sew.
| Hunters who take it to extreme levels and stockpile meat for the
| year. All of it work, while they still have careers.
| sdze wrote:
| Improve your expenditures and work less.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > My father rushed over from his job at Philco (you can still see
| the building on 101 in Palo Alto). He took a couple of days to
| make the necessary arrangements, passed me off to my
| grandmother's care, then went back to work. He had a deadline.
|
| This story is a good reminder to me to continue to live within my
| means. In this situation, fuck deadlines! I'm taking my son to a
| ball game and helping him grieve the loss of his sister.
|
| You deserved more OP, your father was a coward in this situation
| and failed to step up.
| shard wrote:
| I think there is a bit of a lack of empathy in your response.
| First, not everyone has learned how to express affection,
| especially some of the previous generations. The author even
| wrote that the father wanted to be involved in his child's
| life, but did not have practice or models for being the kind of
| father the author wanted. It does not indicate cowardice. It
| could be very difficult to switch one's frame of view to
| something that seems alien. It might have been just as
| difficult for the author's father to become an affectionate and
| involved parent, which you see as something he should be able
| to achieve, as it would be for a typical modern man to accept
| that plants have the same rights as people, which some future
| version of humanity might consider to be an obvious given.
|
| Second, people grieve in different ways. Some might engage in
| self-destructive behavior. Others might fall into a deep
| depression and have trouble getting out of bed. The father
| might have found comfort with the routine of work where he
| could pretend everything was fine. He was at least aware enough
| to make sure his children were care for, by passing them to the
| grandmother. He might find seeing his wife or child too much to
| bear, as they remind him too much of his daughter. There is a
| reason why couples often separate if a child dies. He might not
| have the skills to deal with his grief, might not have had
| help, might not know where to get help, might not have even
| know he needed help.
|
| Third, there are several different ways of parenting. One of
| which is what you mentioned, making sure the family has modest
| needs so that they can live within those means, reducing the
| burden on the parents to have to constantly strive for ever
| increasing wages. There are also parents who want to provide as
| much as possible for their children, the healthiest foods, the
| best medical care, exposure to many ideas and activities and
| cultures, which necessitates a tradeoff between effort put into
| work and direct time with family. It might be easy to agree
| that the extremes of the spectrum are poor choices, but harder
| to say where along the middle of the spectrum is the optimum.
| Which is the main point of the article, whether you agree or
| not.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I could perhaps have been hasty to condemn him to some
| degree. However I think it is critical to our society that
| men teach boys how to be men. I find that what is called
| toxic masculinity is often men who haven't been instructed
| and are doing a thin impersonation of what they believe it to
| be. We can't let other men off the hook so easily, given that
| those choices echo down the generations. I don't believe the
| posters father will ever read what I wrote, but I hope the
| poster does, and when he finds that his children need him I
| hope he understands how trivial someone else's deadline is in
| comparison to their need for their father.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > The author even wrote that the father wanted to be involved
| in his child's life, but did not have practice or models for
| being the kind of father the author wanted.
|
| then the author's father should have figured it out. i don't
| have a lot of sympathy for people in problem solving fields
| that, for the life of them, somehow can't solve for family.
| You read the docs (books), figure it out, and seek SME's for
| guidance. Just like everything else.
| WJW wrote:
| Perhaps. Not everyone can learn everything, and blaming the
| father for his shortcomings because he was apparently smart
| in other fields ("in a problem solving field") is just
| callous. Yes, the world would have been slightly better if
| he could have done it. But sometimes the world is not as
| great as we would like, and people inside it do not live up
| to our (or even their own) expectations. They deserve
| empathy, not to be called cowards in internet comments by
| people who never knew them.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Where do you draw the line? It seems like any shortcoming
| can be traced back to some mix of nature or nurture, is
| it just universally unfair to expect things from other
| humans?
|
| Of course even flawed people deserve some level of
| empathy, but there's a difference between empathy and
| immunity from responsibility or criticism.
| Claude_Shannon wrote:
| I found this article to be lacking. It felt like introduction to
| the content... that abruptly endedn
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > We need work.
|
| Yes, but the place you get a paycheck from doesn't have to be
| this kind of work, the work we need. I need a paycheck. I need
| work. They can come from different places. Give me my paycheck
| and let me spend time with family and on my true work, if not, in
| this market, I'll find another job that pays more.
| golemiprague wrote:
| I don't understand what this guy wants, his dad had to bring
| money to the table, was probably depressed for loosing a wife and
| a daughter which is more depressing to the father than to the
| child. Give him a bit of slack, the fact that he was still
| functioning at work is good enough, loosing a kid put a a hole in
| a father heart, to expect him to be normal is just clueless
| 20211215throw wrote:
| The first 10-15 years I worked my ass off. The last 10 I've taken
| it easy so I'm behind on all the new tech. The problem is now I
| want to work hard again but my skills are out of date. Despite
| the "unbelievably Strong" job market I'm finding it hard to get
| roles.
| taterbase wrote:
| How would you characterize the differences between your years
| working your ass off and your years taking it easy? What did
| daily work look like during these eras?
| lordnacho wrote:
| The problem is basically sow/harvest. If you're in the situation
| most people are in, you need to eat today, and you need to eat
| tomorrow.
|
| Quite a lot is done to force kids to invest early on in their
| lives: go to school, don't get pregnant, don't waste your future.
|
| However at some point you have to get something out of life that
| isn't just potential. You can't eternally be building up to
| something that you'll enjoy later. The biggest issue I have with
| pensions is that it entices people to just endure whatever
| hardships they have so that they can stop doing it when they're
| old.
|
| It happens at both ends of your career: wait a bit to have kids,
| then when you're old and it turns out the game really wasn't
| worth it, don't complain and just retire. In the mean time you
| lose the ability to see your grandchildren, plus the org you're
| working for doesn't get the old timers telling them things are
| totally messed up.
| taylodl wrote:
| _Life is what happens when you 're making other plans._
|
| People are always spending today planning for tomorrow.
| _Tomorrow_ then becomes _today_ and the process repeats. People
| often forget you live your life _today._
| goldcountry wrote:
| This is a stupid take. Work life balance could be easy if we
| didn't live in a system that forced you to sell your life to
| wealthy sociopaths in exchange for the right to exist.
| amw-zero wrote:
| Let's take away the modern economy - what would you have to do
| for survival?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Jon Jandai did a TED talk about this, he was from rual
| Thailand, he tried to get qualifications and a big city job
| and then couldn't. He describes his life after returning to
| his village as spending a few weeks planting and harvesting
| rice, fishing, spending about a month of making clay bricks
| and letting them dry in the sun to build a house with no
| downpayment or mortgage, and having most months of the year
| free, doing a lot of reading, and teaching people about
| saving seeds, farming, house building, community building, in
| exchange for hand-me-down clothes and so on.
|
| He does "work", put effort in for results, but much much less
| than anything you would consider fulltime western job for
| survival. Whether it's possible for everyone to do that at
| scale, possible outside Thailand's growing conditions,
| whether everyone would want to live that way, it is at least
| a counterexample to the kind of dismissal "without a
| corporate job you would work hard 24/7 and still starve in a
| week, everything except this is worse by every measure" that
| seems to be behind comments like yours. He feels a lot
| happier living like this and building a local community than
| struggling and failing in the city as an isolated
| independent. http://www.jon-jandai.com/about/index.html
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Works for a prime-age healthy male of course. The data
| point is limited.
|
| It takes a host more work that this theatre of seed-saving
| and mud-brick-making to live a secure life. That TED pundit
| could always simply take a plane back to civilization of
| the crop failed, if he got sick, if he got bored.
|
| If he'd hit his toe with a hoe while doing that bucolic
| farming, where would he go? Infection, blood poisoning,
| fever, amputation or death could result. Not so romantic.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| {Insert HN comment guideline about avoiding simplistic
| dismissals here}.
|
| > " _Works for a prime-age healthy male of course. The
| data point is limited._ "
|
| Not "of course"; it's typically said or implied that even
| prime-age healthy males would have to work like abused
| pack horses and still barely survive. A limited data
| point it is, but there is another - his same scheme
| includes elderly women building their own homes, and
| young schoolchildren building their own school. Turning
| mud into bricks and bricks into a single story one or two
| room building, working together with no deadlines,
| doesn't need the labours of Hercules. The datapoint is
| not just "it's possible to be a subsistence farmer" which
| we did know, but "we always talk of subsistence farming
| as gruelling long hard work which leads to things like
| Russian peasants eating cabbage soup then starving to
| death in winter; here is a real live example of a
| community subsistence farming and surviving with at least
| an order of magnitude less work than commonly assumed,
| maybe more".
|
| > " _That TED pundit could always simply take a plane
| back to civilization of the crop failed, if he got sick,
| if he got bored._ "
|
| He couldn't, he doesn't have the money or any marketable
| skills, he never did become a wealthy employee who choose
| to give it up for a rural life; from that page I linked "
| _I worked hard but had no savings, just enough to make me
| survive day by day. I was disappointed with my life in
| the city. I couldn't compete with anyone. I felt I had
| failed_ ".
|
| > " _If he 'd hit his toe with a hoe while doing that
| bucolic farming, where would he go? Infection, blood
| poisoning, fever, amputation or death could result._"
|
| Interesting that you've gone from "he could fly back to
| the city any time he wanted" as a dismissal to "he'd have
| nowhere to go if he needed city resources" as a dismissal
| in such a short time. But yes, no doubt those things
| could happen, he does say "learned to do many kinds of
| self-healing" and no doubt that does not include making
| antibiotics, anaesthesia, surgeons, dental fillings or
| living to 95 on a cocktail of statins and beta blockers
| and blood pressure pills and anticoagulants and
| antidepressents and metformin and all the rest.
|
| The big question is not "how romantic is it" but whether
| "I do not feel bad about myself anymore", "When I started
| to do more things by myself, I have more confidence and
| less fear", "now I enjoy spending my life with my family
| and friends and plants" are worth the price compared to
| having readily available opticians and doctors while
| feeling like an isolated unhappy failure endlessly losing
| a forever-competition in city jobs while building no
| community.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Survival is easy. There are ton of places on the planet that
| don't benefit from the 'modern economy'. Hell, there are
| places that are actually getting screwed over the by the
| 'modern economy' and there are war torn anarchy-ridden places
| (for real anarchy, not the Fox News take on Seattle) and
| people still survive if you actually want to talk extremes.
|
| This modern economy is the exact religion that preaches the
| same gospel in the blog post: Maslow's pyramid of needs
| dictates that you need to work. Which is.. fine, I guess? My
| problem with that is that the work has become super
| productive in the past decades and that excess production
| allows only a fraction of people to stop working. Coupled
| with replacing the benefits of an actual community with the
| downgrade which is a workplace to give you that sense of
| belonging, self-sufficiency propaganda and employer-only
| provided healthcare, you get a nation of wage slaves.
|
| We don't really need to work. I mean not all of us. A lot of
| the work done nowadays is bullshit [1]. The pandemic kinda
| showed us exactly who needs to go work to keep society going.
| The rest is just the result of:
|
| - inertial protestant ethic
|
| - wealth hoarding by the owners of production
|
| - people tied to their workplace are easier to
| persuade/manage/manipulate politically
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
| roberto wrote:
| Right, because those are our only options...
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'll argue this in good faith. Let's take your preconditions as
| fact for the purposes of this discussion - employers are either
| "wealthy sociopaths" or agents of the same.
|
| You may find the options they offer to be unacceptable, but
| what if they didn't exist? What options available to you if
| that were the case are not available to you because they _do_
| exist?
|
| As far as I can see our current system is beneficial, if only
| because it allows people additional choices of how to live
| their lives.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Beneficial compared to what? We're stuck in a peak and there
| may be much higher ones elsewhere but because to traverse to
| those points we might have to descend the idea is
| unthinkable.
| skywal_l wrote:
| I personally found a lot from Lucretius Carus's "De Rerum
| Natura"[0]. It was important to popularize the philosophy of
| Epicurus. It describes three types of needs:
|
| 1. Necessary and natural needs: Sleep, eat, the other thing.
|
| 2. Unnecessary (from the individual's point of view) and natural
| needs: Have sex, eating over nutritious food, etc.
|
| 3. Unnecessary and unnatural need: Sports car, big house, etc.
|
| If you want to fulfill 2 and 3, it going to cost you something.
| With an abundance of pleasures will come pain.
|
| Epicurus was a man of another time and its solution, ataraxia[1],
| which is a form of extreme asceticism that would mean living like
| a monk basically, seems untenable today, but I personally got a
| lot from this on why work/life balance is important.
|
| His physic is also incredible. Like the concept of "Clinamen"
| [2]. The guy figured out quantum mechanic 25 centuries in
| advance.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen
| amw-zero wrote:
| I'm not sure that it _should_ be hard, but I am sure that it
| always will be hard. This is just the nature of life, your
| attention is zero-sum. More time here means less time there.
|
| Yes, business is not all there is to life, especially if I am an
| individual contributor who doesn't reap most of the rewards of
| the success of the business. However, my livelihood can be
| affected by a business becoming unsuccessful. I have seen it - I
| was on unemployment when my first child was born because my
| employer ran out of money.
|
| So I work to try and keep any business that I work for afloat. I
| don't think it's much different than if I were a hunter-gatherer
| and had to spend time collecting food to eat. I want to do
| everything I can to make sure there is food to collect tomorrow.
| dainiusse wrote:
| Thank you. That gives a chance to think from another perspective
| about all that grinding.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It sounds like the author's father never recovered from extreme
| trauma, which is a fate many face. I'm not sure that says
| anything about a job/life balance.
| x0hm wrote:
| "Work" and "jobs" are two very different things.
|
| We need _action towards results_.
|
| We do not need _16 hour workdays_.
| civilized wrote:
| What a silly headline. What's wrong with doing a good job at your
| 9-5 and coming home with a clear mind to be with your family?
|
| To be honest I work too hard, but I'm not deluded that I'm
| somehow an especially good person for doing so. The world is full
| of awesome people whose energy mostly goes to things outside
| their jobs, and who make more meaningful contributions because of
| this.
| bidivia wrote:
| This is a horrible story: Someone works so much that falls sleep
| and kills his family members.
|
| Working so much is the definition of "negative returns": Working
| over the limits of exhaustion means you do not only not create
| wealth, but destroy it in huge amounts. And killing people is an
| invaluable loss.
|
| If you work so much that fall sleep with your truck and destroy
| your truck, if you only destroy material things like your truck
| you just evaporated years of work. If you kill people you just
| have destroyed your entire life.
|
| When I started working on a warehouse as an adolescent, a working
| colleague fall sleep for working so much with the forklift and
| had an accident. It meant hundreds of thousands of euros in
| medical procedures for the insurer, and never being able to walk
| again normally for the rest of his life.
|
| It is not worth it but people do it again an again.
|
| People that do it are not role models. It is a toxic influence.
|
| Pick role models of people that work reasonable hours and are
| wealthy and healthy.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| The author is a RETARD.
| zepto wrote:
| "He had a deadline."
|
| He also had two young children to provide for on his own. That
| seems to be omitted from this story.
| [deleted]
| slg wrote:
| The headline makes article feels incomplete. We are told why the
| life side of the equation is important without any real mention
| of the value of work. It feels like the conclusion I am supposed
| to come to is that the balance is easy as work should always
| defer to life. Why shouldn't I put in the minimum amount of
| effort into work that gets me to a comfortable lifestyle outside
| of work?
| elliotec wrote:
| Maybe you should! Sometimes that's still a lot of work though.
| And sometimes for some people, the lines between life and work
| are pretty blurry.
| lostcolony wrote:
| "Why shouldn't I put in the minimum amount of effort into work
| that gets me to a comfortable lifestyle outside of work?"
|
| I agree. Why shouldn't you? I've never heard anyone say "I wish
| I'd put more time and effort into work". I -have- heard "I wish
| I was paid more", and if effort equates to that (from all
| observations of my career, I remain unconvinced) I can see that
| changing your minimum (i.e., from "minimum required to not get
| fired" to "minimum required to get to the next level"), but
| going above and beyond that minimum doesn't extrinsically
| affect you. So if intrinsically you value 'life' more than
| 'work' there...better to take that time/effort and put it into
| life.
|
| This article just made it clear how ephemeral work meaning is,
| and how important life meaning is, and how important it is to
| subjugate the former to the latter. Which I agree, seems at
| odds with the title.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Why shouldn 't I put in the minimum amount of effort into work
| that gets me to a comfortable lifestyle outside of work?_
|
| Indeed. If we assume "work" is doing something you wouldn't
| otherwise do, then absolutely, you should be asking that
| question. And for most people, that's likely true of almost any
| employment.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i can't remember who said it but there's a quote that goes "no
| one ever said on their death bed 'i wish i would have spent
| more time at the office'"
| ravitation wrote:
| I don't know if it really feels incomplete, instead the article
| seems to make a more compelling case for the opposite of the
| headline actually being true.
|
| If we assume the following premise from the article is true...
|
| > The only way balancing is going to be easy is if one or the
| other side isn't worth much, and that would be a shame.
|
| The article makes a much more compelling case that the life
| side is worth quite a lot, and the work side isn't worth
| much... Meaning work/life balance should be easy.
| d23 wrote:
| I can't make sense of this article. Did the dad stop working as
| much? Keep on working as much? Work more? The intro makes it
| seem like he learned to work less, but then the rest makes it
| seem like he didn't.
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