[HN Gopher] Frustration Tolerance: An Essential for Surviving La...
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Frustration Tolerance: An Essential for Surviving Large Orgs
Author : sherilm
Score : 52 points
Date : 2025-01-20 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.leadingsapiens.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.leadingsapiens.com)
| Norfair wrote:
| Having an organisation of highly-frustration-tollerant people is
| a great way of getting an organisation where nothing ever gets
| fixed.
| fdpee wrote:
| This, I'm the low frustration tolerance one and guess what ?
| I'm also the one that document the product and make it actually
| easy to onboard on
| hinkley wrote:
| At a pivotal point in my career growth, I got stuck with a
| project I had grown tired of while a more stimulating project
| was being spun up with new hires. I was "too important" to
| the old project and shut out. I did not enjoy that
| experience.
|
| I've always been a pretty decent writer, and a passable
| tutor. It wasn't that I couldn't divest knowledge to other
| people, we just hadn't made the time. I never did get onto
| that other project, the company started spiraling before I
| convinced that manager the team could deal without me. But I
| have seen what happens when a senior person becomes the
| bottleneck, or when only one voice champions an idea in
| meetings, and I do a better job of carving out bits of
| subject matter to co-create with peers or bequeath to people
| I'm mentoring. There's plenty of breathing room between Work
| Yourself Out of a Job and Being Indispensable, where you have
| enough capacity that you can participate in new ideas that
| strike your fancy.
| CharlesW wrote:
| TFA doesn't say that "frustration tolerant" people tolerate
| _problems_ , but that they tolerate _frustration_ as they fix
| those problems "without succumbing to negative emotions or
| counterproductive behaviors".
|
| I was far more frustration intolerant earlier in my career,
| part of which I can now attribute to undiagnosed AuDHD.
| Although I can't say that I've mastered frustration tolerance,
| I've learned to moderate it to the point that I'm far more
| effective now.
| gffrd wrote:
| I'd be interested to hear how you've learned to moderate your
| response to frustration more effectively.
|
| Practices? Medication? Etc.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| For me, it was better sleep, a healthier diet, and regular
| weightlifting nearly every morning.
| gffrd wrote:
| Intersting.
|
| I have noticed that on the mornings where I do some
| exertion before anything else--a run, some yoga, etc.--
| that my ability to "receive" and process the things that
| come at me is so much better. It feels like there's a
| waiting room, whereas otherwise, whatever comes at me
| gets a 1:1 response.
|
| Have you found weightlifting to be specifically
| beneficial, or is that just your morning workout of
| choice?
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I'd be interested to hear how you've learned to moderate
| your response to frustration more effectively._
|
| I loved _@Schiendelman_ 's answer, and I believe that
| prioritizing mental and physical health is a prerequisite
| for tolerating frustration effectively. For me, it's been
| more about a change in practices and perspective.
|
| For example, I never react in the moment to professional
| frustration beyond listening and asking sincere questions.
| I've learned that I need time to respond, and even to
| consider whether I should respond at all.
|
| If I find myself awake at 4am ruminating about an aspect of
| my company or product, I remind myself that I may be taking
| it (and myself) a bit too seriously, and reassure myself
| that it can safely be tabled until tomorrow.
|
| There's wisdom in the Serenity Prayer: "Grant me the
| serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to
| change the things I can, and wisdom to know the
| difference."
| hinkley wrote:
| The masochists are all too happy to do something the hard way
| in perpetuity. But they are in the smart-industrious quadrant
| and they will burn up man-hours like no tomorrow. Their goal is
| to fill a week not get stuff done.
|
| You can be the person who jumps on the tedious tasks and that's
| fine - as one personality in a diverse team. I worked on a
| project with all super senior people who never wanted to do any
| tedious work, ever. Over the course of a year the project
| started to more and more resemble Second System Syndrome, as
| each dev contributed an "engine" or "framework" to perform Task
| Golf and never write any boring code. That's just as bad as all
| masochists.
|
| But a masochist that insists everyone else experience pain too
| is now a sadist. And from a progress standpoint that's probably
| the worst monoculture to have.
| rini17 wrote:
| "no biggie, it's just like learning to navigate a busy city"
|
| Such insidious reframing with absolutely no mention of burnout
| possibility. Yuck.
| hansvm wrote:
| That phrase resonated with me. Do you not get burnout when you
| spend too much time in a busy city? God forbid you'd have to
| navigate one 8-5 every weekday.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's important to realize that busy cities (and large
| organizations) are the way they are because many people can
| tolerate them and some people thrive in them. (Nothing wrong
| with deciding you personally can't, or just that you don't
| want to.)
| rini17 wrote:
| Most people learn it once and then they go around the city
| largely on autopilot. Some stress is there but more
| manageable. Doing on autopilot is not possible in large orgs,
| or if it's possible it's prone to make you feel unfulfilled
| instead of burned out.
| stouset wrote:
| Did you know that some people actually choose to live in
| cities?
|
| Personally I can't wrap my head around the continuous boredom
| of living in rural areas or suburbia, where anything
| interesting is an hour or more of wasted life in a round-trip
| car ride. Even fetching groceries is a half hour there and
| back instead of a few minute walk. Crazy!
|
| Different people have different norms, different preferences,
| and are acclimated to different environments.
| spacecadet wrote:
| I drive a classic car in NYC and have 100% patience and 0%
| frustration. Meanwhile I cant keep a job at a big corpo because
| of my frustrated rebellious behavior. So yeah, awful framing.
| edem wrote:
| As it turns out my frustration tolerance is very low...I decided
| to check out of this rotten system and go my own way a few months
| ago. My stress levels plummeted since.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Yeah... same.
|
| Power to those who can function in highly frustrating
| environments, but for me the only winning move is to not play
| the game in the first place.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| So what's the alternative?
| fdpee wrote:
| Not being a software dev for one
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Good for you, but what do you do now?
| nateburke wrote:
| "I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a
| bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is
| also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering.
|
| "But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever
| really learns anything important, the real skill that is required
| to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make
| a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not
| efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not
| political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision,
| or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls
| virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that
| underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to
| breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action.
|
| "The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with
| boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes
| everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.
|
| "The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find
| the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the
| repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable.
|
| "It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom,
| there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
|
| David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
| jancsika wrote:
| > "The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with
| boredom."
|
| The key to excellence in _any_ human endeavor is the ability to
| deal with boredom.
|
| Wallace was a serious tennis player for awhile, surely he must
| know this.
|
| It's as if he (and most of HN) has a kind of intellectual
| allergy to the word "bureaucracy" that suppresses his critical
| faculties.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And dealing with boredom is something nobody learns how to do
| anymore. We have constant entertainment in our pockets with
| mobile phones, social media, and streaming.
|
| When I go to the gym I sit in the sauna for 30 minutes just
| doing... nothing. Just sitting. No earbuds, no phone in hand.
| I'm usually the only one like this. I get asked how I can
| stand it. It's just normal to me. I think about stuff I need
| to do. I map out the next day, or the rest of the day, or
| next week. I reflect on last week. My mind always finds
| something to think about.
| c22 wrote:
| People are bringing their phones into the sauna?
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| I think every time I've been (or even been moving toward)
| excellent at something, it's because I found very little or
| none of it boring. Even very-focused drilling and such, or
| studying "boring" material (it wasn't, to me--I didn't have
| to deal with boredom to progress!)
|
| Office work and dealing with bureaucracy stands out as
| something that lots of people find themselves doing and
| _almost all of them_ find unpleasant, including experiencing
| tons of it as very boring.
| elcritch wrote:
| This resonates so deeply with me as an ADHDer. In the sense
| that I abhor it and have become clinically depressed in such
| situations.
|
| It's also why "evolutionarily" the farm-and-plan neurotypes
| became so numerically prevalent over the forage-and-explore
| ADHD neurotypes with the advent of farming and modern society.
|
| That's my working hypothesis at least. Also makes me think
| that's why beer and alcohol were such an important aspect in
| Egyptian and other ancient societies. Perhaps believing that is
| just what helps me sleep at night having a semi-disfuctional
| prefrontal cortex. ;)
|
| Still it fascinates me that ADHD neurotypes persist at a
| stubborn 1/20 ratio in almost all large societies even in
| cultures such as Japan's where one might assume ADHD traits
| would be heavily discouraged. As in ADHDers are the required
| lubricant to keep the bureaucratic machines from rusting up and
| so persist.
|
| As a descriptive counterpoint look at the imagination of the
| "perfect bureaucracy" in Star Trek: the Borg. The only way they
| progress technologically is by assimilating new peoples. I hope
| someone pursue this as a post-graduate thesis at some point.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| This is a great piece, and the comments here are part of the
| learning - the author has hit the nail on the head of the growth
| opportunity for most engineers. Frustration is an internal issue,
| managing it is difficult, and being told you need to is
| uncomfortable.
|
| For a mid level engineer, learning to do so effectively is worth
| a lot more money than any other marginal skill improvement.
| alganet wrote:
| Sounds like a buddhist thing.
|
| Also sounds like an exploit, a cheap excuse for people with the
| power to profit from frustratation to get away.
|
| On the long run, frustration leads to paranoia, and paranoia
| leads to unpredictableness, which in high doses seems to be
| harmful for any organization.
|
| So, it seams that dealing with (not exactly tolerating, also not
| intolerating, it's different) paranoia is way more important. But
| also, if we don't have paranoia, we can find ourselves in the
| receiving end of endless frustration.
|
| A delicate situation.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Let's face it. If you get frustrated, either you get paid enough
| to put up with the nonsense, or you don't. If you do, you can
| stick around. If you don't, you will move on, but just don't
| repeat the loop.
| nxobject wrote:
| This resonated with me, but not in its original context in
| navigating large organizations - it reminds me of chewing on a
| tough open-ended math problem, or other situations where you try
| a 100 solutions to find one that actually works. I hope it's the
| same concept here.
| ant6n wrote:
| In Germany, you have to be extremely frustration tolerant for
| surviving running a small startup. The bureaucracy is crazy and
| convoluted, the funding (including research grants) frustrating
| and obscure, the consultants (e.g. tax advisor) to help with
| these expensive and infuriating, the software (eg bookkeeping)
| infantile.
| briffle wrote:
| Why does reading this make me think of the book "who moved my
| cheese", that was handed out at many large 2000's ish companies a
| quarter or two before layoffs started?
| brendan0powers wrote:
| One of the things I often find missing in articles and discussion
| of these topics here on HN is the understanding that different
| people are really quite different.
|
| Articles or comments like this often read like moral judgements.
| You should be X to succeed. Being X works for me, and it should
| for you. If X doesn't work for you, it's your problem. There's
| usually little considering that achieving X may be significantly
| easier for some than others, or that there may be other ways of
| achieving a persons goals that work better for them.
|
| This article is better than most in that it has a well defined
| scope, large organizations. I don't have any major problems with
| the content, other than I'd like some more time spent on wether
| the model they are applying is really as applicable to the
| situation as they claim.
|
| I must admit to some bias, as I do no do well in large
| organizations, and the description of frustration in the article
| doesn't resonate with my experience of frustration at these orgs.
| I left the last place I worked because it was bad for my mental
| health. In many ways it was a dream job. It payed extremely well,
| I liked the people I worked with, and it wasn't that hard.
| Eventually though, I just couldn't do it anymore, and left for a
| small startup. I didn't realize how bad it was until I noticed I
| could still feel myself physically unwinding three months later.
|
| I've been at this company for three years, and still love working
| here. It's absolutely not frustration free. I am however, much
| better equipped to handle the kinds of frustrations I face at
| this new company.
|
| The author of the article says:
|
| "It's like learning to navigate a bustling city. At first, the
| traffic, noise, and crowds seem like overwhelming obstacles. But
| over time, you see these elements as essential aspects of urban
| life."
|
| I've experienced this first hand after moving to NYC, and it's
| true, but it's also important to remember that some people just
| don't like cities, and that's Ok.
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